10 ms·

For 20-Somethings, Ambition at a Cost

90 points by jejune06 14y ago

johnny99 14y ago
Interesting piece, though they focus only on what they call "rock star" professions, like music, publishing, and the movies. Professions which have always used their supposed status to prey on the young. One solution: become an account or plumber, or software developer, and laugh all the way to the bank.
- wavesounds 14y ago
  Software Developer? A lot of the 20 something developers I know also work 60+ hour weeks while only getting paid for 40. Whether its because they want to be 'rock star' developers or because its just become the accepted norm in the industry is up for debate though.
  - makerbreaker 14y ago
    They aren't making 22k/yr is his point though. A US based dev, who is working 60 hours per week, and not making 50,000$+ is doing something wrong (or chose low pay for a cool company etc)
    - ruswick 14y ago
      Not necessarily. I think a lot of developers are subjected to employment myopia, because they tend to reside in areas with a high concentration of startups that pay well and have generous benefits and "perks." Outside of those areas, the space is dominated by corporate entities, consultancies and other bastions of bureaucracy. These companies can get away paying little because they are entrenched in their market and face very little competition for developers from startups. People who live in or attend school in non-tech-centric cities are often screwed. There are few companies that offer attractive employment opportunities, and those that do are in a position whereby they can hire only the best. (To be honest, I think that this is true everywhere. All startups want to hire the absolute best, and only the best. It appears otherwise because the best are the vocal minority. For every Google engineer on HN that made 120k out of college and extols the ease of finding lucrative employment, there are probably several developers who went to community college or a state school that spend their days in a cubicle in a Palo Alto office park for 30k per year. We just never hear from those people.) So, I think a more accurate statement is "A US based dev, who lives in New York or San Francisco who went to Stanford and who is working 60 hours per week, and not making 50,000$+ is doing something wrong."
      - arvcpl 14y ago
        Everything is up to you. You definitely can be even non US, work remotely and make way more :)
      - saryant 14y ago
        I'm not so sure. I went to college in a non-tech city in the middle of the country and all of my peers, many of whom stayed local, were making at least $55,000 working for boring companies (USAA being a big one). This was not an elite school either. No startups, nothing sexy but if any of those companies recruiting us offered <$55k they were laughed at.
        cpressey 14y ago
        http://monster.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Developer-I-Salary-Details-Cleveland-OH.aspx http://monster.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Developer-I-... http://monster.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Developer-I-Salary-Details-Omaha-NE.aspx http://monster.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Developer-I-... http://monster.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Developer-I-Salary-Details-Boulder-CO.aspx http://monster.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Developer-I-... So that does seem like the ballpark figure, with the following 2 caveats: I don't know how reliable Monster is for this kind of data, and I picked three cities off the top of my head roughly in the middle of the USA that I don't think of tech centres but I don't know how out-of-touch I might be in that regard.
        saryant 14y ago
        http://monster.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Developer-I-Salary-Details-San-Antonio-TX.aspx http://monster.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Developer-I-...
  - hkmurakami 14y ago
    Granted, those 40 hours give them a salary above the median US household income in most cases.
  - nicholasjarnold 14y ago
    That's a shame...on those 20 somethings you know and on their managers. I can see working north of 40 hours during an important crunch time, but only if my superior(s) is/are aware and planning for the post-sprint crash that's an inseparable part of our human condition. Stress takes its toll. Google Image Search: work hours vs productivity Productivity Presentation: http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.html http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-pres...
  - InclinedPlane 14y ago
    It's not an accepted norm in the industry. Only in some parts of the industry. I've worked at 2 out of the top 10 largest tech companies in the world and at both the expectation was generally circa 40 hours.
  - akurilin 14y ago
