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I wish, I wish, I wish someone would have had this talk with me pre-college: "Why are you going to college? To learn a skill that you can use to pay the bills w

I wish, I wish, I wish someone would have had this talk with me pre-college: "Why are you going to college? To learn a skill that you can use to pay the bills with, i.e., to make money, right? If the goal is to make money, then wouldn't it be a good idea to try a major where they literally teach you to make money? Which college does that? Does engineering, science, or liberal arts teach you how to make money? Or do they just teach you how to spend other people's money? Hint, as an engineer you are someone else's cost. The college of business literally teaches you how to make money, especially in finance, where they teach how to start with a pile of money and make it a larger pile of money. Granted, some grounding in the hard sciences is nice, but minors are good for that. Final recommendation is Finance major with Computer science minor, and then get an MBA after that as quickly as you can.” I have bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and in computer science, a law degree (years later in night school), and an MBA (years later again in night school). I do not like that the only advice on picking a major was “do what you enjoy/love”. I loved each of my majors when getting them and when applying them, but I did not enjoy learning the hard way that I want to be the guy paying others to make money for me, instead of the guy getting paid to make money for someone else.

mandelbrotwurst 9y ago
I would have advised you to consider more carefully what you are optimizing for and why. Financial services have a role in a society where we measure value using money - at a minimum we at least need to maintain systems to do all of the accounting. However, as the amount of energy / labor that we spend as a group focusing on one set of problems increases, we are left with a decreasing amount to solve all of the rest of the society’s problems. If everyone is a banker, who will grow our food and build our houses? I strongly disagree with your premise that all majors outside of finance “just teach you how to spend money”. Every area of study provides you with knowledge that you can use to solve real problems that we collectively face. “Do what you love” is idealistic advice that does not take into consideration the realities of a system which makes it extremely difficult to survive let alone thrive without money, but money should be a means, not an end.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  > “Do what you love” is idealistic advice that does not take into consideration the realities of a system which makes it extremely difficult to survive let alone thrive without money, but money should be a means, not an end. I don't disagree, but there is no time when it's closer to practicable than when you're in college.
lordnacho 9y ago
> The college of business literally teaches you how to make money, especially in finance, where they teach how to start with a pile of money and make it a larger pile of money. They most definitely do not. In fact one of the central teachings in finance is that it's very hard to do that (many caveats of course). I also did EE and went to business school, and then I went into finance (the career). The skills are not terribly different. In fact quite often I realise that some item I'm reading about was shown to me in my EE days.
emodendroket 9y ago
Business degrees aren't the kind of slam dunk you're thinking.

mandelbrotwurst 9y ago

I would have advised you to consider more carefully what you are optimizing for and why. Financial services have a role in a society where we measure value using money - at a minimum we at least need to maintain systems to do all of the accounting. However, as the amount of energy / labor that we spend as a group focusing on one set of problems increases, we are left with a decreasing amount to solve all of the rest of the society’s problems. If everyone is a banker, who will grow our food and build our houses? I strongly disagree with your premise that all majors outside of finance “just teach you how to spend money”. Every area of study provides you with knowledge that you can use to solve real problems that we collectively face. “Do what you love” is idealistic advice that does not take into consideration the realities of a system which makes it extremely difficult to survive let alone thrive without money, but money should be a means, not an end.

emodendroket 9y ago
> “Do what you love” is idealistic advice that does not take into consideration the realities of a system which makes it extremely difficult to survive let alone thrive without money, but money should be a means, not an end. I don't disagree, but there is no time when it's closer to practicable than when you're in college.

lordnacho 9y ago

> The college of business literally teaches you how to make money, especially in finance, where they teach how to start with a pile of money and make it a larger pile of money. They most definitely do not. In fact one of the central teachings in finance is that it's very hard to do that (many caveats of course). I also did EE and went to business school, and then I went into finance (the career). The skills are not terribly different. In fact quite often I realise that some item I'm reading about was shown to me in my EE days.

emodendroket 9y ago

Business degrees aren't the kind of slam dunk you're thinking.