14 ms·

I checked his bio, and Baker appears to be a computer science student doing journalism as a hobby. It brings me to wonder how much choice people really have in

I checked his bio, and Baker appears to be a computer science student doing journalism as a hobby. It brings me to wonder how much choice people really have in choosing their paths…if both your parents are journalists or [insert whatever profession], it’s as if you’re likely to pick it up no matter how hard you try not to…

sonicshadow 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  We've banned this account for posting abusive and flamebait comments. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
WastingMyTime89 3y ago
It’s also likely that having grown up surrounded by journalists and people working for newspapers, his education allows him to properly write articles as a freshman. That doesn’t prevent him for learning computer science if that’s what he likes doing.
- tnecniv 3y ago
  Yeah if you have insight into why a field is interesting from a younger age, you are more likely to be interested in it yourself as well. That also goes the other way. My dad was a lawyer, and I know a little more about the law and legal profession than the average joe. However that was enough information to tell me I had no interest in being a lawyer.
no_wizard 3y ago
I realize this is not the point of the article, however you hit on something here I always thought. I think Journalism is a great dual major choice (or maybe just a minor), with whatever it is you want to study, particularly if its in conjunction with engineering, computer science, physics, biology, finance / accounting etc. Why? Because Journalists are trained to be good communicators and summarize ideas (a worthwhile skill in most professions) and they are also taught to be ferocious in finding and corroborating information for its "truthiness". Having these skills would give most people an edge in whatever line of work you are in.
- my_usernam3 3y ago
  My father majored in Journalism, despite having a much more mathematical leaning mind, and small business career. He swears it was the best decision with similar arguments. I'm not 100% convinced it should be the one and only major as he did, but a dual major/minor does sound great.
- beepbooptheory 3y ago
  Don't we think this probably applies to any of the humanities though? What you described, at least, is the practice of careful, critical research followed by exegesis.
  - abathur 3y ago
    I think there's still a difference here with respect to writing styles and audiences. In most humanities specialties you'll be writing for an academic audience (and depending on your focus, potentially one with a very narrow band of shared knowledge/terminology). A lot of what you learn there can get in the way when you need to reach a general/lay audience.
    - beepbooptheory 3y ago
      Journalism is the same way though. They write highly technical papers for academic audiences. Journalism is just distinct in that there are marginally more jobs you can get where you practice direct skills/techniques around the domains. In the rest you can still get this kind of with teaching!
dmoy 3y ago
Well I managed to not get into law at all. I do know more about patent law than is probably relevant for a layperson though lol
wvenable 3y ago
My daughter went into an entirely different career path than me but she's still the one to fix her employer's Wifi when it goes down.
whimsicalism 3y ago
Both of my parents are journalists and I'm a big tech ML engineer... so there are alternative paths available :)
bavell 3y ago
Meh, both my parents practice law and I went into software dev. Had no interest in following in their footsteps.
- morkalork 3y ago
  Both are careers with a foundation of reasoning and logic so the apple didn't fall too far from the tree.
- memefrog 3y ago
  Same, but now I am studying law
colechristensen 3y ago
Culture is inherited, you’ll get the most influence from the people you grew up around. Kids tend to be either a lot like their parents or try to be nothing like them at all (trying to be the opposite is still a huge influence)
callalex 3y ago
In this case it’s probably not so much that the author was forced into journalism, and more that the student was empowered to cover this story without fear of retaliation due to his parents’ large megaphone. With the sheer volume of scandals coming out of Stanford these days, it wouldn’t shock me if a critical mass of former students start feeling empowered to speak out now as well.
- godelski 3y ago
  "Hey, your parents are journalists right? I think that guy's works is fishy. How would I report this or investigate further?" There's definitely an attractive force based on generational expertise. I'd guess more people would be likely to feed them information as well as they would innately have more experience (learned growing up) and definitely have more access to expertise. Considering someone said the student was in CS I don't think I'd say they were forced into journalism, but it does definitely relate to the skills and resources at their disposal.
dllthomas 3y ago
> a computer science student doing journalism as a hobby Y'know, sometimes CS gets slow and you gotta go do some award winning journalism to keep busy.
