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Recent Graduates Are Most Likely to Work in Sales, Making around $40K

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Re: Recent Graduates Are Most Likely to Work in Sales, Making around $40K

#41

Post by claytonjy »

woopwoop wrote: post #36
simonsarris wrote: post #9

I'm not sure we should expect anything differently, if recent graduates are less intelligent (as a cohort) than ever. [Difficult degree] enrollment is relatively flat because aptitude is flat, and grad jobs will reflect this. I wrote a little about this framing it as a CS degree problem, but it seems true for a lot more than just CS. > Can we prove aptitude is flat? Kinda. In 1970s 1-in-2 college grads aced Wordsum t…

Wait, that's an amazing claim. 100 is the median IQ for the entire population. So the claim is that the median college graduate has the same IQ as the median person. How could that possibly be true?

Could it be that in the past, aptitude was the most clear distinction between college-goers and everyone else, while now anyone that can remotely afford it becomes a college-goer, regardless of aptitude? This explanation would require intelligence to not be too sensitive to income, which might be a false assumption.

Re: Recent Graduates Are Most Likely to Work in Sales, Making around $40K

#42

Post by karmicthreat »

woopwoop wrote: post #36
simonsarris wrote: post #9

I'm not sure we should expect anything differently, if recent graduates are less intelligent (as a cohort) than ever. [Difficult degree] enrollment is relatively flat because aptitude is flat, and grad jobs will reflect this. I wrote a little about this framing it as a CS degree problem, but it seems true for a lot more than just CS. > Can we prove aptitude is flat? Kinda. In 1970s 1-in-2 college grads aced Wordsum t…

Wait, that's an amazing claim. 100 is the median IQ for the entire population. So the claim is that the median college graduate has the same IQ as the median person. How could that possibly be true?

In the 70s 10% of people completed a 4 year degree and now it's 35%. So the increased availability of a college education has dragged the meadian of the cohort closer to the average IQ of everyone.

Re: Recent Graduates Are Most Likely to Work in Sales, Making around $40K

#43

Post by [deleted] »

woopwoop wrote: post #36
simonsarris wrote: post #9

I'm not sure we should expect anything differently, if recent graduates are less intelligent (as a cohort) than ever. [Difficult degree] enrollment is relatively flat because aptitude is flat, and grad jobs will reflect this. I wrote a little about this framing it as a CS degree problem, but it seems true for a lot more than just CS. > Can we prove aptitude is flat? Kinda. In 1970s 1-in-2 college grads aced Wordsum t…

Wait, that's an amazing claim. 100 is the median IQ for the entire population. So the claim is that the median college graduate has the same IQ as the median person. How could that possibly be true?

[deleted]

Re: Recent Graduates Are Most Likely to Work in Sales, Making around $40K

#44

Post by runako »

Interesting anecdote, but it's obviously skewed. For example: attorneys, nurses, physicians, and accountants are all missing from the graph. From that I intuit that either a) the data intentionally captures people in only their first job or b) the data is just wildly incomplete.

Conservatively assuming this is intended to be a snapshot of first job salaries, it's interesting to note that a $40k salary is in the top 50% of jobs in the US [1]. And again, we expect most of these people to earn increasingly more as they hit their earning stride (which will be after grad school for many).

1- https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/10/30/heres-the-average...

Re: Recent Graduates Are Most Likely to Work in Sales, Making around $40K

#45

Post by bookmarkacc »

emmab wrote: post #22
Animats wrote: post #21

This is why we've probably passed "peak school". For many new graduates, ROI for college is negative. About half of new college graduates end up working in a job that doesn't require a college education. (It's even worse in some third world countries on the way down. In Egypt, unemployment of college graduates is higher than for non-college graduates.)

> In Egypt, unemployment of college graduates is higher than for non-college graduates. If pay is also higher then college could still be +EV.

Thats not how EV works. It all depends what the increase in pay and unemployment are.

Re: Recent Graduates Are Most Likely to Work in Sales, Making around $40K

#46

Post by accountyaccount »

karmicthreat wrote: post #38
accountyaccount wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditch diggers is a go-to insult, but skilled tradespeople are still incredibly valuable. As an apprentice a plumber makes next to nothing, but once you get your time in you can make a ton of money if you have basic business/time management skills. Everybody poops. The same goes for carpenters, masonry, etc. The physical work will wear you down — but by the time that becomes a problem you should be skilled enough to b…

The apprenticeship and guild systems that states use to regulate them are awful though. Time in is not a great measure of skill and that seems to be a central feature of these systems.

