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The most-disliked people in the publishing industry

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Re: The most-disliked people in the publishing industry

#71

Post by eszed »

bpt3 wrote: post #53
chromacity wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably has to do with the fact that we condition children and adolescents to consider white-collar jobs as more noble than blue-collar jobs, then we tell them that to get a good white-collar job, they need a degree... and then we make STEM degrees hard by subjecting students to more math than most people realistically need. So we have a lot of frontend developers who know calculus and an oversupply of people wit…

The number of people with humanities degrees who also could successfully obtain a rigorous CS or engineering degree is not very large. I suggest you revisit your hypothesis with a little less bias.

The reverse is also true.

My current hypothesis is that as AI forces software development down less and less deterministic pathways, I suspect that the value of a basic CS degree will diminish relative to humanities training. Comfort with ambiguity, an ability to construct a workable "theory of mind", and to construct unambiguous natural-language prompts will become more relevant than grokking standard algorithms.

Re: The most-disliked people in the publishing industry

#72

Post by eszed »

djoldman wrote: post #30

> ...the employees of Random House don’t need to be paid as much as the employees at Palantir, because Random House is perceived (by its employees) as fundamentally good, something that serves humanity, while Palantir designs software that the government uses to find targets for drone strikes. Jobs at Random House are much harder to get than jobs at Palantir, even though jobs at Random House are paid much more poorly…

> the more a job pays, the harder it is to get hired

That's not axiomatically true, like, at all.

The odds of being hired vary according to the supply of qualified applicants vs available positions. Tech companies with large profit margins will be able to offer higher wages than businesses with lower margins - and do so because they're competing with other tech companies, and (for the most part) not companies in other sectors - so assuming pay is a differentiator across domains can't be assumed. Over the long term, pay differential within a sector will motivate more people to become qualified for jobs within it, but at any particular moment cross-sector compensation isn't really relevant to the question.

This isn't to say the original assertion is true, as they don't offer any evidence, but it wouldn't be shocking to find out that a publishing company has more qualified applicants per job posting than any particular tech company.

Re: The most-disliked people in the publishing industry

#73

Post by wisty »

tptacek wrote: post #62
wisty wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not hugely so. Teaching isn't paid megabucks but that's partly because it's a market for lemons - it's hard to tell a good one from a bad one (and people don't even agree in what it means to be educated, are facts or "critical thinking" more important, how about discipline vs temporary comfort) so there's no high paid super stars. There is a stereotype that teachers are low paid. Somewhat .... but there's a slight pr…

Outside of low-population rural school districts, the idea that teachers are poorly paid --- at least for the last 30 years or so --- comes from people not understanding the value of a defined-benefit pension plan (and, if you want to go that far, that people don't understand the interplay between an annual salary and a huge number of days off work).

I think the holdiays are offset by the nature of the job - even the lasiest teachers actually have to show up and work, they don't just type "camera issue" in a WFH meeting then watch Netflix (or do something just as pointless and lazy in a face to face meeting).

If you're comparing teachers to nurses, sure nurses tend to have more pay but more hours and harder work. But most jobs that you can do with a BA in English (or any other degree that isn't either extremely competitive like medicine, or in a really high demand field right now), teachers get (at least) similar pay, for a similar amount of work (albeit compressed into the school calender). Especially if you consider benefits, as you point out.

Re: The most-disliked people in the publishing industry

#74

Post by tptacek »

wisty wrote: post #73
tptacek wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of low-population rural school districts, the idea that teachers are poorly paid --- at least for the last 30 years or so --- comes from people not understanding the value of a defined-benefit pension plan (and, if you want to go that far, that people don't understand the interplay between an annual salary and a huge number of days off work).

I think the holdiays are offset by the nature of the job - even the lasiest teachers actually have to show up and work, they don't just type "camera issue" in a WFH meeting then watch Netflix (or do something just as pointless and lazy in a face to face meeting). If you're comparing teachers to nurses, sure nurses tend to have more pay but more hours and harder work. But most jobs that you can do with a BA in English…

I think it's wild that the basis for comparison you have here is remote software developers in meetings. You know that everybody who works retail, manufacturing, hospitality, warehouses, and construction has to show up and work the same way, too?

