patrick.net

Heraclitusstudent says

so overwhelm by illusions

Nice try, the illusions are the ideas that you're detached from the world affecting you. Otherwise, you would have had zero emotional reaction to the threads on romantic relationships, STEM work in America, and a lot of other stuff.

No, you're attached. just like the monk who told the other monk about why he carried the woman across the river.

The other monk responds ... "I put her down on the other bank. You didn't carry her at all, but she is still on your back."

I think I sort of understood where Heraclitusstudent was coming from, although he was blunt about it. But also, it wasn't really contradicting you.

I think his point was why Prestige ? There are many people who value knowledge and wisdom more than anything in life, not to mention technical skills, and yet have no interest in being seen as intellectually superior to others.

MY reaction was similar. The Prestige, that is what other people think of you, is not a good reason doing anything in life. Or at least many of us think it shouldn't be nearly ones highest priority. But money and material success certainly can be liberating, and that kind of liberation certainly has some prestige attached to it.

I do see some of the drawbacks of STEM. It's hard to count on career growth in middle age and beyond. But I could see that easily changing as many technologies mature, and as the tech world in general grows and matures.

Also, I take issue with the notion that tech nerds don't have good taste or appreciate beauty. I think the opposite is true and that there is a lot of diversity among engineers, such as say software developers.. Sure, Steve Jobs brought an aesthetic and design sense to personal computing and other tech gadgets. But that isn't that amazing. IT's really just a certain specific kind common sense he had, and was driven by. I'm not saying there was no genius to what he did, but in my view he was very much in the engineering realm. To talk about it as if he brought an aesthetic aspect into an engineering world that would normally have been deeply opposed to such considerations is just wrong.

In fact, in my opinion it was actually something that needed to happen, and that's why it was so well rewarded. If it weren't for Jobs, someone else would have pushed the aesthetic side of things (maybe not at the exact same time or the exact same ways).

marcus says

The Prestige, that is what other people think of you, is not a good reason doing anything in life. Or at least many of us think it shouldn't be nearly ones highest priority. But money and material success certainly can be liberating, and that kind of liberation certainly has some prestige attached to it.

In my procession, the notion of cultural prestige, is after the money is accumulated, not before it. Sure, it's sometimes easy to mix and match but that's not the thing here. The prestige which Boston Brahmins like John Kerry get to enjoy, has a lot to do with his heritage/trust fund, plus the fact that he'd studied law and gets to tout himself as an intellectual despite being a completely mediocre student in every way.

marcus says

Also, I take issue with the notion that tech nerds don't have good taste or appreciate beauty. I think the opposite is true and that there is a lot of diversity among engineers, such as say software developers.. Sure, Steve Jobs brought an aesthetic and design sense to personal computing and other tech gadgets. But that isn't that amazing. IT's really just a certain specific kind common sense he had, and was driven by. I'm not saying there was no genius to what he did, but in my view he was very much in the engineering realm. To talk about it as if he brought an aesthetic aspect into an engineering world that would normally have been deeply opposed to such considerations is just wrong.

This is also another part of my gripe. Really, who cares about the aesthetics of a Jobs or really, anyone else out there. As a Navy nuclear engineer, President Carter had performed a task, far more daunting than getting the MAC to use more interesting fonts than courier.

In my Chalk River reactor meltdown example, Jimmy Carter had to put out a potential Fukushima scenario, developing a protocol to keep the workers safe from radiation sickness during the whole ordeal. Does anyone remember this? Or is it that ppl only remember that Carter couldn't stop inflation, the hostage situation in Iran, and was a peanut farmer?

You see, this is where I have a problem.

HydroCabron says

I have no idea whether there are actually any enlightened people in the world - I tend to doubt it.

It's a relative term anyway, right ? If people practice techniques that improve their mindfulness or habits of mind, they are probably just seeking improvement or growth. Or perhaps they experience (or believe they experience) very brief momentary flashes of something that feels transcendent.

Disclosure: I am not one currently devoting much time with such practices, but I am familiar enough with them to understand how they work, and that most people involved with such practices don't expect to achieve enlightenment in the way that you define it.

Law and medicine are noted professions that have been around for 2000-3000 years. Large numbers of engineers in the modern computer geek sense have only been around for ~40-50 years max, and only really proliferated in the last 20 years. Hence, most of the population don't recognize their value or their economic prowess.

