The point is that not that smart people who went into finance and law somehow fucked up. It may be a perfectly rational and good choice for them.
The point is that smart, hard-working people tend to get funneled into one of a handful of professions, and at this point, I would even include software in that handful. It would better if we had smart people also going into other, more underserved fields that are in dire need of innovation.
I would certainly include software in that same bucket. Not only would other fields be better served with more attention, but taking some of the noise out of these arguably over-crowded professions might allow for more innovation to take place within them.
With software specifically, it feels very much like a case of too many chefs in the kitchen at this point. Just look at facebook trying to build one website with 10000 engineers. It's some of the most ridiculous bullshit and it's incredibly distracting even as an outside observer. There are clean and reusable patterns that solve problems for 99.9% of use cases, but most of the discussion and energy these days is spent rehashing the same boring front-end UI story over and over and over.
Sure, I can ignore all the noise on HN, et. al. if I want to get work done, but then I risk missing out on the occasional insight that can potentially give me an integer factor increase in productivity or product quality. As it currently stands, I have to wade through a cesspool of the same boring amateur concepts on a daily basis in order to find the rare fundamental insights that meaningfully move the state of the art forward.
I'd agree with you that HN commenters missed the point here, but maybe for different reasons. I don't agree that "it would be better if we had smart people also going into other, more underserved fields that are in dire need of innovation" -- better for whom according to who? Smart hard-working people don't get passively "funneled", they make their own choices, and they seek the same things most people seek -- comfort, material security, intellectual stimulation, and societal recognition.
Now, this group also contains the more risk taking ones who want glory and outsized returns. These pioneers would go into other more underserved fields in dire need of innovation if they saw opportunity. If they don't see opportunity, there are likely structural factors in play that prohibit innovation. And these structural factors are necessarily difficult to change for any but the most already powerful subgroups of these pioneers -- any less powerful actors will be so easily dispatched by incumbents that they would be foolish to try. So they don't, because as previously established, we're talking about smart people here.
I think your point would be served better by going into more detail about just which other underserved fields are the ones that are in dire need of innovation. My previous points notwithstanding, I do believe that there still exist a significant amount of underserved fields in dire need of innovation that are also completely tractable for the more pioneer oriented group of intelligent people without requiring billionaire level resources to solve. Messy, unsexy problems that customers would jump in line to pay for. But these problems tend to be require solutions by sharp pioneer generalists with a ton of intellectual horsepower _who_ are also capable recruiting and working well with industry insiders.
Having worked at such a company before, I think it's the latter part that's rarer than the former. I can grab a bucket of sharp STEM grads from top 10 universities that could make progress on a lot of hard problems that I know folks would pay good money for, but will they have the humility, spongelike curiosity and flexibility to work well enough with top industry insiders to not just be able to keep up with them but add something unique that wouldn't be doable otherwise? That's the hard part, and I think those kinds of folks are hard to find and will always be hard to find, no matter what kind of society you have.
I've spent a lot of my career thinking about this and bouncing between low-paying and high-paying jobs. In the end, it's hard to ignore the fact that society as a whole is "commanding" us to work at the highest-paying jobs available to us (keeping in mind that some remuneration is non-monetary).
I respect people who take low-paying jobs when they don't have to. In many ways, they're donating money to society, and that's pretty damn cool of them to be doing it.
I don't know if teaching needs 'innovation', but we need to incentivize people to go into teaching more, specifically by paying them a whole bunch of money and giving them a secure environment to teach in. I'd drop out of tech immediately if I knew I could have a good salary teaching in a public school.
Innovation is not compatible with heavy regulations. The reason why so many people look towards Software is because the Internet and app stores of the world are relatively free to improvise and innovate at, compared to other industries such as Education or Healthcare or even Finance (FinTech is an island of relative freedom in the ocean of financial regulations). If you are given a choice to spend the most productive years of your life either in an industry where results of your work are most likely going to be banned by an unnamed bureaucrat, or in a software shop with a weekly public release process, the preference is obvious. Yes, the impact is smaller, yet it's out there and you know that you made it possible.
If too many smart people went to software engineering, there wouldd be a glut of them, and wages would be depressed. The opposite is observed. Reasonably good engineers are in short supply and can choose which company to join.
