Your waitress, your professor

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/19/opinion/your-waitress-your-professor.html

by nvader • 12 years ago

148 140 12 years ago

jetskindo• 12 years ago

We go to school because it is a tradition. Parents wants to see their kid in the funny hat. You are almost shunned when you drop out.

Not to say that school is useless, I loved learning. But I knew that the computer science degree I was working towards wouldn't make much a difference in the field I was hoping to work in.

Going to school should be an investment. It is too bad that most of us are too young to understand the risk we take when taking loans or choosing an education path.

meowface4• 12 years ago

I wish there were more options for technical "trade schools" in the US. At my university I knew I wanted a career in information security and development, and I had a choice between Computer Science and Information Systems. Computer Science was mostly theory with not that much hands-on programming, while Information Systems had some more hands-on real-world programming but was heavily business/management oriented and essentially assumed only the most rudimentary programming and technical skills even in the highest level classes. I ended up going with Information Systems, which I'm still not sure if I regret or not.

I was fortunate enough to be a pretty self-motivated learner and become skilled at the things I was interested in through the Internet and self-teaching, and landed a pretty good job straight out of college, but I can't help but feel I wasted 4 years of time and money.

I would've loved to go to a university with practical Information Security/Assurance and Software Engineering programs at the undergraduate level, but sadly 1) none were anywhere near my area and 2) they're considerably more expensive, and college is expensive enough already in the US.

rietta• 12 years ago

I went through the M.S. Information Security program at Georgia Tech and and glad that I did it. Though at this point in my life I work mostly on building out web applications with Ruby on Rails for startups. Security is a tough sell in most of the industry. Bolting it on after the fact is almost always impossible, which is why I have had to learn so much about startups, their lifecycle, business model development, the customer discovery process, etc, in order to be able to attempt to build more secure software for startups before its too late in the process and bandaids are the only options remaining.

Point is, no matter what you do, there is a tremendous amount of learning to do outside of the university curriculum of your choice.

marincounty• 12 years ago

It's too bad that schools don't prepare graduates for real world jobs. Especially, for what they are charging. Personally, I don't know if most 10 yeared professors could keep up with the pace of change in the real world. I think what a lot of people leave out, when they are espousing their college degree, is the amount of self-learning, or who they know after graduation in order to keep/get their job? We still have a lot of naive Sheep who will judge you whether you finished that degree; so you will probally be glad you stuck it out and graduated? As to the dude above me who automatically put that Sales Person in a different "class" once he found she was a graduate of MIT--I'll give you a break, but repeat a quote I will never forget; "Chubby--you need to stop judging people on they way they look?" by Louis Medlock(Deliverance).

When I was in college I knew it was 90% B.S., but society expected me to finish the degree. Would I go today, I'm not sure. You need to be exposed to a few facts in life, so you don't end up believing in things that gave no scientific validity. On the other hand my sister is a multimillionaire, and believes in Psychics? She is also once very attractive, and thinks nothing of taking advantage of people for what they can offer her--she used to call it , "They would make a good contact!" Now--they call it Networking. Personally, I couldn't stomach it, but my sister doing great financially. Now if she could get her family to like, or trust her, or a partner who actually liked her for personality; she would have it all. Happy Holidays!

rtpg• 12 years ago

I was in a similar boat as you were (wanting to go to a "trade school" type thing for IT, ended up going to a generalist school with business knowledge), and I feel better for it.

Granted, my schooling let me spend some time in Japan on a school exchange, which led to a whole other sequence of events. But I also got some classes on management, economics, and accounting that does help me understand how things are happening around me. Plus having a degree is pretty much mandatory if you want to work abroad (for visa issues). My school prepared me to deal with the human aspect of work, I think.

I did do a lot of self-teaching though, so I didn't end up learning much on the programming side of things.

saalweachter• 12 years ago

I'm not sure trade schools, per se, are the answer.

The problem with trade schools is that you're just making a different bet on what jobs are going to be available in the future. Maybe the numbers are better than for some traditional university degrees, but it's fundamentally the same sort of bet: you educate yourself up in some direction, and then go look for jobs.