Definitely agree. Time is important to some extent because knowledge is different from practice, but the requirements are generally outrageous.

I've also hired tradespeople who did put in the time and were worse than doing the job myself after watching youtube videos for a few hours, so at that point what's it even accomplishing.

Re: Recent Graduates Are Most Likely to Work in Sales, Making around $40K

#47

Post by dismantlethesun »

sonabinu wrote: post #11
simonsarris wrote: post #9

I'm not sure we should expect anything differently, if recent graduates are less intelligent (as a cohort) than ever. [Difficult degree] enrollment is relatively flat because aptitude is flat, and grad jobs will reflect this. I wrote a little about this framing it as a CS degree problem, but it seems true for a lot more than just CS. > Can we prove aptitude is flat? Kinda. In 1970s 1-in-2 college grads aced Wordsum t…

I don't know if it is intelligence alone - I would call it 'grit' as well. If you are willing to slog through a tough class and use good learning strategies, you don't have to be super intelligent to enter into a career in engineering. Are we setting a bar that is high, where college is expected to be a lot of hard work? If we do, we will see those in all careers that require a college degree brining in something new…

The average graduate is now representative of the average member of the population because so many people are entering and completing universities.

It doesn't necessarily mean that it takes any more or less effort or intelligence to finish a university degree.

It also doesn't mean that average intelligence is dropping.

It just indicates a stereotypical reversion to mean.

Re: Recent Graduates Are Most Likely to Work in Sales, Making around $40K

#48

Post by dismantlethesun »

brandonmenc wrote: post #10
kcorbitt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about this. What does it take to make a "good" salesperson by this definition? Just grit and experience, or some innate and uncommon skill? I know there are people who make millions working in sales, but I guess I'm just wondering how common that actually is. Should a reasonably motivated and intelligent salesperson early in their career expect to be making $200k+ a few years in, or does that take a very…

Every great salesperson I know is fearless in any social situation. They can strike up a conversation with anyone, anywhere, anytime - effortlessly. You can't teach that. There are a host of other qualities, but this strikes me the most "inborn" one.

Seemingly effortlessly.

I know some salespeople today, who during highschool were the most introverted, least talkative guys or girls in the world.

Their success is due to practice both in work (entry level sales jobs require non-stop talking for 8+ hours per day, as opposed to entry-level engineering where there are 4+ hours of quiet time), and outside of work (e.g. debate teams, tea clubs, book clubs, meetups, networking events, speech therapists, etc.)

Re: Recent Graduates Are Most Likely to Work in Sales, Making around $40K

#49

Post by dismantlethesun »

maxxxxx wrote: post #27
richardbatty wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can teach that, or at least learn it, with cognitive behavioural therapy for social anxiety and practice in progressively more difficult situations.

I think there are limits. I compare it to athletics. With hard work I can double my bench press but there are people who can bench even more without ever training. If these people work hard in addition they can perform on a level that's not achievable for most of us. I think it's the same for sales or a lot of other professions. People with talent can go much further.

I think this is true too, just that with sales unlike athletics, the field is more inclusive (e.g. specialized knowledge in the product field may be more important than absolute speech skills), and also higher populated leading to there being more positions for people who are merely above average, rather than superhuman.

Re: Recent Graduates Are Most Likely to Work in Sales, Making around $40K

#50

Post by T-hawk »

Animats wrote: post #21

This is why we've probably passed "peak school". For many new graduates, ROI for college is negative. About half of new college graduates end up working in a job that doesn't require a college education. (It's even worse in some third world countries on the way down. In Egypt, unemployment of college graduates is higher than for non-college graduates.)

The overall aggregate ROI of college should be neutral, right? And therefore half the population will find their individual data points to be negative.

If the ROI of college aggregated over all consumers is positive, then the colleges are mispricing themselves. As capitalists, they should charge more until they capture all the consumer surplus and the aggregate ROI for all consumers converges to zero. This is more or less what has happened over the past generation. (Not all colleges are strictly capitalist, of course, but in broad strokes this is what we've seen.)

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