Comment by time_management | Hacker News Reader

Comment by time_management | Hacker News Reader

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time_management

Points (1) and (2) can also be seen in psychological/cultural terms - academia used to be seen as a respectable career choice, but with the rise of the bankers there was more family pressure on young people to 'use' their talents - which mean't making money in the City - otherwise you could be seen as wasting them, and letting down your family.

Really? I am utterly surprised by the thought of anyone choosing finance over academia for fear of "letting down the family". I grew up thinking of "Wall Street" as an uncultured and not very respectable profession.

My dad was disgusted when I told him (2003, during my junior year in college) that I was considering Wall Street as a profession. My parents both wanted me to get a PhD, and strongly insinuated that finance would be a waste of my talent.

I come from a family of inventors, architects, and writers, so although I grew up solidly middle-class, and my parents would've been happy with my choice had I been a high school teacher, the thought of me working on Wall Street was seen as a massive "step down" into unpreftigious nouveau-riche territory. (I softened my view toward Wall Street upon moving to New York; a lot of quants are brilliant, educated, and cultured people. I still do look down, reflexively, upon any "profession" connected to real estate. I can honestly say I'd never marry a woman who worked in RE, and only a woman from a real estate family if she had been purified through an elite college, a filter I otherwise don't care about in the slightest.)

I'm surprised that upper-middle-class UK families don't have an even stronger blue-blooded prejudice against "working on the exchange". Growing up, I always understood being an intellectual (academics at the pinnacle) as the epitome of preftige, and investment banking as the thing you did when your family lost its money/standing and you needed to buy it back by sacrificing ten years of your life to something unpreftigious but lucrative.

> I still do look down, reflexively, upon any "profession" connected to real estate. I can honestly say I'd never marry a woman who worked in RE, and only a woman from a real estate family if she had been purified through an elite college, a filter I otherwise don't care about in the slightest.

Because Ghod knows that folks who build buildings are the lowest of the low.

> I'm surprised that upper-middle-class UK families don't have an even stronger blue-blooded prejudice against "working on the exchange". Growing up, I always understood being an intellectual (academics at the pinnacle) as the epitome of preftige, and investment banking as the thing you did when your family lost its money/standing and you needed to buy it back by sacrificing ten years of your life to something unpreftigious but lucrative.

In other words, the blue-bloods and the wannabees are essentially parasites and that's a good thing.

Napoleon was defeated by the "nation of shop-keepers", not the professional poets. The blue-bloods marched working men into machine gun fire, kicking soccer balls and talking about their halcyon days at Eton. The mechanics and engineers invented tanks.

Engineering and mechanics are admirable professions. "Any 'profession' connected to real estate" excludes engineering and architecture, which are completely fine lines of work. Construction depends on whether the buildings are beautiful and useful or not. Construction connected to some gauche nouveau mogul like Donald Trump would definitely not be OK, but construction of beautiful churches (or temples, mosques) and houses is fine.

Also, my "ilk" have always had a lot of respect for inventors and entrepreneurs, who are the productive engine of our economy. My parents were thrilled when I told them I was joining a startup. We just don't like "business" scumbags-- politically-skilled corporate bureaucrats who masquerade as entrepreneurs-- who move money around but don't contribute intellectually to society, and real estate is especially disreputable because of that industry's exploitation of status-driven and simian emotions.

> and real estate is especially disreputable because of that industry's exploitation of status-driven and simian emotions.

Then sales of art, clothing, jewelry, and pleasure vehicles must be beyond mention.

Thanks for the interesting perspective. As a peasant, I've always blamed the political class for the sins of "politically-skilled corporate bureaucrats".

Then again, I think that construction of a factory, house, or hotel is a higher calling than construction of a church.

Well, I don't identify as upper middle class, like many of people who now go to university I'm lower-middle class - first person from family to go to university. Hence I guess academia is held by suspicion by people who havent had any contact with it. I have a phd, and whilst my direct family were always supportive, there were other members of family and friends who wondered why the hell I would choose to do that rather than rake in the big bucks in a bank. If I had chosen an academic career, it would however have been very difficult financially to stay in the uk - those I know who did typically had parents well-off enough to help buy a flat or house.

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