An alternate route, which has been used at different times in different places, is to first get hired at a company based on general competence, and then to get trained up in whichever direction they want you to work. That way, you have a guaranteed job after you finish training.

It's a much better system for the workers, but it requires different attitudes on the part of the corporations -- they need to be focused much more on the long term; they need to be willing to pay upfront in time and money to train up their workforce, and be stable enough to employee them long enough to make back their investment. Fly-by-night operations that explode rapidly for a couple of years and then collapse can't really afford that.

thebiglebrewski• 12 years ago

I work at one! New York Code + Design Academy. There are similar schools across the country and world. People graduate having enough skills to land an entry level job as a junior developer without having to go incredibly deep into theory, we focus on implementation and actually building products.

vitno• 12 years ago

The logic here seems... hypocritical, or at least inconsistent.

At the beginning: "In class I emphasize the value of a degree as a means to avoid the sort of jobs that I myself go to when those hours in the classroom are over."

At the end: "My perhaps naïve hope is that when I tell students I’m not only an academic, but a “survival” jobholder, I’ll make a dent in the artificial, inaccurate division society places between blue-collar work and “intelligent” work. (also, that diaresis...)

It feels to me like the first statement says "I lie to my students and present them with unrealistic expectations of the world" and the second says "If I say something, I'll let them know that they are deriving little value from their education... and thus put my career further behind."

pcunite• 12 years ago

That may be the intent of the article. To lead you into the thinking that the author wrestles with each day.

speeder4• 12 years ago

As someone that took a degree because the "adults" then forced me to, and spent years of my life just to pay it, totalling 10 years wasted (I am 26 today, and I my assets are the same as they were when I was 16, and soon I will have less than what I had when I was 16 because I am unemployed).

My parents, and the academia, school teachers, all lied to me, they told me that getting a degree was a good thing.

It is not, it basically fucked up my life so far. If I could go back in time only once to give me a single advice, it would be to tell my 18 year old self to get a job and skip college, or get into a trade school.

rayiner3• 12 years ago

The other day my wife and I were at a baby clothing store. We were chatting with the young woman at the counter, and she was complaining about her student loans. I asked her what her major was, and she said it was physics. I said "oh" with a degree of surprise that made me cringe. I mentioned my brother had majored in physics. She asked me where he went to school, and I told her he went to Yale. She said "oh, my parents went to Yale, but I went to MIT."

I felt bad about the encounter, and I couldn't figure out why. Statistically, you're safe in assuming that any random person working at a clothing store isn't an MIT grad making pocket money while working on her PhD. I realized later that I felt bad that it mattered to me. That when she revealed she was smart and educated, in my head I moved her from one class of people into another.

waterlesscloud2• 12 years ago

I have a hard time reconciling the idea that we need more STEM graduates with the difficulty that actual STEM graduates have finding work in their fields.

Even if it's part time work while pursuing a PhD, if there was anything resembling a real shortage, these things wouldn't happen. And it's not a rare story.

melling2• 12 years ago

I thought the argument for increasing the number of H-1B visas is that we need more technology people? The current limit is 65,000 people every year, and the claim is that's too low.

colechristensen• 12 years ago

We don't need more STEM graduates, we need economic incentives for STEM graduates including companies actually willing to take on and train green grads (everything requries a few years of very specific experience these days), willing to pay them good wages for part time work, willing to pay them good wages at all... etc. etc.

The problem is managers aren't scientists, few companies care about pure research and long term benefits coming from it, and nobody is willing to spend effort and resources training inexperienced average graduates any more.

It is also, in many ways, too easy to get a STEM degree by learning how to be a good University student as opposed to learning your subject well.

