So much this. I actually studied a joint course of Engineering and business, which was supposed to be two thirds of the Engineering course, two thirds of the business course. When you put it together the Engineering was still about two thirds of the total, with the business stuff mainly being simple things that took a long time to read. Everyone thought it was unsubstantiated just-so stories (Betamax, five forces, etc), but the point was to know the stories so you could communicate with business people.

If you look at things that are actually hard, nobody keeps you from getting the info. You're just not going to understand that graduate seminar in ergodic theory, though you're welcome to attend.

The reason they keep you from the info is of course you'll see the naked emperor.

Business is super complicated. It's more complicated than science, because it's not science.

Science is "easy" because we can model it, to a degree.

Non-science is so hard that we can't even model it, it's that complicated. So instead we try to voodoo our way around it, rely on simple heuristics, history, etc.

Business isn't really all that complicated. It's just opaque and intersects with other things that are complicated, like finance and law.

But the man who invented 1-800-GOT-JUNK and plastered the phone number on the side of every one of his bins was not some better of Richard Feynman. He understood one thing really well: If you solve a problem, have simple messaging, and unabashedly self-promote you will win.

The lawyers, and accountants, and technologists, will all come and help you with the complicated stuff in exchange for a piece of that mountain of cash.

Business is just dependent on thousands of factors that are fundamentally impossible to control. You can model pretty much every factor of it, individually, but you can't model the whole matrix because some parameters are random and wide (earthquakes, pandemics, etc) and some you cannot account for (were you were born and from whom, what education you get and where, who you can befriend, how your brain works, etc etc).

I think one has to differentiate between "complex" and "complicated". Complex stuff requires Big Brains. Business is not complex, all its processes are simple and fairly well-understood; but it is complicated by the interaction of so many factors.

I think a more correct statement would be that people are complicated, and therefore business is also complicated.

Maybe.

If you have ever been in a relationship, you know how irrational people are: ergo, ability in logic and mathematics plays little role.

Went to MIT in engineering/science, and I would do a mental face-palm when I heard other engineers try to ‘sell’ what they are working on.

It’s the “curse of knowledge” where you forget how to relay ideas because you forget your axioms have been updated but the person you are talking with has not had theirs updated.

This is to say some people (in all fields) can sell ideas, and some can’t. Just as some can do high level mathematics, and some can’t. Those curves overlap in unexpected ways.

Oh yea, I don't mean to say that every single individual can run every single aspect of the business personally. Marketing and social skills are not evenly distributed, but they can all understand it at least, provide input, and have a conversation about it, and I believe, often avoid critical errors.

This goes a little further beyond this point I was making, but I also see collective decision making like this as being more fair. Everyone at the buisness is affected by these decisions, so everyone should share in the decision making process. Natural leaders and experts should become apparent and people will listen to them if they don't attempt to bludgeon them with their credentials.

Eh. A lot of engineers really don't have the social skills to navigate the business situations. Some do, sure, and should be given the opportunity to shine. But I would still say the majority don't.

And what kind of "high level physics" do engineers know? A typical masters track doesn't cover the hard maths like in GR, sounds more arrogant than anything... kind of proving my point ;)

Doesn't this basically argue that "business" is basically the same thing as schmoozing?

You could argue that people are a more complicated system than any software system you would see in a talented shop, and people change in real time.

tbf doing things like GR or QFT is not even required for a graduate degree in physics depending on your field of research

I don't know... We don't assume that people who make it through business classes can figure out engineering either.

That said, I do always try to bring along "business people" in engineering challenges and considerations, for which you don't need a full engineering degree. I do appreciate when I get the same treatment.