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If You’re So Damn Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?

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Re: If You’re So Damn Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?

#71

Post by run4yourlives »

starkfist wrote: post #70
run4yourlives wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Smart people" evaluate this prior to spending 4-5 years and a shitload of money trying to obtain a "Masters in Humanities".

Does it really take this long to get a "Master's in Humanities?" It only takes 3 years to get a law degree. FWIW, my sister has what effectively has a "master's in humanities." It took her 18 months and she makes 6 figs working at some sort of think tank in DC, so I think the individual matters a lot more than the degree...

I have no idea, but if you figure 3-4 for a Bachelors, plus an extra 2 for the Masters, I assume 4-5 years of work.

Re: If You’re So Damn Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?

#72

Post by slantyyz »

lsc wrote: post #48
slantyyz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the sounds of it, the author didn't have much work experience. What else can he apply for? Around the time I finished my undergrad, there was a recession (almost 20y ago), and most of my liberal arts peers were taking customer service jobs. When you're fresh out of school, you gotta start somewhere.

get a job that counts. Even if you have to be underpaid, or work for a small employer. Work in your field. Working in fast food (or data entry) doesn't get you on that upward path to where you want to go... with a degree and a year of data entry experience, you have no more than you had with just the degree. I have relevant experience going back to when I was 15 on my resume. sure, my first cable monkey jobs paid les…

get a job that counts... work in your field

The guy had a Masters in English. Having an English degree does not necessarily mean you are qualified to be a writer or teacher.

Depending on where he lives (small town vs. big city), I think the options could be more limited than you think.

Re: If You’re So Damn Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?

#73

Post by jbooth »

lsc wrote: post #65
jbooth wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had something similar, but we're lucky. If you go to work for a "big company" they'll have their whole dumbed down training program, you'll have to learn to push paper around "their way", etc.

is this always so? when I was working for yahoo a few years back I got my little brother a internship. He did a whole lot of useful work; on his resume he brags that he replaced three temps, and he's not exaggerating... he really was more productive than three dudes from a well-known technical body shop. I mean, I think the difference is more in the person than in the job. At yahoo, if my brother wanted to, he would…

Depends on the company, and your manager. Y! is still fundamentally a tech company and they've had a lot of really good people there over the years.

IBM or Lockheed Martin, probably quite a bit different. (I have in fact gotten in trouble for implementing something useful at one particular job I briefly held. It made people look bad, and I was written up for not staying in my lane.)

Re: If You’re So Damn Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?

#74

Post by jbooth »

shadowfox wrote: post #49
michael_nielsen wrote: post #37

I like the converse: "If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?" It's attributed to MIT's Paul Cootner, supposedly as a comeback to a money manager who asked him why, if Cootner was so smart, he wasn't rich?

That response didnt make much sense to me :(

Who's smarter? Money manager guy who does a good job of getting paid in a system that is universally regarded as broken and overpaying everyone involved to do a crappy job, or the professor who reinvents some area of science but only makes 90k?

Depends on your definition of smart.

Re: If You’re So Damn Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?

#75

Post by lsc »

slantyyz wrote: post #72
lsc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

get a job that counts. Even if you have to be underpaid, or work for a small employer. Work in your field. Working in fast food (or data entry) doesn't get you on that upward path to where you want to go... with a degree and a year of data entry experience, you have no more than you had with just the degree. I have relevant experience going back to when I was 15 on my resume. sure, my first cable monkey jobs paid les…

get a job that counts... work in your field The guy had a Masters in English . Having an English degree does not necessarily mean you are qualified to be a writer or teacher. Depending on where he lives (small town vs. big city), I think the options could be more limited than you think.

Then write documentation. Everything needs documentation. Sure, it doesn't pay that great, but neither does data entry, and it's at least in the field, and even if his degree was in comparative literature, he should be able to handle writing documentation for something.

I'm trying to say that the ability to write clearly is a valuable and marketable skill. Granted, it doesn't always get the pay it deserves, but people /will/ pay you for it because it /does/ add value to the business.

Re: If You’re So Damn Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?