The core problem is university needs to be something special and uncommon, not something necessary. Most jobs have little to do with the University training that comes with them and there's not the budget for 1/3 of the population to do science.

icebraining5• 12 years ago

Isn't it funny how we chastise companies for treating workers like replaceable cogs, and then we do the same in these discussions? If I need an expert in neurobiology, a glut of physics majors is unlikely to be helpful.

rayiner3• 12 years ago

To be fair, this was a little college town and I don't imagine it's easy to find any sort of physics-related job that has much schedule flexibility.

morgante4• 12 years ago

The problem is one of miscommunication between tech and media/government.

There is definitely a shortage of developers, a shortage which tech companies have regularly been complaining about.

Unfortunately, politicians and journalists just hear "we need more nerds" so assume there is a STEM shortage (in their non-technical minds, nerds are all equivalent). Thus the broad and pointless push for STEM graduates when what's really needed is a specific subsection of Technology.

NoMoreNicksLeft• 12 years ago

There is no fixed number of STEM jobs... and it's probably true that the dearth of job candidates actually reduces the number in the long run. If you can't find the workers you need, in the long term you shift strategy to that which doesn't require them.

After all, the United States isn't the only place to find them.

fiatmoney• 12 years ago

Maybe because "STEM" isn't a thing that exists.

"Oh, we're looking to hire a virologist. Or a algebreic geometer. Mechanical engineer maybe. Something like that."

melling2• 12 years ago

That's over $160,000 in college tuition. If it doesn't pay for itself, it's not a very effective use of capital, regardless if her parents paid for college.

Dewie5• 12 years ago

Well at least you're in good company with that attitude, on this site.

morgante4• 12 years ago

That doesn't seem odd to me. If there's a young person working a retail or service job, I usually assume they're doing it for extra cash while they finish their degree. 9 out of 10 times it's true and completely predictable, as these sorts of jobs provide far more of the necessary flexibility than traditional "professional" jobs.

On the other hand, if they're 30+ my preconception is completely different.

kelukelugames• 12 years ago

Was this Cambridgeside Galleria? Not that uncommon for students to work at a Mall.

ElComradio• 12 years ago

This is likely because you've been receiving the message that it's a sin to have preconceived notions and to even formulate a mental model of someone that contains any negative elements.

It's not. Instead I suggest taking pride in that you are not restricted to initial impressions and were able to move her box upon receiving additional data points.

lisper3• 12 years ago

I am actually in need of an underemployed physicist. I'm writing a book about quantum mechanics and I need a consultant to make sure I get the math right. I was going to put an ad on Craigslist, but maybe someone here has a lead?

EC1• 12 years ago

It would be amazing if the guy you replied to somehow ended up hooking that cashier up with a job.

bentoner• 12 years ago

I don't know if he does this sort of thing, but I recommend Jonathan Walgate. He has a Ph.D. from Oxford in quantum physics and a business helping people to write grants. He's also a great guy! (I used to do quantum physics.)

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/jonathan-walgate/35/965/553

dredmorbius• 12 years ago

StackExchange and/or AskScience at reddit can be useful for this sort of thing (though possibly not for lots of repeat queries).

asdkl234890• 12 years ago

Couldn't it be because her skills are obviously being underutilized? Society could benefit from her a lot more, and she could get more resources at the same time, but for what ever reason that's not happening. And that is rationally upsetting.

rayiner3• 12 years ago

It was upsetting to me because I don't think we should value and respect people who are MIT grads more than anyone else. Someone who is working retail because that's all they can do is just as valuable as someone who does it while working on something better. I was upset because I realized how classist I was being.

SilasX• 12 years ago

If she's smart enough to get a physics degree from MIT, she can probably teach herself enough to become a developer and get a big salary boost. Heck, with the way MIT STEM programs work, she probably already can program and pass most technical interview questions.

(She also might not have been entirely truthful with you.)

raincom2• 12 years ago

I don't wanna reveal the identity. There was this girl in a group I am familiar with. She did BS in physics, PhD in astronomy/astrophysics from Yale. She works as a data scientist at one of valley companies. Even though she is a data scientists, what she does most of the time is to write SQL queries against hive which is a SQL interface to hadoop/bigdata.

