4 ms·

Right now, "social media influencer" is a more realistic immediate job than doctor, lawyer, or fighter pilot. To be a doctor, you need a 4 year college degree,

by dsr_ 5y ago

Right now, "social media influencer" is a more realistic immediate job than doctor, lawyer, or fighter pilot. To be a doctor, you need a 4 year college degree, then acceptance into a medical school, then pass the medical school courses and do N years of residency. The average medical school graduate has $200K of debt at that point. To be a lawyer, you need blah blah blah law school, and then it turns out the USA has too many lawyers already... so the average entry-level lawyer makes $48K. Yes, really. To be a social media influencer, you need about $2000 in startup costs and a lot of luck, as well as some degree of actual work. There are roughly a million people with 100,000+ followers on Instagram or YouTube or TikTok. Interestingly, there are about a million lawyers and about a million doctors in the USA. Finally, there are about 15,000 pilots in the US armed forces, but only about 2200 attack or fighter role aircraft. In total: a kid with no particular educational affinity is making a reasonable immediate choice to pursue "social media influencer" over doctor/lawyer/fighter pilot. It's probably a terrible long-term career choice, but so is fighter pilot.

busterarm 5y ago
> To be a doctor, you need a 4 year college degree, then acceptance into a medical school, then pass the medical school courses and do N years of residency. The average medical school graduate has $200K of debt at that point. It's not even that simple anymore. There's also the PGY1 year. There aren't nearly enough residencies to satisfy demand anymore. You might have to change specialties a few times before you land a residency. We're at the point where if you didn't go to medical school in the US, you're SOL. Even if you did, it's a struggle -- hope you went to a great medical school. This at a time when we have higher demand for doctors than ever. Nobody wants to change the residency situation because the economics of it don't work out.
lostcolony 5y ago
I don't disagree, but I think you're overlooking one thing. There are more kids wanting to be social media influencers than there are doctors, lawyers, or fighter pilots. The chances aren't purely based on how much demand there is for a given job, but also on how much supply. For that one million spots competition is fiercer.
- akiselev 5y ago
  Because they can compete. For doctors and lawyers, entry tickets are a few hundred thousand in loans and years of education. For fighter pilots, it's millions of dollars of training and flight time supported by a military. For social media influencers, it's just a computer and a webcam, which they probably already have for school/work.
  - snerbles 5y ago
    USAF pilots are also subject to a ten-year service commitment after they are rated for their aircraft type, which is usually around two years of training.
travisjungroth 5y ago
> It's probably a terrible long-term career choice, but so is fighter pilot. If you're willing to accept the failure modes of non-fighter military pilot, non-pilot military officer, person with a college degree or person with some college (depending on when things go wrong) it's not a bad track. Lots of hedging. Then you can transition to a career in civilian aviation or management. Compare that to something like enlisted Special Operations. Wash out of SEAL selection and you could be scraping barnacles off the side of a ship. Maybe you wash out of Special Forces selection and you end up in infantry. But then you decide you want to stop blowing stuff up, and the highlight of your resume is 4 years experience blowing stuff, with a minor in sweeping barracks. Failure modes aren't as nice.
- potta_coffee 5y ago
  Anecdotally, I dropped out of officer selection once I realized I'd rather kick in doors than be a paper pusher. Didn't meet many officers I admired, I wanted to be an NCO even though it's a less privileged position. Then I blew stuff up for 4 years, came back to a wrecked economy, did odd jobs, failed to start two businesses, sold cars, and taught myself web development. I basically went through every failure mode before finding my "thing". Now I make six figures in cloud engineering, have a house, family etc. Long story short but the "blowing things up" part was pretty interesting and a formative experience for me (not that I'd do it again; I've come to believe we're not blowing up the correct things / people).
  - true_religion 5y ago
    One good thing about being an officer is that if you get high enough in the rankings you can help decide which people get blown up and how.
    - potta_coffee 5y ago
      You don't make it into the higher echelons unless you conform to the desired ideology.
sandworm101 5y ago
>> It's probably a terrible long-term career choice, but so is fighter pilot. I'll mention that to one. It is a perfectly valid career choice even if you don't make it to an F-16 cockpit. Unlike failed civilian pilots a failed military pilot has their choice of other officer trades, from lawyer/doctor to tank commander. And no company will fault someone for failing out as a military pilot. The fact you were accepted into pilot training in the first place puts you ahead of most.

by dsr_ 5y ago

busterarm 5y ago

> To be a doctor, you need a 4 year college degree, then acceptance into a medical school, then pass the medical school courses and do N years of residency. The average medical school graduate has $200K of debt at that point. It's not even that simple anymore. There's also the PGY1 year. There aren't nearly enough residencies to satisfy demand anymore. You might have to change specialties a few times before you land a residency. We're at the point where if you didn't go to medical school in the US, you're SOL. Even if you did, it's a struggle -- hope you went to a great medical school. This at a time when we have higher demand for doctors than ever. Nobody wants to change the residency situation because the economics of it don't work out.

lostcolony 5y ago

I don't disagree, but I think you're overlooking one thing. There are more kids wanting to be social media influencers than there are doctors, lawyers, or fighter pilots. The chances aren't purely based on how much demand there is for a given job, but also on how much supply. For that one million spots competition is fiercer.

akiselev 5y ago
Because they can compete. For doctors and lawyers, entry tickets are a few hundred thousand in loans and years of education. For fighter pilots, it's millions of dollars of training and flight time supported by a military. For social media influencers, it's just a computer and a webcam, which they probably already have for school/work.
- snerbles 5y ago
  USAF pilots are also subject to a ten-year service commitment after they are rated for their aircraft type, which is usually around two years of training.

travisjungroth 5y ago

> It's probably a terrible long-term career choice, but so is fighter pilot. If you're willing to accept the failure modes of non-fighter military pilot, non-pilot military officer, person with a college degree or person with some college (depending on when things go wrong) it's not a bad track. Lots of hedging. Then you can transition to a career in civilian aviation or management. Compare that to something like enlisted Special Operations. Wash out of SEAL selection and you could be scraping barnacles off the side of a ship. Maybe you wash out of Special Forces selection and you end up in infantry. But then you decide you want to stop blowing stuff up, and the highlight of your resume is 4 years experience blowing stuff, with a minor in sweeping barracks. Failure modes aren't as nice.

potta_coffee 5y ago
Anecdotally, I dropped out of officer selection once I realized I'd rather kick in doors than be a paper pusher. Didn't meet many officers I admired, I wanted to be an NCO even though it's a less privileged position. Then I blew stuff up for 4 years, came back to a wrecked economy, did odd jobs, failed to start two businesses, sold cars, and taught myself web development. I basically went through every failure mode before finding my "thing". Now I make six figures in cloud engineering, have a house, family etc. Long story short but the "blowing things up" part was pretty interesting and a formative experience for me (not that I'd do it again; I've come to believe we're not blowing up the correct things / people).
- true_religion 5y ago
  One good thing about being an officer is that if you get high enough in the rankings you can help decide which people get blown up and how.
  - potta_coffee 5y ago
    You don't make it into the higher echelons unless you conform to the desired ideology.

sandworm101 5y ago

>> It's probably a terrible long-term career choice, but so is fighter pilot. I'll mention that to one. It is a perfectly valid career choice even if you don't make it to an F-16 cockpit. Unlike failed civilian pilots a failed military pilot has their choice of other officer trades, from lawyer/doctor to tank commander. And no company will fault someone for failing out as a military pilot. The fact you were accepted into pilot training in the first place puts you ahead of most.