
The jobs that really smart people avoid - arcanus
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/12/the-jobs-that-really-smart-people-avoid/
======
qwrusz
More clickbait bullshit from the Washington Post.

Took a study about MIT graduates: some stayed doing research after graduation
and others went into finance. So yes not all MIT graduates go into finance.
Misleading and inaccurate study of MIT students and what finance is and
whatever "really smart" might mean.

Article says zero about job(s) that smart people avoid.

Whatever smart people are doing they are not at the Washington Post. But their
boss Jeffy Bezos is a Wall St guy, and smart. His strategy of turning the
WashPo into the HuffPo Insider but with a better rolodex and even less ethics
seems to be going solid from a biz standpoint.

~~~
findjashua
"His strategy of turning the WashPo into the HuffPo Insider but with a better
rolodex and even less ethics seems to be going solid from a biz standpoint."

As if that isn't bad enough to avoid them, consider that they're also calling
for prosecution of their own source:
[https://theintercept.com/2016/09/18/washpost-makes-
history-f...](https://theintercept.com/2016/09/18/washpost-makes-history-
first-paper-to-call-for-prosecution-of-its-own-source-after-accepting-
pulitzer/)

I've pretty much started ignoring anything published by them.

~~~
sunstone
Confirmation (bias) of my creeping suspicion that the WashingtonPost has been
picking up speed in the race to the bottom.

------
nostrademons
Five possible headlines that could all fit the data presented in this article,
all of which would make excellent clickbait:

"The billion-dollar mistake top MIT grads make: staying in research."

"Finance makes top students lazy."

"Success in life not determined by how smart you are, study shows."

"Finance industry's 'best and the brightest' aren't actually the best and the
brightest."

"The jobs that really smart people avoid."

All of these have a different slant, but all of them could be supported by the
facts presented in the article. Which interpretation do you prefer?

~~~
qaq
Want to start a "news" site :)?

~~~
nostrademons
Economics are terrible, though I'm wondering if there could be a market for a
markov-chain or recursive-neural-network based site that just generates
clickbait from the millions of training examples on the web.

~~~
sogen
[https://signalvnoise.com/posts/985-custom-cnn-t-
shirts](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/985-custom-cnn-t-shirts)

------
S4M
I have another hypothesis the article didn't mention: students who want to do
research focus more on their studies while the ones planning to go to Wall
Street do the bare minimum to get an acceptable grade (whatever "acceptable"
is for the Wall Street institutions) and spend the rest of their time
networking, preparing for job interviews in banks, or just enjoying life.

EDIT: spelling

~~~
martey
From the article:

" _Shu noticed that since the Great Recession, after Wall Street careers had
lost of some of their luster, newer classes of MIT students became more likely
to major in science and engineering subjects — and their grades were better,
too. This effect was most pronounced among the weaker students. Shu has a
hunch that some students had been slacking off in their classes because they
anticipated working in finance, not science, after graduating._ "

~~~
throwaway729
"slacking off" implies non-productivity, whereas S4M posits high productivity
applied toward different goals.

------
echelon
I absolutely hate these new "N articles a month" paywalls. Using the "web"
link is now ineffective because Google AMP also functions as a paywall.

What if click on an article to skim it and don't really want to read it?
Sometimes I just want to gather some context for the HN discussion. Or perhaps
I'll immediately decide it's not something I'm actually interested in. That
counts against whatever number of reads they're tracking.

You might argue that I should pay for the website and the journalism it
supports. Sure, if half of what I was clicking wasn't click bait. Maybe it's
just me, but I have yet to find a website that I'd want to pay. (I'd pay for
HN.)

To be clear, I do find some journalism to be great, but it isn't uniform in
quality or relevance to my interests at any given news outlet. Not to the
point where I'd pay for a monthly subscription to every news site for a chance
to read the handful of things I want to. I might support microtrasactions if
that were a thing. I wouldn't mind five or fifteen cents here or there. But
that's never taken off.

These websites are taking valuable space on the HN front page, and they're
hosting content I (and presumably others) can't even read! They're like
viruses. I don't want them to show up. I wish we would ban them.

 _Edit:_ I usually don't make voting appeals, but I'm not sure why I'm being
downvoted. This is an earnest call for discussion about an issue I feel is a
pain point for many HN readers. You might disagree with me, but that shouldn't
necessitate a downvote. I haven't been disrespectful, and I welcome different
opinions on the matter. I'd prefer a comment expressing why I'm wrong.

I view links to WaPo and the like as an inequitable and unsolicited tax on HN
readers. Students especially are impacted by these paywalls.

~~~
ejlangev
It is annoying, I've been using
[https://www.eff.org/privacybadger](https://www.eff.org/privacybadger) from
the EFF to help with this and other online tracking. I just disable cookies or
block the parts that track your article counts on various news sites. Agree
with the general point though, I'd be happy to subscribe if less of the
content was clickbait nonsense.

------
rootusrootus
It sounds simple enough. The more driven someone is, the more passionate about
their area of study, the better they perform. Better grades, etc. And since
they're so passionate about the field, they don't have much interest in moving
over to finance.