If she is indeed an MIT grad, there are many companies who wanna hire her just to do SQL queries.

noelwelsh2• 12 years ago

Anyone running an online business will tell you that words are valuable. Text is the primary way we communicate with our customers. Carefully chosen words can have a massive impact on revenue. The author possesses a valuable skill but is not fairly compensated for it. What's going on?

Inequality is increasing in the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United...) and many other countries. Technology is giving capital an increasing advantage over labour. A job as, say, a doctor, lawyer, or University professor, which used to guarantee you a position at the top of the social hierarchy, no longer does. Inequality is generally regarded as a bad thing, both socially and economically (see, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality) Addressing inequality at a macro scale is beyond my knowledge, but I do know how to address it at the micro scale: own your work.

Technology contributes to inequality by allowing successful businesses to scale further with fewer employees. However, you can use the same infrastructure to scale out your microbusiness. Within our community, patio11, Amy Hoy, Brennan Dunn, Nathan Barry, and others have show how to do this. It is noticeable that many of the above have made a substantial chunk of change from publishing a book. (E.g. http://nathanbarry.com/2014-review/ ~$260K from book sales.) The OP is in a great position to replicate this -- they have all the skills, namely command over the written word, to produce great content and great copy to sell it.

On a wider scale, I think we can use technology to redress some of the growth in inequality. Presently it mostly allows relatively few businesses to concentrate wealth. If more people retake ownership over their work, which technology in many cases enables, then perhaps we can do something to address inequality. It's not the whole solution but it might be part of it.

wbl• 12 years ago

There are a lot of writers out there. It hasn't gotten easier to make it big, even if the size of the check once you do is bigger. Google "death of the midlist" for more information about this trend.

noelwelsh2• 12 years ago

Part of the point is that if you own the product you get 100% (well, more like 95%) of the income, rather than the 10% you might get via royalties. 1000 sales for a nonfiction book is a solid year's income.

erikpukinskis• 12 years ago

Somewhat off topic, but to your question about why we don't value certain kinds of work...

Culture provides a kind of distributed wage-fixing. The free market fallacy gives people the idea that wages are optimized and reflect true economic value. But in reality employers pay as little as they can get away with.

Imagine two societies. In the first, its generally accepted that people in any position, including nurses and receptionists and customer support people, can create immense business value if they accel at their jobs. A customer service agent who makes big impacts on retention could expect to make a six figure salary. Others who are less useful might make minimum wage.

Now imagine another world where the general social consensus is that your job title implies a ceiling on how much value you can bring to an organization. In this world a programmer can make millions but a customer service rep is capped at $25 or so per hour. General belief is that if you want to make more you can't just create more value, you have to get a different job title.

In the first world, corporations have to compete for every employee, and overall compensation costs are higher. In the later world, only the top slice of jobs are subject to market forces, and costs go down. It also has social side effects that appeal to the ruling class, but that's another story.

I would argue that businesses who think this way are actually leaving money on the table, and that by removing title-based compensation caps, you have a more accurate picture of the economics of your business and can harvest more value, but most people don't seem to think that way.

gaius6• 12 years ago

This is why the myth being spread that "anyone can code" is so long term dangerous. Because it doesn't matter that it isn't true (beyond trivial stuff like websites): it will still drive down what people in general think programmers are worth.

philwelch6• 12 years ago

In the first, its generally accepted that people in any position, including nurses and receptionists and customer support people, can create immense business value if they accel at their jobs. A customer service agent who makes big impacts on retention could expect to make a six figure salary. Others who are less useful might make minimum wage.

Sorry, but as a matter of real-world fact, individual receptionists and customer service representatives can't create immense business value. Or rather, the individuals in those roles might be able to, but only if they are moved to different, higher-leverage roles. (If you can retain hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars worth of business by talking to individual customers, "customer service" is not your job title. Maybe "sales" is.)

The market has two parts: supply and demand. If you do a job that just about anybody could do, you don't get paid much because there are a lot of people who can do a job just about anybody could do.