glimshe 3y ago
Part of it is that people like what they are good at. Having both parents providing years of mentoring and experience will invariably give their child an edge in that skill set, which leads to a higher chance of embracing it in adulthood.
pmarreck 3y ago
> It brings me to wonder how much choice people really have in choosing their paths I believe the correct answer here is "not a lot," but not in the way that you probably think. I couldn't be more different from my German-immigrant parents. Neither of them were college-educated, my father was the general manager of a moving company before he retired and my mom was a travel agent before she had me. They were both very generally hardworking and I (frankly) only work hard in very specific circumstances (ADHD brain). I excelled academically and was pretty immediately drawn to computers (I'm talking like 1982, with the Commodore PET; I was 10). Neither of my parents were technical, or even that literate, or even that successful (my dad, even as a mere "general manager of a small moving company", was nevertheless the most successful person in his family). Nevertheless they managed to put together enough money to send me off to Cornell, where I got a Psych degree with a "CS minor" (you don't declare minors at Cornell, but let's just say I hounded the CS department for courses I could take; I didn't like the inflexibility of being a CS major, though, and I had messed up a critical calculus course that was a requirement for many of them) I also did a 4 year stint in the USAF (after a very poor first-year showing at Cornell where I bombed academically due to no study habits, having coasted through HS) wherein I was an aircraft mechanic and pushed computers away as far as I could (this was literally just 2-3 years before the Internet would explode in 1995, and sentiment about people who were really into computers was very much still "big nerd"; I was a late-bloomer ::cough:: virgin ::cough:: and felt the need to push anything "uncool" away from me as much as possible). Despite this overt conscious effort to avoid computers, one day the commander calls me into his office (my immediate reaction was "oh sh--, what did I do?") and proceeds with this spiel: "Airman Marreck, word has gotten back to me about your giftedness with computers." (Wait, what? And then suddenly, with some horror and trepidation, I remembered flashes of memory: Walking past VT100 terminals that were inop to keyboard input until I couldn't help but set them right. Hearing about someone complaining about some Windows 3.1 issue and helping them. Fixing a formatting issue with printouts of flight records. Helping another person ranked above me with an Excel issue. Etc. Etc. Etc.) He continued. "I am offering you the opportunity to cross-train into [whatever the USAF's version of software engineer was, I forget]" My honest thought: This f---ing thing has boomerang'ed back to me despite every effort I've made to avoid it. (Clearly, I let SOME efforts slip through... And truth be told, I was ready to accept it, having felt I matured a bit. And gotten my V-Card stamped, of course.) I asked "What's the catch?" He says "Extending your enlistment for 2 more years." I thought "if I'm supposed to do this, then I'm going to do it in the civilian world, and benefit from civilian salaries." I said "Thank you, but no thanks." Anyway, the thing you love (and we could have a very deep discussion about where that comes from, because I certainly never consciously chose it) is the thing you will do. I feel I don't really have a choice, since you can't really choose what you love, you just either do or don't. So... For some at least, there may not be much of a choice. But it may also have nothing to do with their parents. The closest relative that might have had anything to do with me being into computers is my mother's father, who was an accountant, and could add up a column of numbers just by sliding his finger down them (and that quickly). That is literally the only "analytical" type of person in my entire extended family.
detourdog 3y ago
My experience is very little choice if you follow your aptitude.
eastbound 3y ago
What if it really takes two generations to be good at something? Since 1789 (in France) we postulate that inheritance in a societal curse, and postulate that everyone must be equal at birth. However, there are countless examples where sons of doctors make better doctors, sons of journalists make better journalists, and sons of presidents make better administrators of oil companies in war zones (joke intended). We should still aim so that it is possible to succeed as an orphan, of course, but we should also recognize that the best tricks ate learnt during teenage years, when you ask “Hey dad, how come the board of a company isn’t salaried? Dad, how did you deal with your last board where you had too many naysayers? How does it work when you have to fire an employee?” Of course I’ve read my share of books by Ben Horowitz, but of course being the son of such a person gives tremendous advance on how to deal with a lot of situations.
- whinenot 3y ago
  It's not just conversations around the dinner table. It's also how you get started vis a vis introductions to the right people, prized starter jobs and educational pathways that may not be widely known (eg, an internship at ___ will set you up for a job later at ___).