Maybe the only area where the (inexperienced and thus enthusiastic) supply exceeds demand is game development.
There was an article the other day that quoted someone saying, "the greatest minds of our generation are focused on making people click more ads."
And I think there's a lot of truth to that. If you work at Facebook or Google or other companies, you've been convinced that you're the best of the best. The brightest of our generation. But ultimately all your work leads to selling ads.
That's what's so attractive about Musk. He's a bizarre, often unhealthy mind. But he's dead focused on numerous businesses that have a considerably greater point than boosting ad impressions.
And I think he continues to poorly communicate that frustration: way too little of our high tech industry is focused on true innovation for the betterment of humanity. I wish there were more non-Musks we could cheer for.
My takeaway from his musings is that too many strong minds are funnelled into industries that don't push the envelope in more directions.
And I agree with musk's general point on finance. I did my M.S. in finance, I work (somewhat) in the industry still. It's a ridiculous amount of smart people basically wasting everyone's time to magically make money.
Nothing of any real value is being done.. After these many years I don't find value in people spending SO MUCH TIME AND ENERGY into "making more money out of money". That's all it is. We can talk all day about making efficient portfolios and all this bullshit.. Sure there is some value, but 99% of it is utter bullshit that is solely designed to make the rich richer. And not even just the super rich- it is even to keep the upper middle class above the "rest".
>If you work at Facebook or Google or other companies, you've been convinced that you're the best of the best. The brightest of our generation. But ultimately all your work leads to selling ads.
This may be somewhat true, but on the bright side these companies have made immense contributions to open source software. And that ultimately has a positive impact to humanity on a broad scale.
Ads served by Google and Facebook reshaped many business areas. Industries dominated by giant, vertically oriented corporations where 20 years ago, today get constantly disrupted by small enterpreneurs. I've lost count of how many success stories have I heard from people in my closest social circles, that started by baking cupcakes in their kitchen or sewing bags in their living rooms. I have several friends who earn their living by some kind of therapy-like help they advertise on Instagram.
Does all of this really have no value for society?
Maybe in the US, but in The Netherlands it's high frequency trading.
Flow Traders made 10x because of the novel corona virus. In all fairness that could've turned out very differently. The reason for that: volatility went up, but it could've easily gone down.
Senior year of Mechanical Engineering undergrad, professors would legitimately get upset with students for taking jobs in finance and consulting. They wouldn't hold back, saying quite literally "this is a waste of your education."
Ignore him. Not because finance/consulting is glamorous or high paying (it really isn't on average), but because 1. there's many ways to get value out of an education, 2. your professor won't be there for you when you need the money or want to live in a certain city. In general when people give advice but don't bear the risk, the value of their advice is dubious.
Those are entirely different concerns. A professor dedicates his career to advance his field of expertise. If you spend 5 years of your time and resources on a student teaching him to be a leading mechanical engineer but in the end after he graduates he decides to pursue a career as a pastry chef, you'd feel you wasted your time with him as well.
Is it though? The alternative being an exciting career in HVAC, which many MEs find themselves in. Those air conditioners don't install themselves. I've been there and done that, and really I have no regrets moving on from an underpaid, underappreciated field of study.
It’s easy to say that when you’re on the side lines, and not making decisions about career growth and net worth. Its also easy to say that when you don’t have student debts.
People go into finance for extremely rational reasons. Getting upset at them for that is folly.
Those professors are narrow minded. There's no such thing as a wasted education unless you do something like commit suicide or get yourself thrown in solitary confinement for life.
Legal academic Paul Campos's book Don't Go To Law School (Unless) agrees with the "too many people go into law" point: https://jakeseliger.com/2012/11/11/dont-go-to-law-school-unl.... But the number of people taking the LSAT has fallen by half since the Great Recession, at least last time I saw the data; it might have grown again since. But these days, most generically smart people who don't know what to do with their lives are probably better off doing a CS degree or coding boot camp than law school.
I don't think we should spend too much time taking Musk seriously. There are interesting discussions to be had about exponential returns and the structuring of society in a way that rewards producing things, but that's not relevant. This is just some guy trying to justify himself.
