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We should teach our students earlier that it can sometimes be important to align your dreams with what other people will pay for. I.e. not journalism, at least

We should teach our students earlier that it can sometimes be important to align your dreams with what other people will pay for. I.e. not journalism, at least not in the volume that universities continue to turn out journalists. People shouldn't have to work through six years of school before finding this out the hard way.

dkarl 17y ago
The idea is widely understood and discussed among college students, so I'm not sure what can be done further to teach them to live in accordance with it. I think it would be more useful to teach them not to despise knowledge of how the "trivial" aspects of the world actually work, so they find it easier to make themselves useful when and where they need to.
- dantheman 17y ago
  I've started telling people, look at what the median result is for whatever you want to do. If that is something that you would enjoy doing/think is worth it then continue down that path.
  - run4yourlives 17y ago
    I think this is the best approach. It seems that when it comes to a career path, the common notion is to compare the top percentage without taking into account that for many, this situation is only applicable for the last few years of the career; for many more, not applicable at all. It's not whether you want to dream of playing in the NHL. It's whether you enjoy playing hockey enough to play in Rochester for some farm team for a few hundred people a night making $50K.
bilbo0s 17y ago
This is a tough problem, because 6 years ago someone may have gone to college to be a Computer Scientist. Learned Java or C++ if they were lucky. Probably kept sharp with PHP, Python, Ruby, MySQL et al if they were smart. Maybe a little Flash. Then they get out just when everyone who is NOT going NoSQL is using Amazon RDS. People are hiring iPhone programmers to port Flash apps to ObjC. And everyone is looking to get some Erlang or Scala blood into their dev house. The fact is that all skills are obsoleted eventually. And eventually comes quicker and quicker these days. I don't claim to know what the answer is but I think looking at the world today and asking what people are paying for can be a difficult strategy to make work. Now looking at the world today and asking what people will not pay for is somewhat helpful at least. But trying to catch a moving target is fraught with peril. I think a good piece of advice would be to stay flexible. Flexible in your ability to learn. Flexible in your ability to move. Flexible in your ability to absorb fluctuations in income. I think that in the America of the future workers may need to be flexible, and let a lot of things roll off of them. If not. I don't know. I could see this whole thing ending badly.
- nickpp 17y ago
  Seems like you have a distorted view of the current programming environment. The skills you list are used in a tiny minority of ycombinator-like startups, few of them making money. The real world still runs on Java, C++, .NET and PHP. And SQL. Lots and lots of SQL.
  - bilbo0s 17y ago
    You've missed the point of my post entirely. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. The point is that all of the skills you just listed will be obsolete eventually. To say they will not be obsolete is to bury one's head in the sand. The question is, if all skills will be obsolete then what are people to do except be flexible?
    - houseabsolute 17y ago
      Being adaptable is really important, you are absolutely right. But there's a difference here too. Learning one language in programming is just a particular skill that itself might become obsolete. But the discipline will not, at least not soon. On the other hand, learning to produce journalistic content does become kind of silly when the demand for the entire discipline is decreasing rapidly. It's still possible to adapt to new skills, but it's more difficult because the other skills are further away.
    - pyre 17y ago
      > The point is that all of the skills you just listed will be obsolete eventually. To say they will not be obsolete is to bury one's head in the sand. 'Eventually' could be 50 years from now. You're making unqualified statements. You also mentioned in your original post that the time between skills being in demand and obsolete is getting smaller and smaller, but you're real-world 'examples' of this don't work. Maybe it's just me but when you say something like 'smaller and smaller' you imply that soon it will be so small as to be non-existent and the speed at which is shrinking is increasing (i.e. exponentially decreasing interval). If that is what you're implying then I have a hard time seeing how a job market could work where the skills of last year are no longer in demand this year because companies have switch all of their projects over from Java -> Scala and next year they are going to change all their projects from Scala -> SomethingElse. {edit} You said 'quicker and quicker', so my comments still hold but need to be read with the view of exponentially increasing speed (which implies a 'short and short' time interval between).
lsc 17y ago
Good (non-technical) writers are incredibly cheap right now. There has got to be a business model in that somewhere.
- GBond 17y ago
  AOL (seed), CrowdSpring, and (less directly) Amazon (Mech Turk) has this business model.
  - lsc 17y ago
    mechanical turk seems to be based more on the idea that "labor (in general) is cheap" You know, programming and having humans execute the code. It is less focused on taking advantage of the large pool of cheap but educated/experienced writers. seed is interesting, and sounds a lot more like what I was thinking about. thanks for pointing that out.