- digging 3y ago
  > What if it really takes two generations to be good at something? This really is the recipe for success. The majority of success is intergenerational. Someone can come from nothing and become wildly successful, it's true. But it's extremely unlikely. With 8 billion people, occasional rags-to-riches stories are going to happen; even if it's a 1-in-100,000,000 chance that would be about 80 people. These are not the stories to aspire to; they're random anomalies. The stories we should aspire to are the ones of humans setting up future humans for success. Ideally, not even just their children...
  - brightlancer 3y ago
    > This really is the recipe for success. The majority of success is intergenerational. I think it's better said that the majority of success is from _iteration_. In lots of ways, I'm not just a product of my parents' (lack of?) success or their parents' (lack of?) success and so on, but also a product of my iterated local communities and iterated larger society. > The stories we should aspire to are the ones of humans setting up future humans for success. Ideally, not even just their children... Be wary of claimed benevolence, for it justifies corpses in the name of the greater good. History has shown that rising tides lift all boats. We are all the product of millennia of selfish pursuits by bigots, rapists, war profiteers, etc. And yet, the long-term trajectory for the masses is up -- because success iterates not just along family lines, but broadly across society.
ghaff 3y ago
It can definitely be an influence. My parents were both in the life sciences and I was definitely gently pushed in that direction. And I got interested in nascent biomedical engineering. Then I took organic chemistry. Switched to pure mechanical engineering. Would probably have liked EECS more when all is said and done and have had more aptitude for it. But, at the end of the day, can't really complain about the circuitous path I took which, like so many in my cohort, ended up in computers anyway.
sydbarrett74 3y ago
Genetics certainly plays a heavy hand in terms of what we end up doing occupationally. It's not the whole story, obviously, but it's one of the chief protagonists. There's also the matter of constant reinforcement and exposure to your parents' careers as you grow up. So it's mostly genes (nature) and parenting (nurture). Extrafamilial social interactions provide a lesser, but not insignificant, influence.
- underlipton 3y ago
  Yes, genetic variability, which was largely set in prehistory, definitely "plays a heavy hand" in determining whether someone will enter the workforce in one of several occupations that cluster closely in terms of skill set, yet vary widely in terms of pay and prestige. This guy will probably be a journalist instead of, say, a private investigator, or a novelist, or a technical writer, or a marketer, because it's in his genes. /s
  - sydbarrett74 3y ago
    Different occupations require different temperaments, personalities, and so forth. These things are largely determined by genetics. How is any of that controversial, or worthy of your scorn?
    - underlipton 3y ago
      >Different occupations require different temperaments, personalities, and so forth. No, I don't think I agree with that. Widely varying workplace cultures across businesses in the same field or market are driven by widely-varying temperaments, personalities, etc. in each business's labor force. (This is the saving grace of, say, police officers, where many decorated vets have been shown to be bullies and sociopaths; I would hope that there is some variance there.) There isn't just variance in how different companies and even teams do things, but across time; the job of a journalist today is quite different from the job of one at the occupation's inception, and even of one who is now retiring as this young man is beginning his career. In fact, assuming that in-built assets truly vary non-trivially, many retire BECAUSE theirs are incompatible with the shifting needs of a modern worker. That a job's responsibilities change over time would alone seem to falsify the notion that one can be born with a proclivity for it, the same as one's parents. >How is any of that controversial, or worthy of your scorn? It's unscientific, Panglossian garbage.
HideousKojima 3y ago
I dunno, I'm nowhere close to doing worker's compensation claims adjustment even though my dad did it for 40+ years.
cbsmith 3y ago
Picking it up doesn't mean it's your career path. You learn a lot from your parents, including bits about their careers, but I'd say such learnings add to your career choices rather than dictate them.
deleted 3y ago
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godelski 3y ago