>Making a car is an honest day’s living, that’s for sure
Yes, and I'm sure the class of people who work in car factories and have seen their wealth drop further and further and further over the last 30 years really appreciate how honest their living is.
Tangential, but I think the underlying issue is that too many people (smart or not) are herded into careers they don't want, simply so they can earn enough money to have the lifestyle they want. There are very few careers in America today that will enable a "middle class" (whatever that means nowadays) lifestyle. A nice car, a vacation every once in a while, a house to call your own, etc. "Smart" people often make the decision to obtain financial success via whatever means necessary, because being poor in America is decreasingly dignified and increasingly dangerous. And there is no "middle" option. I have no proposed solutions, just some bleak observations.
I am not saying that I am smart. But I will say that I regret having gone into law.
Regret is too strong of a word. I don't regret it. Law is fun and you can make a lot of money. Who doesn't like that? But, I had been dissuaded from getting a CS degree at university. It was partly because my dad was a SWE for one of the big ones when I was young, and I was a rebellious kid who could be swayed away from something I loved in part by not wanting to be like him. And, like I said, law was a field where I could make a lot of money. Back then, I didn't realize that I could have done CS without being like him.
Rather, I regret it because I could have spent these years doing something that I loved.
Anyway, I am rectifying that now by doing a masters in cognitive science with a goal of researching human curiosity and building curious machines. In other words, I am trying to rectify the error I made the first time around where I went into something for reasons other than because I really wanted to.
I would also note that way way way too many not-smart people go into law and finance, as well. But I'm not sure there is much you can do about that.
There is a broader underlying thing going on here: Japan has removed all humanities at their universities.
There are only 4 interesting fundamental categories of knowledge: Math, Physics, Chemistry and Biology; everything else is made up by man from nothing and it will return to nothing after all surplus energy (that gave humans the possibility to dream up all that crap in the first place) is consumed!
Hang on to your knowledge of nature people; because this society is going Kansas.
Here’s an idea: don’t project your values or idea of worth on what other people choose to do with their life. You’re not as righteous as you may think you are, I guarantee it.
Here’s an idea: don’t project your values or idea of worth on what other people choose to do with their life. You’re not as righteous as you may think you are, I guarantee it.
That's pure gold! I'm putting that one in my notes!
But to play devil's advocate: Well, if you go empirical on this, then what the heck else is the Internet for, aside from porn!?
Elon’s actions are very good example why people go into those professions. He’s doing very high quality finance engineering at his companies and is constantly causing legal troubles. That ensures big demand for those professions.
Most of finance that I can see seems to consist of investment firms hiring lots of people with good credentials so that they can convince clients that the efficient market hypothesis actually doesn't apply to their firm, then making off with the profits.
There's a reason only market makers are the ones prop trading any more.
There is a cultural piece to this as well. For example in many Asian countries (particularly in Hong Kong), engineers are often confused with technicians or construction workers, which are generally not valued by the society. This perception has an impact to future generation when picking career choice.
Basically, anyone can call him/herself an engineer and they generally don’t have any engineering knowledge, training, or ethics. It’s unfortunate how devalued the engineer title has become.
Perfect timing. Elon just tweeted: “ Tesla is filing a lawsuit against Alameda County immediately. The unelected & ignorant “Interim Health Officer” of Alameda is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense!”
It might not be the choice that will change the world for the better, but it is most certainly a pragmatic one.
I don’t know about the rest of the world, but in South Africa (where I’m from) these two fields account for roughly 30% of all of our dollar millionaires. I’m sure it’s the same/similar in the developed world.
Btw, Elon Musk's entire podcast with Joe Rogan (the recent one from which this came) is an interesting listen - https://youtu.be/RcYjXbSJBN8 especially the parts where he talks about Neuralink, Mind Virus..
[+] [-] d357r0y3r|5 years ago|reply
The point is that not that smart people who went into finance and law somehow fucked up. It may be a perfectly rational and good choice for them.
The point is that smart, hard-working people tend to get funneled into one of a handful of professions, and at this point, I would even include software in that handful. It would better if we had smart people also going into other, more underserved fields that are in dire need of innovation.
