4 ms·

> that students need to spend their spare time working on projects and battling for internships, or they'll likely remain unemployed, that you'd be laughed out

by aianus 11y ago

> that students need to spend their spare time working on projects and battling for internships, or they'll likely remain unemployed, that you'd be laughed out of the building. Fighting over unpaid or underpaid internships and ass-kissing with professors so you don't wind up unemployed is standard operating procedure in every industry other than tech. I can't believe the things my high school classmates in law and medicine put up with and how little money they stand to make until they hit 30.

arethuza 11y ago
Medicine has great job security, good salary (with the potential of doing private work on the side) and is very high status, law is high status and if you manage to make partner at a decent sized law firm (which everyone think they will as they don't know about the "up or out" policies a lot of firms have) then you can be making pretty serious money.
- aianus 11y ago
  You've literally wasted the entire first half of your life before you catch up to software engineers doing law or medicine. Not worth it. Finance, maybe.
  - anjc 11y ago
    Medicine and law, in my western European country at least, are vastly more reputable careers than software engineering. Perhaps you don't make as much money as a mid 20 year old, but in terms of reputation and social standing and so on, it's not even close. I'm sure that these intangible benefits have some sort of value, regardless of pay.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  The UK has a huge glut of lawyers. I hear similar things from the US. A lot of people go into it believing they'll make huge piles of money, but a lot of the money goes to the public school types who know someone/are related to someone in barrister's chambers. The rest goes to corporate street fighters - the kind of people who get involved in patent troll cases, and send out cease and desist letters to the owners of domains one or two letters away from a famous brand. High street laywers don't earn much, comparatively. They're also not particularly competent (IME). There's a basic problem here - when someone finds a piece of popular software is crap, they're not surprised. When someone discovers a doctor or a lawyer is incompetent, they are surprised. In fact I suspect these professions are a lot less competent than we'd all like to believe. The real difference in ability may be smaller than we think. But software is used by millions, so when there's a bug it can make the headlines, and it's always bad news for the public perception of the software industry. Doctors, lawyers, and accountants all work personally, case by case, so it's easy to hide pervasive incompetence.

by aianus 11y ago

arethuza 11y ago

Medicine has great job security, good salary (with the potential of doing private work on the side) and is very high status, law is high status and if you manage to make partner at a decent sized law firm (which everyone think they will as they don't know about the "up or out" policies a lot of firms have) then you can be making pretty serious money.

aianus 11y ago
You've literally wasted the entire first half of your life before you catch up to software engineers doing law or medicine. Not worth it. Finance, maybe.
- anjc 11y ago
  Medicine and law, in my western European country at least, are vastly more reputable careers than software engineering. Perhaps you don't make as much money as a mid 20 year old, but in terms of reputation and social standing and so on, it's not even close. I'm sure that these intangible benefits have some sort of value, regardless of pay.
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
The UK has a huge glut of lawyers. I hear similar things from the US. A lot of people go into it believing they'll make huge piles of money, but a lot of the money goes to the public school types who know someone/are related to someone in barrister's chambers. The rest goes to corporate street fighters - the kind of people who get involved in patent troll cases, and send out cease and desist letters to the owners of domains one or two letters away from a famous brand. High street laywers don't earn much, comparatively. They're also not particularly competent (IME). There's a basic problem here - when someone finds a piece of popular software is crap, they're not surprised. When someone discovers a doctor or a lawyer is incompetent, they are surprised. In fact I suspect these professions are a lot less competent than we'd all like to believe. The real difference in ability may be smaller than we think. But software is used by millions, so when there's a bug it can make the headlines, and it's always bad news for the public perception of the software industry. Doctors, lawyers, and accountants all work personally, case by case, so it's easy to hide pervasive incompetence.