CamperBob2• 12 years ago

But in reality employers pay as little as they can get away with.

And you don't?

icebraining5• 12 years ago

She's not actually using that skill to increase revenue of some business?

anigbrowl3• 12 years ago

She's working as a college professor! Why is this not considered worthy of an economically sustainable income? Most schools seem to have a lot of money sloshing about, it just goes into the pockets of administrators and sports coaches and people erecting buildings. The people delivering the actual service of education seem to be the most poorly rewarded despite the significant degree of competence required.

lolwhat• 12 years ago

Not surprised when 1% of the country holds 40% of the wealth.

jrells• 12 years ago

I like this article, but I wish it would do more to point out that high-education low-wage workers, like adjunct university teachers, are usually in their low-wage jobs by choice, and their education gives them a lot more opportunities even if they don't take them. They are in a way very financially secure, since they could easily give up on academics and move into high-wage industry jobs (at least in the applicable fields). There are a lot of people who really want academic jobs anyway, so schools are happy to pay low.

Note: I'm an academic and I have a second job to supplement my income. I have often considered moving into industry where I would make 5-10x my teaching income.

jpindar• 12 years ago

But, but, there is no industry left in the US!

(Or so the internet tells me. Meanwhile I drive past half a dozen bustling factories every day on my way to work at an electronics manufacturer.)

morgante4• 12 years ago

I find it hard to sympathize with these articles.

She was aware that the academic job market is bleak, especially in English, yet chose to pursue it nonetheless. Thus, her plight is squarely on her shoulders. It also doesn't mean her students will fair worse: some of them might be making rational choices to get degrees in useful, lucrative fields. Especially at a third-rate university, nobody really has the luxury to major in English.

Nothing in our economic system entitles you to making a living at something just because you like it and practice it. I could train for decades to be the world's foremost expert on modern cave painting, but that doesn't entitle me to a cent of wages unless the market deems that skill is useful.

Dewie5• 12 years ago

It doesn't look like she is looking for sympathy, and it seems to be her opinion that her career was her own choice.

wfo• 12 years ago

Any halfway decent programmer I've ever met or heard of loves programming. They'd do it even if it didn't happen to be hyper-lucrative. We just got lucky; we're passionate about something that the owning class happens to currently consider fashionable. Enjoy it while it lasts and try not to pretend it makes you better than anyone else.

meowface4• 12 years ago

We just got lucky; we're passionate about something that the owning class happens to currently consider fashionable. Enjoy it while it lasts

I imagine programming and related fields (networking, system administration and integration, other IT operations) will still be very lucrative in 100 and 200 years from now. It might be slightly less lucrative (or it could be more lucrative, who knows), but programmers will likely be very important to organizations for at least a few centuries, if not millennia.

neilk2• 12 years ago

Yeah, there's this narrative about programmers being born, not made. I have come to believe it is mostly false.

First of all, when I was in my early 20s, I loved a lot of things. Writing, music, graphic design. For a time, I defined myself as someone who used to program. When the internet happened, I just dropped back into it. If I had been born in different decades, I most certainly would have done different things.

Secondly, I know a number of people in SF who decided to jump on the programming bandwagon since 2011 or so, in the hope that they could remain employable in an increasingly topsy-turvy economic environment. And... they aren't bad. Not great, but not terrible either. A friend of mine who couldn't write a line of code two years ago cracks jokes about D3.js today. Some of them were women who might have had STEM-ready brains, but were scared off from science by the usual sexism in childhood. But others, as far as I can tell, were pretty average and don't have a great aptitude for it. They just learned it, by learning it.

My feeling is that, in North America, they just forgot how to teach computer science for a few decades. There's an effect some people have found (anecdotally) that computer science starts to skew male when, in a given country, home computers become widely available as gaming machines. So it seems to me, CS departments relied on amateur geeks (usually male) who already knew how to program to be the top students in the class, and explained away the high failure rate (and a very skewed gender ratio) because computer science is just so hard.

morgante4• 12 years ago

While I do indeed love programming, I also enjoy many other things. For most of high school, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. For the first two years of college, I thought I wanted to work in finance. Heck, for a brief period I was infatuated with architecture.