Yes: the kinds of people commenting on HN have it easier than just about anybody in the work force. That doesn't make us a reasonable bar for assessing the attractiveness of a job. Would you rather work as a teacher or a truck driver?

Re: The most-disliked people in the publishing industry

#75

Post by tptacek »

decimalenough wrote: post #61
tptacek wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nursing and teaching are surprisingly well-compensated fields with lots of job security and relatively straightforward entrance requirements. It's also true that both fields are valorized, but plumbing isn't and has the same dynamics. These arguments are all overdetermined.

This depends wildly on the country, but in many, public school teachers are criminally underpaid. Nursing is also a hard job where the paycheck is nowhere near what doctors can earn.

Very few professions in the world earn anywhere near what doctors can earn.

Re: The most-disliked people in the publishing industry

#76

Post by bpt3 »

eszed wrote: post #71
bpt3 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of people with humanities degrees who also could successfully obtain a rigorous CS or engineering degree is not very large. I suggest you revisit your hypothesis with a little less bias.

The reverse is also true. My current hypothesis is that as AI forces software development down less and less deterministic pathways, I suspect that the value of a basic CS degree will diminish relative to humanities training. Comfort with ambiguity, an ability to construct a workable "theory of mind", and to construct unambiguous natural-language prompts will become more relevant than grokking standard algorithms.

The reverse most certainly is not true, and even if it were it wouldn't matter.

Humanities advocates have been hoping for the demise of valuable STEM degrees for at least the last 30 years. It's not happening for many reasons, of them being: All the skills you listed are also taught in an engineering and rigorous CS curriculum, plus those degrees provide validation that the individual is intelligent and determined enough to complete coursework that most people cannot.

Re: The most-disliked people in the publishing industry

#77

Post by eszed »

bpt3 wrote: post #76
eszed wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reverse is also true. My current hypothesis is that as AI forces software development down less and less deterministic pathways, I suspect that the value of a basic CS degree will diminish relative to humanities training. Comfort with ambiguity, an ability to construct a workable "theory of mind", and to construct unambiguous natural-language prompts will become more relevant than grokking standard algorithms.

The reverse most certainly is not true, and even if it were it wouldn't matter. Humanities advocates have been hoping for the demise of valuable STEM degrees for at least the last 30 years. It's not happening for many reasons, of them being: All the skills you listed are also taught in an engineering and rigorous CS curriculum, plus those degrees provide validation that the individual is intelligent and determined en…

I dunno, man. The difficulty (and resentment of having to even take them) most STEM majors had in my college-level writing classes causes me to doubt that, as does the general reaction on this board to any kind of problem / domain with irreducible ambiguity. But look, I'm not talking about the top ~10%, or whatever: the really smart kids can adapt to whatever gets thrown at them[0]. I'm doubtful that a 50th-percentile or below CS degree / student will retain the value that they've recently had - and given what I read on here about the present job market for new grads on here, that's maybe already happening.

Anyway, I had to pick one, my money'd be on philosophy degrees rising in value: they're already sought out by financial firms. Have you seen the sort of analytical / symbolic reasoning they do?

[0] In fact, in case you didn't know, rigorous humanities programs and research involve an awful lot of statistics and coding, even though the dinosaurs that run the MLA and most English departments aren't able to handle it.

Re: The most-disliked people in the publishing industry

#78

Post by bpt3 »

eszed wrote: post #77
bpt3 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reverse most certainly is not true, and even if it were it wouldn't matter. Humanities advocates have been hoping for the demise of valuable STEM degrees for at least the last 30 years. It's not happening for many reasons, of them being: All the skills you listed are also taught in an engineering and rigorous CS curriculum, plus those degrees provide validation that the individual is intelligent and determined en…

I dunno, man. The difficulty (and resentment of having to even take them) most STEM majors had in my college-level writing classes causes me to doubt that, as does the general reaction on this board to any kind of problem / domain with irreducible ambiguity. But look, I'm not talking about the top ~10%, or whatever: the really smart kids can adapt to whatever gets thrown at them[0]. I'm doubtful that a 50th-percentil…

> I dunno, man. The difficulty (and resentment of having to even take them) most STEM majors had in my college-level writing classes causes me to doubt that, as does the general reaction on this board to any kind of problem / domain with irreducible ambiguity.

