Naive efficient-market analysis suggests that if finance and computer programming are predictable and lucrative careers, there should be some less stable career option which is even more lucrative on average. For someone who’s genuinely earning to give, and planning to keep only a pittance for their own survival regardless, that variability shouldn’t matter.
No because only a tiny percentage of the population has a high enough IQ and work ethic to succeed at the elite level of these jobs. To do well at a top investment bank you need to be willing to work (in your early 20s at least) 80+ hours a week at a job that’s often stressful and boring and where you have little choice over what you do despite the fact that you have the ability to get a job that’s much more interesting and involves half the work yet yields an upper middle class lifestyle.
In which case you should warn people against investment banking.
(No, seriously, this is not just ideological whinging. If you’re going for impact rather than money, you don’t want to be an investment banker, you want to be in the actual companies being funded by investment bankers.)
Naive efficient-market analysis suggests that if finance and computer programming are predictable and lucrative careers, there should be some less stable career option which is even more lucrative on average. For someone who’s genuinely earning to give, and planning to keep only a pittance for their own survival regardless, that variability shouldn’t matter.
No because only a tiny percentage of the population has a high enough IQ and work ethic to succeed at the elite level of these jobs. To do well at a top investment bank you need to be willing to work (in your early 20s at least) 80+ hours a week at a job that’s often stressful and boring and where you have little choice over what you do despite the fact that you have the ability to get a job that’s much more interesting and involves half the work yet yields an upper middle class lifestyle.
How’s about computer programming start-ups? (Though in most cases a specific one is predictably non-lucrative)
I agree with this but my point was more to go for high impact directly by producing a socially valuable product.
In which case you should warn people against investment banking.
(No, seriously, this is not just ideological whinging. If you’re going for impact rather than money, you don’t want to be an investment banker, you want to be in the actual companies being funded by investment bankers.)