------
tschellenbach
The real issue here is that there is no economic incentive for many types of
research. The more low level the research, the harder it is the reap the
commercial benefits from your discoveries. Technological progress is one of
the factors that drives long term economic growth, but we didn't find a good
way yet to encourage it. (To clarify, this only applies to low level/basic
research.)

~~~
curun1r
The other issue is just how much incentive there is in finance, which doesn't
actually create anything of value. I get that allocating capital to where it's
needed is a thing that needs to happen and there needs to be incentives to
make it happen...I'm not for medieval prohibitions on usury, but if the 20%
number quoted in the article is accurate, that seems dysfunctional. Given how
often capital isn't being allocated effectively in the US, your example being
just one of many, it seems like we're paying an awfully high premium for that
function in today's society.

------
BlackJack
The article neglects to mention that 15-40% [1][2] of graduating classes at
elite schools go into finance. That's a staggering number.

Sure the top students are going into research careers/PhDs, but the
banking/consulting/tech recruiting engine is very strong for the rest. I think
there are many people who could have productive roles in
science/engineering/teaching/etc without getting PhDs who end up in
tech/finance instead due to the strong recruiting pressure and great job
perks/prestige.

[1] [https://www.marketplace.org/2014/03/20/education/top-
student...](https://www.marketplace.org/2014/03/20/education/top-students-
turning-down-wall-street-life). [2]
[https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/out-of-
harvard...](https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/out-of-harvard-and-
into-finance/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0)

~~~
vaveh
I think it's quite common for CS grads to choose finance as a second choice
after the big tech companies. Few people see it as an exciting as these banks
try to portray themselves. I know several people who took an offer from a big
four company to leave from a bank the first chance they got.

------
laxatives
Are patents really a great indicator of success? I have a handful, and
honestly its a much stronger indicator of networking/coworker
relationships/legal force of a company. There a number of key people missing
on many of the patents I am co-inventor purely based on these relationships.
These patents also would never exist, if not for the legal team at the
purchasing company. If the organization went for an IPO or alternate exit, the
odds of patents are probably close to zero.

------
ktRolster
_Firms like Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch spend lavishly on Ivy League
headhunting, tempting students with fancy dinners, promises of prestige — and,
most importantly, the idea that there exists a safe template for their post-
grad lives._

I didn't realize thy were pushing so hard.

------
mjfl
> People going into finance were less likely to say they gained an “in-depth
> knowledge of a field” or that they better understood “the process of science
> and experimentation” after their four years at MIT.

Maybe that's because most jobs on Wall Street aren't that technical? A huge
part of the job of an investment banker is learning how to socialize with rich
folks and sell investment products to them. The president of Morgan Stanley
gave a talk at my college and made it very explicit: "At Morgan Stanley, you
are a salesman first". That's what the job is.

------
prymitive
Who are those mythical "smart people"? I keep hearing about their habits all
the time. Are they related to "successful people" in any way? Discovery
doesn't have any documentaries on them yet.

------
huac
"Students destined for Wall Street tended to arrive at MIT with weaker high
school records, and later graduated with lower college GPAs."

This is also true at Wharton! The really high GPA kids go to consulting
instead.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
My experience has been the opposite, and more in line with the article. High
IQs go to research, high EQs go to banking and the others consult.

~~~
huac
I meant this mostly as a joke, Wharton kids don't get PhD's. Though here, the
really smart kids do go to quant finance, so maybe we're just playing at a
lower part of the curve than MIT.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
I was a quant trader and hired quants out of MIT, _et cetera_. I never found
them as brilliant as MIT's proper engineers nor as creative (or savvy) as
other schools' proper financiers. (Part of the effect may arise from pure
finance aspirants focussing less on their studies than research aspirants.)

------
moomin
Anecdote: a (very able) friend of mine was at a technical conference and
attended a talk given by an HFT firm. His take was "The tech's pretty
interesting, but all it seems to do is make money."

But what do I know, I'm a second tier guy working in the finance sector. :)

------
gandutraveler
Writer doesn't seem to understand the difference between smart and intelligent
and hardworking.

I've come across many intelligent and hardworking guys who lacked basic
smartness

------
andrewclunn
Sneaking suspicion that it's the legacy students (see got in on daddy's money)
students who go into finance.

------
aisofteng
The article neglects to compare how many academic jobs there are with how many
people get degrees that are supposed to qualify them for them, and instead
skips to blaming Wall Street first, then imply that people that go to work on
Wall Street are stupid.

This would be poor journalism if it were journalism in the first place.

------
sjg007
If you can get into a PhD program at a top school like MIT or Harvard or
Stanford then you should absolutely go. Otherwise the evidence is less clear.
I think med school is actually the best place to go if you are smart, educated
in the US...

------
owebmaster
I avoid Washington Post. Am I smart?

~~~
AznHisoka
I generally do not read articles that provide data or uncover an insight if
they are written by journalists.

Experts usually dont become journalists in their field. For example a writer
for thr WashingPost are not usually experts in the implications of nuclear
war, or psychological tendencies of humans.

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splike
The article doesn't even try to answer the question in the title.

------
Overtonwindow
They forgot one: Politics.