    I'd say that the more you approach "coolness" in the software industry, the more you can expect to be ridden for extra hours. Game developers are probably as close as possible to other creative popular types and have to pay for that status very dearly, while hundreds of thousands of enterprise developers toil in obscurity with pretty guaranteed 40h weeks.
scarmig 14y ago
At one point in the article, one person spends all night working on a $35k marijuana harvest and gets paid in the morning with a breakfast burrito. Someone is a spectacular failure at hardball negotiating.
- patmcguire 14y ago
  "No pay, but great blackmail opportunities." But on a serious not, it mentions she worked in San Francisco, so it was probably legal.
  - codexon 14y ago
    Isn't it illegal at the federal level? Maybe report it to the DEA?
    - davidtanner 14y ago
      You're a real piece of work. Maybe you should try and blackmail people for committing the 'crime' of sodomy next.
      - argonaut 14y ago
        >You're a real piece of work. Ad hominem much? What a useless statement.
      - aspensmonster 14y ago
        It sounds to me like the 75 year old who's socking 34k per crop into a retirement account and conscripting employees from an unrelated company to assist (OTC, of course) in the harvest while compensating them with a breakfast burrito is a much greater piece of work. (edited because grammar)
      - InclinedPlane 14y ago
        Point of fact: sodomy is not a crime and is protected under the constitution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
jwwest 14y ago
Are unpaid internships something that's uniquely common in NYC? I scan Craigslist all the time for freelance opportunities and almost every single unpaid gig in New York is touted as an "internship". I have never seen this in listings in Dallas or Austin. Internships are incredibly murky things. You cannot, legally, get free labor from someone for the sole benefit of the business. The DoE has cracked down on this type of thing before. One would assume that in a strong liberal city like NYC, this sort of nonsense wouldn't happen often.
- HunterV 14y ago
  You have to remember that while liberal, NYC is at its core a business focused city that has a long history (for US standards at least) in business. With that in mind "internships" i.e. unpaid labor for the inexperienced is almost expected proving ground for the up and comers. In reality, the "best" internships can go unpaid because their target market is students from top universities who come from affluent backgrounds whose parents could easily afford an apartment in NYC over the Summer. That being said, I'm being general here. A lot of startups pay (and should pay) for programmers. Actually, us programmers have it pretty good. Try to a paid business internship in NYC sometime.
  - johnrgrace 14y ago
    If you're in "real" business not a creative industry like Fashion, Music, or Publishing you can get paid professional level salaries, for instance Investment banking interns get paid get paid a few thousand a month.
- esmansf 14y ago
  Don't forget the author's own confirmation bias; the author is in an industry that relies on unpaid internships, and probably has many friends, who are also in unpaid internships in related fields (i.e. fashion, non-profit, etc).
- ErikAugust 14y ago
  http://www.amazon.com/Intern-Nation-Nothing-Little-Economy/dp/1844678830 http://www.amazon.com/Intern-Nation-Nothing-Little-Economy/d... There are some mentions of NYC internships in this book... along with research, etc. Pretty good (very anti-Internship in general).
pjscott 14y ago
> The median net worth for householders under 35 dropped by 68 percent from 1984 to 2009, to $3,662. In case anybody else was wondering, those figures are in 2010 dollars, adjusted for inflation.
- cm2012 14y ago
  Thank you. Do you know how much of that change happened between 2008-2009 (b/c of recession), by any chance?
  - pjscott 14y ago
    Quite a lot of it; the youngest demographics were hit the hardest, by percentage. See the section "The Great Recession" in the page the article links to: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap-in-economic-well-being/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap...
peterhunt 14y ago
I wonder if the fact that all of the example "rock star" professions are in industries that are, at best in a transitional period and at worst are dying has anything to do with the proliferation of unpaid internships and poor working conditions and salaries. The real problem is educating college students early on about the ramifications of their choice of major. Perhaps this also calls for an evaluation of which subjects are emphasized in American high schools as well.
- nsedlet 14y ago