> if both your parents are journalists or [insert whatever profession], it’s as if you’re likely to pick it up no matter how hard you try not to… How likely is it for you to be {Catholic,Muslim,Hindu,etc} if your parents are? What about the food you like? Interests? Etc The answer is high, but not 100%. I say this as someone who comes from a _very_ religious family (I'm more areligious), the only person who does anything even remotely STEM related, and has a very different diet than my parents. So triple whammy (but probably unsurprising to get both given one). It's just likely that you are going to be more similar to your parents than not. Not sure why we should expect otherwise. As an example, growing up in my house there was a lot of discussion of politics and business. It is probably no surprised that almost everyone works in sales. But friends who have parents who are professors grew up listening to and discussing academic ideas. Essentially what is happening is that at an early age we're all being trained and this training is heavily influenced by the teacher models, I mean parents. Sorry, the ML is creeping in ;). I would not be surprised that someone who grew up in a house where both parents are journalists that they wouldn't be explicitly trained to scrutinize authority, gather evidence, and write that down. Lots of learning is done by imitation. Is this a bad thing? Probably not. Does it mean you don't have free will? Definitely not, but it does mean heavy influence. I think an important aspect is to recognize this, especially if we are going to have conversations about meritocracy and fairness. Understanding this early learning does give credit to claims of quality through generational experience. The question is how much this matters by the time we reach adults and finish our education (wherever that is). I think the longer the education, the less this matters. But it definitely means there's a bias in prestige of that education (and quality if you believe that prestige strongly correlates with quality). It probably isn't a surprise that kids from academics tend to end up at higher ranked universities than kids from non-academics (we see a strong effect when looking at race or class, but these are most likely not causal variables but confounders). It also means that any "meritocratic" system (personal belief is that these are fools errands) will be substantially benefited by generational experience as children will at a young age learn how to optimize for the metrics (which are not necessarily aligned to the goals of those metrics though, which is why the previous note). Momentum is one hell of a force. Compounding interest isn't just important for money, but nearly any form of resource. There are a lot of benefits to momentum, but the problem is that we often don't account for this in our models and this makes for poor evaluation. I would be very willing to bet that a lot of things people make evaluations on are far more random than they believe. For example I'd put money on that were everything else held equal (making this hard to measure) that high school grades would not significantly affect student outcomes. We can use the studies on students who were admitted through affirmative action to get an indication of this, where we generally see similar results to students admitted normally. There is some noise, but it also isn't unsurprising that if you are doing poorly in high school that this might correlate with problems at home, which can cause a higher likelihood of dropout. But generally, this would suggest that you could shuffle all applications, randomly select, and you wouldn't see a large difference in your students' performance nor outcomes post university (my hypothesis). Some of this is already done, given that many top universities have more applicants that are nearly impossible to distinguish than they have seats for, making selection at least nearly arbitrary for these applicants. But where this may matter in the real world is that prestige definitely correlates with opportunities like internships and work, as companies prioritize recruitment from these locations and prioritize building connections with these professors (who connect students with opportunities). These are probably where we could make adjustments to make a more fair system, but is likely harder than suggested. TLDR: heavy influence, but you still got free will. Should make you think though...
Guthur 3y ago
Pretty simple to see how this happens. One can not isolate one's self from cumulation of being that is one's life. During this individuals life in sure he was often exposed to talk and thought about journalism. But also maybe form additional interests and ambitions. This is not about choice persay, but rather a life lived.
throwawaylinux 3y ago
You can tell he's not a real journalist because he wasn't digging dirt and attacking anybody who questioned The Science™ or carrying water for the ruling class.
sharadov 3y ago
Not necessary - both parents were doctors but I became an engineer. And no - They were not in it for the money. Although they worked really hard they were always passionate about their work and truly loved helping people getting better. But I realized early enough that I did not have the same level of commitment.
WalterBright 3y ago
There's no inevitability about picking up a career you're familiar with. My dad was a pilot and a professor - yet I'm a computer nerd.
dottedmag 3y ago
My father was a school gym coach and then a flight attendant. My mother was a sales clerk. Neither of them were into computers. I have no idea about none of their areas either. So I guess this only applies to a prestigious occupations.

