>I almost envy countries that focus on almost militaristic rote practice. For some of my foreign educated colleagues, there is little in the way between wanting to accomplish something and accomplishing it.
It has its downsides. I had mostly bad experience working with software developers from rote learning cultures, because you may guess it, they tend to execute but not think about it. IMO the main worth of a software developer is unpacking customer requirements and getting them to make logical sense so that a computer can understand them.
If you don't question anything coming from authority, i.e. the customer, due to your upbringing, you're already off to a bad start.
Because executing without thinking is not what you hire the humans to do, it's what the computer does.
I will play the devil's advocate here which also express my opinion tho...
Choices have trade-offs, business believe, in general, that things are simple and should be done fast. However, IMO, good design ( independent being software, etc... ) takes time and effort.
Do you personally feel that it would be valuable to have the high authority/rote people in place to execute and low authority/creative thinkers in place to plan?
Exactly, and I do think the tinkering of the execution part is an important part of the creative process. A lot of requirements mismatch becomes visible when implementing.
We don't ask artists to describe the painting and let someone else do the execution part. Working with the pigments, and seeing how they interact on the canvas is important for getting a good result. An intermediary would be detrimental.
In music maybe there's such a thing when you have somebody who can sing well, that has a team of songwriters doing the creative work.
Maybe the question is what other jobs rote learning is good for. I think there are enough jobs that don't ask for creativity, but instead require discipline.
And as with all things, there are probably shades of grey in between. A mix of discipline and creativity might be better than the extreme for many jobs.
It has its downsides. I had mostly bad experience working with software developers from rote learning cultures, because you may guess it, they tend to execute but not think about it. IMO the main worth of a software developer is unpacking customer requirements and getting them to make logical sense so that a computer can understand them.
If you don't question anything coming from authority, i.e. the customer, due to your upbringing, you're already off to a bad start.
Because executing without thinking is not what you hire the humans to do, it's what the computer does.