Passion vs. Money

College Majors Business Major
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<ol>
<li><p>plscatamacchia, is there something i am saying that is false? if so…please let me know. otherwise…shut up</p></li>
<li><p>my mom is a former professor at Harvard Law School and is now a professor at Stanford Law School. My dad went to Berkely for undergrad and Stanford for grad majoring in business and economics, and he is a current entrepreneur…</p></li>
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<p>so trust me. one dinner conversation with those two and i know a whole lot more about college and business than the average high school student</p>

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<p>We aren’t average high school students.</p>

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<p>They can conduct themselves as a S-Corp and/or LLC and be a business on one employee. Of course, they have to have a stellar past work history and willing to take the risk of having their contract ended at anytime. They are independent contractors acting as subcontractors. They are basically cutting out the “middle man” which would be working for the defense corporations like Boeing, Northrop Grumman, CSC, Lockheed, etc.</p>

<p>The insurance part would be that their is company incorporated as an LLC. They can definitely charge 40 hours a week. If they choose, they can hire others to work for them but usually a new employee working for a company that small would ask for more money because the benefits are not as good as the Boeings, Lockheeds, etc. I know myself, I have a different asking price between small start-ups and big corporations.</p>

<p>Now for myself, I will admit that I am not too risky and hid under a big corporation when the economy went down.</p>

<p>I guess the MAIN thing I should have said is that you need a top-secret security clearance with a polygraph to do business with the INTEL agencies.</p>

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<p>And? Your knowledge is based off of what you’ve read or what your super-parents have told you. You have no knowledge of what you’re talking about, besides awesome dinner time conversations about entrepeneurship classes and what it takes to start a business.</p>

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<p>how do i not have knowledge of it? i probably know a whole lot more about college admitions, college corses, and the entire college strucutre than most people do. Just beacuse someone’s in college doesnt mean they, and only they, understand everything about college</p>

<p>plus im not talking about what being in college is like, im talking about class structure…soo…</p>

<p>again, am i saying anything incorrect?</p>

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<p>I switched from engineering major since engineers are mostly antisocial or below the people who make the decisions, which are the business majors. And I am more of a big picture kind of person than a detail-oriented person. </p>

<p>Anyway, does anyone know any lucrative careers in business besides big 4 partner or investment banking?</p>

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<p>That made me lol</p>

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<p>Well, typically I would expect that LLC’s would be <em>required</em> to carry some kind of malpractice insurance if their contract work was the kind that generates lawsuits on occasion. </p>

<p>At any rate, I think the further you get from big organizations where recruiting, career paths, and salary are well known, the less you are realistically able to plan based on website advice when you are 18 years old. If you want to work at the Big Four…go to a top 25 school with a 5 year masters program, get good grades, be an officer in Beta Alpha Psi, apply, etc ---->great chance of success. The steps to starting your own successful business or consulting practice or whatever…that’s for hour long conversations with people who have done just that…not websites where barely anyone is past their entry level job yet.</p>

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<p>Actually, I was posting about I.T. independent contractors in response to the postings that said that you could not make much money in engineering.</p>

<p>Another thing I wanted to post is that managers of engineers, especially engineers who are doing INTEL contracting for the Feds do NOT always make more money. Yes, they are the decision-makers but US engineers do not care about that. We can basically go from employer to employer anytime because of out skill-set.</p>

<p>In fact, many engineers contracting in INTEL were former managers, I.T. directors and the such from the private sector and are now just grunt engineers in the INTEL world because we get more money and less responsibility.</p>

<p>$150k without anyone reporting to you >>>> $120k and worrying about 50 other folks.</p>

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<p>I see…thanks for the advice jonahrubin. It is good to know the creative, instinctual types can make it along with the cookie cutter gpa linear progression folks.</p>

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<p>Prothero: Management consulting = big picture.</p>

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<p>Have to be at a target school for that, though.</p>

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<p>I’m going to go ahead and disagree with some of the people here saying you will get rich with an Engineering degree. No you wont. Most engineers are in non-management position and are quite expendable. Engineers in upper management, which means you get an MBA after a few years of laboring away for your employer, would get you closer to an income, that can make you rich, albeit in the long-term with conservative spending habits and smart investing, you can definitely retire as a millionaire. </p>

<p>If you like BMW M3’s withe the Dinan package (or Horsepower Freaks 4.0), a Ferrari with a Rosso Novitech tuning package, a house on Diamond Head Beach, Oahu, vacationing in Europe, all at an early age, you are going to be disappointed going into Engineering. However, if you get an engineering degree, and start your own company based on skill sets you have learned, or a sector you have worked in, then you can definitely make it to that echelon. Working for somebody in a JOB (journey of the broke) isn’t going to get you into the top 1%, in most cases. Sure there are the lawyers who make partner (small percentage of overall lawyers), the doctors who build successful practices while working for a hospital, but most people in the 1% are into starting businesses / managing businesses rather than working for somebody else. Upper management is another sector, where if you get in early, you can make it big. However, the positions are limited, and require a lot of political maneuvering to secure. </p>

<p>To get a good idea of what it takes to climb to the top of the money ladder or even half-way there, check out the Forbes 400, and look into the biographies of the individuals who didn’t inherit their money.</p>

