re: Which is more important, knowing something or being able to find the answer?

Critical thinking skills are vastly more important than the regurgitation of the memorized drivel from a parrot.

Rarely is the knowledgeable person tripping over their own feet to learn new stuff while the other is teaching themselves calculus on the fly but not remembering it

Being knowledgeable is generally going to be the winner here but definitely exceptions based on situation or specific individuals

quote:

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“I’d rather have a guy that works his arse off but gets Ds than some lazy, straight A student.”

- said no hiring manager ever.

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No but I have known more than a few guys who have said they would rather hire a guy with a 2.5-3.5 GPA who had to work through school than a 4.0 grad who never had a job.

None of which addresses the question.

TO answer the OPs question, look at the PE exam for an answer. You can bring as much reference material as you want. The key, though, is to have a really good idea where to find the answers you need, otherwise you will run out of time looking for answers.

So in the real world, you will always come across problems that you don't have the answer to. It is better to be able to find the answer but that involves knowing something-where to find those answers in a timely fashion.

My two cents, for what it is worth.

In the business world, Being able to find the answer is a higher value proposition.

We have mostly procedural departments at our company meaning, here is the step by step document to do your job, go do it. We can hire sub $20/hr employees all day to do those jobs.

Very few take the initiative to try to figure stuff out.

I’m a developer, so I have to play both sides of the coin here. A developer who can’t figure out how existing code works is not a very good asset. A developer who can only figure out how an application works but can’t write new code is also not ideal.