231–240 of 297 posts
“I would have liked to work hard on something I cared about. But I didn't have anything I cared about” This is one of those sentences that make me jealous I didn’t write it. Just such a perfect description of early adulthood for many.
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Modern society tries very hard to lay tracks for everyone all the way to final station: The old folks home. In my opinion, there are TOO MANY tracks. We have plastered the entire map with so many tracks, that experiencing true freedom has become virtually impossible.
We’re also too many people on Earth to continue living in a green field world. Fantasizing about freedom and the absence of tracks is a Western thing; I don’t think you can afford trial-and-error paths or separating from the cohort of applicants when you live in Singapore, Taiwan, or China. Kalzumeus had to show his bride’s mother his revenue sheet before asking her hand, because startup creator is second to homeless…
That's how marrying into an elite family worked in most of the world for most human history. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Shakespear#Engagement -
> In 1911 Pound returned from America and in October formally approached Dorothy's father asking permission to marry her. Pound told Shakespear he had a guaranteed annual income of £200 in addition to earnings from writing and Dorothy's own income of £150 a year. Shakespear refused on the grounds of insufficient income believing Pound overstated his potential to earn money writing poetry. [...]
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> for other sciences and humanities, it's a flex about pursue abstract "truth" or "knowledge" of "beauty" or whatever. it is very monastic in that people make a show of forgoing traditional measures of status in service of their "calling". These comments are oddly cynical. The people I know who went to grad school did it because they enjoyed the academic world. That's all. There was no flexing or bragging. Those who…
I think both can be true. The majority of people I knew who went to grad school genuinely liked academic life so it’s natural they want to continue it. But we are also social creatures that value status. That’s also why many people try to construe their academic careers while also enhancing their open prestige, whether that’s defined by the institution they attend, the advisor they have, the grants/thesis they pursue…
But it's unmissable how much it is drilled into kids heads now. On some of the job forums I frequent, every other week some kid is asking about "the most prestigious [college / degree / masters program / banking job / bank / team within bank / type of fund / specific fund / specific team within fund].
What's crazy to me is these kids are targeting such a narrow narrow funnel they might as well be asking about "how do I become a quarterback for a team that has won a Super Bowl in last 3 years". Like good luck kid, 1 of those seats opens up per decade (if at all), and theres 100 of you asking about it every week.
To me the whole point of a good college education is that there are thousands to millions of jobs in the field to go after. Why on earth would you fixate on a role that is basically 1-in-a-million?
Part of it is clearly the mentality of kids who have been "on the tracks" since their teens, and having made it thru a 99% rejection college admissions process think they can make into this seats. Which is mathematically literate since even limiting just to Ivys there are 1000-10,000s of you looking for finance jobs each year. So the 1-seat-per-decade fever dream is like a 99.99% to 99.999% rejection rate.
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If you aren't careful though, the tracks can also continue. At BigCorp they have lots of titles to create a sense of urgency and box-ticking to progress from A to B to C to..
This is obnoxiously commonplace. At my first job they upgraded me from a level N engineer (1 or 2, probably) to a level N+1 engineer with a 10% pay rise or something. The year after that I stumbled upon a new job which paid more than their highest value of N. They definitely don't want this to happen. They want you striving for (N+1)+1 only, so they can give it out whenever they think you feel like you're not progres…
They added some system of "well to get from C to D, there is now C1->C2->C3->C4, and we've classified you as a C3, congrats".
Of course this week out of the blue her boss calls her with the "great news" that she's been "put up for promotion process for C4, but no guarantees"..
Anyway few understand this but even in these types of roles, the compensation bands are very very wide, with overlaps, and differ across departments. So just ask for money over title until your title limits their ability to give you money. You can't eat title.
It's great advice. Reminds me of Steve Jobs' statement: When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up…
I find myself in the former position more than ever. Feeling kinda trapped... it's what my parents and their parents did before me. Not sure how to break out? It becomes much harder to take risks once you have an entire family to take care of.
Read Plato's "Apology," "Crito," and "Phaedo." Yes, in that order.
https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html
https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/crito.html
https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html
If you know nothing of these dialogs, that's almost better.
I know that some internet rando telling you to read a bunch of Plato is, like, never going to happen.
But on the off chance that you do, the less I tell you, the better. And if you do decide to do this, you can cheat and read along with the sparknotes and use an LLM to help read along too. But do try your best to read it first, then use the other resources to guide you. It'll make more sense after you read them. Again sorry, about this being really strange.
But it is worth your time and effort, I promise you.
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For some people external validation is not very important and they genuinely love and enjoy the pursuit of knowledge and have little interest in what others think of them. Sure everyone requires some degree of external validation and there is a hierarchy in every group but all is not vanity.
I don’t think you’re wholly wrong, but if you look at longitudinal surveys of students, it presents a less rosy view. The majority select their primary motivation as getting “very financially successful.” Now those surveys are undergrads, but considering that grad school has become more common path, I don’t see any reason why grad students would be of a wholly different mental makeup.
Both types of people are useful but I feel it is highly reductive and simplistic to reduce the world to one motivation for all people.
> The first step is to realize that the subway stops here. Up to this point in life, most of you have been rolling on train tracks. Elementary school, middle school, high school, college—it was always clear what the next stop was. In the process you've been trained to believe something that’s not true: that all of life is train tracks. And there are some jobs where you can make it stay like train tracks if you want,…
Blame parents, teachers etc. When I mean blame, really blame them unapologetically, I have no sympathies for them.
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We’re also too many people on Earth to continue living in a green field world. Fantasizing about freedom and the absence of tracks is a Western thing; I don’t think you can afford trial-and-error paths or separating from the cohort of applicants when you live in Singapore, Taiwan, or China. Kalzumeus had to show his bride’s mother his revenue sheet before asking her hand, because startup creator is second to homeless…
> Kalzumeus had to show his bride’s mother his revenue sheet before asking her hand, because startup creator is second to homeless in the humiliation ranking. That's how marrying into an elite family worked in most of the world for most human history. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Shakespear#Engagement - > In 1911 Pound returned from America and in October formally approached Dorothy's father asking…