
Don’t Know What to Do with Your Life? Seek Bargains (2012) - gamechangr
http://calnewport.com/blog/2012/02/24/dont-know-what-to-do-with-your-life-seek-bargains/
======
z-tech
What have I gained from reading this other than learn that the author is a
high achieving person? I'm a software engineer in my late twenties in America.
I would guess this blog is geared toward people like me, yet the author seems
comedically unaware that very few, remarkably close to zero people, have
opportunities like pursuing a PhD at MIT. So you chose MIT... I think most
people would have. This is just a self congratulatory story with a cheap
facade of wisdom.

~~~
paulpauper
A $28,000 MIT stipend and PHD does not seem that great..it's not that much
money. The odds of producing ground-breaking research are slim even for
someone brilliant, as the author evidently is. The $85k Microsoft offer would
probably be just enough to cover rent and other expenses, although there is
room for promotion. Its not like these are huge sums of money. Then again, I
am assuming Seattle living expenses.

~~~
majormajor
85K in 2004 would cover more than "just rent and other expenses" or I'd eat my
hat. It was a different time, with different costs, and a much less inflated
market. The author even calls it "about as much as you could possibly earn
right out of college."

MIT is obviously about the prestige and academic opportunities more than the
money.

If you're saying these aren't great options for a college senior in 2004 you
need to talk to a _lot_ of college seniors to get some perspective. Your
comment sounds like "this college student hasn't made millions of dollars or
groundbreaking research, I don't know why you think he's any different than
the average kid."

~~~
branchless
People in their 20s don't remember before the banking coup. They think it has
to be like this.

~~~
majormajor
Shit, 85K as a college grad TODAY still puts you solidly into the upper ranges
of your demographic.

If you think that's "just cover rent and expenses" money, how do you think the
people you buy coffee, food, or anything else from live??

The author also doesn't seem to discuss _what he did the 8 following years_ ,
which seems baffling.

> I didn’t know which traits I ultimately wanted in my career, but I
> appreciated that MIT would offer me more options for the career capital I
> generated.

So which traits did you build?! Tell me up front why I should listen to you if
I wanted to build a career (it's not cause you had two nice offers coming out
of college - that's why I'd listen to you if I was a high school senior).

~~~
paulpauper
Assuming Seattle living expenses which are higher than national average

~~~
mywittyname
Back then, Seattle/Redmond was much, much more affordable. In 2004, the Case-
Shiller Index for Seattle was 125, while the national index was 140 (!). Today
Seattle has a 250 index while the national index is 195.

In other words, Seattle housing went from pretty well below-average to wildly
more than average in ~15 years.

So $85k in Seattle in 2004 then would be roughly like $160k in Columbus today.

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barrkel
This article is bordering on tautological, with post-hoc rationalization.

Something is a bargain when it has a large ratio of value to cost.

The trouble with career choices is that the value is in the future - it is, at
best, only probabilistically estimable.

Thus this advice merely moves the problem from choosing between alternatives
to estimating future value of those choices. This doesn't really decrease the
problem difficulty at all.

The justification for "methodology" is post-hoc. There was no guarantee he'd
pick up rare and valuable skills in academia; to the degree that he did, using
that fact as justification is very shaky.

I've worked with a number of people who spent years in academia and came out
in varying states, some less suitable for the workplace, others enamoured with
a way of living more compatible with student life than professional life,
others more interested in digging into problems than getting things done, etc.
I think these risks are real if you're aimless on a post-grad path.

~~~
ryandrake
Survivorship Bias. Take existing successful people, ask them what they did and
what traits they had, and then draw a conclusion that those actions/traits
lead to success. Ignore the people who also did those things and had those
traits who did not meet with success.

See also: any “how to succeed in business” book like Good To Great.

------
wccrawford
I couldn't understand how the title related to the advice until I finally
looked up the definition of "bargain".

"an agreement between two or more parties as to what each party will do for
the other."

I've never, ever heard anyone use the word "bargain" in the way that the
author is doing. I can't deny that it technically fits the definition, but if
you want to be understand, I think it's important to use language the way
other people use it.

The author repeated uses the word "traits" in the body of the text instead,
and I think changing "Seek Bargains" to "Seek Traits" makes the title _way_
more understandable.

~~~
darrenf
> _I 've never, ever heard anyone use the word "bargain" in the way that the
> author is doing. I can't deny that it technically fits the definition, but
> if you want to be understand, I think it's important to use language the way
> other people use it._

This surprises me as much as the author's usage did not. Are phrases like
"bargaining chip" or "more than they bargained for" not common enough that
this sense of "bargain" is widely understood?

~~~
christotty
I think it is about the phrasing. "Seek Bargains" sounds very similar to me as
"Bargain Hunting", which would lend to an object more than a negotiation.

------
erikb
Completely agree with what is stated. Jobs where you can learn something are
much more valuable than jobs that pay well from the beginning.

I'd like to add that at least for me it was confusing how many valuable skills
I need before I can really sell myself consistently. It's not enough to just
develop in a programming language. You need to know how to QA your code, how
to project manage, how to deploy your code to users, how to sell, how to
survive office politics, and on a higher level how to survive the office
politics that happen at your customer/partner companies where you are not on-
site on a daily basis.

Not the single skill is the value, but the combination of the right skillset.
Think about it from a customer perspective. You don't pay for a car that only
screwed together correctly, it also needs to drive, it also needs to be useful
quickly to you (intuitive), and needs to get repaired if it breaks down, even
if you are the one who used it incorrectly. Only if you have the feeling you
get all of that then you will buy the car.

~~~
mkirklions
Oh boy.

I sold out and took the money to be a program manager.

I use the money to pay for my pet projects that I hope one day will explode.