  This is an excellent point. In the five years since I graduated college, I've seen so many friends blindsided by the difficulty of actually making a living in their chosen professions. Now that some are considering having families, they're shocked again at the impossibility of continuing their current jobs while enjoying life in the city. Colleges could certainly help by explaining that money matters (instead of simply encouraging students to follow their passions, as many colleges do), and that success in certain industries can be particularly elusive. However, it's understandably hard for colleges to figure out what's going on in the labor market, which is always in flux. It's actually REALLY hard to make sense of the job options out there, and the risks involved for each: employers aren't transparent about salaries, job titles are difficult to parse, and the career trajectories + risks implied by various entry-level jobs aren't obvious (even to the employers themselves).
  - sopooneo 14y ago
    Passion, yes. When I was in undergrad the rising mantra was "follow your bliss." I think now it should have been "fund your bliss".
- redwood 14y ago
  Don't suggest this too loudly... the rest of us would have more competition! The solution can't be to have everyone be STEM... the solution will require something far more outside the box than that.
abraininavat 14y ago
This article might as well be about the game development industry
ruswick 14y ago
I was particularly surprised by the referenced outrage over the 65+ hour-per-week job solicitation. 65 hours per week, although inordinate, isn't entirely outrageous. It equates to 12 hours per weekday plus a half day over the weekend, which is effectively the hours I'm subjected to by school, and is well within the realm of what I'd be willing to work if it was the difference between employment and destitution.
- nisa 14y ago
  > 12 hours per weekday 8am waking up 9am finished breakfast / shower 10am finished commute to work 10pm finished workday 11pm at home even if you cut commuting out of the equation you won't have a life. that may be fine with you if you work on something that is important too you... however it is fine to be outraged by this!
rayiner 14y ago
I swear, there should be a basic course in the fundamental concepts of supply and demand required as a part of graduating middle school. I overheard a kid (teenager) talking the other day about how he was going to work for a big record label finding talent. I wanted to shatter his little world by asking him: "do you know how much d--k you're going to have to s--k to work your way up in that kind of job?" The job market is weak, but there are jobs out there. Not just programming. Nursing, accounting, etc. Tons of baby boomers getting ready to retire means opportunities for young people. But those opportunities are not in oversubscribed professions like media and music. Before we had our daughter, my wife, being from the west coast, was like 'oh, you shouldn't put too much pressure on kids--they should be what they want.' I, being Asian, thought exactly the opposite. But now that the baby is here, my wife has done a total 180. "Penn undergrad then med school" is her new plan. Like a good little half-Asian.
- tomerico 14y ago
  "The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
  - stiff 14y ago
    ...in Walt Disney movies.
  - jimboyoungblood 14y ago
    Hey, I can conjure up random pithy quotes too: "The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, usually fail to do so." "The people who don't think they can change the world, sometimes do anyway." No idea how any of this is relevant to the OP.
  - SkyAtWork 14y ago
    Generally true but definitely survivorship bias
- dchichkov 14y ago
  Med school is probably all right. Of course robotics and advancements in AI are going to take away some of these jobs (personally I'd prefer IBM Watson to look at my genetic data and results of the blood tests, rather than some human doctor), but there would certainly be some jobs in medicine.
wyclif 14y ago
Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Internships: http://www.irishstu.com/stublog/2011/06/30/calling-bullshit-on-unpaid-interships/ http://www.irishstu.com/stublog/2011/06/30/calling-bullshit-...
cm2012 14y ago
I'm not a programmer, but I make a pretty good living at age 21 doing e-commerce marketing. I also got married last December to my girlfriend of 7 years. I honestly attribute most of my early success to the fact that I started on my career so young since I knew I wanted to be married soon, and thus needed to have independent income (I.E. first side money business at 15, first unpaid internship at 17, first career job at 18, etc.). Thinking back, I definitely would have been an unprepared for life by the time college ended if it hadn't been for that confluence of events. I never really though about what I would do before, and I never had any economically sound interests (I almost went to high school for voice acting and singing!).
DanBC 14y ago
