Comment by slurry | Hacker News Reader

Comment by slurry | Hacker News Reader

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I think it's interesting that you love what you do and also work in a high demand field. I don't think those are actually coincidental.

All the chemical engineers I know (I know a few) are pretty happy. Most find their work interesting.

All the humanities academics I know (I know very many, having been one in a former life) are more or less unhappy. Many find their day to day work uninteresting and unexciting.

Chemical engineering is a high-demand field. Not many people's dream job.

Humanities academia is a low-demand field. Many people's dream job.

I think "work in a high demand field" is better advice for any young person than "do what you love," with or without qualification. Especially if they are the sort of young person who wants to be passionate and interested in their work.

Doing the hyperspecialized Hot Field of the Day may be a bad idea, but perennials like [software] engineering, K-12 education, finance, nursing, medicine etc. are generally going to be the best use of an intelligent student's time.

Low-demand fields mean a lot of down time due to lack of funding or lack of employment. That kills passion. High-demand fields mean there's always something to do and a new problem to solve. I think that's more important for actually loving what you do.

This ignores that often the high demand is there because it is a tough job for folks to do. Not everyone can physically/mentally do any job. Even if they would love to do so. That you know successful people appears at face value to simply be survivorship bias.[1]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Academia, nonprofit work, the arts and other low-demand "dream" jobs are also extremely demanding and not possible for everyone to do.

My argument was that being one of the (high percentage of) chemical engineers with a job is better than being one of the (low percentage of) humanities academics with a job. I'll acknowledge that survivorship bias is a potential problem.

Do you think humanities PhD washouts are generally happier than Chem E washouts?

My argument is that the "high percentage of chemical engineers" are the survivors. I knew quite a large number of chemical engineers that failed out of college. Or, amusingly enough, had to switch majors to a humanities degree. :)

So, if your point is to strive high at what you are good at, provided that what you are good at is in demand, then yeah. Kind of easy to see. If your point is to simply pick an in demand position and be good at it, that is a bit tougher.

Cut policies at chem e programs are brutal and I sympathize. However, an unsuccessful chem e student who becomes a coder, or uses his prereqs to get into nursing school or become a K-12 teacher is still following my advice. It's not about which specific field, it's about what kind of probability distribution of finding a job in a field.

But you are completely ignoring all of the kids that are just drop outs. Those that don't ever get a degree, because they got their asses handed to them in pursuit of one.

And, as I said, more amusingly, you do not count the folks that started in chemE only to switch to humanities. Just pursuing a degree in a desirable degree is by no means a guarantee that you will get a good job. Just as merely throwing a dart in the general direction of the board is no guarantee that you will hit it.

a. My bad for using chem e as an example. Switch in K-12 teachers instead and the comparison vs. humanities academics works out about the same, modulo more complaints about working conditions.

b. Humanities PhD programs also have enormous dropout rates. And many dropouts also end up in bad shape. I'm ignoring them too, so in the context of the breathtakingly unscientific anecdote, it's even.

c. Besides which, survivorship bias is probably not even in the top three things that make my personal anecdote not a valid scientific experiment. It's obviously not good empirical evidence for many other reasons.

Look, the basic point is, fields that people "love" but which are very hard to get jobs in, such as academia, the arts, architecture, nonprofit human services work, journalism, modeling, video game design, etc. do not tend to actually make them happy in my personal observation and experience. Another point is that I think people in high-demand fields tend to have more life satisfaction.

Things I did not address: getting a degree vs. getting a job/career; are the humanities terrible?; which specific high-demand career should one choose?; what happens if one can't hack chem e/nursing school?

I don't know the answers to most of those questions. Failing out of nursing school? I really don't know what to tell you. Would it have been better if you passed as a fine arts major? Possibly. But I'm more concerned about careers than about degrees here. If you graduate with a fine arts degree and go into banking you may be better off than the nursing school dropout, if you try to seriously pursue a career as a sculptor you are probably going to be worse off, unless you have family money.

I really am not offering advice on what career to choose, besides pointing to one big superclass of jobs that are probably a bad idea to pursue and another big superclass that are probably a better idea.

Sorry this got stuck on chem e. I don't know any chiropractors, otherwise I would have used them.

I should have been clearer myself on some of this. I think the "do what you love" proponents are pretty much a poster child of survivor bias. Doesn't matter what you are attaining to, if you are able to get it, you are likely decently happy with yourself. If you failed at one thing and switch gears to another out of necessity, it is not that surprising that you would be less happy about it.

Consider the rock stars of academia in CS. Most are fairly happy and well off people with (or without, to their desire) families. Same for many studio artists. Not just the rock stars.

I think I get what you are saying, though. That to a large extent it is supply/demand. It is easier to attain a job if those two values are at least closer to equal than otherwise. Sports/musician/artist/professor/etc, in particular, are atrociously bad choices, just by the numbers.

I just fear that knowing which fields have a high demand is not enough to decide what field to go for. Many of them have higher demand than supply due to very valid reasons of physicality or mental difficulty. Though, I fully agree that this is a better decision attribute than "what do you love to do?"

I HATED chemical engineering. No idea why I finished my degree.

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