Goal is to be a leader, not a laborer.

~~~
erikb
The thing is that a leader without labor experience is not a leader but an
a*hole idiot boss, and not idiot because people don't like him. More like
idiot in the traditional sense.

No, seriously. If you never went through producing anything, the trouble of
actually making it happen, the difference between the nice university theory
in contrast to the real life experience of working with people, too little
time and resources, etc. The stuff you never learn in any school because no
teacher has the experience either.

It's really hard to express, but you are completely unable to lead without
productive experience, as in show the way forward, as in organize resources,
as in understanding organizational problems.

The best laborers are what becomes the best leaders, if they learn to use
their laboring skills to improve others' performance and make people work
together in a similar direction.

------
collyw
Wow, having worked as a database guy in a number of academic institutions I
find it hard to believe that he is suggesting academia over a high paid stable
career in MS.

Maybe CS PhDs are different, but biology ones who I have worked with are low
paid, stressful, and highly competitive to get past a couple of postdoc
positions.

It might be more interesting work, but is your work the only real interest you
have in life? There is so much more to explore than sitting in front of a
screen trying to make code work.

~~~
majos
CS PhDs _are_ different than biology PhDs. They are still low-paid relative to
industry, stressful, and competitive. However, multiple postdocs in CS are
pretty uncommon, and it is not uncommon for a PhD candidate to get faculty
offers with no postdoc (though many do a year of postdocing anyway, since it's
less pressure than being junior faculty but at least twice the pay of being a
grad student).

I think a reasonable rule of thumb is that the quality of life for grad school
in area X is directly proportional to the employability of a BA/BS or MS in
area X. In CS most anybody doing a PhD at a decent school could leave for a CS
job paying at least twice as much. In biology this is less true, and in the
humanities it's even less true. IMO this explains mych of the difference in
grad student experiences across these areas.

~~~
askafriend
With CS, it's not twice as much, it's more like 4x-5x as much if it's
something like ML/AI, Security, etc.

$1mm-$5mm+ compensation packages are not rare by any means.

------
intended
If you are unsure of the next best move choose the next move which leaves you
with the most options.

The meta point being that advance programs recognize this pattern and then
judge you accordingly.

The meta meta pattern thus leads to making all your moves seem like they were
all planned from the start.

This is sort of encapsulated by a saying attributed to GE executives: “if at
first you don’t succeed, bury all evidence that you tried.”

~~~
mkirklions
Andddd this is how I wait another year and another year to have children...

~~~
52-6F-62
You're not alone.

------
csomar
Making life decisions is no different than trading Bitcoin. I learned this the
hard way. Sure there are the obvious ones: If you make a bad choice (ie: do
drugs and not save any money on your young years the trading equivalent of
"you invest in a scam ICO), it'll end badly.

But given two similarly good options, it's a shot in the dark. The OP could
have gone to Microsoft and became a CTO or CEO. Then he'll be writing how his
Phd friends wasted their time in an academic career blablabla

You can't "see into the future of something". Especially when we are talking
very long time frames (10-15 years). Someone who moved into Asia in the last
10 years would have done massive growth compared to someone who would have
invested in south America (ie: Venezuela).

------
instaheat
I took my current job for the money vs. a low paying job into a new field I've
been wanting to get into for 10 years. (Film/TV Production)

....I regret it.

~~~
gamechangr
What are you currently doing?

~~~
instaheat
Mortgage Banking.

------
dean
"the right way to build a remarkable life is to first identify the traits that
define your vision of “remarkable,” then pursue only jobs that will reward you
with these traits if and when you master rare and valuable skills."

That's a tough read. I think I read this sentence 10 times, and I still didn't
know what it meant.

Finally moved on to the rest of the article to discover that he's talking
about aspects of a job, such as having an impact.

So to rephrase, if you want to make an impact in your career, take the job
that will allow you to make an impact if you do that job very well. Substitute
'impact' for whatever aspect of a job you'd like to have. Maybe a bit obvious
when stated this way.

------
paulpauper
The article seemed to be lacking. I was hoping for actual substantive advice
than just a brief story of his career choice.

------
petra
A question about "rare and valuable skills" \- since many want to have
valuable skills, and so they become common, is the only way to get rare skills
is choosing to learn very difficult things?

~~~
dceddia
I think that's one way, but not the only way. A single specific rare and
valuable skill ("software engineering") can make you stand out, but a bundle
of related or even unrelated skills can be even better (software engineering +
design + business skill + good writer).

Scott Adams talks about combining skills like that in his book How to Fail at
Almost Everything And Still Win Big [0]. He talks about his own combination of
skills being "funnier than average" and "decent at drawing". I thought it was
a good read. His talk of systems vs goals was also very worthwhile.

0: [https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-
Still/dp/1...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-
Still/dp/1591847745)

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sharemywin
Where are they now of some of the early microsoft employees:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-1978-photo-2016-10#...](http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-1978-photo-2016-10#bob-
greenberg-left-microsoft-then-worked-on-the-cabbage-patch-kids-6)

Counterpoint to the article very few stayed at Microsoft.

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wskinner
A lot of the top comments seem to be intentionally misunderstanding the point
of the article to score cheap privilege points. Yes, the author happened to
have the luxury to choose between two objectively good options.

The core advice could be rephrased as “optimize for convexity (in the Taleb
sense)” or even, “optimize for long term rather than short term value”.

Put this way, it seems uncontroversial, as many HNers agree with these
sentiments.

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gamechangr
What are some examples of "rare and valuable" skillsets?

Programmers, Physicians, well paid musicians....

------
drharby
Skate Better: The Blog Post

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vfulco
Weird, link broken

~~~
cosmolev
works for me

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ashtube
The top comment on that article:

"This site is way better than Perezhilton.com"

Cracked me up.

