If You’re So Damn Smart, Why Aren’t You Rich?

I'm 35. I'll try not to be too critical. Moral of the story:<p>Being educated doesn't say anything about you being smart.<p>Here's the rub. A college degree is a specialization. That's why you "major" in something. It was never designed to be an extension of high school. So, you should get a degree in something that you are both passionate about <i>and</i> also accept the limited career paths that come with that particular passion. If the career paths are limited and/or not to your liking, assume that the degree will not help you find a job. You may as well use the money to travel instead.<p>The further you deviate from the career paths that are attached to the degree you obtain, the more worthless it becomes. Attempting even greater specialization along this field of study only <i>enhances</i> this effect; it will not correct it.<p>So, Mr. Masters in English: Why are you not focusing your search on the career paths that are attached to the degree that you have; assuming this is actually a passion of yours, namely teaching and/or writing?<p>Applying for random positions because you figure your degree actually means something is about as stupid as applying to the space program and for all the same reasons. You do not have a catch all pre-requisite. You have specialized training, and you receive little to no benefit over the random person on the street when you are evaluated for suitability to this position if the training isn't aligned with the job you are trying to get.<p>Not realizing this after years and years of education isn't very smart at all, really. Sadly I know you aren't alone.

Let's see now...<p>You took bad advice from the wrong person.<p>You dumbed yourself down.<p>You played the role of some other person, not yourself.<p>You played someone else's game without expressing what you were really thinking.<p>You settled for an inappropriate job.<p>You're bored to death and wasting time in a dead end job for 6 months now.<p>And you call that "Damn Smart"?<p>[EDIT: The only smart thing you did (following up with a nice Thank You note) is the only thing that got you the job. Please don't attribute your "success" to anything else.]

I expected this article to be something totally different. I think it was a great article, though the title had little to do with the moral of the story.<p>But man I can relate. When I graduated with my Mechanical and Electrical Engineering degrees, I thought the world was my oyster. I found a sweet job called Marketing Engineer that required both a well-formed understanding of engineering and a knack for marketing and communication (I had those!). Turned out to be nothing more than a glorified technical support job (at least 6-7 hours of my work day). After 8 months, I was totally depressed, my side startup was suffering because of it, and I had to quit. No amount of money was worth that feeling all day, every day.

I like the converse: "If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?"<p>It's attributed to MIT's Paul Cootner, supposedly as a comeback to a money manager who asked him why, if Cootner was so smart, he wasn't rich?

I've never run into this myself (BSc Comp Sci, MSc Management), but that might be because most jobs I've had have come through word of mouth / networking. Plus, once you've got a bit of a career history, your education doesn't matter much compared to your experience.<p>I've spoken to plenty of friends/employers who don't care about degrees at all, but not many who would actively count that against applicants.<p>As other people have said, it most likely depends on the kind of jobs you're applying for. Being massively over-qualified for the position you're going for can certainly act against you as you're more likely to get bored and move on.

The problem probably wasn't having the masters degree so much as having the masters degree and applying for jobs with titles like "administrative assistant"<p>moral of the story: don't trust "careers counselors"

i think the author of this post needs to drop his intense feelings of superiority and entitlement as they are obviously not backed up by any real world metrics. sorry, much of academia is completely disconnected from the real world. just because you made marks doesn't mean the rest of the world should bow before your superior intellect. sheesh, the nerve of some people...

I read a lot of comments mentioning how the author is overqualified for the jobs he's applying to.<p>But we've gotta consider two things:<p>1) We're currently in a depression/recession. Jobs are scarce out there.<p>2) He has a Masters degree in English! Compared to most of us on Hacker News, we don't have experience job hunting with an arts degree.

Sounds like a situation he put himself in by having no goals and just looking for anything that comes up.<p>Instead of doing that, he could have done research in what opportunities his degree opens up for him and specifically target those areas in his job hunt.

I find the idea of paper degrees being somehow a synonym of "smarts" a bit elitist.<p>As far as getting rich goes (at least in startupland), there's a <i>big</i> difference between "so, what can you do?" and "so, what can do <i>to help me</i>"?<p>If life isn't turning out quite like you expected, perhaps it'd be "smart" to be a bit more proactive?

<i>"Life is too short to walk around reluctantly doing crap work"</i> -Bruce Sterling

Dumbed himself down for a job he was over-qualified for and ends bored to depression. Sounds about right.

I really hope there's a good deal of fantasy into this story.<p>Gladwell, in his great book Outliers, argues that IQ is only related to success to some extent: above the intelligence level that allows you to get a MSc without great difficulties (this is obviously a fuzzy metric), adding much more doesn't have a big impact. Other factors (was programming your hobby at 16 and you got access to a workstation when it was not common?) make the difference.

If You're So Incredible Rich, Why Aren't You Happy?

Because I'm smart.<p>Money certainly has utility, but it's not the be-all and end-all of my existence. It enables freedom in choices but doesn't become the reason I make choices.<p>And it certainly has let me chose not to work with someone who is impressed by 'dumbing down'.

