6 ms·

This story is decidedly anecdata, even personal, but I think it's illustrative of what's going on in certain fields. - Had a friend who has multiple graduate l

This story is decidedly anecdata, even personal, but I think it's illustrative of what's going on in certain fields. - Had a friend who has multiple graduate level degrees in architecture related sub-specialties e.g. architecture criticism etc - HN being what it is, I will mention that the pay for most of the jobs you would get with the above is zero or near zero. - There is also a dramatic oversupply of candidates for available positions - That being said, certain jobs can be prestigious e.g. curator at a museum etc - Most places that would hire someone with these degrees will ONLY hire the children of very wealthy individuals - Why? The thought is that a museum hires the child of a hedge fund manager, there is a non-zero chance the wealthy parent will give or leave money to the institution when they die - This means a steady stream of unpaid internships for everyone else for, essentially, the rest of their lives It's therefore not surprising that only wealthy/elites would go into these particular fields and, in turn, causes people to not even enter the academic subjects to begin with. This isn't necessarily a criticism since everyone here is acting rationally from an economics perspective. I do wonder about the poor kid from a bad neighborhood who could have become the next great museum curator if not for the fact that his parents aren't wealthy.

hourago 4y ago
> Why? The thought is that a museum hires the child of a hedge fund manager, there is a non-zero chance the wealthy parent will give or leave money to the institution when they die Another way that inequality damages society. When your best bet for your future is to appeal to the super rich instead of serving society and getting money from the government society losses its power. As you say, it is rational to work for the one that can pay you. It's a catastrophe that there general public in aggregation has less power than very rich individuals by themselves.
- marcinzm 4y ago
  >best bet for your future The best bet for the future is to pick a career path that is not massively over supplied with candidates. Once you get to that situation there's no system that will not cause most everyone to be unhappy.
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    That game will get worse over time as people optimize for it too. It'll be a matter of trying to guess what's going to be in demand but not so in demand that people are training for it because they are also trying to choose a career that's in demand. And as usual, those with the better information and means to switch paths or take multiple shots will be the ones who can come out ahead.
    - lumost 4y ago
      Pretty much, We don't talk about it as often as we should - but post dot-com Software was a bad place to be. There was general fear that outsourcing to India would do to software what outsourcing to China was doing for Manufacturing. These fears culminated in an under-supply of CS majors through the 2000s and an oversupply of various "business" degrees. The assumed "ideal path" was to be in management so as not to be vulnerable to outsourcing. Flash forward to the 2010s and there are too many entry level accountants/financiers/managers in training, and too few software professionals. Even in fields with some shortages it's not a given that you will have bargaining power e.g. Nursing.
      - TimPC 4y ago
        Even after the dot com crash software was never a bad field it just felt that way because it was worse than it had been at the peak. There was still enough demand for most people to get actual jobs somewhere just not at the wages they like. Fields that suffer from this in academia have small percentages of people who study for it actually end up doing related work. Sometimes as low as 5% of the people. Software is nowhere close to 19 in 20 people working outside the field even during its worst crashes.
      - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
        >accountants/financiers/managers All of these professions do just fine, even the ones in which there's "oversupply". What these professions don't provide is readily available opportunity for someone of substantially below median intelligence and work ethic to make a very nice living with little more than token effort as is the case in software, or any other "hot" industry (in a cooler industry they plateau much closer to entry level).
bernf 4y ago
This is not really correct. Art and a lot of jobs that don't pay well go to children of rich people because they don't need the money, their parents are usually already in the network of influence and patrons. The current state of art is at the mercy of them anyway to keep up the illusion - the rich donate and get their benefits/private events and tax write offs. And since they're rich they end up becoming public figures themselves and bring even more attention to their institute.
john-radio 4y ago
> This isn't necessarily a criticism since everyone here is acting rationally from an economics perspective. I do wonder about the poor kid from a bad neighborhood who could have become the next great museum curator if not for the fact that his parents aren't wealthy. I guess you're right, as long as you take it as axiomatic that capitalism should govern absolutely every part of our society.
Mezzie 4y ago
