So much of academia is about connections and reputation laundering

> Don't judge your self worth based on the latest shiny megacorp's inscrutable interview process.

The following comment might be too candid and too unpopular. I'm sorry about that. I need to write it down somewhere with the potential for some interaction (it helps me learn). I know I'm not alone in this feeling though. Though, I'm pretty sure the majority of people won't share my opinion. So either there is something I should correct in myself, or I'm a bit odd regarding what I'm about to say. I guess some financially independent people feel similar about this

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It's not about self-worth. My financial worth depends on it and with it the freedom and possibilities I have. Now, I maybe be biased in how I view my options.

Which is why I said, maybe I should find a career coach.

The way I see it: no job at FAANG means less secure freedom. There is a lot of freedom to be had as an entrepreneur, or as an artist. It's also a lot less secure. There are indeed drawbacks for being in golden handcuffs and not having a lot of free time when working at FAANG. But as far as I can tell: while the freedom is skewed towards money and not time, if you don't have lifestyle inflation and save up the money, you can retire quite a bit earlier.

I want freedom. I want to retire earlier.

And now that I know that I have to work at least until I'm 67, because I can't get an amazing career start, that hurts. I know it's a spoiled statement to make compared to the rest of the population and perhaps even an insult to the world to consider this normal. Nevertheless, I've worked for this goal in particular and I'm seeing nothing of it back. My family has worked at this as well, they did their best into letting me succeed. Yet, I spectacurlarly failed.

I'm not worth less because of it, but financially I am worth less because of it. And because I'm worth less financially, I am able to do less with the life that I want to do.

Of the waking hours:

- 50% of my life is spent working

- 25% of my life is spent doing mundane tasks

- 25% of my life is spent doing what I want

If I could increase from 25% to 100%, then in a sense I live 4 times as long.

Note: I like programming, but I don't love it. For me programming is similar to physically moving around, except now I'm physically moving around in the digital world. I like to do it when it's needed, but not much more than that. I'm not an athlete (a person who only loves physical movement).

There are so many things that I love (that don't make any money or are very risky). I want to do those things instead, but I've seen with a lot of family members how that turns out (bad). Startup failures are real. Life changing successes don't come around often, if at all. This is even the case when you're a person who does everything right.

Now I know that I have to be happy with living a life like the rest of us: mostly doing things that I don't want to do but have to.

I know I have to grow up in this sense (despite my age), but it's a gloomy future and one I don't get excited by. It feels too boring. I don't really see the point of it other than raising children and doing your best they can live a life that feels fulfilling to them, if you have them already. If you don't, then one should reflect deeply on whether they want to burden their children with a father who feels that life is too boring (because they are mostly doing things they don't want to do) and couldn't care less.

I wonder how many commenters actually read the article posted here. The validity of this general statement is something worth debating, for sure, but in this particular case, it doesn't seem like that Chairman Phillipson "doesn't know what he's talking about", as the author seems to be suggesting. But rather, he's trying to defend his political position, for some political aims (remember that he's a politician now, instead of an academic publishing a paper). It would be quite untenable (though of course not impossible), for a chairman to join force with opinions bashing the results published by his own agency, especially when some clear political antagonism exists.

In many situations, it's not that the person doesn't know what they're talking about or is "bluffing", but that they are deliberately presenting a position that fits their current role and benefits them in some way. I totally agree that the former does happen, but those two things are really distinct, and if the author conflates those two and throws out a blanket claim that "stats is hard", it's not really helpful.

Eventually this does make sense in some ways. It's commonly accepted that you would want to avoid a 10x programmer who is toxic and drags everybody in the team down. So what's the huge difference of that to what you're describing? You'd much rather have in an important position somebody who everybody can trust, has mutual respect for, and is willing to work with, to somebody who is untrustworthy and looks down upon everybody. This pulls everybody together and eventually results in much better results for the organization (and hunter/gatherer group for example in ancient times), compared to the situation where one person has brilliant hard skills but makes everybody really uncomfortable and demotivated.

Of course, one might interpret what you said in a slightly different way, in that two groups of people would fight each other and only vote for people within their group, which would be sorta counterproductive for the whole organization. However, the behavior still actually makes sense for the particular group that those people are in and creates the maximum benefits for everybody in that group. For the organization, it would then be a problem of reconciliating the interests of different groups of people.

When I was in a similar position, i had to make loads applications, almost a hundred. The ones that came off are the ones i least expected. I needed this many because in the begining I sucked at interviews, misunderstood questions/what people where after, etc. Also FAANG will not neccesarily give you the most meaningfull work, there are plenty of smaller firms working on important things in life

thank you for this great summary; i couldn't understand it myself, but can with your help.

my only regret is that now that I understand it, i realize it's not interesting (to me personally)