> and representing their company at all hours. Giving an over-tired, over-worked, under-paid child the password to your social media accounts is probably a really bad idea.
mhartl 14y ago
It's interesting to note that (unless I missed something) all the struggling ambitious 20-somethings interviewed for the article are women. (I don't include Ross Perlin, who was interviewed not because he's struggling but because he wrote a book on the subject.) Is this a coincidence, or is it part of a broader trend? If the latter, it suggests that the problem may be even worse than it looks. Such ambitious careers arguably cost young women more than they cost young men, since women use up a scarce resource (peak fertility) not sacrificed by their male peers.
walesmd 14y ago
And this is why I'm so glad I skipped college and enlisted. 6 years of military and I walked right into a $75k/yr at 25 years old. Had my 10yr reunion recently and I was the only one that owned their home.
- redschell 14y ago
  I didn't really interpret this as a knock against college. More like a cautionary tale about "entry-level" work in hyper-competitive industries that end ups amounting to slave labor with no future prospects to speak of. I really can't understand, for instance, why one of the characters here interested in producing would seek toxic employment with the dying movie studios. With platforms like Kickstarter that circumvent traditional barriers to the entertainment industry (and other creative sectors), it's hard to imagine a bright future for old, gatekeeping jobs. She would probably be better served looking for marketing or sales work at a tech company.
Futurebot 14y ago
Societies (particularly US society) are getting more competitive every single day. Lowered barriers to entry, better tools, increasing automation, and other factors are going to support this trend continue well into the future. We are already seeing companies give some entry level jobs to interns (I'm sure some of you have seen this, and there's more about this trend in "Intern Nation.") For those who want to compete, it's going to be non-stop self-learning, retraining, and networking: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/business/to-stay-relevant-in-a-career-workers-train-nonstop.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/business/to-stay-relevant-... We've entered an era of "Hypercompetition."
nawitus 14y ago
This article is a pretty good argument for Scandinavian style workplace regulation. There's lots of bad regulation over here, but restricting working hours is something that's easily justified. It's sad to see some people working these crazy hours.
ErikAugust 14y ago
"According to a 2011 Pew report, the median net worth for householders under 35 dropped by 68 percent from 1984 to 2009, to $3,662." That's something to think about: college debt, etc.
- Kopion 14y ago
  I read that line 3 times just to make sure I read it correctly. Its pretty unbelievable.
- kens 14y ago
  Even worse, the report says 37% of householders under 35 have zero or negative net worth. The report is a bit opaque though with the wide <35 category - you'd expect a big difference between 21 and 34 year olds so lumping them together makes it hard to tell what's going on. The full report is at: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap-in-economic-well-being/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap...
- sopooneo 14y ago
  This may be dumb, but what does "householders" mean? I assume it's not "homeowners". Does it just mean someone that is in a settled relationship (ie part of a household)? Because I assume there must be some distinction from just "individuals".
  - johnrgrace 14y ago
    Household, is a single person or group of people living together.
philip1209 14y ago
As a college senior approaching graduation in May, I am thankful to have chosen an engineering path and to have learned programming.
- sopooneo 14y ago
  I'm with you on that. But frankly, I'm glad my passion was in STEM. Because as a kid, I had no interest in thinking about my future financial security. I just happen to be lucky that pursuing my interests coincided with good career prospects. So what do we do with all the people that hate STEM as much as I hate going to night clubs?
betterunix 14y ago
...and I thought graduate school was bad. I average a 50-60 hour week, but at least my adviser doesn't expect me to be on call.
api 14y ago
The "cooler" a field is, the more unbalanced it is from a supply/demand point of view for labor and the more you're going to have to bust your ass to get anywhere in it. People need to understand this. It's even true within fields. You can usually find 40/hr week jobs in software that pay a good or even great wage, but they're usually doing boring stuff: business apps, IT support, financial stuff, etc. But in sexy areas like game development you're into crazy 60-80 hour work week for no pay territory again.