sonicshadow 3y ago

[flagged]

dang 3y ago
We've banned this account for posting abusive and flamebait comments. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

WastingMyTime89 3y ago

It’s also likely that having grown up surrounded by journalists and people working for newspapers, his education allows him to properly write articles as a freshman. That doesn’t prevent him for learning computer science if that’s what he likes doing.

tnecniv 3y ago
Yeah if you have insight into why a field is interesting from a younger age, you are more likely to be interested in it yourself as well. That also goes the other way. My dad was a lawyer, and I know a little more about the law and legal profession than the average joe. However that was enough information to tell me I had no interest in being a lawyer.

no_wizard 3y ago

I realize this is not the point of the article, however you hit on something here I always thought. I think Journalism is a great dual major choice (or maybe just a minor), with whatever it is you want to study, particularly if its in conjunction with engineering, computer science, physics, biology, finance / accounting etc. Why? Because Journalists are trained to be good communicators and summarize ideas (a worthwhile skill in most professions) and they are also taught to be ferocious in finding and corroborating information for its "truthiness". Having these skills would give most people an edge in whatever line of work you are in.

my_usernam3 3y ago
My father majored in Journalism, despite having a much more mathematical leaning mind, and small business career. He swears it was the best decision with similar arguments. I'm not 100% convinced it should be the one and only major as he did, but a dual major/minor does sound great.
beepbooptheory 3y ago
Don't we think this probably applies to any of the humanities though? What you described, at least, is the practice of careful, critical research followed by exegesis.
- abathur 3y ago
  I think there's still a difference here with respect to writing styles and audiences. In most humanities specialties you'll be writing for an academic audience (and depending on your focus, potentially one with a very narrow band of shared knowledge/terminology). A lot of what you learn there can get in the way when you need to reach a general/lay audience.
  - beepbooptheory 3y ago
    Journalism is the same way though. They write highly technical papers for academic audiences. Journalism is just distinct in that there are marginally more jobs you can get where you practice direct skills/techniques around the domains. In the rest you can still get this kind of with teaching!

dmoy 3y ago

Well I managed to not get into law at all. I do know more about patent law than is probably relevant for a layperson though lol

wvenable 3y ago

My daughter went into an entirely different career path than me but she's still the one to fix her employer's Wifi when it goes down.

whimsicalism 3y ago

Both of my parents are journalists and I'm a big tech ML engineer... so there are alternative paths available :)

bavell 3y ago

Meh, both my parents practice law and I went into software dev. Had no interest in following in their footsteps.

morkalork 3y ago
Both are careers with a foundation of reasoning and logic so the apple didn't fall too far from the tree.
memefrog 3y ago
Same, but now I am studying law

colechristensen 3y ago

Culture is inherited, you’ll get the most influence from the people you grew up around. Kids tend to be either a lot like their parents or try to be nothing like them at all (trying to be the opposite is still a huge influence)

callalex 3y ago

In this case it’s probably not so much that the author was forced into journalism, and more that the student was empowered to cover this story without fear of retaliation due to his parents’ large megaphone. With the sheer volume of scandals coming out of Stanford these days, it wouldn’t shock me if a critical mass of former students start feeling empowered to speak out now as well.

godelski 3y ago
"Hey, your parents are journalists right? I think that guy's works is fishy. How would I report this or investigate further?" There's definitely an attractive force based on generational expertise. I'd guess more people would be likely to feed them information as well as they would innately have more experience (learned growing up) and definitely have more access to expertise. Considering someone said the student was in CS I don't think I'd say they were forced into journalism, but it does definitely relate to the skills and resources at their disposal.

dllthomas 3y ago

> a computer science student doing journalism as a hobby Y'know, sometimes CS gets slow and you gotta go do some award winning journalism to keep busy.

