This is not the place to bicker with each other and take the thread off track. PM each other if you want to fight over personal points.*
To me, yes. Without hyperbole.
If I won the lottery I would never work in any job whatsoever. I would be retired.
How do I figure out a way to get paid a reasonable wage while doing absolutely no work?
@MaterS, eh. A large percentage of women who enter any profession quit eventually. Take a guess at how many women with HBS MBA’s are still working 20 years later. Blame culture or inadequate childcare if you like.
A lot of STEM-mies on CC seem to have a very narrow view of the skills that are in demand these days, and overlook or seem oblivious to a lot of very good careers where STEM knowledge isn’t particularly needed or valuable. They seem to think that “business” is merely the actual physical development, engineering or production of stuff, and seem to gloss over the other functions needed to run a business.
“You’re right. Maybe we should drop out of college because that’s what Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did, and they both became billionaires. Maybe we should go to Stanford for a year, leave for 3 years for a Mormon mission, then go to BYU and get an English degree because that’s what Mitt Romney did, and he’s a millionaire and a former presidential candidate.”
I think there’s no need to be sarcastic like this. This young woman isn’t getting a degree in underwater basket weaving from East Nowheresville State; she’s going to Wellesley. She’ll be fine. Even if she’s “only” an Econ or IR major. (Btw I hear some Wellesley alums have done ok for themselves in the field of IR, but maybe they were just secretaries.)
My D “only” has a government degree from Wesleyan.
My S “only” has a psychology degree from Columbia.
Neither makes a lot of money. But both are self-supporting, and happy in what they do. Why should anyone expect anything more.
“…did graduate with an engineering degree, and I can tell you how well everyone did. The best students got great positions or went into solid graduate schools, and made things work out quite well. The average and below-average people got jobs in engineering, sometimes right upon graduation and sometimes a few months later, but they earned salaries that even top performers from less lucrative fields (language, psychology, even basic sciences) would feel lucky to get.”
Lol! At the very beginning, sure, the engineers initially make more. Then, they stall out and plateau if they don’t have equally good “soft skills.”
Well, OP’s issue is with her father’s ideas and his support.
She’s right, she may make a decent salary. We’re right, it takes a path to get there. This is a rare time when I say, can we let her have her own ideas and just help her know how to get there?
@Pizzagirl
sigh Here we go again…
Not every pro-STEM post is some sort of blind STEM fanboyism. You are ascribing that quality yourself. Frankly it’s a little bit annoying because it’s not at all what anyone said. Let’s just
No one said otherwise. For example, my first post here:
No one said this. I don’t think anyone even thinks this. The only reason engineering was mentioned is because it’s in the OP. And it does pay well for what it’s worth.
I don’t think I said otherwise, at all. That point was in reference to trying to imply that if it worked for [famous person] then it will work for you in general. Not everyone who drops out of Harvard becomes Bill Gates. Not everyone who finishes Harvard Law School becomes president. I don’t see how you can think otherwise.
And on the point of the specific major:
That’s right. They plateau within a few years at a point where many others would be happy to end up at the end of their career. And a lot of them don’t plateau and find plenty of advancement well into their middle age years. If you looked at some of my points here and in the Engineering board, you’d find that I do, in fact, talk a lot about how engineering isn’t enough and that you need soft skills as an engineer too. So I don’t even disagree with that soft skills are important.
Long story short, you’re equating “STEM has its merits” with “STEM and STEM alone matters.” You’re strawmanning.
I really wouldn’t recommend this, personally. CS without having a fondness for math is very limiting. And making websites isn’t really all that inspiring, even if it does pay pretty well.
Let me put it a different way, since it seems my main point was lost here:
IF you plan to go for a major with a less defined set of career outcomes than something like engineering, accounting, law, medicine, etc., THEN you should be prepared to take the initiative to find a viable career path because your major alone won’t mean much. It won’t just come to you because you do just what you need to graduate, or because you pursue your “passion”, or because you are smart and ambitious. It requires deliberate guided effort towards a career that pays. It’s true for all fields, but especially so for “soft skills” majors and even for highly academic fields like math and science.
My kids with the “soft” majors mentioned above, did NOT have defined career paths. pretty much zero guided effort. . We did not encourage that in our family–if they had them, fine, but we did not see that as necessary for a good student. Just very smart people developing their minds and skills. And they’re both doing fine.
Poor kid has to slog through all of this to find some advice.
Her dad “believes the degree would be useless because only people living in countries outside of the USA can realistically get a job.”
He doesn’t know what an econ major can do or what IR is. If OP got as far as Amnesty jobs, look into what econ majors can do, how they play a role in business and govt right here in the US.
Engineering salaries stagnate whether you have soft skills or not. Engineers need to enter the management track to progress in salary.
Alternately engineers can start in Marketing, Sales, or Business Development and be on the fast track to career progression and significant salary increases.
Check out the Albright Institute at Wellesley. What a fabulous resource for those interested in IR. I only wish my D had been so inclined to take advantage of that resource and those connections.
Neo - I was careful to say “a lot,” not “everyone.” If the shoe doesn’t fit, please don’t wear it!
The engineering track tends to be very slow on the upper end, that’s for sure. These days, more than in the past, you can still make some very solid money being an engineer your whole life (because businesses realized that a lot of people are good engineers but bad leaders). The engineering track is still much slower, and it doesn’t go as high up as the management track, due in large part due to the fact that promotions tend to come faster in management than in engineering for a person of comparable capabilities (engineers tend to get more at any given level, but they move up much slower).
Thing is, though, there is little issue with making a lateral shift from engineering to the business side. It’s not even rare for that to happen, and in fact it’s often even better than starting from business. So if you’re looking at this from a purely monetary perspective, engineering is pretty good.
I majored in poetry and make surgeon money. You never know what will be “practical.” In my case, it turned out that creativity, curiosity, reading and writing skills, and ability to analyze and improvise were applicable to a surprising number of fields.
One of my favorite sayings:
Do what you love. love what you do.