90 points by jejune06 14y ago

Interesting piece, though they focus only on what they call "rock star" professions, like music, publishing, and the movies. Professions which have always used their supposed status to prey on the young. One solution: become an account or plumber, or software developer, and laugh all the way to the bank.

wavesounds 14y ago
Software Developer? A lot of the 20 something developers I know also work 60+ hour weeks while only getting paid for 40. Whether its because they want to be 'rock star' developers or because its just become the accepted norm in the industry is up for debate though.
- makerbreaker 14y ago
  They aren't making 22k/yr is his point though. A US based dev, who is working 60 hours per week, and not making 50,000$+ is doing something wrong (or chose low pay for a cool company etc)
  - ruswick 14y ago
    Not necessarily. I think a lot of developers are subjected to employment myopia, because they tend to reside in areas with a high concentration of startups that pay well and have generous benefits and "perks." Outside of those areas, the space is dominated by corporate entities, consultancies and other bastions of bureaucracy. These companies can get away paying little because they are entrenched in their market and face very little competition for developers from startups. People who live in or attend school in non-tech-centric cities are often screwed. There are few companies that offer attractive employment opportunities, and those that do are in a position whereby they can hire only the best. (To be honest, I think that this is true everywhere. All startups want to hire the absolute best, and only the best. It appears otherwise because the best are the vocal minority. For every Google engineer on HN that made 120k out of college and extols the ease of finding lucrative employment, there are probably several developers who went to community college or a state school that spend their days in a cubicle in a Palo Alto office park for 30k per year. We just never hear from those people.) So, I think a more accurate statement is "A US based dev, who lives in New York or San Francisco who went to Stanford and who is working 60 hours per week, and not making 50,000$+ is doing something wrong."
    - arvcpl 14y ago
      Everything is up to you. You definitely can be even non US, work remotely and make way more :)
    - saryant 14y ago
      I'm not so sure. I went to college in a non-tech city in the middle of the country and all of my peers, many of whom stayed local, were making at least $55,000 working for boring companies (USAA being a big one). This was not an elite school either. No startups, nothing sexy but if any of those companies recruiting us offered <$55k they were laughed at.
      - cpressey 14y ago
        http://monster.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Developer-I-Salary-Details-Cleveland-OH.aspx http://monster.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Developer-I-... http://monster.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Developer-I-Salary-Details-Omaha-NE.aspx http://monster.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Developer-I-... http://monster.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Developer-I-Salary-Details-Boulder-CO.aspx http://monster.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Developer-I-... So that does seem like the ballpark figure, with the following 2 caveats: I don't know how reliable Monster is for this kind of data, and I picked three cities off the top of my head roughly in the middle of the USA that I don't think of tech centres but I don't know how out-of-touch I might be in that regard.
        saryant 14y ago
        http://monster.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Developer-I-Salary-Details-San-Antonio-TX.aspx http://monster.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Software-Developer-I-...
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  Granted, those 40 hours give them a salary above the median US household income in most cases.
- nicholasjarnold 14y ago
  That's a shame...on those 20 somethings you know and on their managers. I can see working north of 40 hours during an important crunch time, but only if my superior(s) is/are aware and planning for the post-sprint crash that's an inseparable part of our human condition. Stress takes its toll. Google Image Search: work hours vs productivity Productivity Presentation: http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-presentation.html http://www.lostgarden.com/2008/09/rules-of-productivity-pres...
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  It's not an accepted norm in the industry. Only in some parts of the industry. I've worked at 2 out of the top 10 largest tech companies in the world and at both the expectation was generally circa 40 hours.
- akurilin 14y ago
  I'd say that the more you approach "coolness" in the software industry, the more you can expect to be ridden for extra hours. Game developers are probably as close as possible to other creative popular types and have to pay for that status very dearly, while hundreds of thousands of enterprise developers toil in obscurity with pretty guaranteed 40h weeks.

