6 ms·
No one is deciding to work a trade instead of going to Stanford.
by nsnick 6y ago
No one is deciding to work a trade instead of going to Stanford.
- fortran77 6y agoHow many Stanford students are even capable of working a trade?
- 32notp 6y agoWhat do you mean by that?
- war1025 6y agoWould you be equally confused if it was phrased the other way? "How many trade workers are even capable of going to Stanford?" People like to talk about "grit" in white collar circles. If you want to see real "grit" go talk to the blue collar people who do shitty jobs at the expense of their personal health so their kids can have a better life. The working class has an understanding of self sacrifice that is largely absent from more well-off groups.
- fortran77 6y agoThank you.
- non-entity 6y agoI'd wager most of them
- jacquesm 6y agoWhether they'd be willing or not is another matter. I know a few though, people that have very high levels of secondary education working trades or other simple jobs because it keeps their stress levels down.
- non-entity 6y agoYeah thats probably true. There are a few I'd certainly consider picking up if not only so I could manage to do work myself as opposed to hiring someone else.
- fortran77 6y ago> working trades or other simple jobs because it keeps their stress levels down. Yes! People take "simple jobs" like hauling trash or cleaning sewers or welding pipes because it's stress free! Unlike those high-stress jobs at Facebook where you take the free party bus to the office, get free food, drink, gym, yoga, and massages, and even have internal message boards where you're encouraged to post about how horrible you're being treated. So stressful! I bet all of those 10xers at the FAANGS wish they could be maintenance workers.
- asldkjaslkdj 6y agoYou're cherry picking examples to suit your narrative. For every person working at a FAANG you can probably find 1,000 working in a place with the same shitty working conditions most people are subjected to. As a counter example cops can make $200k a year doing detail work (standing around) and retire with a pension after 20 years. There are similar situations (with lesser pay) for a lot of city and state level civil service. There are shit jobs that will wear you down in every field. They're the jobs most people are working.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoI work for a tech company and I get no free food, no free drinks, we have gym membership partnership that basically is the retail cost of any generic gym membership (so it offers no real benefit), no free yoga, and no free massages.
- 908B64B197 6y agoTime to interview somewhere else!
- jacquesm 6y ago
- chasd00 6y agoit would be interesting to see the ambition and execution discipline of a young person who made in to, and through, Stanford applied to a traditional trade. If i may use a dirty word, "disruptive" comes to mind.
- dokem 6y agoThere's plenty of guys that go into the trades (thinking more like welding, machining, diesel repair) that quickly start running their own truck or shop, work for themselves, maybe hire a few employees and make bank. That's what it would likely look like I imagine.
- 609venezia 6y agoI know a guy who dropped out of HS and did this as an HVAC guy. He bought a house on a lake, a second home at the beach, and built a special garage to house his car collection. After an ugly divorce that cost him almost everything he has rebuilt (but not quite to where he was before). It takes a lot of work but it can be done. As others have observed, it's unfortunately regarded as a low-status option on the coasts
- elliekelly 6y agoDo you not see programming as a trade? Do you not see accounting as a trade? Nursing? Medicine? Law? Pharmacology? I would consider all of those “trades.” The non-trade courses of study aren’t particularly popular with college students anymore. I don’t know many people with degrees in english or latin or history or philosophy. And the few that I do always planned to go to trade school (law school) so their undergrad course of study didn’t much matter.
- ceilingcorner 6y agoNo one considers these things trades. Trades and trade school have a very specific meaning in contemporary American English.
- chrisseaton 6y ago> I would consider all of those “trades.” Well good luck communicating with other people because is not how anyone else anywhere uses the word ‘trade’. They’re not ‘trades’ they’re ‘professions’. And I would guess you already know this and you’re trying to be contrary rather than you’re genuinely misunderstanding a basic word.
- elliekelly 6y agoI’m not being contrary at all. Nor do I think I’ve grossly misunderstood the word. Haven’t you ever been to a trade show - a meeting of people from one profession? I don’t think I’ve used the word outside of its definition: > 3. b : the business or work in which one engages regularly : OCCUPATION > 3. c : the persons engaged in an occupation, business, or industry https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trade https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/trade
- chrisseaton 6y agoIf you take your definition then all jobs are trades, in which case why do you think we have the word trade if it doesn’t add any new meaning, and what do you think a ‘profession‘ is? Have you never heard people make a distinction between tradespeople and professionals? What do you think the words in this article mean? Are they completely new concepts to you? https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/business-income-manual/bim14010 https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/business-income-man... > A ‘profession’ historically meant the three learned professions of the Church, Medicine and the Law but today the term goes much wider and normally involves some substantial exercise of intellectual skill.