There has been a lot of discussion about academic qualifications over the past couple of days. I wrote a long post about it. If you find it useful, give it a read. If not, just pretend you never saw it.
From tribal hunting to settled communities, humanity entered the agricultural age, living by the rhythm of sunrise and sunset. Everything revolved around the most important means of production: land. Families naturally organized themselves into clans living together. For most people, understanding the 24 solar terms, reading the weather, and knowing when to plant and harvest were far more important than formal education.
Works like The Book of Lord Shang, Discourses on Salt and Iron, and The Prince represent the thinking of that era. Education and literacy were privileges reserved for a small elite. That's why people believed, "Among all pursuits, studying is the noblest." A single examination could completely change a person's destiny. Passing the imperial exam meant instant prestige and success.
Then came the steam engine and the Industrial Revolution.
People became cogs in the machinery of society. Around factories, energy, and transportation, the old clan system fell apart, and local gentry and aristocrats were left behind with the agricultural era. Today's social structure—including our families, companies, offices, and education system—was largely built to serve factories.
Different factories needed different workers with specialized skills. Workers had to fit precisely into specific roles, so mass education became necessary. We have benefited enormously from technological and social progress. Yet even today, our mainstream educational philosophy and academic disciplines are still designed to solve the problem of labor specialization.
Even the most prestigious MBA programs are, at their core, teaching people how to manage workers or create consumer demand. The famous business case studies from elite universities are trying to preserve the fading glory of old business empires. As the education bubble has expanded, the meaning of academic excellence has changed. Once, graduating from university almost guaranteed a government-assigned job. Today, even top graduates wonder whether they should give up their pride and simply take ordinary jobs.
The Information Revolution brought us the internet—but it also opened Pandora's box.
Countless ideas and cultures collided. Everything is constantly being broken apart and rebuilt. Authority is no longer unquestioned. The internet has no ceiling—and no floor. A degree can earn you admiration, but it can also make you a target for criticism.
This is both the best and the worst era in human history.
It's the best because, if you're willing, you can learn almost anything with nothing more than a smartphone. It's the worst because endless streams of sensational content compete for every second of your attention.
In this era, we've seen countless ordinary people rise to prominence because the internet has flattened the world. But competition has also become much fiercer. You suddenly realize that the world isn't as impressive as it once seemed, and many so-called experts are simply ordinary people. Every platform is full of debates every day, and every day a new "internet celebrity" or "guru" is born.
In just over thirty years, I've lived through all three of these waves.
As someone who graduated from a vocational college but was fortunate enough to build a successful career, I now spend my days searching for the right people to join my team.
From an employer's perspective, here's an opinion that may not be popular:
A strong academic background usually shows that a candidate is intelligent and capable of working consistently toward a goal. But a traditional university degree—or even an MBA—is ultimately just general education.
Knowledge is not the same as skill.
Skill is not the same as mindset.
And mindset is not the same as the inner strength needed to withstand both praise and criticism.
Most real abilities are developed through continuous practice over time. Character is even more valuable. What matters more is whether a candidate is honest, thinks logically, has resilience, and possesses a growth mindset.
Finally, this is also a recruitment post.
If you're someone who can drive explosive user growth, optimize conversions, push products to iterate rapidly, and build thriving online communities, then I've been looking for you for a long time.
A prestigious degree is great—but if you only have a vocational college diploma, that's perfectly fine too.
I've recently realized that many things in life are like this:
It's great if you have them—but it's also okay if you don't.
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