There about ~1 million lawyers in the U.S., ~1 million doctors -- ~500k programmers, 100k electrical engineers. How many nuclear engineers are there in the USA? ~10,000? NICHE. Even if you include other engineering types like civil/mechanical engineering (eg., bridges, railroads)), which have been around for ~100-200 years, engineers of all stripes added up have only attained the size of the law and medicine population recently. And this is only because of the recent growth of programmers in particular.

If you want respect for STEM, give it another 100 years -- it'll take that long for the general population to realize the economic prowess of engineers as a class.

Of course, this may not happen as we keep offshoring our engineer jobs to other countries so for the average American, studying Law or Medicine, the two service professions which is less offshoring, is a much better bet than studying STEM. Which is why, in grad school most STEM students are foreigners.

And BTW Rin, are you sure in your firm, the prestige of the 'quantitative analyst' and the 'law/finance' guy isn't just because one is a senior partner and the other more junior? As i said earlier, techies and tech companies are a relatively new thing. It's hard to imagine at a tech company created by a tech-orientated founder, Gates, Zuckerberg,...etc. STEM isn't valued. But plop up the yellowpages and how many tech companies do you actually find?

Lastly, go to Asia or even Europe, where a good mind and STEM career is highly prestigious. It's only in cowboy America that its not. And once again, we're not too distant enough from our frontier origins to appreciate STEM. Give it some time. In the meantime, if you really want to challenge yourself, don't study medicine which is all alchemy and BS. Try physics or math.

zhaohuang says

Lastly, go to Asia or even Europe, where a good mind and STEM career is highly prestigious.

Yes, I concur with this, as Asia-Pacific is becoming the world capital for STEM work as time goes by. Soon, US institutes will have campuses there. I believe that the Univ of Chicago has already opened a satellite campus in Singapore. Others will follow in the decades ahead.

zhaohuang says

Of course, this may not happen as we keep offshoring our engineer jobs to other countries so for the average American, studying Law or Medicine, the two service professions which is less offshoring, is a much better bet than studying STEM. Which is why, in grad school most STEM students are foreigners.

In addendum to my theme here, the fact that STEM work is being continually offshored and the fact that now, over half the graduate students in USA STEM studies are international students, makes this area appear to be less prestigious to the American observer.

zhaohuang says

In the meantime, if you really want to challenge yourself, don't study medicine which is all alchemy and BS. Try physics or math.

The idea is to get the M.D., because one, it's considered a final degree (with a doctor title), which allows one to publish and present at conferences. And it's guaranteed to complete within 4 years whereas a PhD in chemistry, math, or some engineering area could last anywhere from 5 to 10 years. One can study those other areas on the side, once free time is available and one's not under the thumb of a principal advisor for an RA-ship.

zhaohuang says

the prestige of the 'quantitative analyst' and the 'law/finance' guy isn't just because one is a senior partner and the other more junior

Not really, because I'm also at a level, not too distinct from the so-called quant. I don't, however, ever talk about my work/educational titles. I simply reference my clients/customers and play on the social angle. The professor and I are seen as tight and thus, I'm his mini-me so while he's seen as the philosopher/professor, I'm seen as the guy who gets *it done*. If I decided to get an LLM on the side, as in a part-time program, and the prof and I bantered on about political and legal issues, we'd both be the firm's intellectuals. So it's a cultural thing, not an economic ladder ordering.

BTW, for those of you who're not in the know ... a British Masters of Law, LLM, even if it's Oxford/Cambridge/London, does not allow an American to sit for any US bar exam. In other words, it's a show off diploma, geared towards indicating that a business type is legally savvy, from a global academic perspective.

In fact, in the UK, one is expected to get a UK bachelors of law, LLB, to sit for the bar, to become a barrister in Britain. Everyone knows that the post-graduate study of law is for show (kinda like a smart guy's version of the MBA [ with the courses being challenging & not a bunch of malarkey ]) and not for practical purposes, unless one is using it to become a professor.

If I finally get the most prestigious degree, surely people will respect me.

I doubt it is about the degree. It sounds like the schmoozer is just good at schmoozing.

HydroCabron says

If I finally get the most prestigious degree, surely people will respect me.

Seemed to work for John Kerry; it enhanced the value of being a trust fund baby w/o any major accolades.

