Tag / talent development

Man teaching pointing to a projector screen.
by Nathan Coumbe

Talking yourself into learning

I’ve been reviewing some coding skills in my spare time to improve the content and coursework I create for my day job.

As part of my practice, I’ve been talking to myself.

Here’s one example:

“I need to turn this text into a link, so [as I’m typing out the code] I need to wrap this header element in an anchor tag and add the hypertext reference attribute to it and set it equal to the hyperlink I need to direct my audience to. Oh, don’t forget to add the target attribute and set it equal to blank so it’ll open in a new tab.”1

It’s more tedious and time-consuming than simply typing out the code. But the point is to understand the concepts behind what I’m doing, not just to write functional code as quickly as possible. (If I wanted to do that, I’d just have Claude do it for me…)

Teaching someone else—even if you’re teaching yourself by talking out loud—is one of the best ways to prove you know something. When you force yourself to explain something out loud, you learn where the gaps in your knowledge are, which then signals what you need to review. Then, when you come to the same scenario again, you can see if you’ve acquired the necessary ability to explain your former knowledge gap.2

This is active recall: talking or writing out something you’ve learned in your own words, and it’s how I’ve been approaching certain aspects of training at work. Rather than having everyone watch videos or read through course SCORM files, we’re testing employees’ abilities to talk through features.

It starts with review, of course—you still need content they can reference at the beginning of the learning process. But that’s where L&D often falls short. We equate content delivery with learning. And, obviously, that’s not true.3

But the proof of learning comes when they’re forced to talk it out and get graded on their delivery.

There’s no punishment for getting things wrong. But we know for certain where the gaps in understanding are, what needs review and further study. Or we learn that we, the L&D practitioners, missed something in the initial teaching and have to fill it in.

Talk out what you’re learning. If you can explain it to someone else (or yourself)—out loud—there’s a good chance you’ve grasped the concept.

  1. I’m aware that this is extraordinarily basic HTML code for all you web developers out there. But the point is the practice of talking it out, not how advanced the code is. ↩︎
  2. My favorite book on this topic was actually written to help college students improve test scores. Check out Cal Newport’s How to Become a Straight-A Student. It’s not just for undergrads. ↩︎
  3. Again, I have to point out that this is why most online learning (e.g., MasterClass, Udemy, and most corporate training) doesn’t work. Consuming information isn’t learning. It’s part of it, sure, but only the retention and understanding of that information actually matter. And the only truly effective way to test this is through active recall, which is exactly what I’m doing when I talk out my code. And it’s what we’re doing when we have people talk through our product. ↩︎
by Nathan Coumbe

On the frivolousness of educational requirements in job postings (Part 2 of “Same job, different pay”)

I anticipated some of the pushback I’d receive from yesterday’s post, and I wanted to address it here.

Some might argue that certain jobs require graduate or other advanced education to obtain them. And I agree some should: I’d much rather have a surgeon who went to medical school operate on me than one who learned from YouTube.

And we’re all better off with engineers who went to school for the subject than relying on amateurs to build our bridges.

But doctors, engineers, nurses, and other “professional” roles all require specialized education simply to learn and carry out the basics of their jobs.1

This isn’t the reality for many knowledge or service sector jobs, which comprise a significant portion of our modern workforce. However, you might point out that many of these jobs require a college or even graduate education, as indicated in their job postings. Isn’t that at odds with what I’m saying?

No—because these jobs don’t actually need you to have a degree. It’s a tool to keep you from applying for them.

Hiring managers simply use that to make their lives easier and weed out 90% of otherwise qualified applicants without ever having to look at their applications. It reduces their workload.

For the vast majority of us working in the knowledge sector, a college education neither prepares us for specific jobs, such as those professional jobs listed previously, nor does it actually equip us with most of the skills required for knowledge work. We learn on the job and through self-education.

You don’t need a master’s degree in computer science from MIT to work as a software developer. You simply need to know how to program (and be damn good at it). You can learn on Codecademy or attend a bootcamp, gaining enough knowledge to get a job. You’ll have to learn the specifics of the role when you start working, anyway.

I work in learning and development, so I’m somewhat biased in my thinking on this. The shift in L&D now is toward skills-based training and qualifications. Essentially, we’re trying to answer this question:

Leaving aside formal education, what specific skills does a person either need to possess—or need to learn—to be qualified for this specific job?

You don’t consider their past college education (or lack thereof); you only consider what they’re capable of. This approach doesn’t harm people who attend school for specific fields because, as long as they’re qualified by their skills, they can still get the job. However, it also doesn’t prevent those who didn’t attend a formal school, but who do possess the necessary skills, from securing work for which they’re qualified.

Again, why do we need someone who is applying for a job in marketing or customer success to have a college degree? If they have the skill, or can learn it outside of a university, shouldn’t that be enough?

For most knowledge work jobs, it’s simply ridiculous to require a college degree (and I have two of them, neither of which I’ve ever used in my knowledge work jobs).

So I suppose I’m arguing two things:

  1. Eliminate degree requirements for most jobs.
  2. Pay the same wages (and good ones) for the same work, regardless of educational background or years of experience.2

Only the quality and the results of the work should matter. Not how much education someone has.

And for God’s sake, not based on how good someone is at negotiating. Not everyone is comfortable negotiating salaries or demanding raises, especially when they think their boss will just fire them and hire someone cheaper if they try.

We are obsessed with meritocracy in this country, often to our detriment. And we obsess over it in such a way that it harms people who may be just as capable at a job as someone else, but who don’t have the courage or the skills to negotiate with someone in a position of power above them.

Does this mean that I think another L&D specialist at my company who hypothetically started today should make the same amount of money I make after nearly four years of raises?

Absolutely, I believe that. But I’ll save that rant for Part 3 tomorrow.

  1. I have a holdup about including lawyers in this list for one very specific reason: Until sometime in the 20th century, you did not have to go to law school to practice law. You simply needed to pass the bar exam for the state(s) in which you intended to practice.

    Walter Gordon, a native of my home state of Mississippi (who was one of the main characters in Band of Brothers), passed the bar exam after the war while still in law school and was allowed to practice even without his diploma.

    At some point, law schools realized they could make a lot more money if they collaborated with the American Bar Association to require would-be lawyers to attend their schools, thereby creating a somewhat arbitrary barrier to entry into the field.

    Are lawyers who attend law school objectively better off? I don’t know, nor do I feel qualified to say. However, it does seem similar to what we encounter in knowledge work job searches.

    Are all hiring managers part of some cabal to make it difficult to get jobs? No. It’s simply easier for them and also just “how things are done around here.” The status quo is the status quo for a reason. ↩︎
  2. What if someone in the same role as someone else is objectively better at the job than the other person? Personally, I believe this issue can be easily resolved with bonuses or commissions.

    I don’t mean paying people crappy wages and hoping that they’ll make it up in bonuses (looking at you, restaurants paying servers $2.13 an hour). I mean that if two people are doing the same job, but one of them has been outstanding for just one quarter or year or whatever, pay that person some sort of bonus to show your appreciation.

    But don’t punish the other person who is doing good work—to spec, doing what needs to be done and is asked of her—by paying her less for arbitrary reasons. ↩︎