glimshe 3y ago

Part of it is that people like what they are good at. Having both parents providing years of mentoring and experience will invariably give their child an edge in that skill set, which leads to a higher chance of embracing it in adulthood.

pmarreck 3y ago

> It brings me to wonder how much choice people really have in choosing their paths I believe the correct answer here is "not a lot," but not in the way that you probably think. I couldn't be more different from my German-immigrant parents. Neither of them were college-educated, my father was the general manager of a moving company before he retired and my mom was a travel agent before she had me. They were both very generally hardworking and I (frankly) only work hard in very specific circumstances (ADHD brain). I excelled academically and was pretty immediately drawn to computers (I'm talking like 1982, with the Commodore PET; I was 10). Neither of my parents were technical, or even that literate, or even that successful (my dad, even as a mere "general manager of a small moving company", was nevertheless the most successful person in his family). Nevertheless they managed to put together enough money to send me off to Cornell, where I got a Psych degree with a "CS minor" (you don't declare minors at Cornell, but let's just say I hounded the CS department for courses I could take; I didn't like the inflexibility of being a CS major, though, and I had messed up a critical calculus course that was a requirement for many of them) I also did a 4 year stint in the USAF (after a very poor first-year showing at Cornell where I bombed academically due to no study habits, having coasted through HS) wherein I was an aircraft mechanic and pushed computers away as far as I could (this was literally just 2-3 years before the Internet would explode in 1995, and sentiment about people who were really into computers was very much still "big nerd"; I was a late-bloomer ::cough:: virgin ::cough:: and felt the need to push anything "uncool" away from me as much as possible). Despite this overt conscious effort to avoid computers, one day the commander calls me into his office (my immediate reaction was "oh sh--, what did I do?") and proceeds with this spiel: "Airman Marreck, word has gotten back to me about your giftedness with computers." (Wait, what? And then suddenly, with some horror and trepidation, I remembered flashes of memory: Walking past VT100 terminals that were inop to keyboard input until I couldn't help but set them right. Hearing about someone complaining about some Windows 3.1 issue and helping them. Fixing a formatting issue with printouts of flight records. Helping another person ranked above me with an Excel issue. Etc. Etc. Etc.) He continued. "I am offering you the opportunity to cross-train into [whatever the USAF's version of software engineer was, I forget]" My honest thought: This f---ing thing has boomerang'ed back to me despite every effort I've made to avoid it. (Clearly, I let SOME efforts slip through... And truth be told, I was ready to accept it, having felt I matured a bit. And gotten my V-Card stamped, of course.) I asked "What's the catch?" He says "Extending your enlistment for 2 more years." I thought "if I'm supposed to do this, then I'm going to do it in the civilian world, and benefit from civilian salaries." I said "Thank you, but no thanks." Anyway, the thing you love (and we could have a very deep discussion about where that comes from, because I certainly never consciously chose it) is the thing you will do. I feel I don't really have a choice, since you can't really choose what you love, you just either do or don't. So... For some at least, there may not be much of a choice. But it may also have nothing to do with their parents. The closest relative that might have had anything to do with me being into computers is my mother's father, who was an accountant, and could add up a column of numbers just by sliding his finger down them (and that quickly). That is literally the only "analytical" type of person in my entire extended family.

detourdog 3y ago

My experience is very little choice if you follow your aptitude.

eastbound 3y ago

What if it really takes two generations to be good at something? Since 1789 (in France) we postulate that inheritance in a societal curse, and postulate that everyone must be equal at birth. However, there are countless examples where sons of doctors make better doctors, sons of journalists make better journalists, and sons of presidents make better administrators of oil companies in war zones (joke intended). We should still aim so that it is possible to succeed as an orphan, of course, but we should also recognize that the best tricks ate learnt during teenage years, when you ask “Hey dad, how come the board of a company isn’t salaried? Dad, how did you deal with your last board where you had too many naysayers? How does it work when you have to fire an employee?” Of course I’ve read my share of books by Ben Horowitz, but of course being the son of such a person gives tremendous advance on how to deal with a lot of situations.

