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I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

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Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#101

Post by luckylion »

bigred100 wrote: post #59
baron816 wrote: post #40

The media's constant reporting on college debt and low paying majors has actually had a large impact on what the next generation is studying. https://qz.com/1370922/the-2008-financial-crisis-completely-... The humanities and social sciences have fallen off a cliff, heath care and STEM has soared. I'm skeptical that this is a good thing.

I wonder if humanities knowledge will become a status symbol, as being in great shape has become

Hasn't it already? It certainly is in Western Europe, a way to distinguish yourself from the filthy masses that need to do physical labor and the slightly smarter but soulless engineers and lawyers and what have you.

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#102

Post by lostmsu »

lame88 wrote: post #67
pawelmurias wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less bullshit majors seems like a very good thing.

This is either a low effort bait post or exactly the kind of bullshit tech-worship I've come to despise. There's more to life and learning than STEM and whatever rides the current economic wave.

I disagree. Without significant advances in STEM the last 200 years would be pretty much identical to the 200 years before them, and another 200 before them, etc.

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#103

Post by SantalBlush »

motogpjimbo wrote: post #78
BowBun wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science gives us answers. Culture gives us meaning.

Is that what the arts and humanities graduates serving my coffee in Starbucks are generating - culture? Don't conflate culture with those who study it. The vast majority of non-STEM graduates generate no activity of either cultural or economic significance. All such degree programmes could be dropped tomorrow with no detriment to society.

>All such degree programmes could be dropped tomorrow with no detriment to society.

That is such an outrageous and untestable claim that it is basically meaningless.

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#104

Post by peterwwillis »

If you can make $125k in your 20s, work that soul killing job for 10 years and put as much away as you can. Then at least you have the start of a nest egg by the time you reach retirement. If you do it backwards and save when you're older, it's 10x harder.

Do your passion when you actually have a passion. Until then, work to live, and save save save. (But don't forget to travel)

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#105

Post by geebee »

notbob wrote: post #46
baron816 wrote: post #40

The media's constant reporting on college debt and low paying majors has actually had a large impact on what the next generation is studying. https://qz.com/1370922/the-2008-financial-crisis-completely-... The humanities and social sciences have fallen off a cliff, heath care and STEM has soared. I'm skeptical that this is a good thing.

That QZ article gets a lot wrong. In particular: > if the tech bubble bursts, computer science may even be riskier than a humanities degree, which gives graduates a broader set of knowledge. How do humanities degrees provide "broader knowledge" than CS degrees? Different, sure, but broader? Good CS degrees are not coding bootcamps. CS students take a lot of mathematics and logic-heavy courses and can easily pivot fro…

That's a very important observation. It's been almost 20 years since I was an undergraduate, but at the time (I went to UCSD), general college requirements were overwhelmingly tilted toward the humanities. Specific requirements varied on which particular college you attended, but often required a 2 lower division survey of world history and cultures, 2 years of a foreign language, and 1-2 courses in performing arts. Often considerable upper division work in a branch of the humanities was required as well (for instance, an upper division series in literature or history). Science requirements were much lighter, and could often be fulfilled without taking calculus (non-calc based stats or symbolic logic for math, non-calc based physics, that sort of thing).

I don't really understand why people act like humanities majors are "well rounded" compared to science or engineering majors - it seems like the absolute opposite. To confirm this, just pick a respectable college and read the degree requirements for students in different majors (I don't mean elite colleges, there are hundreds of colleges that meet this standard).

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#106

Post by codingdave »

Sohakes wrote: post #86
lame88 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is either a low effort bait post or exactly the kind of bullshit tech-worship I've come to despise. There's more to life and learning than STEM and whatever rides the current economic wave.

It's not bullshit. But at the same time, I wonder why so many people do these majors. They mostly end up working on a unrelated field. If they go to university just because they are passionate about learning the subject and are willing to pay for it, that's great! But I feel it's just that they are pressured to go to college, they are pressured to "follow their passions" even when it will not work out, and in fact so…

Philosophy teaches logic and analysis, and teaches you to break down texts into their core points and arguments, then both support and refute them as well as apply them to other situations. It teaches you to see multiple perspectives, to compare and synthesize them, and use them in practice, whether or not you actually agree with them. Those abilities are needed in the working world, (and not just by lawyers), and absolutely could help our economy.

We can even look at my Fine Arts degree the same way. My whole career people have said it is odd for a Fine Arts major to be a coder, until I explain what that degree really taught me - to look at the existing body of work in a field, learn the techniques, and look for new and innovative ways to change those techniques. Then to create a vision of something you want to deliver, start from scratch, and build up to a final product that takes the field a step or two forward, while also effectively communicating with, and engaging, your audience.