scarmig 14y ago

At one point in the article, one person spends all night working on a $35k marijuana harvest and gets paid in the morning with a breakfast burrito. Someone is a spectacular failure at hardball negotiating.

patmcguire 14y ago
"No pay, but great blackmail opportunities." But on a serious not, it mentions she worked in San Francisco, so it was probably legal.
- codexon 14y ago
  Isn't it illegal at the federal level? Maybe report it to the DEA?
  - davidtanner 14y ago
    You're a real piece of work. Maybe you should try and blackmail people for committing the 'crime' of sodomy next.
    - argonaut 14y ago
      >You're a real piece of work. Ad hominem much? What a useless statement.
    - aspensmonster 14y ago
      It sounds to me like the 75 year old who's socking 34k per crop into a retirement account and conscripting employees from an unrelated company to assist (OTC, of course) in the harvest while compensating them with a breakfast burrito is a much greater piece of work. (edited because grammar)
    - InclinedPlane 14y ago
      Point of fact: sodomy is not a crime and is protected under the constitution. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_v._Texas

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jwwest 14y ago

Are unpaid internships something that's uniquely common in NYC? I scan Craigslist all the time for freelance opportunities and almost every single unpaid gig in New York is touted as an "internship". I have never seen this in listings in Dallas or Austin. Internships are incredibly murky things. You cannot, legally, get free labor from someone for the sole benefit of the business. The DoE has cracked down on this type of thing before. One would assume that in a strong liberal city like NYC, this sort of nonsense wouldn't happen often.

HunterV 14y ago
You have to remember that while liberal, NYC is at its core a business focused city that has a long history (for US standards at least) in business. With that in mind "internships" i.e. unpaid labor for the inexperienced is almost expected proving ground for the up and comers. In reality, the "best" internships can go unpaid because their target market is students from top universities who come from affluent backgrounds whose parents could easily afford an apartment in NYC over the Summer. That being said, I'm being general here. A lot of startups pay (and should pay) for programmers. Actually, us programmers have it pretty good. Try to a paid business internship in NYC sometime.
- johnrgrace 14y ago
  If you're in "real" business not a creative industry like Fashion, Music, or Publishing you can get paid professional level salaries, for instance Investment banking interns get paid get paid a few thousand a month.
esmansf 14y ago
Don't forget the author's own confirmation bias; the author is in an industry that relies on unpaid internships, and probably has many friends, who are also in unpaid internships in related fields (i.e. fashion, non-profit, etc).
ErikAugust 14y ago
http://www.amazon.com/Intern-Nation-Nothing-Little-Economy/dp/1844678830 http://www.amazon.com/Intern-Nation-Nothing-Little-Economy/d... There are some mentions of NYC internships in this book... along with research, etc. Pretty good (very anti-Internship in general).

pjscott 14y ago

> The median net worth for householders under 35 dropped by 68 percent from 1984 to 2009, to $3,662. In case anybody else was wondering, those figures are in 2010 dollars, adjusted for inflation.

cm2012 14y ago
Thank you. Do you know how much of that change happened between 2008-2009 (b/c of recession), by any chance?
- pjscott 14y ago
  Quite a lot of it; the youngest demographics were hit the hardest, by percentage. See the section "The Great Recession" in the page the article links to: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap-in-economic-well-being/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap...

peterhunt 14y ago

I wonder if the fact that all of the example "rock star" professions are in industries that are, at best in a transitional period and at worst are dying has anything to do with the proliferation of unpaid internships and poor working conditions and salaries. The real problem is educating college students early on about the ramifications of their choice of major. Perhaps this also calls for an evaluation of which subjects are emphasized in American high schools as well.

