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Comment by pauldenton | Hacker News Reader

It's more like certain sectors have seen growth, others are so regulated that not many people aspire to work in them. How many Smart kids enroll to be Nuclear Engineers instead of Computer Science, Finance or Business? How many rocket Engineer jobs are out there besides at NASA or Space X? Things that capture imagination and could be dream jobs just aren't hiring, aren't building or aren't paying

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That cycles back into companies no longer train anyone. All the training has to be done by the kid schools with ridiculously inflated tuition. And if they don't pick something that will pretty much guarantee a job, like anything other than CS, they get put down by society for not picking a high paying major. The situation is not any of the kid's fault. This perverse system was put in place to wring kids for money, put them in debt, so a few of the oligarchy could feel safe and secure.

I don't know why young people aren't willing to take on massive amounts of personal debt in order to get a job at 1 of roughly a dozen ethically compromised companies or their suppliers.

As someone on the border of being Gen Z, I think there is some truth to what you are saying. Especially on the not paying part. Lots of dream jobs are hiring.

If I think of what jobs would be most meaningful to me, it is things that are not paying. I could be a computer science teacher and after a long career still make less than I did in my first software job out of college.

If I want to afford to own a house or have a family, it's clear which career choice I have to make.

Owning a home and raising a family on a teacher's salary is entirely possible in many parts of the country. I literally know people who are doing it. But somehow the HN reality distortion bubble thinks that everywhere is like California. Try Iowa or Arkansas.

And I do think that we should build more housing in California, and other high cost areas. But realistically that's not going to happen soon. Zoomers who want to improve their lives today should look outside the fashionable cities.

Remote work increasing could have led people to move to lower cost of living areas, reduce pressure in the cities, and increased taxes for many smaller areas, but "there's nothing to do" is a common (and true) complaint about small towns.

Remote work has had only a minor impact on most low cost areas. You can rent a studio apartment in Cedar Rapids for $650. It's not a small town.

The notion of a dream job is rather silly. Historically very few people in prior generations ever had an opportunity to work in a dream job. They took a job they could find and got on with it instead of whining.

Today there are many other employers hiring rocket engineers. Try Boeing, Northrop Grumman, or RTX. A lot of experienced engineers are retiring so there are opportunities available. But you can't be picky about location.

The usual kinds of analyses applied to nuclear engineering salaries suggest that there's already more than enough smart people working in that area.

> others are so regulated that not many people aspire to work in them

Can you talk more about this and cite some sources?

I know a few people who got out of aero/defense related jobs because they were sick of spending most of a career in meetings petitioning to use Vishay Resistor B instead the Murata Resistor A that was in the certified design. I imagine medical and nuclear are similar but I don't know anyone who did that.

To be clear I'm glad some things are regulated, but being in hundreds upon thousands of those meetings doesn't appeal to me, and it eventually didn't speak to them.

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