Considering I've spent my career in the opposite position, I've never fully understood this mentality.<p>But America is littered with over-educated, under-employed people for some reason. I recall working service jobs as a student with unhappy coworkers - career waiters, cooks or store clerks - in their mid 30's with Masters degrees and that was back when there was no recession to use as an excuse.<p>I'd attribute it to entitlement, maybe just a personal disposition of not being very driven, and the fact there are many people who's only real talent is excelling at school...

A polarizing article not meant to entertain or educate, but to gain traffic from those searching for 'smart and rich'. If the story were true, I’d feel sorry for him; creating an ideology based on the corner of a puzzle piece makes you horse-headed and ultimately miserable.<p>Fortunately, it’s not, and he has successfully brought attention to his personal site, which, because of the content, is pleasantly ironic. My left-handed compliments to the chef.

If you're so damn smart, why don't you start a company and then consult?<p>I've seen the pattern that internally many companies work the way the article noted. That is, insecurity and ass-kissing go way down to the bowels of the company.<p>However, I have found that the problems created by ass-kissing are solved when you sell yourself not as an employee but as a consulting expert/guru. Then, intelligence and other awesome qualities are then marketing tools.

Am I the only one that read the article and thought that part of the problem had to do with the fact that he was sending out "thousands of resumes" in the last two months?<p>I really expected to come to the comments on this post and see a lot of responses about that. It doesn't sound at all like he was trying to target his market at all. It sounds as though his plan was to simply spam his way to finding a job.

I don't get the mentality of sending out thousands of resumes. I sent out one to get my current job because I wanted to work there.

If this story is trying to convince me that it makes sense to dumb down credentials ("at least I was employed") it was not successful. He apparently sent out his resume to roughly every business he saw on the street. Perhaps if he had represented himself better on it, he would have gotten a different job that doesn't suck.

What was your graduate degree in? Could you apply that to create value somehow?

Clearly the story is not about being Smart. More in the lines of: you can get a dog job if you learn to bark. But then don't complain if you are not a dog, don't ask for meat and eat the bones that a dog eat.

OP should have simply done something interesting in the extra 5 hours per day that his employer was paying him to do nothing. Read a book, write memoirs, work on a side business...

Because money isn't my primary aim in life.

The 'dumbing yourself down' skill comes very handy when talking to most girls at bars/clubs.

Are hard to read font colors a new trend or something?<p>#666666 for body text makes my eyes bleed

I'm smarter than Obama, why I'm not President of America?

Quote: '“This letter is too well written.” He fiddle [sic] with the pen as he read.'

While I think this story is largely fictitious, when someone argues that they're downtrodden and victimized because they sound smart -- in verbal or written form -- they're often missing the forest for the trees.<p>Unless you're debating esoterica of a specialized domain, the smartest people manage to communicate in a simple, effective manner(1). The person accused of using too many syllables, in contrast, tends to be someone who isn't actually terribly smart at all, and the compensation is a verbal find/replace of commonplace words with a cargo cult collection of "smart" words, because that's what they think smart people do.<p>When someone says "you're too smart", or "you sound too smart" or "try to dumb yourself down", most of the time they're not <i>really</i> saying that you're too smart. They're saying "can the act."<p>(1) - The best example of this, I think, was Richard Feynman. He never tried to sell the idea that he was smart -- anyone who needed to know that already knew it -- but instead managed to communicate the most incredible ideas clearly and effectively.

Yep. Self-induced lobotomy is a very useful skill.

Rubish.<p>And I'll say what I like because this is the internet and I will care about you as much as you cared about my five minutes.<p>Your tone is patronising. You are shouting at me, I feel like a little child in a very dark room with a very tall man shouting at me and I have watery eyes and will any moment start crying.<p>First, English Literature. That is arts. Arts and business are two different things. With english lit you write the subjective rubish you did and make me feel very bad for no reason whatever.<p>Second, is this all fiction?<p>Third, how old are you? - just to say I didnt read it all, I didnt wanna cry and didnt like the darkness.<p>Fourth, it is not smart to study English Literature, you read book instead.<p>Fifth, it is not smart to apply to jobs you are not qualified for.<p>Sixth, get a proper degree!<p>Seventh. Are you saying that someone who went to Harvard would be looked down compared to someone who went to, well I dont know about there in the US, but a rubish university by reputation, unless you were appying to be a bin collector?<p>Or are you saying that really employers do not want smart people - smart by the standards of reality - that is great university reputation and numbers or letters in your paper- when applying for the jobs which kinda - if not in reality than perception - require a lot of responsibility and someone's intellect you can trust when making far reaching decisions?<p>To Conclude, I don't like you, whoever that wrote it. It is grim, it is shouting at me, at no point, as far as I read anyway, and if you were so smart you would have made my reading pleasurable and I would have finished reading it, did I think that you showed any reason for me to think that you are smart, your article is full of generalisation, opinions,<p>You know, perhaps if you are smart enough you will understand this, you article gives those same emotions as - and this is brutal - as those articles written by journalists in populous newspapers did when they were arguing for invading Iraq. I do not say it is of that grave scale, it gives those same emotions.<p>So god let me pray that you do not become a journalist and so too god I pray that your articles, if of the same kind, do not find their way to HN again.

I'm lazy as fuck. That's why.

It would appear that you talk like a fag, and that your shit's all retarded.