YesYNot says

I doubt it is about the degree. It sounds like the schmoozer is just good at schmoozing.

The other partners are also schmoozers, he's the only one's who's the professor. I don't think he could have done that, simply telling ppl that he'd read a few books after hours.

Is it because of what he talks about or the degree? You mentioned that his studies enhanced his abilities to discuss legal issues. He might have a really good ability to discuss legal jargon in a way that is easy for other people to understand, or in a way that makes other people feel like they are learning something.

YesYNot says

Is it because of what he talks about or the degree? You mentioned that his studies enhanced his abilities to discuss legal issues. He might have a really good ability to discuss legal jargon in a way that is easy for other people to understand, or in a way that makes other people feel like they are learning something.

It's a bit of both; what you're attempting to do is separating the issues when they're not separable.

Sure, he's a good communicator of legalese, however, when he prefaces statements like, "At London ...", "When I was at London ...", "London scholars believe...", "London's global focus ...", etc, the name dropping becomes a huge part of the overall discussion. In fact, it gives the entire process a sense of regalia and truism. And then, he gets to mix it up by talking about parties on the West End. So you see, there's a lot there. It's not just about scholasticism but also, about being worldly and seeing happening places outside of NYC, Boston, etc.

You can't create the same effect by saying, "When I was reading a book at the Boston public library and had an insight ..." I hope you see the difference.

When I was an engineer (a/o ITer), a few MIT grads tried the same thing but it always backfired as other ppl weren't impressed by dorky remarks like, "Only an MITer would know about Runge-Kutta approximations", as if somehow, that info's not covered nationwide at other engineering schools' differential equation courses. Plus the liberal arts types thought that it was a geek, trying to pull something over someone else. Hence, the snob appeal of knowing technical stuff was never all that impressive, even to other engineers.

Remember, the London law graduate isn't trying to be a lawyer, he's simply depicting a sense of culture.

I get your point regarding name dropping. But come on, no one is suggesting that an engineer would go out and discuss numerical methods for forward integration. Also, someone skilled in communication would never preface something with, 'when I was reading a book at the public library...' I was suggesting that if you learned whatever this guy learned in school, and were a good enough bullshitter, you might get most of the way there. The other issue is that a less skilled conversationalist might do worse even if he had studied in London.
The engineer has two advantages in this situation. It is always impressive when an engineer is very good at technical things, and can keep up when discussing cultural issues or other things outside of his field. Other peoples expectations are always a little lower for an engineer, so if you can blow those stereotypes out of the water, people are impressed. The other advantage is if some technical issues come up and the engineer can explain them in a way that other people can understand, or like I said, makes them think they get it. For this to work, they other person has to bring the subject up. No one likes an engineer who goes out and brings up some arcane engineering topic, even if he ties it into the discussion pretty well. You have to wait until there is a need, and then satisfy that.

You are the only one who knows this particular guy and the situation, and everyone else is just guessing. But in my experience, conversational skills are very important (maybe more so than degrees) in how people are perceived, in general.

Oh, I agree with your general premise that culturally, STEM is not prestigious, when it comes up the upper crust of society. It is seen as rote work in a way for non-creative types. The engineers who are well respected are the ones who used their positions and skills to succeed in management - your Lee Raymonds and Jack Welches of the world, or those who start companies and become stupid rich. When you are rubbing elbows with the middle class (truly median earner type people), then being an engineer is prestigious IMO.

The people I know in STEM are the most culturally enlightened. Only Doctors, Agriculture, Science, Engineering and Manufacturing contribute and have an awareness to the potential of human contribution of people who produce. Our do nothing legal/arts/humanites folks have a belief that they have culture, but they detract from the real culture created by contributors and innovators of society.

YesYNot says

No one likes an engineer who goes out and brings up some arcane engineering topic, even if he ties it into the discussion pretty well. You have to wait until there is a need, and then satisfy that.

Agreed, the problem is that nifty mental operations is what S&E types excel at, but then, it's hard to brag about that stuff w/o looking like some dork. Unfortunately, many STEM types do look that part.

YesYNot says

Also, someone skilled in communication would never preface something with, 'when I was reading a book at the public library...' I was suggesting that if you learned whatever this guy learned in school

Yes, but then the reference check falls into this obscure land of "I'd heard" or "I was told" or "I remember a (X, Y, or Z)", and that doesn't have the same impact.

