<p>Hey everybody. I'm a junior at Carnegie-Mellon, and I was wondering what everyone thought about career advice for geekier people (I'm a CS major).</p>
<p>I've done some research over the past six months, and I've concluded that pretty much <em>every</em> career is about social skills, networking, and making people like you. And <em>only</em> about social skills, networking, and making people like you. Nothing else- hard work, intelligence, experience, skill, determination- really matters that much.</p>
<p>There are one or two exceptions to this. Academia is one. But academia royally sucks as a career choice for other reasons- you'll probably be making $30,000 at age 35 with no job security, and the odds say that a majority of people who get Ph.D.s will <em>never</em> get tenure, and will be forced to go somewhere else. IT is similar- the pay is crap, you work long hours, you have no job security, and you're forced to compete against a huge number of immigrants (I have nothing against immigrants, but it makes your life much harder if there are a very large number of people applying for a limited number of jobs).</p>
<p>Consider pretty much every other field. Corporate law is all about schmoozing your corporate clients, so they'll go to your firm and not somebody else's firm. Finance is all about schmoozing CEOs and VPs at big companies, so they'll do deals with you. Big business is all about schmoozing your boss, so he'll give you the promotion and not some other guy. Consulting is all about looking impressive, marketing yourself, and being likable. Entrepreneurship is all about getting people to invest in you, and you do that with social skills, networking, and getting people to like you. Politics and entertainment should go without saying. Et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam.</p>
<p>holy crap my dad and i had a big discussion about this last night. I was saying that everything is about politics these days while he argued that all that matters is hard work and technical expertise. While I’d have to agree with him to an extent for some technical jobs, I think everything else really comes down to politics and relationships if you want to get anywhere.</p>
<p>In all fields you still have to know what your are doing to be successful. The fluff runs out quickly when you loose someone money in finance, or someone goes to jail in law. A lot of business and legal marketing is based on referrals but you can’t get referrals if you screwed you clients because of your incompetence. Even your friends will resist referring you if you don’t show that you work hard, are intelligence, have experience, skill, determination, blah, blah, blah. This is so because your friends want to protect their reputation and build favors with quality referrals so they can do well too.</p>
<p>It appears easier because you know little about the fields you have been researching. All of those successful people put in thousands of hours in school, thousand of hours in continued education, and thousands of hour doing the “dirty work” all just to get noticed. Once they get noticed the work gets harder before it gets easier.</p>
<p>“The fluff runs out quickly when you loose someone money in finance, or someone goes to jail in law.”</p>
<p>Tell that to Bernie Madoff, who ran an <em>obvious</em> scam for <em>fifteen years</em> before getting caught, because he was really darn good at schmoozing rich people.</p>
<p>You appear to be unfamiliar with how corporate law works. (Indeed, you seem to be unaware that there is a huge gulf between ordinary law and corporate law.) In corporate law, most of the time, the case never goes to trial; the agreement is worked out behind closed doors, where schmoozing ability is everything.</p>
<p>“It appears easier because you know little about the fields you have been researching.”</p>
<p>Says the person who doesn’t know about the difference between regular law and corporate law.</p>
<p>“All of those successful people put in thousands of hours in school, thousand of hours in continued education, and thousands of hour doing the “dirty work” all just to get noticed. Once they get noticed the work gets harder before it gets easier.”</p>
<p>If you go to work at a company that uses highly technical people, hen your technical expertise will be appreciated. If you don’t schmooze, you won’t get promoted into management, but you probably wouldn’t want that job anyway. Ask prospective employers about career tracks for technical experts.</p>
<p>Most technical jobs aren’t in big cities. They’re in outlying communities from those cities.</p>
<p>Also, just because houses sell for that much doesn’t mean you have to live in one that costs that much.</p>
<p>Also, for someone as enlightened as yourself, you should know academia is far from being free of politics. It’s not uncommon for people to be denied tenure due to their research conflicting with other people in the department or just for nobody getting along with them. How do you think collaborations between faculty members and different universities happens? How about people winning various awards and grants? It’s not necessarily because their research is the best, a lot of it is their ability to broadcast what they’re doing out to anyone that will listen.</p>
<p>I also imagine with corporate law you at least need to show it would be cheaper for them to settle out of court than to go through with a whole trial. While it’s certainly heavier on the interpersonal skills than, say, accounting, I imagine there are also other skills required than just being a warm body.</p>
<p>Also just gonna say now this feels like a massive ■■■■■, and I’m both sad and happy they chose my alma mater as their claim of current school.</p>
<p>By “appreciated”, do you mean “we’ll actually pay you enough to live on”?</p>
<p>Yes, but not enough for a million dollar home. Get real - most people live in homes 1/5 that cost (or less). Commute or live in a cheaper appt. till you can afford more.</p>
<p>I’ve worked in software engineering since the mid 1980s and I know a lot of engineers
with really bad, bad and mediocre social skills. They make very good money for our
location (40 miles outside a major metro) and many are wealthy from stock options.</p>
<p>You’re fortunate as you’re majoring in an area where job prospects are decent with
a good future outlook and you’re at a very well-known school for this major. Coming
out of school, I’d suggest looking in areas where you’ll really enjoy the work. This
could be at a startup, a big company, an engineering company, or your own company.
