<i>The fundamental problem with a career in law is that you aren’t doing anything of value for society.</i><p>I stopped reading there. Sure, there are scumbag lawyers out there, but telling eg. the EFF or Creative Commons, not to mention your average underpaid and overworked public defender, that they "aren't doing anything of value for society" is a bit rich.
This is one of the continual discussions i have with my grandmother, who worked a total of 2 jobs in her entire life, where as i, as a web developer contractor/freelancer, can have as many as 20 "jobs" in a year. She worries about my job security, even though i earn a ridiculous amount of money vs what i <i>need</i> to live, i save some, spend some and invest some.<p>I get hired ridiculously easy, its just unfair. Granted the odds stacked in my favour immensely. I'm young, i travel anywhere within the UK for work and can be on site with 24hrs notice, i have no dependents (other than my employees, but my businesses independently cover their wages), my living expenses are about 10% of my earnings, I live in a low cost city but work in a high income city, I'm highly skilled (by the industry average, not by my standard) and my industry is drastically under served by skilled workers.<p>Job security no longer means getting hired by a big company and staying there for 30+ years, today, it means how easily you can get hired. Some of these things you can influence, like skill, or choose, like flexibility on location and times, and some are things outwith your control but can still be exploited, like market demand.
In the case of law, this is actually way too optimistic - an A-list school in no way guarantees you'll "do all right for yourself" anymore. Horror studies abound of even graduates of the top-5 finding themselves with loads of debt and nothing but very low-paying jobs.
On the one hand, the headline is quite true, but the story is filled with bigoted, idiotic stereotypes and ridiculous generalisations, written by someone who clearly has an axe to grind and little sense to offer anyone. Lame.
Reading some of the other articles on this blog, this guy needs to realize he's not a unique snowflake and has no business giving 'life advice' to others.<p>e.g. <a href="http://www.freedomtwentyfive.com/2013/03/where-does-it-end/" rel="nofollow">http://www.freedomtwentyfive.com/2013/03/where-does-it-end/</a>
The big differentiator in careers that I see time and again is hustle. I rarely see people with hustle out of a job.<p>This is the mindset that ensures you will always have a job:<p><a href="http://slyoyster.com/music/2010/50-cent-will-shovel-your-snowy-sidewalk/" rel="nofollow">http://slyoyster.com/music/2010/50-cent-will-shovel-your-sno...</a><p>If I lost my job, I would start selling my skills & abilities the next day, working side jobs, whatever. Gotta hustle to make the ends meet.<p>You have to take a message to Garcia.
Ok, so <i>what the fuck am I supposed to do?</i><p>I'm 24, and I'm a CS grad student. I want to do research, or at least research&development. I can code plenty well; hell, I'm typing from the end of the workday at my sweet internship right now.<p>But if you're going to tell me that even tech will leave me broke and unable to support a family at 35, what... what anything? Why anything?<p>Why pretend I have career aspirations if anything I can think of ends in being broke and useless at 35? Why pretend I give half a damn about any of the work I do if I can't ever rely on even a reasonably stable lifestyle, if everything is just moonshot after moonshot before the unemployment line?<p>It's one thing when I hear that I'll probably never have a flying car or pet robot [1]. It's another thing when I hear that I can't expect to ever have a family or make it to retirement without plunging into poverty, <i>and I'm part of the privileged elite.</i><p><i>What. The. Fuck?</i><p>PS -- I apologize for the obvious emotion in this post, but it's a worry I've been carrying for a couple of years now.<p>[1] - <a href="http://thebaffler.com/past/of_flying_cars" rel="nofollow">http://thebaffler.com/past/of_flying_cars</a>