[+] [-] bob1029|5 years ago|reply
With software specifically, it feels very much like a case of too many chefs in the kitchen at this point. Just look at facebook trying to build one website with 10000 engineers. It's some of the most ridiculous bullshit and it's incredibly distracting even as an outside observer. There are clean and reusable patterns that solve problems for 99.9% of use cases, but most of the discussion and energy these days is spent rehashing the same boring front-end UI story over and over and over.
Sure, I can ignore all the noise on HN, et. al. if I want to get work done, but then I risk missing out on the occasional insight that can potentially give me an integer factor increase in productivity or product quality. As it currently stands, I have to wade through a cesspool of the same boring amateur concepts on a daily basis in order to find the rare fundamental insights that meaningfully move the state of the art forward.
[+] [-] yowlingcat|5 years ago|reply
Now, this group also contains the more risk taking ones who want glory and outsized returns. These pioneers would go into other more underserved fields in dire need of innovation if they saw opportunity. If they don't see opportunity, there are likely structural factors in play that prohibit innovation. And these structural factors are necessarily difficult to change for any but the most already powerful subgroups of these pioneers -- any less powerful actors will be so easily dispatched by incumbents that they would be foolish to try. So they don't, because as previously established, we're talking about smart people here.
I think your point would be served better by going into more detail about just which other underserved fields are the ones that are in dire need of innovation. My previous points notwithstanding, I do believe that there still exist a significant amount of underserved fields in dire need of innovation that are also completely tractable for the more pioneer oriented group of intelligent people without requiring billionaire level resources to solve. Messy, unsexy problems that customers would jump in line to pay for. But these problems tend to be require solutions by sharp pioneer generalists with a ton of intellectual horsepower _who_ are also capable recruiting and working well with industry insiders.
Having worked at such a company before, I think it's the latter part that's rarer than the former. I can grab a bucket of sharp STEM grads from top 10 universities that could make progress on a lot of hard problems that I know folks would pay good money for, but will they have the humility, spongelike curiosity and flexibility to work well enough with top industry insiders to not just be able to keep up with them but add something unique that wouldn't be doable otherwise? That's the hard part, and I think those kinds of folks are hard to find and will always be hard to find, no matter what kind of society you have.
[+] [-] downerending|5 years ago|reply
I respect people who take low-paying jobs when they don't have to. In many ways, they're donating money to society, and that's pretty damn cool of them to be doing it.
[+] [-] ironman1478|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ghostwriter|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DevopsQuestions|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nine_k|5 years ago|reply
Maybe the only area where the (inexperienced and thus enthusiastic) supply exceeds demand is game development.
[+] [-] mam2|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krtong|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Waterluvian|5 years ago|reply
And I think there's a lot of truth to that. If you work at Facebook or Google or other companies, you've been convinced that you're the best of the best. The brightest of our generation. But ultimately all your work leads to selling ads.
That's what's so attractive about Musk. He's a bizarre, often unhealthy mind. But he's dead focused on numerous businesses that have a considerably greater point than boosting ad impressions.
And I think he continues to poorly communicate that frustration: way too little of our high tech industry is focused on true innovation for the betterment of humanity. I wish there were more non-Musks we could cheer for.
My takeaway from his musings is that too many strong minds are funnelled into industries that don't push the envelope in more directions.
[+] [-] mrlala|5 years ago|reply
And I agree with musk's general point on finance. I did my M.S. in finance, I work (somewhat) in the industry still. It's a ridiculous amount of smart people basically wasting everyone's time to magically make money.
Nothing of any real value is being done.. After these many years I don't find value in people spending SO MUCH TIME AND ENERGY into "making more money out of money". That's all it is. We can talk all day about making efficient portfolios and all this bullshit.. Sure there is some value, but 99% of it is utter bullshit that is solely designed to make the rich richer. And not even just the super rich- it is even to keep the upper middle class above the "rest".
/disillusioned person related to finance
[+] [-] _lbaq|5 years ago|reply
I find him very human, as flawed as the rest of us.
[+] [-] jeffnappi|5 years ago|reply
This may be somewhat true, but on the bright side these companies have made immense contributions to open source software. And that ultimately has a positive impact to humanity on a broad scale.