I don't think most STEM majors would be outstanding English Literature (or whatever humanities program you prefer) majors, but I do think they could manage to obtain a degree. Very, very few humanities majors could get an engineering degree.

And yes, the writing classes they force engineers to take are largely pointless and not enjoyable. Everyone with a degree got through them though, and I have to imagine the percentage of STEM students who washed out on that and not organic chemistry, compiler design, differential equations, etc. is extremely small (it was 0 out of the hundreds of people I knew at my school).

> But look, I'm not talking about the top ~10%, or whatever: the really smart kids can adapt to whatever gets thrown at them[0].

Sure. Very few of these kids are going into publishing, because they'll have more lucrative options and will pursue them.

> I'm doubtful that a 50th-percentile or below CS degree / student will retain the value that they've recently had - and given what I read on here about the present job market for new grads on here, that's maybe already happening.

That may be, but they're still in better shape than a 50% percentile humanities degree holder, who also is having the value of their skillset eroded by AI.

> Anyway, I had to pick one, my money'd be on philosophy degrees rising in value: they're already sought out by financial firms. Have you seen the sort of analytical / symbolic reasoning they do?

Lol, they are not "sought out" in any sense of the word. Philosophy majors at top tier schools are sought out because everyone at the school is sought out, not because they majored in philosophy.

And yes, I took a number of philosophy classes in college as an undergrad because they were easy (have you seen the analytical/symbolic reasoning required of EE or CS majors? It's a lot more difficult that what is required of philosophy majors).

Re: The most-disliked people in the publishing industry

#79

Post by zipy124 »

djoldman wrote: post #30

> ...the employees of Random House don’t need to be paid as much as the employees at Palantir, because Random House is perceived (by its employees) as fundamentally good, something that serves humanity, while Palantir designs software that the government uses to find targets for drone strikes. Jobs at Random House are much harder to get than jobs at Palantir, even though jobs at Random House are paid much more poorly…

And yet I don't know any software engineers in my personal circle who would be willing to work for palantir, and so they must have a fairly hard time finding people willing, thus it can't be as difficult as places where this is not the case (in the same industry).

Re: The most-disliked people in the publishing industry

#80

Post by eszed »

bpt3 wrote: post #78
eszed wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, man. The difficulty (and resentment of having to even take them) most STEM majors had in my college-level writing classes causes me to doubt that, as does the general reaction on this board to any kind of problem / domain with irreducible ambiguity. But look, I'm not talking about the top ~10%, or whatever: the really smart kids can adapt to whatever gets thrown at them[0]. I'm doubtful that a 50th-percentil…

> I dunno, man. The difficulty (and resentment of having to even take them) most STEM majors had in my college-level writing classes causes me to doubt that, as does the general reaction on this board to any kind of problem / domain with irreducible ambiguity. I don't think most STEM majors would be outstanding English Literature (or whatever humanities program you prefer) majors, but I do think they could manage to…

> [50th percentile CS grads] are still in better shape than a 50% percentile humanities degree holder, who also is having the value of their skillset eroded by AI.

That's the crux of it, and right now it appears to me that the ability to write unambiguous natural language prompts - in a variety of contexts, not specifically heavy-duty dev work - is going to be increasingly valuable. The 50th percentile english / philosophy grad is better at that than the 50th percentile CS major - while, at the same time, the bottom rungs of the developer ladder appear to have been kicked out.

I'm trying very hard not to make this into a "who's smarter?" question. That's a well-trodden and pointless argument, particularly if money is going to be the measuring stick. Besides, if that's where we're going, the finance bros and C-suite win, and do either of us think they're the geniuses in the room?

But, we'll see. We're living in Interesting Times.

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