Academia just isn't WORTH it for talented peasants (speaking as one). I had people encouraging me to go into academia since I was 4-5 years old, had a desire to go be a professor, etc. But things have changed a lot since I was a child 30 years ago. Now, if I were to go into academia without family or other connections, I'm looking at: - Unstable employment and a serious amount of overwork. At the end of this I may get a chance at some stability, but given how academia is moving away from the tenure-track, that's less and less likely. - Restrictions on what I can say and what kind of work I can do based on academic politics, what grants will fund, etc. - Very little reputational benefit to affiliating myself with an institution: speaking as an American, our institutions are collapsing. Why would I tie myself to a sinking ship? Those who are already in the upper-middle or upper class are all in on maintaining the status quo because it works for them and because they have a safety net if things go south. It's similar to how, no matter what your interpretation of Jan. 6, 2021, I bet there's some reconsidering of people's desires to be staff in Congress. ("I'm not getting shot for Pelosi/McConnell, fuck that noise.") On the other hand, if I DON'T go into academia, I can still access research and I can say whatever I want. I can also work on my own schedule and only do work that I think has some value (as opposed to chasing after publications and massaging my work to beef up my CV). Anyone from a poorer background who has the skills to make it in academia also has the skills to recognize that it is a TERRIBLE deal for them at the moment and that they have better options. Granted, this is also true of higher socio-economic classes, and that's one reason the people from elite backgrounds in academia are also trending towards the more and more mediocre.
- matthewdgreen 4y ago
  > Restrictions on what I can say Academia isn't perfect and it sure isn't what it once was. But go ahead and talk crap about your corporate employer for the next six months and see what happens to you.
  - Mezzie 4y ago
    I'm a freelancer + work in the non-profit space; I don't do corporate work. Which is also on purpose. ;) The difference is that corporate work never had the pretense of offering me intellectual freedom, whereas academia did. At least if I go corporate, they'll buy my silence with resources/$$$. Academia? So you want to give me nothing AND restrict what I can say? That's going to be a hard pass.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
matthewdgreen 4y ago
Even if this is true, it probably explains a fraction of 1% of the effects that TFA is talking about. The set of "curator etc." positions with fundraising influence is vanishingly small. It's much more likely that the bigger pressure is the need to complete many unpaid internships, which is easier for wealthy folks. (And to add anecdata, the two curators I personally know are both from middle-class backgrounds and have nothing to do with fundraising.)
3pt14159 4y ago
This is a decidedly personal, anecdotal story too, but I think it's illustrative of some of the reasons to hope for the world. I was dating someone that was a civil engineer and she absolutely hated the constant sexual harassment that happens on construction sites in Canada. She came from a poor family that fled Russia as the Soviet Union was collapsing. I told her I could teach her tech in one month. Whatever she wanted, frontend, backend, didn't matter. Enough to get hired. She took the plunge, dove in and I tutored her about 40 hours a week for a month or so. Got her a mini data science contract with some friends of mine and after this little boost of experience she landed a job at Shopify and more than tripled her already above average salary. Stayed there for years and as far as I know she's still doing quite well. Yes there are problems in the modern economy. Real, awful problems. We need to look at them with clear eyes and make policy changes to make sure that things don't get worse for the least fortunate in life. But that said, there are a lot of unsung stories out there and the world is getting better in a lot of little ways. We should not lose hope.
- make3 4y ago
  hopefully she won't also get sexually harassed in tech
  - nicwolff 4y ago
    Compared to construction? Almost literally impossible.
    - bobkazamakis 4y ago
      based on...?
- Bostonian 4y ago
  Thanks for the neat story, and kudos to you for helping her.
eternalban 4y ago
> Why? The thought is that a museum hires the child of a hedge fund manager, there is a non-zero chance the wealthy parent will give or leave money to the institution when they die That's a thought. But it smells, unsurprisingly, as petit-bourgeoise thought, where "money" is the end all be all of social striving. So another thought is that a certain class insists that it is the rightful keeper (a whiff of the divine right of kings here btw) of cultural lights and direction of "civilization". And naturally, these cultural shepherds are nurtured generationally in institutions that were created by their forebears. MoMA for example, is a Rockefeller institution. Anyway, food for "thought".
devilbunny 4y ago
Also, as you point out, this is a very-low-paying field. Someone who isn't from a wealthy family will struggle to live on the kind of pay they will get, meaning that they are more likely to work in the field for a few years, then get married, have kids - and need a real income. And now the next hiree has to go to all the trouble of re-establishing relationships with donors. I just read a reasonably interesting book (In the Garden of Beasts) about an academic who became FDR's ambassador to Nazi Germany. One of the points that the author repeatedly makes is that such positions were very much the preserve of the wealthy, who were expected to spend substantially from their own pockets for both official and unofficial events. Living on his salary alone was an unusual and unpopular move, even within the State Department.