YesYNot says

The other issue is that a less skilled conversationalist might do worse even if he had studied in London.

What you're describing is the stereotypical 'Commonwealth' nerd, like a STEM type from Hong Kong, who'd gotten the A's and O's (or Dean's List if post-graduate) necessary to attend a UK school, but then, appears to be some goofball in the real world. Now here's the question, without that UK certificate, would that goofball have even had a chance of breaking out of someone's lab? Sure, his career perhaps ends with his first major spreadsheet assignment and lousy presentation of it but at least he got there; many STEM grads don't even that first crack outside of the academy or the military, if they're 'all govt'.

YesYNot says

When you are rubbing elbows with the middle class (truly median earner type people), then being an engineer is prestigious IMO.

A long time ago, and this was ages back, I knew someone who'd thought this and was the second member of his extended blue collar family to attend an engineering college. When he was graduating with his BS in mechanical engineering (cum laude), an older aunt had asked what his expected earnings were to be. His response was "some $54K/yr after school". Her reaction was in shock, "Is that it? Isn't there a way to get some more? Isn't that a fire worker's salary after some time on the force?" Sure, if he'd graduated during the oil patch/fracking run up, he may have been among the $100K starting pool, but not everyone hits those rare hiring cycles. Needless to say, his aunt wasn't impressed that that many hours of studying resulted in an ordinary payoff.

Rin says

YesYNot says

When you are rubbing elbows with the middle class (truly median earner type people), then being an engineer is prestigious IMO.

A long time ago, and this was ages back, I knew someone who'd thought this and was the second member of his extended blue collar family to attend an engineering college. When he was graduating with his BS in mechanical engineering (cum laude), an older aunt had asked what his expected earnings were to be. His response was "some $54K/yr after school". Her reaction was in shock, "Is that it? Isn't there a way to get some more? Isn't that a fire worker's salary after some time on the force?" Sure, if he'd graduated during the oil patch/fracking run up, he may have been among the $100K starting pool, but not everyone hits those rare hiring cycles. Needless to say, his aunt wasn't impressed that that many hours of studying resulted in an ordinary payoff.

IMHO, STEM is only prestigious from this line of thinking ... it's a university degree and thus, it propels one out of the label of blue collar, even if the job involves hands-on wiring work, like an electrician, cable guy or perhaps, a Cisco network engineer (which is suppose to jump the line between the blue & white collar hurdles).

And then, if the person achieves some modicum of success, like he becomes a development lead for a tech company, then he can attribute that to a career track, originating from the study of engineering.

Now, Carly Fiona, former CEO of HP, was a philosophy/history major but still ran a tech company. And even though Jack Welsh had a PhD in chemical engineering, when he'd joined GE, he never referenced himself as a Dr Jack or Dr Welsh. He'd re-aligned his identity to that, of a business lead and not that of an R&D type. Everyone I knew at GE, knew that about Jack, which is why his career didn't die in the labs.

Thus, at the end of the day (or career), I believe that STEM is just another degree.

not culturally prestigious at all. it's a thankless job, underpaid, over-managed, etc.

every thing an engineer does serves a business management d-bag's needs to buy a loaded porsche cayenne.

landtof says

not culturally prestigious at all. it's a thankless job, underpaid, over-managed, etc.

every thing an engineer does serves a business management d-bag's needs to buy a loaded porsche cayenne.

That's typically the bottom line.

Its no wonder why China is kicking our butts, you lawyers/libs/art majors forget who invented culture and prosperity. Or how many of you felt luxurious flying in business class, watching a TV, or flashing your fitbit. All creativity, increase in the standard of living, preservers of liberty comes from, scientists, engineers, doctors, (yes a few good lawyers)

Entitlemented says

Its no wonder why China is kicking our butts, you lawyers/libs/art majors forget who invented culture and prosperity. Or how many of you felt luxurious flying in business class, watching a TV, or flashing your fitbit. All creativity, increase in the standard of living, preservers of liberty comes from, scientists, engineers, doctors, (yes a few good lawyers)

You're shooting the messenger. I'm merely pointing out how society thinks.

I wish that the world resolved around the work ethic and belief systems of our Navy nuclear engineers. Unfortunately, that's not the case.

Rin says

Al Gore, who's too stupid or lazy to pass even that program.

Yet he invented the internet