The answer to this question goes in waves, according to the zeitgeist, and mirrored by the (ridiculous) starting salaries on offer. Someone might put approximate years to these, but by my reckoning these are what we've witnessed over the past several decades, in rough chronological sequence of their peak vogue. There's obviously overlap.
- McKinseys and the like
- Tech, of the NASDAQ tech-boom vintage: (various flavours during that run, but at one time B2B was the thing)
- Investment banks
- Green investment vehicles
- Hedge funds
- "Blockchain" (as a buzzword) / crypto
- Commodities trading (as a specific hedgie emphasis)
- "AI" (as a buzz-phrase) / LLMs
Now, it seems, space flight has a massive vogue. This one differs a bit, because to enter this field at least a high percentage of recruits will need to be decent engineers of one stripe or another - actual hard graft! For some of the others, BS + "potential" were the criteria; although the ability to do Hard Sums also featured.
So - what do your bright young acquaintances all aspire after? What is going to cream off / trendily waylay the next generation of ambitious wannabes?
ND
Difficult to say, as none of my kids, though bright, are terribly ambitious cash-wise. Foolish IMHO, as without cash they'll never have the life their parents had. A uni friend bought a house "oop North" for £400 in 1976!
ReplyDeleteBoth mine are long past that stage (#1 = double 1st from Cambridge, #2 = 2.1 Cardiff).
ReplyDeleteI'd advise any youngster today with a decent brain who isn't into STEM but can do relatively hard sums to leave school at 18 and get a small, local accounting firm to put them through AAT and ACC/ACA on the job. By age 25 latest they'll be a "fully qualified" Accountant with no debt. Then get some business experience doing management accounting. At that point the world is their oyster.
Absolutely agree. Unless you’re very, very bright and capable of getting the best degree in the most challenging of subjects or your career preferences mean you must, unavoidably, get a degree then most are not only a colossal waste of time and money, but also deprive you of several extremely productive years in real world job experiences
DeleteI'm too old to have experienced these waves of piracy. But I do remember as an undergraduate that a bloke in the year ahead decided to go to Harvard to get an MBA.
ReplyDeleteHow everyone hooted! That would suit a plonker like him! How would you like him as your boss? You couldn't trust him an inch! Etc.
What became of the other people I knew? The most exciting was a chap who I saw on TV being put in a paddy wagon having just been found guilty of the attempted murder of his wife "using his skills as a biochemist".
Who on earth married him? The girls in our classes gave him a wide berth on the grounds that he obviously wasn't right in the head.
The most dismal was a classmate killed in an African war.
As someone who has been pretty scathing about AI, I am currently involved in an agentic one - no exciting images, no making movies or songs, but doing nuts and bolts stuff.
ReplyDeleteIf I have the measure of it, it could be an actual useful application of it, and so money making.
As for what to get in to, coding is still a good job for those with a brain and if they're willing to move, places like Malta are crying out for them.
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ReplyDeleteAnother country, preferably one not doomed by the looming end of the West....
ReplyDeleteOff topic, this article explains clearly - and even to a layman such as I who whilst born speaking Pure Maths fluently, never got a handle on Practical Maths or Physics - why NetZero can NEVER work (though maybe if we cover the country with inertial wheels?
https://richardlyon.substack.com/p/the-physics-of-net-zero
Never predict, especially the future.
ReplyDeleteA few random thoughts. I doubt space travel will be really big. Going to Mars seems a total waste of effort. No one will be building transgalactic transporters or time travellers. Low orbit - useful but crowded.
The key sectors will as usual be sex, money and power. Sex has a sell by date but money and power still look good. We do seem to have a permanent class who get to Harvard or Stanford or Oxbridge and then into the money and power trades. Repeat ad nauseam. Whether they are any more intelligent than us chavs seems doubtful, the game is to get on top and make sure your genes stay there. Better trained and experienced yes.
Combinations of the old and the new probably successful. A relative is combining advertising and marketing with AI skills. All the better to flog stuff and nonsense to the masses.
A difficulty is that a lot of things now require complex tools to make anything of them. Harder and harder to understand how the tools really work. Textbooks and uni courses will fade away, no need. There may develop an under-market for those who take the effort to tunnel through the complexity - and subvert or exploit. So we go on.
And again, off topic, but pertinent.
ReplyDeleteLils was driving home last night, c6pm, listening to Talk Radio. Whoever was interviewing a former SPAD to Starmer
SPAD said two extraordinary things, in one way anyway, that this was a Labour man...
1. Starmer is a hollow man (I long ago clocked that he is personality disordered)
2. He lies and lies (see above)
Well as noted, most get this now. But again, this was a Labour man, and Starmer's SPAD.
He also said that he and Rache from Account will gone long before 2029. But who replaces them? And will that mean any less damage to the country.