If you do well at your job, the money should eventually come along. The social skills
should come along too, especially if you work on them.</p>
<p>The economy is uncertain right now but you have better opportunities ahead than do
most.</p>
<p>CRYPTOLOGY!! that’s the field to go into. part of the job description is being able to work by yourself, a.k.a with no people bothering you! i’m seriously considering it…</p>
<h1>1. accept your geekiness and take a tech job path. you will be comfortable, afford a reasonably sized home, a toyota corolla etc. you will be able to raise a family, earn a decent living (like 120k/yr), and have interesting work. however, you will forever be a grunt at work (not rise up into management) and you will not have a prestigious place in society (which could affect everything from dating to local social clubs). this can be a good trade-off for some and i have seen many engineers in their 30’s/40’s who are quite happy with their life. they put in their “9-5” and then go home and spend time w/ family.</h1>
<h1>2. FIX your geekiness. it really is a choice. you can develop socially by joining clubs, dressing nicer, etc. if you can do CS at carneige mellon you can figure this **** out; it is not very complicated. if you manage to couple your intellect with social skills, you can really go far (ex going for a top MBA and making bank). you will be very successful, make a ton of cash, and be well accepted by society. of course this would require effort and you may not think its worth it, your choice.</h1>
<p>fyi, law is often considered a “geeky” field, at least relative to business. law school admissions is all about grades and standardized test scores, which do not generally go hand-in-hand with social skills. there are also areas of law that seem to attract “geeks” who excel in them (like tax law or patent law). if you put in an effort to increase your salesmanship you should be fine. intelligence is also VERY important because corporate law is reserved for grads from the best law schools, which require amazing grades and test scores to gain admission.</p>
<p>Actually your payments will be about $5,300 with 20% down (and most banks these days won’t finance you without 20% down). That said, you need about $12,500 a month net income to support that mortgage payment. I don’t know any programming job that will pay $210k net of tax before the age of 40. This may be reasonable for a dual income family but probably not wise to stretch that much. I don’t think techies go beyond $150k generally.</p>
<p>Tax law is for geeks? Awesome. Glad to hear there’s a place for introverted lawyers in the legal profession :D</p>
<p>Besides, programming jobs suck. You’re better off going into IT consulting. And by the way, tech companies don’t have offices in the downtown core of the big cities. That’s law firms and investment banks and consulting firms and accounting firms. Tech companies are usually in the outlying suburbs (especially the “tech” part, see Silicon Valley, Redmond, WA-home of Microsoft, Westchester, NY-home of IBM, outlying Boston suburbs) allowing you to live in the outlying exurbs where houses are cheaper and more plentiful and still have a decent commute.</p>
<p>I know many that are able to afford million dollar homes but that was mainly from stock options in the last 20 years. I know a few that have truly hit it big (tens to hundreds of millions of dollars).</p>
<p>That’s probably 1 in 100,000 though. Even rarer. Statistical outliers. For every 1 company that made it big, there are probably 100 that failed. In general, programmers make a comfortable living but probably can’t afford $1 mil homes by themselves. The ones that hit it big probably paid cash for their McMansions out in Cupertino anyways.</p>
<p>But hey, if you can find the next Google, go for it.</p>
<p>It used to be on in ten at Microsoft. I’d guess that it’s about one in twenty in the building where I work.</p>
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<p>Let’s say that your typical programmer makes $100,000 after 5 years. Most of the people where I work have at least a masters degree. That leaves you with $3 million after thirty years. Combine that with another professional earner in the household and you have a lot of income to work with. Let’s also say that you get stock options on a regular basis. You will pick them up when the stock is low and when it was high. If there’s enough volatility in the stock over the long-term, it’s hard not to win. Most of the millionaires around here did their jobs well over the long haul and the money just came along - not all at once. Look at the long term, enjoy your job and do your best at it and the rewards will come. Maybe a million-dollar home is in your future and maybe it isn’t. But you can still have a lot of fun in life without it.</p>
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<p>The statistics on millionaires were published this month and the percentages by state were quite interesting. I think that NJ was at the top with NH, MA and CT in to the top 10. California was in the top ten as well with the highest absolute number.</p>
<p>Great post. I agree with each point wholeheartedly.</p>
<p>Now for my own thoughts: Have you looked into proprietary trading firms? These days it’s more important to know CompSci than it is to know about finance/trading with these firms. If you’re smart enough, they’ll teach you how to be a good trader/algorithmic programmer and you will make bank. Interviews are all brain teasers and probability questions. Extremely competitive, but schmoozing is not necessary because a lot of these firms don’t interact with clients. They are trading their own money for their own profit. If you are smart and are perceived by the firm to be able to make them money, you will get a job (as long as you do not completely suck socially, but for that see BostonEng’s post on how to fix your geekiness).</p>
<p>Can someone comment about programming/IT/cryptology long term? I was initially wanting to pursue that path but heard that the field is for young people and you become more obsolete as you grow older…</p>