However, as a rational actor looking at the career landscape, it was clear that CS was a much more productive and lucrative field—so I went down that path. I'd expect any other human to do the same.

I guess I don't entirely blame her though. For years we've been spouting atrocious career advice to "follow your passion" when what people really need is passion for what they do.

Mz2• 12 years ago

I dropped out of college when I was 21, in part because I knew two different people with bachelor's degrees who had jobs like delivering newspapers or selling shoes at a department store. Everyone around me seemed to think I needed a degree in order to have a career and that a degree automagically would give me a career. The lives of these two personal acquaintances suggested otherwise.

I am currently personally acquainted with two other people who completed college and they thus are saddled with huge student loans. Neither one is making enough money to deal with those loans, much less justify them. One owes $100k the other owes $250k. Even if you successfully declare bankruptcy, you cannot write off student loans. These two people may never manage to get their loans paid off. I cannot imagine how awful that must be and I used to have more than $50k in personal debt, which I have been slowly resolving in recent years. (Part of mine is also student debt, but not all of it. It is one of the reasons that although I have considered declaring bankruptcy, I have never pursued it in earnest. Part of what I owe has to be paid regardless.)

There is something very wrong with the system here in the U.S. A college degree should not be a path to permanent poverty because you cannot really afford the student loans you wracked up getting it.

jrs235• 12 years ago

Contrary to popular belief, while it is difficult, it is possible in certain situations to have student loans forgiven, canceled, or discharged.

https://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness-cancellati...

Edit:https://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness-cancellati...

Mz2• 12 years ago

Thank you.

palimpsests• 12 years ago

I find it fairly surprising how certain the author seems to feel that getting a doctorate would somehow equate to higher income and job stability -- English Ph.Ds aren't exactly a credential in high demand. In fact, reality indicates the opposite is true.

pbhjpbhj2• 12 years ago

I was curious what an English (literature) Ph.D might entail, still am, but Birimingham.ac.uk website had this:

"Over the past five years, over 90% of English Literature postgraduates were in work and/or further study six months after graduation. " //

Against an unemployment rate of ~20% for 16-24 year olds, http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/unemployment-four-ten-uk-graduates-..., that seems quite good. I'm sure there are some damn lies in there though.

More on stats for UK graduate employment, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-29327590.

richardwhiuk• 12 years ago

By the time you've completed a PhD you aren't 16-24. Roughly speaking, Bachelor degree will take 3 years, PhD will take at least 4, so you'll be at least 25.

That's also 90% from a relatively reputable university - http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/International/impact/global-rank... claims top 100 in the world.

The University of Nevada in comparison is apparently the 113th best college in the US for English: http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/... - so much further down the rankings.

philwelch6• 12 years ago

People get stuck in bubbles. In the academia bubble, the only people making a living are professors and to become a professor you need a Ph.D. So they are the example people follow. They don't realize that becoming, say, an accountant might be a better move because there aren't any accountants in the academia bubble.

Dewie5• 12 years ago

People who get into PhD programs should have the general intelligence to realize that every PhD candidate can not become a professor. It doesn't add up in any hierarchical organization like that.

jgwest• 12 years ago

Okay, Brittney Bronson, it is what it is... You teach the young grown-ups / old kids at the college, and then you shuck it in your part-time service job... It is what it is...

transfire• 12 years ago

Not to worry in 10 to 20 more years robots will take your survival job away too. Then you can teach college and be one of the homeless at the same time!

bsder• 12 years ago

The real problem is that neither of her jobs affords her a career.

Why should her teaching position be just above the poverty line? People should regard that as horrific.

Why should her service job not be a career? People should regard the fact that service jobs are so unstable as horrific.

imaginenore3• 12 years ago

I just don't get all the complaints.

Since when did we become entitled to a well-paid job?

