The Disillusion of Absolutism: A STEM Graduate’s Journey from University into the Corporate World

Hierarchical knowledge. Absolute truth. Unquestioned integrity. Right and wrong. Black and white. Better and worse. The stalwarts of a STEM students upbringing entrenched in our current education system. It is perhaps not so surprising then that a transition from the often conformative, oppressive and even elitist institutions that have had laid sole claim to the development of our minds from the age of 4 or 5 onwards into the realities of the micro-nuanced world of work can be a rather painful one.

A bit harsh? Maybe. And I want to get one thing straight here - this piece is not intended to be a scathing review of our education system. Far from it. Whilst not perfect, it would be foolish of me to claim that I would be where I am today had I not been through it - or at least something not unlike it. But in a time where governments are pushing the agendas of STEM subjects ever more vigorously, I think it is important to ask the question of whether STEM subjects really equip the workers of tomorrow with the skills they need to thrive in the business world. And more importantly, what can employers of and STEM graduates themselves better do to prepare for what happens after they cross the divide?

I myself am a STEM graduate and what follows is intended to be an exploration of some of the gaps that exist between the worlds of STEM education and business.

STEM Graduates are not prepared for life in a world without "right" answers.

I was not prepared for a world where it was no longer possible to be objectively correct about anything anymore. 

For the best part of 20 years, my life had revolved around the notion that there was, to a greater or lesser extent, a right answer to the problems of life. Call this naivety if you like - and I will agree with you - but I am inclined to argue that far from being my fault, this naivety was founded in and perpetuated by a system that had promised to develop and protect me from such frailties during my formative years.

My argument is thus: every year, I faced many tests and received many scores that informed me of how close I was to the right answer. Every year, through, on the whole, successful deception and trickery, I was forced to unlearn certain principles and relearn them again in ever more righteous forms. Every year I journeyed ever closer to the truth and was told just how correct I was in my understanding - xx/100. Every year, I strived to score as highly in my tests as possible to prove to everyone and myself that I knew the right answer from the wrong one and that I had the best possible understanding of the wonderful complexities of this life and all that humans have discovered of it. To my fellow STEM students and graduates, I’m sure you can concur.

And then. When faced with the challenge of beginning my career, fresh-faced and confident as I was that I could now apply all that I had learnt from my degree in order to achieve the same pace of progression and development of understanding in an entirely new field, I encountered something rather unexpected. I could no longer work out, for the life of me, what was right or wrong, correct or incorrect, any more.

You see, to learn a STEM subject, is to learn absolute truths about the universe - or at least, humanities current closest approximations to them. We are provided with the tools to verify and confirm, nearly always to an objective level, the truth and validity of a given principle. This is how knowledge is gained. To leave something open to doubt or at least not proceed in the most logical manner was nothing short of heresy.

"The choice was no longer between the right and wrong action or the right and wrong answer - but rather between the actions and answers in and of themselves"

But now, not only did it seem impossible to distinguish the correct course of action, it also seemed, simultaneously, impossible to distinguish the incorrect one. There was no logic in the matter. The choice was no longer between the right and wrong action or the right and wrong answer - but rather between the actions and answers in and of themselves. Where was the absolute authority on these matters? Who could one turn to to provide them with the reassurance of knowing what should be done? Who would tell you what you needed to do to get to where you wanted to be? University was chock full of these people - where had they all gone? Personally, I found it all really quite disorientating.

Correct and incorrect, I began to realise, can be seen merely as the ultimate expression of justification for an action or an answer - if taken to the absolute limits. In the brave new world I now found myself stumbling unsteadily through, it seemed as if there was required little to no connection to such objective principles (and hindsight shows, understandably so). Justification itself was all that was needed - and seemingly, the strongest justifications were simply those given by individuals with more (at least perceived) authority or whomsoever expressed a greater level of conviction throughout the course of a given interaction. And these people were never as convincing as teachers and lecturers whom I had always previously assumed to be my intellectual superiors.

“What a foundationless premise from which to determine a course of action” said the physics graduate to himself, huffily...

So, what can be done to adapt to this strange new world?

Really, the truth here is as simple as it is unsettling. No one knows what they're doing. Not really. Throughout education a lot of us have the blinders on to the failings and shortcomings of our teachers, through virtue of the simple fact that they know so much more than we do, it's easy enough to make the logical jump to the conclusion that they know everything and are therefore beyond questioning. As an undergraduate reading a STEM subject, the gap between my own understanding of matters and that of my lecturers remained so immense as to never give me cause to really challenge this assumption. It was only through joining a corporate organisation where the total knowledge that existed around certain topics was already within reaching distance for me, even as a complete newbie, that the fog began to lift. I realised that it was not always beneficial to bow to “experience”.