[+] [-] miscPerson|5 years ago|reply
Mr Musk won’t put 2.5% of his money where his mouth is. If he genuinely thought there was a problem to fix, he’d fund a demonstration of the solution.
The US government already spends $2B a year funding small business innovation across a range of industries. What more can we do?
[+] [-] golergka|5 years ago|reply
Does all of this really have no value for society?
[+] [-] bobbytherobot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] data4lyfe|5 years ago|reply
Nowadays it seems more and more common that this phrase is "Too many smart people go into working on ad optimization".
[+] [-] mettamage|5 years ago|reply
Flow Traders made 10x because of the novel corona virus. In all fairness that could've turned out very differently. The reason for that: volatility went up, but it could've easily gone down.
[+] [-] MiroF|5 years ago|reply
Maybe. At least of the East Coast elite universities, what Elon is saying here rings true to me.
[+] [-] davidwihl|5 years ago|reply
Disclosure: work on ad tech at Google. Opinion my own.
[+] [-] boltzmannbrain|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xiaolingxiao|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rumanator|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chroem-|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ashtonkem|5 years ago|reply
People go into finance for extremely rational reasons. Getting upset at them for that is folly.
[+] [-] meddlepal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jseliger|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _bxg1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clairity|5 years ago|reply
reducing it's stature and influence might lead to a more harmonious society.
[+] [-] Traster|5 years ago|reply
>Making a car is an honest day’s living, that’s for sure
Yes, and I'm sure the class of people who work in car factories and have seen their wealth drop further and further and further over the last 30 years really appreciate how honest their living is.
[+] [-] ntsplnkv2|5 years ago|reply
But I do think his point needs to be taken. We don't value engineering/science/solving hard problems enough in the US.
[+] [-] cmckn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] checkyoursudo|5 years ago|reply
Regret is too strong of a word. I don't regret it. Law is fun and you can make a lot of money. Who doesn't like that? But, I had been dissuaded from getting a CS degree at university. It was partly because my dad was a SWE for one of the big ones when I was young, and I was a rebellious kid who could be swayed away from something I loved in part by not wanting to be like him. And, like I said, law was a field where I could make a lot of money. Back then, I didn't realize that I could have done CS without being like him.
Rather, I regret it because I could have spent these years doing something that I loved.
Anyway, I am rectifying that now by doing a masters in cognitive science with a goal of researching human curiosity and building curious machines. In other words, I am trying to rectify the error I made the first time around where I went into something for reasons other than because I really wanted to.
I would also note that way way way too many not-smart people go into law and finance, as well. But I'm not sure there is much you can do about that.
[+] [-] bullen|5 years ago|reply
There are only 4 interesting fundamental categories of knowledge: Math, Physics, Chemistry and Biology; everything else is made up by man from nothing and it will return to nothing after all surplus energy (that gave humans the possibility to dream up all that crap in the first place) is consumed!
Hang on to your knowledge of nature people; because this society is going Kansas.
[+] [-] lrm242|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MiroF|5 years ago|reply
Unless you're a moral relativist, why shouldn't I do this? I find this entire attitude baffling.
If you went around assassinating people to make a living, I think I would be fine in saying that you're an asshole, no?
[+] [-] stcredzero|5 years ago|reply
That's pure gold! I'm putting that one in my notes!
But to play devil's advocate: Well, if you go empirical on this, then what the heck else is the Internet for, aside from porn!?
[+] [-] xoxoy|5 years ago|reply
Tesla is Tesla because of an army of lawyers and financial engineering.
[+] [-] justapassenger|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dasudasu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MiroF|5 years ago|reply
There's a reason only market makers are the ones prop trading any more.
[+] [-] luckydata|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thatfrenchguy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] generalpass|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woranl|5 years ago|reply
Basically, anyone can call him/herself an engineer and they generally don’t have any engineering knowledge, training, or ethics. It’s unfortunate how devalued the engineer title has become.
[+] [-] xoxoy|5 years ago|reply
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1259159878427267072?s=21
[+] [-] ycombinete|5 years ago|reply
I don’t know about the rest of the world, but in South Africa (where I’m from) these two fields account for roughly 30% of all of our dollar millionaires. I’m sure it’s the same/similar in the developed world.
[+] [-] amrrs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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