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<p>^Can you post a link? It is interesting to see.</p>

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<p>arplayer, I don’t think anybody should be making decisions to do anything based on the goal of being super-rich, especially since the dotcom boom is over. What we can do is make somewhat informed choices of how to start out a decent job, the one we prefer over other decent jobs based on our knowledge of ourselves, and maybe shoot for one of those 2-3% spots that go to the best. “Start a wildly fantastic company, have a great IPO, drive ferraris and bang models” is a lot harder to achieve than the following:</p>

<p>Go to a target school for the Big Four, get 3.5+, get hired, kiss ass for 15 years, -----> Partner, buy Ferrari</p>

<p>Go to Ivy League, get good grades in math, go to Wall Street, work 100 hours a week(maybe have to go get MBA after 3 years), buy Ferrari, </p>

<p>Go to a good school, go Pre-Med or major in biology, do well on MCAT and get into good medical school, do well as an resident and become a specialist in a field where you get paid a lot ----->buy ferrari, hope Obamacare gets canceled</p>

<p>Go anywhere, get a really high GPA, get a high LSAT, go to a top 14 school(higher is better), be in the top 25% and on Law Review, get BigLaw job, work 100 hours a week and kiss ass ----->Partner, buy ferrari</p>

<p>Go to a good engineering school, do well, get cool job, go get a top 7 MBA, be a management consultant, go to Wall Street, or go into industry related to your old job and try to be CEO someday -----> buy ferrari</p>

<p>It’s not rocket science and 98% of the people on these paths aren’t going to end up with the Ferrari, but they’ll probably end up in the middle class and happy enough. You can always start your own company after you’ve worked for the man for a few years.</p>

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<p>^</p>

<p>My advice is pretty straight forward. If you are interested in the business world and want to make money, versus just working in on field the rest of your life, then look at those who succeed in doing so.</p>

<p>You aren’t reading their biographies to become exactly like them,but instead to see what the common denominators are in their successes, so you yourself can attain a piece of the pie. If you are fortunate enough to become like one of them, then that is reward of your efforts. If your goals are of mediocrity from the beginning, then you won’t be disappointed if the life of grandeur doesn’t pan out, as you won’t really be trying to attain it. </p>

<p>Everybody dreams of Ferrari’s as a kid, but how many actually work towards getting one? Most people go to college, and then life takes over and their lofty ambitions start getting replaced with normal ambitions. I would have to say that the people that are in the 1% of America, didn’t give up their goals and ambitions as easily as most do, and worked hard for their money if it wasn’t inherited. Of course they got lucky, but that’s what happens when you work hard. </p>

<p>To each his own. Some people do want to make a lot of money, because for them, experiencing the best life has to offer, is a priority. If they are ambitious enough and want to work that hard, which most people don’t, they should reap the rewards. If our current economic times have taught us anything, relying on an “employer” to provide for you and your family isn’t in anyone’s best interest, as the employer is always thinking about their own bottom line. Period. It’s much smarter to bite the bullet and look into self-employment, than to rely on somebody else, whose main concern isn’t your you.</p>

<p>“If you shoot for the stars and hit the moon, it’s okay. But you’ve got to shoot for something. A lot of people don’t even shoot.” -Robert Townsend</p>

<p>“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” Thomas Jefferson</p>

<p>PS - Link to Forbes 400. [The</a> Richest People In America - Forbes.com](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/30/forbes-400-gates-buffett-wealth-rich-list-09_land.html]The”>The Richest People In America)</p>

<p>There is a mini biography on each individual on the website linked above, but you will have to do some goggling to get a more complete information.</p>

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<p>LOL @ thinking all engineers in upper-management make more than engineers not in management. Hell, if your I.T. specialization is in hot demand, the employers place you in the upper-management position while NOT assigning employees to report to you JUST so they can pay you the market rates.</p>

<p>Ever heard of sub-contracting?..being a company of “1” and getting that government contracting rate all to yourself?</p>

<p>Ever heard of cleared/INTEL work?..where there are contracts that NEVER get funding cuts?</p>

<p>And all you have to do is have a degree and pass a polygraph. No “target” schools. No 3.9999999 GPA. No competition stress. No MBA needed.</p>

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<p>Fair enough. To be clear, my position is that if one is choosing moons to shoot at, it’s safer to shoot at the CEO/CFO/LawPartner/Big4Partner/BrainSurgeon moons because I think if you do that and end up in the 50th percentile of your fellow shooters, you’ll probably end up better than the 50th percentile of the entrepreneurs. </p>

<p>I also think that if one doesn’t really WANT to be a self-employed entrepreneur, you will be happier not being one even if you think you’ll make more money or have some other benefits doing it. Same with most of the other choices I gave(mainly doctor or lawyer). Accounting, engineering, IT, other disciplines require less investment up front, and I think it’s easier to switch into other roles when you start with those. Doctors and lawyers accumulate a lot of debt and spend a lot more years before figuring out they don’t like their jobs or aren’t good at them, and after 3 years of a failed self-employment effort you’ve got a lot less to show for it than someone with 3 years of unhappy public accounting/engineering/IT consulting or whatever.</p>