#76

Post by lsc »

jbooth wrote: post #73
lsc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is this always so? when I was working for yahoo a few years back I got my little brother a internship. He did a whole lot of useful work; on his resume he brags that he replaced three temps, and he's not exaggerating... he really was more productive than three dudes from a well-known technical body shop. I mean, I think the difference is more in the person than in the job. At yahoo, if my brother wanted to, he would…

Depends on the company, and your manager. Y! is still fundamentally a tech company and they've had a lot of really good people there over the years. IBM or Lockheed Martin, probably quite a bit different. (I have in fact gotten in trouble for implementing something useful at one particular job I briefly held. It made people look bad, and I was written up for not staying in my lane.)

hah. well, I've never seen that, but I imagine I have massive selection bias (I mean, if you are a 'by the book' company, you are pretty much going to bin my resume right off... there's no "education" section.)

The only time I've gotten in trouble for 'getting out of my lane' is when I started to take over someone else's project, but didn't finish, which seems reasonable to me.

Re: If You’re So Damn Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?

#77

Post by reynolds »

sabat wrote: post #66
reynolds wrote: post #29

I don't get the mentality of sending out thousands of resumes. I sent out one to get my current job because I wanted to work there.

And if they turned you down? Then what? Eventually, after scores of weeks of silence, you'd start blanketing too.

> after scores of weeks of silence, you'd start blanketing too.

Actually I wouldn't, but my situation is probably different than most people just looking for a job. I wouldn't let it get to weeks of silence. I'd just move on.

Re: If You’re So Damn Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?

#78

Post by slantyyz »

slantyyz wrote: post #72
lsc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

get a job that counts. Even if you have to be underpaid, or work for a small employer. Work in your field. Working in fast food (or data entry) doesn't get you on that upward path to where you want to go... with a degree and a year of data entry experience, you have no more than you had with just the degree. I have relevant experience going back to when I was 15 on my resume. sure, my first cable monkey jobs paid les…

get a job that counts... work in your field The guy had a Masters in English . Having an English degree does not necessarily mean you are qualified to be a writer or teacher. Depending on where he lives (small town vs. big city), I think the options could be more limited than you think.

Writing documentation is a skill that requires more than a good command of the English language. The technical writers that I've hired in the past didn't even have English degrees, but were excellent at what they do.

I don't think the copywriters in the media agencies I worked at had English degrees either.

I've only hired one English major in my career, and that was as a software developer. He was -much- better at writing code than he was at writing prose.

Frankly, a lot of people don't know what field they belong in when they first graduate. I have a social sciences undergrad and an MBA, and I've been "out of my field" doing technology for 90% of my career. Most of my friends in the tech industry also don't have engineering or CS backgrounds. A lot of them have diverse backgrounds like poli.sci, etc. And most of us started our careers doing stuff like "admin assistants" etc.

Re: If You’re So Damn Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?

#79

Post by slantyyz »

akadruid wrote: post #19
notahacker wrote: post #2

The problem probably wasn't having the masters degree so much as having the masters degree and applying for jobs with titles like "administrative assistant" moral of the story: don't trust "careers counselors"

At least the counselor got him a job. What is strange is that he apparently gave up on his job hunt despite being underemployed in his new position. I wonder at some of these stories I read where people spend months looking for work as if it were some kind of game. Do they not eat or live under a roof? How do they pay for those letters and faxes? When I left school, I temped in warehouses, factories, offices, whateve…

I've learned something useful from every job I've had, whether I was underemployed or not. He (the author of the article) can probably learn a lot about organizational behaviour being an admin assistant. He can also take that time to think about what he really wants to do as a career. Your first few jobs (or the degree you have) don't define what you end up doing in the long term. You really have to play it by ear.

Re: If You’re So Damn Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?

#80

Post by GBKS »

jazzyb wrote: post #44
reynolds wrote: post #29

I don't get the mentality of sending out thousands of resumes. I sent out one to get my current job because I wanted to work there.

Some people (such as myself) have a hard time landing interviews for some reason[1]. During my final year in college, I sent out no fewer than three dozen resumes to potential employers (all of whom were hiring); only four of those companies asked me to come in for an interview. [1] Note that that "reason" was no doubt due to my inexperience and not knowing how to properly market myself at the time.

Not getting contacted back can many times also be a fault of the company hiring. Sometimes it takes weeks to hear back, sometimes they want you to stop by tomorrow while you clearly wrote you're on the other side of the country.

Just another indicator not to take job hunt too personal and making sure to look into every opportunity available.

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