hourago 4y ago

> Why? The thought is that a museum hires the child of a hedge fund manager, there is a non-zero chance the wealthy parent will give or leave money to the institution when they die Another way that inequality damages society. When your best bet for your future is to appeal to the super rich instead of serving society and getting money from the government society losses its power. As you say, it is rational to work for the one that can pay you. It's a catastrophe that there general public in aggregation has less power than very rich individuals by themselves.

marcinzm 4y ago
>best bet for your future The best bet for the future is to pick a career path that is not massively over supplied with candidates. Once you get to that situation there's no system that will not cause most everyone to be unhappy.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  That game will get worse over time as people optimize for it too. It'll be a matter of trying to guess what's going to be in demand but not so in demand that people are training for it because they are also trying to choose a career that's in demand. And as usual, those with the better information and means to switch paths or take multiple shots will be the ones who can come out ahead.
  - lumost 4y ago
    Pretty much, We don't talk about it as often as we should - but post dot-com Software was a bad place to be. There was general fear that outsourcing to India would do to software what outsourcing to China was doing for Manufacturing. These fears culminated in an under-supply of CS majors through the 2000s and an oversupply of various "business" degrees. The assumed "ideal path" was to be in management so as not to be vulnerable to outsourcing. Flash forward to the 2010s and there are too many entry level accountants/financiers/managers in training, and too few software professionals. Even in fields with some shortages it's not a given that you will have bargaining power e.g. Nursing.
    - TimPC 4y ago
      Even after the dot com crash software was never a bad field it just felt that way because it was worse than it had been at the peak. There was still enough demand for most people to get actual jobs somewhere just not at the wages they like. Fields that suffer from this in academia have small percentages of people who study for it actually end up doing related work. Sometimes as low as 5% of the people. Software is nowhere close to 19 in 20 people working outside the field even during its worst crashes.
    - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
      >accountants/financiers/managers All of these professions do just fine, even the ones in which there's "oversupply". What these professions don't provide is readily available opportunity for someone of substantially below median intelligence and work ethic to make a very nice living with little more than token effort as is the case in software, or any other "hot" industry (in a cooler industry they plateau much closer to entry level).

bernf 4y ago

This is not really correct. Art and a lot of jobs that don't pay well go to children of rich people because they don't need the money, their parents are usually already in the network of influence and patrons. The current state of art is at the mercy of them anyway to keep up the illusion - the rich donate and get their benefits/private events and tax write offs. And since they're rich they end up becoming public figures themselves and bring even more attention to their institute.

john-radio 4y ago

> This isn't necessarily a criticism since everyone here is acting rationally from an economics perspective. I do wonder about the poor kid from a bad neighborhood who could have become the next great museum curator if not for the fact that his parents aren't wealthy. I guess you're right, as long as you take it as axiomatic that capitalism should govern absolutely every part of our society.

