Hugh MacLeod on career prospects

In China, if you are one-in-a-million skilled at your endeavor of choice, there are <i>still</i> a thousand people better at it than you. Ditto with India.<p>I had a facts-of-life conversation with myself prior to entering college on how good of a computer programmer I am (decent, but not the best) and what my competitive situation would look like next to 100,000 Indians graduating every year (not so great). That is when I decided to double major in a language. Playing the Venn diagram game, the circle of people who are better programmers than me is pretty big, the circle of people who speak better Japanese than I do is pretty big, but the intersection of those two circles is pretty freaking small.<p>I really suggest that everyone play the Venn diagram game for themselves. And, no, "speaks English kinda good" and "has a college degree" is no longer enough to cut it. Find yourself a niche and be at or near the top of the skill curve in it. (I rush to add, for my fellow ArtSci graduates, that it helps if the niche has <i>cough</i> economic value. Nobody says you can't be the world's leading expert on traditional Louisianan pottery, but that may end up being your hobby rather than your day job.)<p>P.S. "Can program way out of paper bag" INTERSECT "marketing skills" results in a <i>disgustingly</i> small set. This is great news for small businessmen!

"And in the back of my mind, I’m thin­king the same is star­ting to hap­pen to white collar guys more and more, as well. But it’s not quite out in the open yet. Society’s not quite ready to have that conversation."<p>This. I wonder how long it's going to take until we're allowed to talk about this. It's pretty clear that five years ago if you graduated from an Ivy but you weren't that smart, you could still get a pretty good job. But today these people are mostly unemployed because they aren't willing to take a menial job, and the thing is that it looks like they'll never get offered anything better than a menial job. How big does this class of people have to get before this is officially a 'thing'?

Am I the only one who feels that having to <i>actually try</i> to get a good job straight out of uni should be the norm rather than the exception?<p>College is not training for a job. It's something you should do because you want to learn. If you go to university because you want a job, you're a fool. There's no conceivable reason why simply "having a degree" (or, for the blue-collar example, being alive) should be a guarantee of a "good job".<p>I didn't graduate all that long ago, from a top university, and yet I had to actually struggle to get my first job (graduating right after 9/11 and being a foreign student didn't help). I don't see that as abnormal, though. What's so terrible about a little struggling? It's not like any of these so-called thousandists are struggling to feed themselves. Does anyone really want to just waltz out of college into a boring, reasonably paid job for the rest of their life? I find it hard to empathise with anyone whose aspirations in life stop there.<p>Sorry for the slightly incoherent rant, but this sort of thing (which I think they call "an overgrown sense of entitlement") bugs me. Nothing's guaranteed in this world, not even that you'll have a fair shot. Compared to most of human history, these are fantastic times we live in, where almost everyone is at least given the opportunity to do something with their life. Stop bitching and get on with making the most of your life!

This reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine. I was ranting to him how I didn't feel good enough in any single pursuit and was upset at having so many hobbies and side-interests diluting my ability to be much better at any one thing. He basically told me: "Well, no one has the exact same set of skills that you do and being diverse in training is a virtue. Plus, even if there is someone better than you at everything you do, that person's really fucking busy right now, so there's still a lot of work to do"

Doesn't the idea that there are thirty million piano-playing Chinese children imply that there is also a massive impending expansion in total addressible worldwide market?<p>The era of the 6-figure starting salary for MBA's may be drawing to a close (though it is not, as my little sister will tell you, for law school grads), but the forces that demolished Big Auto are specific and concrete; no similar force applies to "white collar" in general.

That is a powerful post. This is the HN moment. The HN community can play a critical role in shaping the next decade.<p>Personally, as scary as the coming years may be, I've been expecting them, and am excited.