If, let's say, tomorrow they invent an AI that can write great code, putting me out of business - I will say, well, time to switch to something that pays. And there are still TONs of jobs that pay - electricians, plumbers, carpenters, construction equipment operators, elevator repairmen, illustrators, real estate brokers - they all make good money. For now at least.

Why would I even waste my time as a waiter? That time can be spent learning a skill that's in demand, not something literally anybody can do.

anigbrowl3• 12 years ago

Because neither your landlord nor your supermarket proprietor is going to wait around while you learn the skills to become employable in some other field. You don't just decide to take up plumbing and bootstrap yourself from fixing leaky buckets to running your own plumbing company. As well as the skills, you need a pile of equipment, a vehicle, you probably need to be licensed in some fashion, you need to be bonded or insured before people will do business with you, and you need to spend a good bit of time networking.

You can of course bootstrap yourself into a lot of jobs, I've done it in more than one field. but it can take quite a while to break even, and it's not like there isn't competition. I was perticularly perplexed by your mention of illustrators - for sure some illustrators can make a lot of money, but I'm pretty sure that like every other branch of the arts, the average illustrator starting out is beset with requrests to work for free or on spec on the grounds that 'this will be great for your portfolio!'

imaginenore3• 12 years ago

I have savings and my credit history is nearly perfect. I'm pretty sure I can take out a loan and start one of the above businesses.

It's important to have other skills in life as a backup plan. That, and because it's interesting :)

I did wedding photography for fun, so I can tell you for certain - nobody who does it professionally bills less than $2K per wedding (which is 6-8 hours of shooting plus around 20 hours of photo editing). It's mostly $3-6K. If they want a professional looking album, it's another 5-10 hours of laying it out and ordering, and you can bill them another $500+ on top of the album cost. Of course, you need a portfolio, and you need skills, but I billed for my second wedding shoot - the first one was free for a friend.

How long will it take me to start a full blown wedding business? I'd say I will land my first one within two-three weeks. I will probably not have many clients at the beginning. In 6 months I will have more than I can handle. It's true of every single good wedding photographer - they are booked months in advance.

FD3SA• 12 years ago

Since when did we become entitled to a well-paid job?

This is a funny mindset. Since when were you entitled to claim large swaths of this planet as belonging to an arbitrary group of people, and subsequently feel entitled to this land's resources and bounty and the rights to dictate how it would be reaped and exploited in a very arbitrary manner as defined by the current so called "modern society"?

You have the cart and the horse backwards. Humans are primates, and we fight for our right to live. If a group of people is impeding that right unreasonably, they will face the consequences.

Don't be naive, and don't take this snapshot of the present era as an axiomatic law of the universe.

Nature is a cruel mistress.

imaginenore3• 12 years ago

Since when were you entitled to claim large swaths of this planet as belonging to an arbitrary group of people, and subsequently feel entitled to this land's resources and bounty and the rights to dictate how it would be reaped and exploited in a very arbitrary manner as defined by the current so called "modern society"?

And where did I claim that?

eli_gottlieb8• 12 years ago

If, let's say, tomorrow they invent an AI that can write great code, putting me out of business - I will say, well, time to switch to something that pays.

This is an absolutely absurd limiting case to take. "An AI that can write great code" can rewrite itself and "go all Singularity" on us. If that happens, there will not be any damn jobs.

Since when did we become entitled to a well-paid job?

While there is any such thing as a job, yes, the social contract dictates that in exchange for forcing people to work to eat, with no access to the commons and all the Earth enclosed as private property, we give people a damn job to live off. Hell, basic morality demands it.

zxcvvcxz• 12 years ago

English instructor

The most important piece of information was at the end of the article! The whole read I kept thinking "what type of professor is being economically valued at a third that of a cocktail hostess?"

While this is ridiculous and seems like an example of the free market gone wrong, I think it's very particular to Vegas. Serioisly, I know friends doing the equivalent of 50/hour thanks to tips. However if this were true, in say, Seattle, then I'd be much more worried.

Your waitress, your professor

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