"The lack of objective truth in the workplace, a result of there being no 'scientific' law to its operations, requires that we shift to a more complex model of justification"

For me, this is the crux of the matter. I have built the career that I have so far, precisely because I learned how and when to challenge those whom I had previously assumed to know better. A complex skill, requiring buckets of self confidence, not to mention respect in spades for colleagues - all mixed in with some good old-fashioned experience. The lack of objective truth in the workplace, a result of there being no "scientific" law to its operations, requires that we shift to a more complex model of justification - namely a blend of logic, conviction, statistics and experience.

We have to remember that 'Arts' students have an advantage here in the way that their subjects are taught - they’re encouraged to be far more critical in their perceptions of others and challenged to back themselves on all of their output, without the luxury of universal principles to fall back on. Working without a clear direction and in the absence of absolute authority is already second nature to them - which strikes me as being an extremely useful skill to bring with you into the workplace (UK government, take note). I'm sure a lot of them are reading this now with a somewhat bemused expression on their face, incredulous that anyone could have got as far as I did without having grasped this stuff. The things we take for granted...

So, to my fellow STEM grads, my advice to you is the following:

• Work on challenging your “superiors” (in a nice way!) and get to the heart of the matter in hand, in order to get the most complete understanding of it. Then you can really start to add value.
• Don't be afraid to make your own thoughts and ideas heard - back yourself when it comes to making difficult decisions and because of your STEM skills, you’ll probably fare better than you think, even if you’re convinced you’re not the best qualified for the task in hand!
• Learn to really respect the views of others - even if you find them illogical! You will do well to remember that people are themselves very illogical creatures; and being a humanist is just as important a skill as being a technologist.
• Look to see what you can do beyond just the day-to-day activities of your job. If you can help your business grow by giving back, you'll find therein quite a lot of justification for getting you to where you want to be...!

And for Employers, if you can unlock the potential of a STEM grad, then you'll usually find that they live up to the hype. How do you do that? Well, my suggestion would be to try to find ways to inspire confidence in them to step beyond the task fulfillment aspect of their roles, and be firm where needed in helping them understand the lay of the land. It will depend greatly on the individual's personality and disposition of course, but there is quite a strong likelihood for STEM grads to tend towards submissiveness - and equally, self-rightousness. They will take well to tasks and instructions - and will often over deliver, figuring out new and more efficient ways to get things done - but will expect that that, in and of itself, is enough to justify their progression. If they don't get the feedback that they think they deserve, and they likely won't, then they will tend towards demotivation and disengagement. Giving them that extra confidence should move them away from this submissive tendency and get them operating at a much higher level overall - which is great for you as a business and their careers.

One tip on how you might do this - provide them with more information about how your business works, how it all fits together and how you make an impact in the world. STEM students are pretty good at figuring out how to optimise machines, so get them a schematic of your business and encourage them to have their say. You'll be surprised at the level of insight they'll be able to bring - and how much this can change their approach to work in general, inspired by the possibilities both for them and your business!

Being a 'straight A' STEM student can help you succeed in the workplace - but not in the way you think.

In my youth, I was often referred to as a "gifted" student. It didn’t seem to matter the subject, I had an affinity for exams and all the other various testing paraphernalia schools and university managed to cook up, that served me well throughout my academic career. It was largely because of this that I decided to pursue studying a STEM subject, since it was (and still is) generally regarded as being the best route to the largest number of possibilities from a future career perspective. I'm sure many of you now reading this will have experienced the same.

But what I came to realise, particularly within the confines of university education, was that this affinity for exams did not equate to an affinity for the subject itself (please don’t ask me any questions about physics). Rather, what I was good at, was just passing the exams.

"An exam is an imperfect entity [...], a hoop of a certain height and diameter that an individual simply has to learn how to jump through."

If you do well in one exam, the success is often attributed to a few different things - how much work you did to prepare for the exam; how well you understood the core subject; how focused you were feeling on the day; how lucky you were in the alignment of the contents of the exam to the prep you did; etc. If you do well in lots of exams though, you begin to attribute this success to some more general principles - consistently appreciating the success criteria of the exam and tightly aligning your prep to it; being strategic with the content that you commit to memory; realising what are, and then taking advantage of, the most useful resources; developing a success mindest; etc. Now, your focus is no longer on the contents of the exam itself, but on how to assure yourself the best chance of passing it through careful manipulation of the variables within your control.

For these reasons, an exam is an imperfect entity. Intended to evaluate the relative aptitude an individual has for a particular subject - but often realised in a pretty easily manipulated vessel capable only of measuring the relative aptitude an individual has to satisfy its own, often inadequately considered, requirements. A hoop, if you will, of a certain height and diameter that an individual simply has to learn how to jump through.

Of course, there is value in this. The learning mentality and strategic thinking required to be successful at exams is invaluable when it comes to its application in problem solving situations. In fact, you could argue that the real value of an exam is that it teaches you how to be pragmatic and even how best to approach the myriad of problems that you’ll inevitably face throughout the rest of your personal and professional life - and we'll explore this in a little more detail further on. But where this "exam mentality" falls down in the workplace is not in the practical application of exam skills - but in the inference of equivalences that one tends to make as a result of being good at exams: better grades equals better performance, equals greater personal worth, equals justification for greater rewards.

