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Comment by hourago | Hacker News Reader

> Why? The thought is that a museum hires the child of a hedge fund manager, there is a non-zero chance the wealthy parent will give or leave money to the institution when they die

Another way that inequality damages society. When your best bet for your future is to appeal to the super rich instead of serving society and getting money from the government society losses its power.

As you say, it is rational to work for the one that can pay you. It's a catastrophe that there general public in aggregation has less power than very rich individuals by themselves.

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>best bet for your future

The best bet for the future is to pick a career path that is not massively over supplied with candidates. Once you get to that situation there's no system that will not cause most everyone to be unhappy.

That game will get worse over time as people optimize for it too. It'll be a matter of trying to guess what's going to be in demand but not so in demand that people are training for it because they are also trying to choose a career that's in demand. And as usual, those with the better information and means to switch paths or take multiple shots will be the ones who can come out ahead.

Pretty much, We don't talk about it as often as we should - but post dot-com Software was a bad place to be. There was general fear that outsourcing to India would do to software what outsourcing to China was doing for Manufacturing. These fears culminated in an under-supply of CS majors through the 2000s and an oversupply of various "business" degrees. The assumed "ideal path" was to be in management so as not to be vulnerable to outsourcing.

Flash forward to the 2010s and there are too many entry level accountants/financiers/managers in training, and too few software professionals. Even in fields with some shortages it's not a given that you will have bargaining power e.g. Nursing.

Even after the dot com crash software was never a bad field it just felt that way because it was worse than it had been at the peak. There was still enough demand for most people to get actual jobs somewhere just not at the wages they like. Fields that suffer from this in academia have small percentages of people who study for it actually end up doing related work. Sometimes as low as 5% of the people. Software is nowhere close to 19 in 20 people working outside the field even during its worst crashes.

>accountants/financiers/managers

All of these professions do just fine, even the ones in which there's "oversupply". What these professions don't provide is readily available opportunity for someone of substantially below median intelligence and work ethic to make a very nice living with little more than token effort as is the case in software, or any other "hot" industry (in a cooler industry they plateau much closer to entry level).

> substantially below median intelligence and work ethic to make a very nice living with little more than token effort as is the case in software

I disagree that you can make a nice living room with "substantially below median intelligence" in software. Getting into FAANG+ is hard and plenty of people never even finish their degree or get a related job.

I think you have no idea what people with "substantially below median intelligence" are like.

Nursing pay did rise quite a bit with Covid, so I suspect there wasn't a shortage before then.

This gets to a core issue with our system. Employers want an over supply to drive down wages and the easiest way to get that is misinformation.

Actually I think those who come out the most ahead are those interested in the field, even when nobody else is. It seems a better strategy than trend hoping is to find something you like, that can plausibly be useful and invest in that.

That's not what GP is saying though:

> The best bet for the future is to pick a career path that is not massively over supplied with candidates.

I agree, avoiding the worst career choices is easier than trying to find the good ones. Sorry if there was a confusion about context.

There's a difference between picking the optimal career and not picking a career with the worst prospects.

>And as usual, those with the better information and means to switch paths or take multiple shots will be the ones who can come out ahead.

I feel a person should care more about their own happiness than how other people are doing.

Picking a career path isn’t that simple. Who can really predict what will be oversupplied 4 (college), 6(college + masters) or 8/10 (college + PhD) years from now?

Additionally, if you’re wealthy enough, going into a passion project is the viable option. It’s what privilege affords you- doing what you are passionate about. I wished everyone had this.

>Picking a career path isn’t that simple. Who can really predict what will be oversupplied 4 (college), 6(college + masters) or 8/10 (college + PhD) years from now?

Seriously? In the late 1990s, I was in middle school. My grand parents sat me down and told me to work towards a degree that makes a lot of money. They had lists of "typical starting salaries, by college degrees". We picked the top 3, and I started working towards those. I later reassessed and picked the top 1 - Electrical Engineering.

In 2010, I got my BSEE, and my starting salary was more than the average US salary.

Looking back, it was a hard road, but I get paid enough to provide for my wife and kids, and our life is good.

> Seriously? In the late 1990s, I was in middle school. My grand parents sat me down and told me to work towards a degree that makes a lot of money. They had lists of "typical starting salaries, by college degrees". We picked the top 3, and I started working towards those. I later reassessed and picked the top 1 - Electrical Engineering.

And people from poor and/or rural backgrounds? I only got those discussions because I tested well enough that my future potential was considered a societal matter and educators unrelated to me were brought in to inform both me AND my parents. None of my classmates, siblings, or cousins had that benefit.

I grew up poor. I was raised by my grandparents part of the time, and my single mom part of the time. I also spent part my my childhood in "rural" America. And I'm mentally disabled. Educators told my family that I would end up in prison by the time I turned 18.

I'd be curious about your grandparents' socio-economic statuses throughout their life and their ages (particularly whether their socio matched their economic). Also which part of your childhood was rural, because lacking resources at 6-7 is going to have very different results than lacking them in high school.

My point is that whether or not something is 'simple' depends very much on what resources you (and your group/family) have at hand. For example, I was coding in elementary school, so from my experience the idea that coding could be difficult to learn doesn't make sense. But it obviously is/can be difficult depending on background.

And never mind if somebody is from an abusive home (like I also was): If mom's passed out drunk and depressed on the couch and middle school you is running after your younger sibling (me again), mom and dad aren't giving you college or earnings talks.

It's not a kid's fault for not knowing these things, although at least now bright kids with no adults can use the Web to help and look up this information.

I think you're misinterpreting the parent comment. The best bet for the future of the museum is to appeal to the rich. The child of the hedge fund manager will be fine no matter what they do.

> Once you get to that situation there's no system that will not cause most everyone to be unhappy.

There are three negatives in this sentence, and I'm having a very difficult time telling what it is saying (and I tried several times to track through the parity flips required). Anyone mind translating it for me?

If you're field is overpopulated the people in the field won't be happy.

It's not that difficult and using the three negatives makes sense.

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