Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by daishi55 58 days ago
> Dr. Jason Wingard is a globally recognized executive with deep experience across corporate, nonprofit, and academic sectors, specializing in the future of learning and work.He currently serves as Senior Advisor at Harvard University, where he advises trustees, senior administrators, and faculty leaders, and leads a research agenda on workforce transformation and innovation. He is also Executive Chairman of The Education Board, Inc. and Senior Advisor at Social Finance, Inc., providing strategic and visionary consulting while advancing a national research agenda on leadership and workforce development.He most recently served as the 12th President of Temple University, where he held dual tenured faculty appointments as Professor of Management and Professor of Policy, Organizational, and Leadership Studies.Previously, Dr. Wingard was Dean of the School of Professional Studies at Columbia University and Managing Director and Chief Learning Officer at Goldman Sachs. Earlier, he served as Vice Dean of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; President & CEO of the ePals Foundation and Senior Vice President at ePals, Inc.; and held leadership roles with the Aspen Institute, Vanguard Group, Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI), and Stanford University.An award-winning author, Dr. Wingard has published widely on leadership, learning, and workforce strategy.

Not sure exactly what this guy does or what his expertise is, but I am fairly certain it’s not software development.

4 comments

He's responsible for the great success of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI)

> and held leadership roles with the Aspen Institute, Vanguard Group, Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI), and Stanford University.

How is that relevant to the question of software development expertise?
It was a fun jab - as SGI famously tanked in the late 90s.

But SGI also had quite a lot of software, including their OS (IRIX), imaging and 3D modelling libs and tools, and this little thing called OpenGL.

SGI gave us NVidia
nah, that was Forest Basket
So decades ago he worked for a company that no one’s heard of, and which hasn’t existed for 16 years, and that means I should care what he thinks about vibe coding / modern software development why?

The whole resume just screams BS.

>decades ago he worked for a company that no one’s heard of

Err, SGI was one of the pillars of the industry.

Apparently not? A pillar is something that is structurally required.
What would today look like without NVidia? SGI is a pilar.
We'd likely have 3Dfx keeping its technology and developing it, or Rendition, S3, 3DLabs or whatever taking its place instead.
> So decades ago he worked for a company that no one’s heard of,

You must be trolling? SGI is one of the legend companies of Silicon Valley.

Never heard of it. Maybe legendary among people over 50.

Regardless, he apparently was a just a PM there? For a year?

I'm under 50 and know SGI. People should spend more time learning some of the field's history.

Maybe then they wouldn't make the same goddamn mistakes over and over again.

>Never heard of it.

Than maybe get another profession.

That's the same vibe as some musician saying "Elvis? Never heard of him. Maybe legendary among people over 50."

Google moved into their old building, fwiw.
Wow, seriously?

Fun fact. macOS (formerly OS X) Got many of its design cues from HP-UX, IBM AIX, Solaris, and Silicon Graphics (SGI). I managed a fleet of these UNIX systems, so had a distinct vantage point to notice it. I wouldn’t blame anyone else for not noticing. OS X was absolutely revolutionary, but also had some design inspiration from the systems before it.

Anyways, just know that any system you’re using today (Mac, Windows, Linux) was inspired by SGI and the other UNIX platforms.

The point of the article is exactly that you shouldn't hand over software development to people with no expertise in software development. So he sounds smarter and more humble than a lot of CEOs at the moment.
> The bottleneck in the AI era is not production. It is discernment.

there's quite a few variants on the "its not X its Y" in this article that make me wonder how much of this waffle was written by a human

He was at SGI for 1 year as a "Program Manager" and then went into academia and a bunch of random jobs. He majored in Education and Sociology.

I'm betting he's never shipped a single line of code into a real production system in his life.

http://linkedin.com/in/wingardjason/

Note: Don't downvote or flag me for linking to his LinkedIn. Clearly he wrote this Forbes article to chase clout and influence like most Forbes writers. This is what he wants, for us to talk about him and his credentials.