nsedlet 14y ago
This is an excellent point. In the five years since I graduated college, I've seen so many friends blindsided by the difficulty of actually making a living in their chosen professions. Now that some are considering having families, they're shocked again at the impossibility of continuing their current jobs while enjoying life in the city. Colleges could certainly help by explaining that money matters (instead of simply encouraging students to follow their passions, as many colleges do), and that success in certain industries can be particularly elusive. However, it's understandably hard for colleges to figure out what's going on in the labor market, which is always in flux. It's actually REALLY hard to make sense of the job options out there, and the risks involved for each: employers aren't transparent about salaries, job titles are difficult to parse, and the career trajectories + risks implied by various entry-level jobs aren't obvious (even to the employers themselves).
- sopooneo 14y ago
  Passion, yes. When I was in undergrad the rising mantra was "follow your bliss." I think now it should have been "fund your bliss".
redwood 14y ago
Don't suggest this too loudly... the rest of us would have more competition! The solution can't be to have everyone be STEM... the solution will require something far more outside the box than that.

abraininavat 14y ago

This article might as well be about the game development industry

ruswick 14y ago

I was particularly surprised by the referenced outrage over the 65+ hour-per-week job solicitation. 65 hours per week, although inordinate, isn't entirely outrageous. It equates to 12 hours per weekday plus a half day over the weekend, which is effectively the hours I'm subjected to by school, and is well within the realm of what I'd be willing to work if it was the difference between employment and destitution.

nisa 14y ago
> 12 hours per weekday 8am waking up 9am finished breakfast / shower 10am finished commute to work 10pm finished workday 11pm at home even if you cut commuting out of the equation you won't have a life. that may be fine with you if you work on something that is important too you... however it is fine to be outraged by this!

rayiner 14y ago

I swear, there should be a basic course in the fundamental concepts of supply and demand required as a part of graduating middle school. I overheard a kid (teenager) talking the other day about how he was going to work for a big record label finding talent. I wanted to shatter his little world by asking him: "do you know how much d--k you're going to have to s--k to work your way up in that kind of job?" The job market is weak, but there are jobs out there. Not just programming. Nursing, accounting, etc. Tons of baby boomers getting ready to retire means opportunities for young people. But those opportunities are not in oversubscribed professions like media and music. Before we had our daughter, my wife, being from the west coast, was like 'oh, you shouldn't put too much pressure on kids--they should be what they want.' I, being Asian, thought exactly the opposite. But now that the baby is here, my wife has done a total 180. "Penn undergrad then med school" is her new plan. Like a good little half-Asian.

tomerico 14y ago
"The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
- stiff 14y ago
  ...in Walt Disney movies.
- jimboyoungblood 14y ago
  Hey, I can conjure up random pithy quotes too: "The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, usually fail to do so." "The people who don't think they can change the world, sometimes do anyway." No idea how any of this is relevant to the OP.
- SkyAtWork 14y ago
  Generally true but definitely survivorship bias
dchichkov 14y ago
Med school is probably all right. Of course robotics and advancements in AI are going to take away some of these jobs (personally I'd prefer IBM Watson to look at my genetic data and results of the blood tests, rather than some human doctor), but there would certainly be some jobs in medicine.

wyclif 14y ago

Calling Bullshit on Unpaid Internships: http://www.irishstu.com/stublog/2011/06/30/calling-bullshit-on-unpaid-interships/ http://www.irishstu.com/stublog/2011/06/30/calling-bullshit-...

cm2012 14y ago

I'm not a programmer, but I make a pretty good living at age 21 doing e-commerce marketing. I also got married last December to my girlfriend of 7 years. I honestly attribute most of my early success to the fact that I started on my career so young since I knew I wanted to be married soon, and thus needed to have independent income (I.E. first side money business at 15, first unpaid internship at 17, first career job at 18, etc.). Thinking back, I definitely would have been an unprepared for life by the time college ended if it hadn't been for that confluence of events. I never really though about what I would do before, and I never had any economically sound interests (I almost went to high school for voice acting and singing!).