whinenot 3y ago
It's not just conversations around the dinner table. It's also how you get started vis a vis introductions to the right people, prized starter jobs and educational pathways that may not be widely known (eg, an internship at ___ will set you up for a job later at ___).
digging 3y ago
> What if it really takes two generations to be good at something? This really is the recipe for success. The majority of success is intergenerational. Someone can come from nothing and become wildly successful, it's true. But it's extremely unlikely. With 8 billion people, occasional rags-to-riches stories are going to happen; even if it's a 1-in-100,000,000 chance that would be about 80 people. These are not the stories to aspire to; they're random anomalies. The stories we should aspire to are the ones of humans setting up future humans for success. Ideally, not even just their children...
- brightlancer 3y ago
  > This really is the recipe for success. The majority of success is intergenerational. I think it's better said that the majority of success is from _iteration_. In lots of ways, I'm not just a product of my parents' (lack of?) success or their parents' (lack of?) success and so on, but also a product of my iterated local communities and iterated larger society. > The stories we should aspire to are the ones of humans setting up future humans for success. Ideally, not even just their children... Be wary of claimed benevolence, for it justifies corpses in the name of the greater good. History has shown that rising tides lift all boats. We are all the product of millennia of selfish pursuits by bigots, rapists, war profiteers, etc. And yet, the long-term trajectory for the masses is up -- because success iterates not just along family lines, but broadly across society.

ghaff 3y ago

It can definitely be an influence. My parents were both in the life sciences and I was definitely gently pushed in that direction. And I got interested in nascent biomedical engineering. Then I took organic chemistry. Switched to pure mechanical engineering. Would probably have liked EECS more when all is said and done and have had more aptitude for it. But, at the end of the day, can't really complain about the circuitous path I took which, like so many in my cohort, ended up in computers anyway.

sydbarrett74 3y ago

Genetics certainly plays a heavy hand in terms of what we end up doing occupationally. It's not the whole story, obviously, but it's one of the chief protagonists. There's also the matter of constant reinforcement and exposure to your parents' careers as you grow up. So it's mostly genes (nature) and parenting (nurture). Extrafamilial social interactions provide a lesser, but not insignificant, influence.

underlipton 3y ago
Yes, genetic variability, which was largely set in prehistory, definitely "plays a heavy hand" in determining whether someone will enter the workforce in one of several occupations that cluster closely in terms of skill set, yet vary widely in terms of pay and prestige. This guy will probably be a journalist instead of, say, a private investigator, or a novelist, or a technical writer, or a marketer, because it's in his genes. /s
- sydbarrett74 3y ago
  Different occupations require different temperaments, personalities, and so forth. These things are largely determined by genetics. How is any of that controversial, or worthy of your scorn?
  - underlipton 3y ago
    >Different occupations require different temperaments, personalities, and so forth. No, I don't think I agree with that. Widely varying workplace cultures across businesses in the same field or market are driven by widely-varying temperaments, personalities, etc. in each business's labor force. (This is the saving grace of, say, police officers, where many decorated vets have been shown to be bullies and sociopaths; I would hope that there is some variance there.) There isn't just variance in how different companies and even teams do things, but across time; the job of a journalist today is quite different from the job of one at the occupation's inception, and even of one who is now retiring as this young man is beginning his career. In fact, assuming that in-built assets truly vary non-trivially, many retire BECAUSE theirs are incompatible with the shifting needs of a modern worker. That a job's responsibilities change over time would alone seem to falsify the notion that one can be born with a proclivity for it, the same as one's parents. >How is any of that controversial, or worthy of your scorn? It's unscientific, Panglossian garbage.

