Vanitas vanitatum, et omnia vanitas! You know the Book of Ecclesiastes, in which a downhearted king of Israel discoursed on the vanity of power, wealth, and honours. Today I would like to talk about the vanity of competence, in relation to the vanity of power (of political, administrative, and economical power), of wealth, and of honours. In fact, the Ecclesiast was not downhearted at all; he was lucid. Contrary to most other kings who were barely narrow-minded warlords, the Ecclesiast was really able to consider the true problems of life. Nowadays, he certainly would have been considered depressed and treated with antidepressants; his book would be interpreted as the work of a distorded mind. What a faulty judgment !
When I was a young scientist, the highest value was attached to competence; to consider someone incompetent was the worst possible insult of all. Therefore I believed that to acquire competence was an absolute necessity. However, I could see later that in reality those who dominate others are often incompetent. At first sight one cannot understand why a society or community in which the leaders are incompetent establishes competence as its highest merit. But after further thought it appears logical: every technical activity needs competence, and a foreman or chief-manager can only be acknowledged as a leader if the activitiy he or she is leading produces results. A company or laboratory can still exist and survive if its head is incompetent, but certainly not if its workers are incompetent, too. Therefore every leader is doomed to cultivate competence as a cardinal virtue. This necessity is independent of the personal merits of the leader; the difference between qualified and deficient leaders will come into view through the fear of being unmasked. In order to avoid being unmasked, deficient leaders will use escapement strategies.
Now, the trouble with today's Big Science System arises from the inflation of administrative positions, which arouse the cupidity of innumerable talentless careerists. As a consequence of this situation, competence is used - by sheer necessity - for all the technical realizations, but at the same time it is confined to the most obscure places. If you are young and very competent, you are in danger of being exploited by cynical managers who just have a talent for business, public relations, and furthering their career. So the omnipresent praise of competence is nothing but a strategy for trapping young talents.
Talented or ardent young scientists or engineers are generally very enthusiastic and eager to create something. In return for their achievements, they expect to enjoy some reputation and esteem. This is precisely when things begin to get worse. The people around, who are of course less competent since talent is by nature uncommon, begin to feel embarrassed or ill at ease. It is not necessarily jealousy, it is more frequently mere perplexity in the face of ideas that are too subtle, or a fear of showing ignorance or incapacity. The hierarchy, which was very likeable as long as the most important thing was profit and exploitation, begins to be debunked. Soon the ingenuous young genius discovers that the highly praised competence has only been profitable to others. For one's own promotion, competence turns out to be useless.
However, in a case where the technical competence is associated with a skill for business and public relations, then the former will enhance the efficiency of the latter. What is useless is the technical competence alone (see for example the case of quasi autistic computer freaks).
The fact that your competence will be of use to some tricky exploiters could be of minor importance, if there were other gratifications than money and social status. The talented worker could find satisfaction in joining other impassioned minds. This occurs sometimes, but unfortunately the chances of its happening are remote. There are several reasons for it being difficult to become acquainted and work together. Let us see three of them.
1. The activities become more and more specialized. Before you could meet through a common passion for computers, for butterflies, for physics, etc. Now the common passion must be much more precise: if A and B are both computer lovers, there is a very small probability that they work on precisely the same field and can understand each other's technical jargon or tricks. So A could be an excellent hacker, whereas B will be highly skilled in image processing. Even by corresponding throughout the world using the Net, it becomes more and more difficult to find a common passion and at the same time to undertake actual team work. Of course I know a few cases in which such associations succeeded. Some are well-known (LINUX developers community, etc.)
2. Despite the considerable enhancement of communication means, the true human communication remains poor. In the ancient era (before modern technology), you generally needed more time or more means to get in touch with some brothers-in-spirit, but these brothers were easy to identify. Nowadays you don't need any time at all for communicating over long distances, but the possible fellows are needles in a haystack. In the XVIIIth century you could immediately hear of an excellent mathematician living in St-Petersburg, but you needed two months to get in contact with him; now an email can be sent to St-Petersburg within one second, but to find an excellent expert in some very unusual disease can be very difficult and can require years. Conversely this excellent expert can live in some little town in India and have the feeling that his (or her) competence is useless . . .
3. Competent persons are competent in one precise area (or at most a few), but to find a job generally means being able to work in other areas. This means the competent person will consequently be busy because of the job and will therefore have no longer time for the area of interest. This often destroys any possibility of working together with other fellows.
It often happens that talented young scientists or engineers who cherished dreams of success, though succeeding in some sense, will be disappointed by the mundane, uncelestial results, and consequently have a feeling that competence is useless. They will be in the same state of mind as the Ecclesiast and develop some bitterness against competence and glory: omnia vanitas ! Then it is time to read the Book of Ecclesiastes.
The feeling of useless competence can also be experienced when looking for a job. The typical case is the young engineer who has a passion for technological creation and can only find a job in public relations, marketing, management, or sales. Industry needs technical competence, of course, but the corresponding jobs are very rare because competence can be concentrated. As an example: in the mass production of computers, each individual piece must be mounted by unskilled line workers and once finished, this mass production must be taken in hand by masses of managers and sales engineers; but the technological innovations, the architecture, etc, can be conceived and designed once for production in the whole world by only one laboratory, in which a tiny little team of super-minds are at work. If you dream of a very creative job, you will have to join this Olympus, but the places are few and far between.
Now the conclusion. Is it worth working passionately to end up in a mediocre position, for which no competence at all is required ? The answer is glaringly obvious: even if you could succeed in joining the Olympus, your competence will only bring satisfaction or happiness to yourself, for you will enjoy the results of your job. To sell your competence to others can bring you money, of course, but in any case those who are employing you will profit more.
If cash is your top priority, the best way will be to do business rather than engineering or science, and for this purpose the only useful competence is that for business. A technological or scientific competence can be very beneficial to you as an intellectual satisfaction, but it will be poorly efficient for growing rich or even for finding a job (the employers generally consider qualifications, not talent).
So if you want money and status above all, just be competent at the social game and business; if you have a passion for some technical or scientific activity, try to find a job in the sector, as close as possible to your favorite activity, but manage to obtain freedom and independence in your position.
If you hesitate between the quest for money or status and the dream of creative and exciting activities, read the Book of Ecclesiastes before reaching any decision.