Astronauts vs. Youtubers
Why the conclusion may be almost the exact opposite of the conventional wisdom
I just came across the following post on X:
Everyone is dunking on this survey since it purportedly shows how the West is becoming soft and decadent, and Chinese kids have their priorities straight. With all due respect, that’s total midwit analysis.
I am one of those kids who grew up in a totalitarian country and who’s first career aspiration, age 7, was to become a scientist and work for NASA. A few decades later, and a several degrees from the top research universities in the world, and you discover that careers in “hard” science are a) virtually impossible to get except for a fortunate few, and b) are total sh*t in terms of any reasonable quality of life metric.
So what did I do? I went online, tried a bunch of different things, and after several false starts stumbled upon machine learning and data science, acquired very strong skills in those domains, and managed to squeeze a fairly successful second career out of it. I am almost daily contacted by someone with a similar academic background to mine, and my advice to them is always along those lines. You don’t necessarily have to become a clover/youtuber (although that can work out great too, just ask Sabine Hossenfelder), but IMHO creating a strong online personal brand is an absolute must these days, even if you are in a hot field that doesn’t require any additional career boosting tricks.
We are homeschooling our kids, and even though the core of their education is very traditional (paper books, pencil and paper assignment, traditional math/reading/writing curriculum), I am not promoting any STEM supremacy dogma. I am gradually starting to teach them how to create some awesome content, and hope to teach them other digital creativity skills soon. They love it, and IMHO those skills are far more marketable than anything else that they will come across in their curriculum.
A couple of things Bojan...
1. The politics in China are not the same as in US and UK. China sensors YouTube to its population and China right now is a lot more richer than it was so many years ago. I don't think kids there have the same support from their families to pursue a career in being an "actor" or "comedian" from YouTube.
2. Gen Z kids these days have a high addiction to pursuing a career that draws attention from other people.
3. The Location of the demographic matters. grew up in the Bay Area where the public schools are rich and there is a sense of STEM supremacy dogma. Most of the kids in the Bay Area want to go into tech because of the money and influence their parents (who work in FAANG) provide them.