"Being objective about who among us is more deserving [...] is a natural by-product of an exam mentality"

To put this more simply, because you do better in an exam, you are therefore better at the thing the exam was intended to measure and are therefore entitled to the recognition and subsequent superiority, or higher worth, over others that this entails. But there is a serious danger in conflating this so-called “performance” with recognition and worth - particularly in the workplace.

Those who deem themselves more worthy, deem themselves more deserving. Being objective about whom among us is more deserving based on their ability to meet certain criteria is a natural by-product of an exam mentality, since exams serve the purpose of providing a steady point of reference against which all can be measured. Particularly exams for STEM subjects, which remain pretty consistent and objective across the board. The problem is, we don’t tend to create arbitrary measuring sticks in the workplace, designed to pit people directly up against each other for the sake of deciphering who is better at jumping through certain hoops - precisely because we have seen the exercise for what it really is. There is little to no value in it. Rarely do such exercises accurately reflect the reality of our work - and can in fact serve to detract from it.

"What often matters more than your ability to do something really well, is your ability to demonstrate the value in your doing so."

In the real world, we know that it’s not always necessarily the best performer, objectively, of their daily duties that gets the rewards. Does this mean that they aren't deserving? Almost certainly not. And yet, a purveyor of the exam mentality might be strongly inclined to think otherwise, since being the best at what you do is all you need to succeed. Well, I'm afraid that's just simply not true.

What's key here is that, in life, what often matters more than your ability to do something really well, is your ability to demonstrate the value in your doing so. Recognition has to be fought for, it isn't automatically given. It was enough for you to do well in your exams to get you where you wanted to be at school, but it is no longer enough to simply do well with the tasks in front of you to get you where you want to be in business. There is no longer someone watching over you with the sole intention of evaluating your performance. You yourself have to take on the responsibility of proving yourself - and to make matters more difficult, you also need to do it to the right people.

I know from personal experience that this can be a pretty bitter pill to swallow.

So how can one translate academic success into business success?

As a STEM graduate, you have skillfully navigated your way through a highly structured system. You have known the path that lies ahead of you and have been aware of the criteria needed to be met in order for you to move along that path. The workplace might seem like the Wild West when compared to a structure as immaculate as the one you're used to, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have one. Yes, it's not as obvious, nor is it very consistent across organisations. And it will more than likely hinge heavily on a certain amount of subjectivity, or the opinions of others, in more than one place. But this is not to say that one does not exist.

In fact, all organisations have a structure, regardless of the level to which it has been properly formalised - and as a skilled navigator of systems, thanks to your sharp, exam-hardened mind, you're actually in a great position to set sail through it. The only additional challenge you now face is in first identifying what your "structure" actually consists in. Where are the stage-gates? What are the hoops that you need to jump through? And who are the gatekeepers?

"All of this is not to say that you don't also need to be great at what you do - after all, the best way to demonstrate your value to someone is with lots of lovely evidence."

Applying your "exam mentality" to these "problems" will give you a real insight into how better to get to where you want to be. Complete administrative tasks early and to a high standard. Collect lot's of feedback wherever possible. Develop your emotional IQ and invest in the relationships that matter. Tick every box you can find and then look for more. All of this is not to say that you don't also need to be great at what you do - after all, the best way to demonstrate your value to someone is with lots of lovely evidence. A concept that should be very familiar to a STEM grad...

How can employers help? Well here's one thought - a great way to motivate all of your employees, not just STEM grads, is to provide them with a clear map of their opportunities. Breaking your organisation down into different employee journeys can give new grads and experienced hires alike a real sense of what they could become - and most people like having some sort of a vision of themselves for the future. It means they know that more is to come; that they are really working towards something bigger and that life is moving forwards. This doesn't have to be anything hugely detailed either - a high-level chart or similar depicting the various types of journeys you could embark on in the organisation will probably do to start with.

Just be careful in how you go about setting expectations around moving along these paths - or you could fall into the exam trap. But I will save the topic of performance management for another time...!

In Summary

We have discussed just a couple of the friction points that I experienced as a result of moving from the academically objective nirvana of STEM education into the subjective Wild West of business - from figuring out what to do day to day to how to make an impact in your career. Hopefully, some of the things mentioned here have struck a chord with those of you reading this as well - and if not, perhaps there was some valuable insight to be found in the struggles of a poor physics grad finding his feet during the first few years of his career (sympathy is optional).

Either way, I think that there is some food for thought to be found here around what we as a society could be doing better to prepare our future engineers and computer scientists to thrive in the workplace from day one. Certainly, educating STEM graduates about the value of self-promotion and subjective justification outside of a purely logic-driven realm seems like a good place to start to me.

Did you have a similar experience as a STEM grad starting out your business career? Have you seen grads struggling with some of the concepts in this article? Let me know your thoughts on how you've managed to get the best out of your STEM grads/education!

Catch you next time. Matt.