I’ve often seen it said on Hacker News that programmers could clean up in many other occupations because writing programs would give them a huge advantage. And I believe Michael Vassar has said here that he thought a LWer could take over a random store in SF and likewise clean up.
(This makes some sense to me. Programmers have some good tools which don’t see much use outside programming—source control comes to mind. Writers ought to use it, but don’t. Architects are constantly modifying highly detailed plans, but apparently don’t use real source control etc.)
Economics tells us there is no free lunch. The occupations mentioned might seem like free lunches because they pay so much, millions & millions. So of course, the no-free-lunch comes into play with low probability of success. Most lawyers don’t make millions, most would-be CEOs stagnate in The Office. The expected-utility is evened out that way. And worse, those are socially prestigious occupations, so one might expect an additional penalty via no-free-lunch in exchange for the prestige. (I think that may be one reason there are so many would-be lawyers.)
This would imply that other areas without prestige or high variance might have higher expected utilities because high IQ types shun them and ignore their comparative advantage in them. What areas are unprestigious and don’t offer lottery tickets? Selling to small businesses seems like such an area. (Look at GroupOn. Why wasn’t that already done in 2000?)
Whether someone will become a partner at biglaw and make millions per year is hard to predict, but it is fairly easy to predict who will get a permanent job as a biglaw associate making 500k per year. I’m not saying that this is a good job, but if you want such a job (and a chance at partner), it’s pretty easy to predict before law school whether you can get it. The main point is which law school admits you. Whether you can get adequate grades and whether you can put in the hours on the job are two other factors. It’s true that demand for these jobs makes it hard to get into top law schools, but if you don’t get in, you should know you’ve lost without wasting tuition or 3 years.
But most law students make the simple error of not knowing that, of going to law schools that don’t produce lawyers, or at least not lawyers that make more than they would having skipped law school. The kind of error economists refuse to believe in.
I’ve heard that a very high proportion of the economy is sales to businesses, but relatively few people who are thinking of starting a business think of anything but selling to consumers.
I’m guessing it’s just that most people have little or no contact with selling to businesses, so it’s a blind spot. There may also be an element of preferring to sell an obviously interesting product—if you’re selling to retail, you can still have that, but a lot of business-to-business products are infrastructure.
Thinking a little more, I think Joel Spolsky advocates selling to other businesses for much the same reason—they’re fairly neglected and businesses are willing to pay a lot.
I’ve often seen it said on Hacker News that programmers could clean up in many other occupations because writing programs would give them a huge advantage. And I believe Michael Vassar has said here that he thought a LWer could take over a random store in SF and likewise clean up.
(This makes some sense to me. Programmers have some good tools which don’t see much use outside programming—source control comes to mind. Writers ought to use it, but don’t. Architects are constantly modifying highly detailed plans, but apparently don’t use real source control etc.)
Economics tells us there is no free lunch. The occupations mentioned might seem like free lunches because they pay so much, millions & millions. So of course, the no-free-lunch comes into play with low probability of success. Most lawyers don’t make millions, most would-be CEOs stagnate in The Office. The expected-utility is evened out that way. And worse, those are socially prestigious occupations, so one might expect an additional penalty via no-free-lunch in exchange for the prestige. (I think that may be one reason there are so many would-be lawyers.)
This would imply that other areas without prestige or high variance might have higher expected utilities because high IQ types shun them and ignore their comparative advantage in them. What areas are unprestigious and don’t offer lottery tickets? Selling to small businesses seems like such an area. (Look at GroupOn. Why wasn’t that already done in 2000?)
Economics tells us lots of false things.
Whether someone will become a partner at biglaw and make millions per year is hard to predict, but it is fairly easy to predict who will get a permanent job as a biglaw associate making 500k per year. I’m not saying that this is a good job, but if you want such a job (and a chance at partner), it’s pretty easy to predict before law school whether you can get it. The main point is which law school admits you. Whether you can get adequate grades and whether you can put in the hours on the job are two other factors. It’s true that demand for these jobs makes it hard to get into top law schools, but if you don’t get in, you should know you’ve lost without wasting tuition or 3 years.
But most law students make the simple error of not knowing that, of going to law schools that don’t produce lawyers, or at least not lawyers that make more than they would having skipped law school. The kind of error economists refuse to believe in.
I’ve heard that a very high proportion of the economy is sales to businesses, but relatively few people who are thinking of starting a business think of anything but selling to consumers.
I’m guessing it’s just that most people have little or no contact with selling to businesses, so it’s a blind spot. There may also be an element of preferring to sell an obviously interesting product—if you’re selling to retail, you can still have that, but a lot of business-to-business products are infrastructure.
Thinking a little more, I think Joel Spolsky advocates selling to other businesses for much the same reason—they’re fairly neglected and businesses are willing to pay a lot.