DanBC 14y ago

> and representing their company at all hours. Giving an over-tired, over-worked, under-paid child the password to your social media accounts is probably a really bad idea.

mhartl 14y ago

It's interesting to note that (unless I missed something) all the struggling ambitious 20-somethings interviewed for the article are women. (I don't include Ross Perlin, who was interviewed not because he's struggling but because he wrote a book on the subject.) Is this a coincidence, or is it part of a broader trend? If the latter, it suggests that the problem may be even worse than it looks. Such ambitious careers arguably cost young women more than they cost young men, since women use up a scarce resource (peak fertility) not sacrificed by their male peers.

walesmd 14y ago

And this is why I'm so glad I skipped college and enlisted. 6 years of military and I walked right into a $75k/yr at 25 years old. Had my 10yr reunion recently and I was the only one that owned their home.

redschell 14y ago
I didn't really interpret this as a knock against college. More like a cautionary tale about "entry-level" work in hyper-competitive industries that end ups amounting to slave labor with no future prospects to speak of. I really can't understand, for instance, why one of the characters here interested in producing would seek toxic employment with the dying movie studios. With platforms like Kickstarter that circumvent traditional barriers to the entertainment industry (and other creative sectors), it's hard to imagine a bright future for old, gatekeeping jobs. She would probably be better served looking for marketing or sales work at a tech company.

Futurebot 14y ago

Societies (particularly US society) are getting more competitive every single day. Lowered barriers to entry, better tools, increasing automation, and other factors are going to support this trend continue well into the future. We are already seeing companies give some entry level jobs to interns (I'm sure some of you have seen this, and there's more about this trend in "Intern Nation.") For those who want to compete, it's going to be non-stop self-learning, retraining, and networking: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/business/to-stay-relevant-in-a-career-workers-train-nonstop.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/business/to-stay-relevant-... We've entered an era of "Hypercompetition."

nawitus 14y ago

This article is a pretty good argument for Scandinavian style workplace regulation. There's lots of bad regulation over here, but restricting working hours is something that's easily justified. It's sad to see some people working these crazy hours.

ErikAugust 14y ago

"According to a 2011 Pew report, the median net worth for householders under 35 dropped by 68 percent from 1984 to 2009, to $3,662." That's something to think about: college debt, etc.

Kopion 14y ago
I read that line 3 times just to make sure I read it correctly. Its pretty unbelievable.
kens 14y ago
Even worse, the report says 37% of householders under 35 have zero or negative net worth. The report is a bit opaque though with the wide <35 category - you'd expect a big difference between 21 and 34 year olds so lumping them together makes it hard to tell what's going on. The full report is at: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap-in-economic-well-being/ http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2011/11/07/the-rising-age-gap...
sopooneo 14y ago
This may be dumb, but what does "householders" mean? I assume it's not "homeowners". Does it just mean someone that is in a settled relationship (ie part of a household)? Because I assume there must be some distinction from just "individuals".
- johnrgrace 14y ago
  Household, is a single person or group of people living together.

philip1209 14y ago

As a college senior approaching graduation in May, I am thankful to have chosen an engineering path and to have learned programming.

sopooneo 14y ago
I'm with you on that. But frankly, I'm glad my passion was in STEM. Because as a kid, I had no interest in thinking about my future financial security. I just happen to be lucky that pursuing my interests coincided with good career prospects. So what do we do with all the people that hate STEM as much as I hate going to night clubs?

betterunix 14y ago

...and I thought graduate school was bad. I average a 50-60 hour week, but at least my adviser doesn't expect me to be on call.

api 14y ago

The "cooler" a field is, the more unbalanced it is from a supply/demand point of view for labor and the more you're going to have to bust your ass to get anywhere in it. People need to understand this. It's even true within fields. You can usually find 40/hr week jobs in software that pay a good or even great wage, but they're usually doing boring stuff: business apps, IT support, financial stuff, etc. But in sexy areas like game development you're into crazy 60-80 hour work week for no pay territory again.