HideousKojima 3y ago

I dunno, I'm nowhere close to doing worker's compensation claims adjustment even though my dad did it for 40+ years.

cbsmith 3y ago

Picking it up doesn't mean it's your career path. You learn a lot from your parents, including bits about their careers, but I'd say such learnings add to your career choices rather than dictate them.

deleted 3y ago

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godelski 3y ago

> if both your parents are journalists or [insert whatever profession], it’s as if you’re likely to pick it up no matter how hard you try not to… How likely is it for you to be {Catholic,Muslim,Hindu,etc} if your parents are? What about the food you like? Interests? Etc The answer is high, but not 100%. I say this as someone who comes from a _very_ religious family (I'm more areligious), the only person who does anything even remotely STEM related, and has a very different diet than my parents. So triple whammy (but probably unsurprising to get both given one). It's just likely that you are going to be more similar to your parents than not. Not sure why we should expect otherwise. As an example, growing up in my house there was a lot of discussion of politics and business. It is probably no surprised that almost everyone works in sales. But friends who have parents who are professors grew up listening to and discussing academic ideas. Essentially what is happening is that at an early age we're all being trained and this training is heavily influenced by the teacher models, I mean parents. Sorry, the ML is creeping in ;). I would not be surprised that someone who grew up in a house where both parents are journalists that they wouldn't be explicitly trained to scrutinize authority, gather evidence, and write that down. Lots of learning is done by imitation. Is this a bad thing? Probably not. Does it mean you don't have free will? Definitely not, but it does mean heavy influence. I think an important aspect is to recognize this, especially if we are going to have conversations about meritocracy and fairness. Understanding this early learning does give credit to claims of quality through generational experience. The question is how much this matters by the time we reach adults and finish our education (wherever that is). I think the longer the education, the less this matters. But it definitely means there's a bias in prestige of that education (and quality if you believe that prestige strongly correlates with quality). It probably isn't a surprise that kids from academics tend to end up at higher ranked universities than kids from non-academics (we see a strong effect when looking at race or class, but these are most likely not causal variables but confounders). It also means that any "meritocratic" system (personal belief is that these are fools errands) will be substantially benefited by generational experience as children will at a young age learn how to optimize for the metrics (which are not necessarily aligned to the goals of those metrics though, which is why the previous note). Momentum is one hell of a force. Compounding interest isn't just important for money, but nearly any form of resource. There are a lot of benefits to momentum, but the problem is that we often don't account for this in our models and this makes for poor evaluation. I would be very willing to bet that a lot of things people make evaluations on are far more random than they believe. For example I'd put money on that were everything else held equal (making this hard to measure) that high school grades would not significantly affect student outcomes. We can use the studies on students who were admitted through affirmative action to get an indication of this, where we generally see similar results to students admitted normally. There is some noise, but it also isn't unsurprising that if you are doing poorly in high school that this might correlate with problems at home, which can cause a higher likelihood of dropout. But generally, this would suggest that you could shuffle all applications, randomly select, and you wouldn't see a large difference in your students' performance nor outcomes post university (my hypothesis). Some of this is already done, given that many top universities have more applicants that are nearly impossible to distinguish than they have seats for, making selection at least nearly arbitrary for these applicants. But where this may matter in the real world is that prestige definitely correlates with opportunities like internships and work, as companies prioritize recruitment from these locations and prioritize building connections with these professors (who connect students with opportunities). These are probably where we could make adjustments to make a more fair system, but is likely harder than suggested. TLDR: heavy influence, but you still got free will. Should make you think though...

Guthur 3y ago

Pretty simple to see how this happens. One can not isolate one's self from cumulation of being that is one's life. During this individuals life in sure he was often exposed to talk and thought about journalism. But also maybe form additional interests and ambitions. This is not about choice persay, but rather a life lived.

throwawaylinux 3y ago

You can tell he's not a real journalist because he wasn't digging dirt and attacking anybody who questioned The Science™ or carrying water for the ruling class.

sharadov 3y ago

Not necessary - both parents were doctors but I became an engineer. And no - They were not in it for the money. Although they worked really hard they were always passionate about their work and truly loved helping people getting better. But I realized early enough that I did not have the same level of commitment.

WalterBright 3y ago

There's no inevitability about picking up a career you're familiar with. My dad was a pilot and a professor - yet I'm a computer nerd.

dottedmag 3y ago

My father was a school gym coach and then a flight attendant. My mother was a sales clerk. Neither of them were into computers. I have no idea about none of their areas either. So I guess this only applies to a prestigious occupations.