dkarl 17y ago

The idea is widely understood and discussed among college students, so I'm not sure what can be done further to teach them to live in accordance with it. I think it would be more useful to teach them not to despise knowledge of how the "trivial" aspects of the world actually work, so they find it easier to make themselves useful when and where they need to.

dantheman 17y ago
I've started telling people, look at what the median result is for whatever you want to do. If that is something that you would enjoy doing/think is worth it then continue down that path.
- run4yourlives 17y ago
  I think this is the best approach. It seems that when it comes to a career path, the common notion is to compare the top percentage without taking into account that for many, this situation is only applicable for the last few years of the career; for many more, not applicable at all. It's not whether you want to dream of playing in the NHL. It's whether you enjoy playing hockey enough to play in Rochester for some farm team for a few hundred people a night making $50K.

bilbo0s 17y ago

This is a tough problem, because 6 years ago someone may have gone to college to be a Computer Scientist. Learned Java or C++ if they were lucky. Probably kept sharp with PHP, Python, Ruby, MySQL et al if they were smart. Maybe a little Flash. Then they get out just when everyone who is NOT going NoSQL is using Amazon RDS. People are hiring iPhone programmers to port Flash apps to ObjC. And everyone is looking to get some Erlang or Scala blood into their dev house. The fact is that all skills are obsoleted eventually. And eventually comes quicker and quicker these days. I don't claim to know what the answer is but I think looking at the world today and asking what people are paying for can be a difficult strategy to make work. Now looking at the world today and asking what people will not pay for is somewhat helpful at least. But trying to catch a moving target is fraught with peril. I think a good piece of advice would be to stay flexible. Flexible in your ability to learn. Flexible in your ability to move. Flexible in your ability to absorb fluctuations in income. I think that in the America of the future workers may need to be flexible, and let a lot of things roll off of them. If not. I don't know. I could see this whole thing ending badly.

nickpp 17y ago
Seems like you have a distorted view of the current programming environment. The skills you list are used in a tiny minority of ycombinator-like startups, few of them making money. The real world still runs on Java, C++, .NET and PHP. And SQL. Lots and lots of SQL.
- bilbo0s 17y ago
  You've missed the point of my post entirely. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. The point is that all of the skills you just listed will be obsolete eventually. To say they will not be obsolete is to bury one's head in the sand. The question is, if all skills will be obsolete then what are people to do except be flexible?
  - houseabsolute 17y ago
    Being adaptable is really important, you are absolutely right. But there's a difference here too. Learning one language in programming is just a particular skill that itself might become obsolete. But the discipline will not, at least not soon. On the other hand, learning to produce journalistic content does become kind of silly when the demand for the entire discipline is decreasing rapidly. It's still possible to adapt to new skills, but it's more difficult because the other skills are further away.
  - pyre 17y ago
    > The point is that all of the skills you just listed will be obsolete eventually. To say they will not be obsolete is to bury one's head in the sand. 'Eventually' could be 50 years from now. You're making unqualified statements. You also mentioned in your original post that the time between skills being in demand and obsolete is getting smaller and smaller, but you're real-world 'examples' of this don't work. Maybe it's just me but when you say something like 'smaller and smaller' you imply that soon it will be so small as to be non-existent and the speed at which is shrinking is increasing (i.e. exponentially decreasing interval). If that is what you're implying then I have a hard time seeing how a job market could work where the skills of last year are no longer in demand this year because companies have switch all of their projects over from Java -> Scala and next year they are going to change all their projects from Scala -> SomethingElse. {edit} You said 'quicker and quicker', so my comments still hold but need to be read with the view of exponentially increasing speed (which implies a 'short and short' time interval between).

lsc 17y ago

Good (non-technical) writers are incredibly cheap right now. There has got to be a business model in that somewhere.

GBond 17y ago
AOL (seed), CrowdSpring, and (less directly) Amazon (Mech Turk) has this business model.
- lsc 17y ago
  mechanical turk seems to be based more on the idea that "labor (in general) is cheap" You know, programming and having humans execute the code. It is less focused on taking advantage of the large pool of cheap but educated/experienced writers. seed is interesting, and sounds a lot more like what I was thinking about. thanks for pointing that out.