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It's really simple. Smart people are not going to work 1000 times harder for less payoff. Smart students with everything going for them get to make this decisi

It's really simple. Smart people are not going to work 1000 times harder for less payoff. Smart students with everything going for them get to make this decision: (A) Dedicate their entire life at college to doing useless problem sets. No free time. No social life. No girlfriends. Spend all your time with stinky nerds drilling on useless sets. Then get out of school and make $80k doing the engineering slog. Max out your salary at $140k, 20 years down the road. (B) Take easy classes while being a professional partier. At parties, have loads of sex and take lots of drugs while meeting many many people. Build up 1000+ Facebook friends and forge lifelong bonds with important well-connected people. Get your degree and use your connections to get hired for $80k. Have your employer then pay for your MBA. Max out your salary at $400k 20 years down the road, not including bonuses and side deal opportunities. Phillip Greenspun was right. Unless you're a masochist or a social reject, engineering is for foreign students. A top American student from a good family has no incentive to do engineering: not lifestyle, not financial. When it comes to software this is even more true because you don't even need an engineering degree to write software. Paul Graham has a philosophy degree and most of his wealth came from people skills: convincing Blackwell and Morris to hack for him, and later convincing young engineers to hack for him. Steve Jobs vs Steve Wozniak is another perfect example. Woz did the work, Jobs got the glory. Woz stayed home nights hacking while Jobs was out fucking the prom queen and taking credit. Our society does not reward engineers so anyone with the ability and foresight to be a doctor, dentist, MBA, or clinical psychologist is not going to torture themselves. Hacker News entrepreneurs are just a bunch of masochists who never learned that partying, taking drugs and having sex is more fun and pays better than writing Ruby apps.

Locke1689 15y ago
FYI, medicine has a very bad expected value for time input. MBA and engineering are decent -- not great, but OK. The probability of making decent money is pretty good, while the probability of making a lot of money is small. If you're smart (and I mean really smart), finance is generally a good bet. Once again, adjusted for time input it's not great but it does have a higher expected value.
- forensic 15y ago
  You're still missing the real value, which is not the "degree" but rather the connections. Just make friends with rich people and get them to hire you at their friend's giant corporation where their job is to undermine democracy and fool people. It's easy and pays well.
silverlake 15y ago
Paul Graham's doctorate in computer science probably helped a bit.
hagy 15y ago
That’s a bit of an over-generalization. While there are individuals that can use the party-sex-drugs track as a networking opportunity into future lucrative careers, such individual are an exception, not the rule. Most students on the party-sex–drugs track are just enjoying their youth (and racking up student loans). I’ll agree that if you’re a young Machiavelli attending an elite school, then rubbing shoulders with your wealthy classmates can work out quite well.
omlette 15y ago
> Paul Graham has a philosophy degree and most of his wealth came from people skills: convincing Blackwell and Morris to hack for him, and later convincing young engineers to hack for him. id think having a deep enough knowledge on lisp to fill two books probably had something to do with it as well.

Locke1689 15y ago

FYI, medicine has a very bad expected value for time input. MBA and engineering are decent -- not great, but OK. The probability of making decent money is pretty good, while the probability of making a lot of money is small. If you're smart (and I mean really smart), finance is generally a good bet. Once again, adjusted for time input it's not great but it does have a higher expected value.

forensic 15y ago
You're still missing the real value, which is not the "degree" but rather the connections. Just make friends with rich people and get them to hire you at their friend's giant corporation where their job is to undermine democracy and fool people. It's easy and pays well.

silverlake 15y ago

Paul Graham's doctorate in computer science probably helped a bit.

hagy 15y ago

That’s a bit of an over-generalization. While there are individuals that can use the party-sex-drugs track as a networking opportunity into future lucrative careers, such individual are an exception, not the rule. Most students on the party-sex–drugs track are just enjoying their youth (and racking up student loans). I’ll agree that if you’re a young Machiavelli attending an elite school, then rubbing shoulders with your wealthy classmates can work out quite well.

omlette 15y ago

> Paul Graham has a philosophy degree and most of his wealth came from people skills: convincing Blackwell and Morris to hack for him, and later convincing young engineers to hack for him. id think having a deep enough knowledge on lisp to fill two books probably had something to do with it as well.