Mezzie 4y ago

Academia just isn't WORTH it for talented peasants (speaking as one). I had people encouraging me to go into academia since I was 4-5 years old, had a desire to go be a professor, etc. But things have changed a lot since I was a child 30 years ago. Now, if I were to go into academia without family or other connections, I'm looking at: - Unstable employment and a serious amount of overwork. At the end of this I may get a chance at some stability, but given how academia is moving away from the tenure-track, that's less and less likely. - Restrictions on what I can say and what kind of work I can do based on academic politics, what grants will fund, etc. - Very little reputational benefit to affiliating myself with an institution: speaking as an American, our institutions are collapsing. Why would I tie myself to a sinking ship? Those who are already in the upper-middle or upper class are all in on maintaining the status quo because it works for them and because they have a safety net if things go south. It's similar to how, no matter what your interpretation of Jan. 6, 2021, I bet there's some reconsidering of people's desires to be staff in Congress. ("I'm not getting shot for Pelosi/McConnell, fuck that noise.") On the other hand, if I DON'T go into academia, I can still access research and I can say whatever I want. I can also work on my own schedule and only do work that I think has some value (as opposed to chasing after publications and massaging my work to beef up my CV). Anyone from a poorer background who has the skills to make it in academia also has the skills to recognize that it is a TERRIBLE deal for them at the moment and that they have better options. Granted, this is also true of higher socio-economic classes, and that's one reason the people from elite backgrounds in academia are also trending towards the more and more mediocre.

matthewdgreen 4y ago
> Restrictions on what I can say Academia isn't perfect and it sure isn't what it once was. But go ahead and talk crap about your corporate employer for the next six months and see what happens to you.
- Mezzie 4y ago
  I'm a freelancer + work in the non-profit space; I don't do corporate work. Which is also on purpose. ;) The difference is that corporate work never had the pretense of offering me intellectual freedom, whereas academia did. At least if I go corporate, they'll buy my silence with resources/$$$. Academia? So you want to give me nothing AND restrict what I can say? That's going to be a hard pass.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

matthewdgreen 4y ago

Even if this is true, it probably explains a fraction of 1% of the effects that TFA is talking about. The set of "curator etc." positions with fundraising influence is vanishingly small. It's much more likely that the bigger pressure is the need to complete many unpaid internships, which is easier for wealthy folks. (And to add anecdata, the two curators I personally know are both from middle-class backgrounds and have nothing to do with fundraising.)

3pt14159 4y ago

This is a decidedly personal, anecdotal story too, but I think it's illustrative of some of the reasons to hope for the world. I was dating someone that was a civil engineer and she absolutely hated the constant sexual harassment that happens on construction sites in Canada. She came from a poor family that fled Russia as the Soviet Union was collapsing. I told her I could teach her tech in one month. Whatever she wanted, frontend, backend, didn't matter. Enough to get hired. She took the plunge, dove in and I tutored her about 40 hours a week for a month or so. Got her a mini data science contract with some friends of mine and after this little boost of experience she landed a job at Shopify and more than tripled her already above average salary. Stayed there for years and as far as I know she's still doing quite well. Yes there are problems in the modern economy. Real, awful problems. We need to look at them with clear eyes and make policy changes to make sure that things don't get worse for the least fortunate in life. But that said, there are a lot of unsung stories out there and the world is getting better in a lot of little ways. We should not lose hope.

make3 4y ago
hopefully she won't also get sexually harassed in tech
- nicwolff 4y ago
  Compared to construction? Almost literally impossible.
  - bobkazamakis 4y ago
    based on...?
Bostonian 4y ago
Thanks for the neat story, and kudos to you for helping her.

eternalban 4y ago

> Why? The thought is that a museum hires the child of a hedge fund manager, there is a non-zero chance the wealthy parent will give or leave money to the institution when they die That's a thought. But it smells, unsurprisingly, as petit-bourgeoise thought, where "money" is the end all be all of social striving. So another thought is that a certain class insists that it is the rightful keeper (a whiff of the divine right of kings here btw) of cultural lights and direction of "civilization". And naturally, these cultural shepherds are nurtured generationally in institutions that were created by their forebears. MoMA for example, is a Rockefeller institution. Anyway, food for "thought".

devilbunny 4y ago

Also, as you point out, this is a very-low-paying field. Someone who isn't from a wealthy family will struggle to live on the kind of pay they will get, meaning that they are more likely to work in the field for a few years, then get married, have kids - and need a real income. And now the next hiree has to go to all the trouble of re-establishing relationships with donors. I just read a reasonably interesting book (In the Garden of Beasts) about an academic who became FDR's ambassador to Nazi Germany. One of the points that the author repeatedly makes is that such positions were very much the preserve of the wealthy, who were expected to spend substantially from their own pockets for both official and unofficial events. Living on his salary alone was an unusual and unpopular move, even within the State Department.