You could draw similar parallels with any humanities degree. That process of deconstructing an entire body of work, learning the ins and out of its components, and reconstructing it into something completely new is common to all liberal arts educations. And that is why people with liberal arts degrees are often not the slightest bit concerned whether their degree and their career are a 'match'.

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#107

Post by exelius »

parthdesai wrote: post #85
exelius wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is not the only thing in the world, or even the most important. It’s a means to an end.

Right, tell that to a person in 3rd world who doesn't know where their next meal is going to come from. Money is not the most important thing in the world when you are making more than maybe $60-$70k/year in NA, but if you are making anything less than that, it definitely is the one of the most important thing if not the most important thing in the world.

Okay, but I think we as a society are poorer as a result. Consumerism is not the end-all, be-all.

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#108

Post by m0zg »

13415 wrote: post #96
m0zg wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A major which the labor market doesn't need in the quantities that are being churned out by colleges, such as the classic "would you like fries with that" English major. It's not "bullshit" if you're independently wealthy and can pay to "study" for "fun", or as a second major to something that's in demand. But for everybody else I'd consider more in-demand professions, even though they're usually much harder. For an…

That doesn't make the degrees bullshit, though, it merely means that studying the respective field is less likely to be very economically rewarding. You need to make a difference between practical life advice and evaluations of areas and disciplines, or otherwise you'd also have to say that Vincent van Gogh and H.P. Lovecraft were total losers. They weren't. Wittgenstein gave away most of his inherited wealth when he…

  >> it merely means that 
  >> studying the respective field is less likely 
  >> to be very economically rewarding
Um, no, I'm gonna have to disagree with you on that one. Paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in borrowed money for something which doesn't provide any ROI is IMO bullshit, particularly so if you can't discharge the debt under bankruptcy.

Your examples are bad too, because back in the day all those painters, writers, etc, were either independently wealthy already, or did other jobs before they became famous. H.P. Lovecraft, for instance, worked as a traveling salesman. Van Gogh both comes from a wealthy family _and_ had a job at an art dealer. And there are very few of such people anyway, it's not a viable route for most people, it's more like a lottery.

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#109

Post by pedrosorio »

jdavis703 wrote: post #99
pedrosorio wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people underestimate the options and freedom (including being ready for the effects of recession/ageism in the industry) that living on $60k with a $200k salary can provide.

How do you pay for $200k level taxes on a $60k salary? I make low six figures and pay an effective tax rate of about 35%. You’d only have about $5k left over for living expenses for the year...

Assuming this was a legitimate misunderstanding:

- they earn a $200k salary

- their living expenses match those of a person living with a $60k salary and presumably spending everything they earn after tax (in response to “what kind of life they can live with $60-80k”)

Does that make sense?

Re: I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

#110

Post by lame88 »

Sohakes wrote: post #86
lame88 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is either a low effort bait post or exactly the kind of bullshit tech-worship I've come to despise. There's more to life and learning than STEM and whatever rides the current economic wave.

It's not bullshit. But at the same time, I wonder why so many people do these majors. They mostly end up working on a unrelated field. If they go to university just because they are passionate about learning the subject and are willing to pay for it, that's great! But I feel it's just that they are pressured to go to college, they are pressured to "follow their passions" even when it will not work out, and in fact so…

There is absolutely pressure to go to college, but there is hardly pressure to follow passions. If there was, then the two would be in conflict. The pressure is: don't follow your passions, go to college, major in STEM or "something useful". What has that resulted in? An inflation of watered-down STEM-lite degrees not just from the standard degree factories but accredited state research universities, that provide none of the benefits of a liberal arts education and still leaving one poorly trained to produce.

I am willing to bet that given a population of philosophy majors and a population of engineering majors, if you gave them an equivalent year of quality mentorship in programming, the philosophy majors would perform better. Because philosophy heavily emphasizes critical and abstract thinking. Better yet they might be able to really think about the consequences of the systems they build, whereas the tech industry mostly seems to have no problem and no concerns about building a global surveillance apparatus. Engineers learn how to do now the stuff that is relevant now. As a software engineer I am constantly battling with abstraction, and I constantly feel held back by my limited understanding of math, science, and philosophy.

The cost of college is an issue of its own and it's irrelevant to choice of major. School is the one place where we have an institutionalized system to study and progress the liberal arts as a whole, which teach us how we got here, what we value, and how we ought to live. One episode of The Wire should be sufficient demonstration of the need for our understanding of sociology to improve, among other things. Discouraging any of the liberal arts due to the overwhelming cost of college exacerbates our problems and risks turning universities into trade schools, directionless and with all the volatility of economic cycle.

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