And this is whom I ended up hiring – young engineers with curious minds, who are willing to self-learn and are continuously engaged in the self-learning process. I also continuously suggest interesting, prospective, and relevant new things to take a look into, and they seem to be very happy to go away, pick the subject of study apart, and, if they find it useful, incorporate it into their daily work. We have also made a deal with each other that they can ask me absolutely any question, and I will explain and/or give them further directions of where to go next. So far, such an approach has worked very well – they get to learn arcane (it is arcane today, anyway) stuff from me, they get full autonomy, they learn how to make their own informed decisions, and I get a chance to share and disseminate the vasts of knowledge I have accumulated over the years.

> How can one claim to have a B.Sc. in our field without understanding how […]

Because of how universities are run today. A modern uni is a commercial enterprise, with its own CEO, COO, C<whatever other letter>O. They rely on revenue streams (a previously unheard-of concept for a university), they rely on financial forecasts, and, most important of all, they have to turn profits. So, a modern university is basically a slot machine – outcomes to yield depend entirely on how much cash one is willing to feed it. And, because of that, there is no incentive to teach across the areas of study as it does not yield higher profits or is a net negative.