So many people have this question early in their careers, it really seems like something is wrong. Perhaps we need a serious/mandatory/formal job-shadowing program for teens and college students.
Its not "by Study Terkel" because he didn't really write this book....I mean, its his book, but he basically ran into all these chaps, and let them do all the talking. And they talk and talk and talk. He prompts them from time to time, but mostly, its a book by these people. And their stories and lives are super compelling. I often used to wonder why people do dead-end jobs like parking cars in a building, or store clerk etc. Here, those people tell you why. There is this hooker who tells you how she got into the business, how she turns tricks, dealing with cops, offering freebies to pimps,the whole thing is simultaneously amazing and sordid and just puts everything into perspective. It taught me that America is a hard country. Its not some first world paradise. America is like, seriously fucked up. I mean, all these people, they were here long before I got here, and they have friends & families & homes & connections, and yet their lives are so hard and messed up and its not all whining & complaining, but I did get the impression things are very hard out here for the blue collar guy. Ofcourse had Turkel gone to Sand Hill road & bumped into a hundred VCs, that would be a very different book. It a definite must-read, especially if you are an immigrant.
We have a strong push towards internships, it seems odd that students aren't taking advantage of this hands-on experience in a field that interests them. Of course, missing out on a paid job for the (most likely unpaid) internship is probably a factor.
On the other hand, I really don't understand what a lot people in the tech industry do. I have a friend who works for some kind of 'data analysis' company. He makes $80K a year, and he tells me on a bad day he has to do 2 hours of 'real' work: the rest of the time is spent on reddit or taking classes. It's gotten so bad (or good) for him that he is taking 3 evening classes in the University he graduated from while working full-time. He says he spends most of his worktime doing assignments and readings anyway, so he's more prepared for classes than he was ever in college.
I understand why a game company might need 50+ developers working on the same game. I understand why Google might need all those engineers. I really don't understand what 50+ 'data engineer's at what is essentially an SEO company with 100+ employees do... Like you say, I am really confused : is the market REALLY that bad at finding exploitable niches?
And then there's another friend of mine, who says the most difficult part of his Google engineering job by far was getting it. Go figure!
Combined with engineering, there's some very interesting ways to do all those things. For example statistics on such a big scale were very hard until the internet became so widespread.
The folks who brag and tell you they make great money and don't do shit all - it's just ego tripping. Really, I've seen it a thousand times - somebody of moderate intelligence and no desire or ability to do anything creative or interesting, will sweat his/her way through university and then gloat over what an awesome position in company X he/she now has.
Really, it can be frustrating if you are in financial difficulty but rest assured, those who do the real work and are savvy enough to not get taken advantage of, will come out on top. The fella bragging about not doing much is going to continue not doing much and best case scenario - he/she cruises through life with a nice salary, having done the bare minimum.
Meh.
It's up to the employee to find their way to that 20% that's real work. If wanted it's definitely possible to find that 20% and be /truly/ worked to the max. But it doesn't just happen.
For most lawyers out drafting contracts, we're still in the days of mainframes. We write code by hand which will probably never be run on a real judge, but we hope we haven't made any bugs.
It would be an interesting project to create an artificial court/judge into which you feed a contract and an argument and get a response out.
My sense is that there's probably not a viable business there but it may make an interesting hobby blog-series, if you can get people to participate.
That's the problem; I'm not possessed of a sufficiently creative (or informed) mind to fill in the blanks here. Dangerously, due to that programming knowledge, I also have the incorrect notion that everyone else could be replaced by either a handful of code and some lightly trained workers, or wholesale by mechanization. Clearly this isn't the case (or the market is doing a very poor job of finding exploitable niches), so what gives? What do people _do_? Because I'm at a loss and need to educate myself.