[mandmandam]

The best jobs for society seem to be the worst appreciated and compensated.

Corporate tax accountants "earn" orders of magnitude more than janitors and nurses. Media puppets earn far far more than investigative journalists. Lawyers are respected more than teachers, in many ways. It's all absolutely batty.

That said, seems to me the best compensated people, with the least friction in their career, and with the least amount of overt evil done to society seem to be consultants. If you can start a consulting business in some field you can probably do well, financially at least.

I am not a consultant. From here though, it seems like they get paid astoundingly well by large companies that have no real way to measure the outcomes, so you just have to be confident and chipper and give people the feeling that you know what you're talking about and can help them.

Good luck!

[itake]

> with the least amount of overt evil done to society

Debatable. My friends at BCG have a HUGE carbon footprint as they fly around the world to site offices every week.

[jesterson]

> Lawyers are respected more than teachers, in many ways.

Wonder what those ways are - in my environment (and it's very business oriented, very far from teaching), teachers are respected way more than lawyers.

Yea, lawyers make more cash, but it's totally different story and has nothing to do with respect.

[mandmandam]

The cash is a big, big deal. And it comes with benefits like having more time off, better health care, a higher quality of life. Cash is intimately linked; highly, highly correlated with respect from strangers. You can't ignore it.

Lawyers can afford better clothes, giving them instantly more respect from strangers. They eat at more expensive restaurants, shop at higher class shops, fly in a better class. Their respect might be shallow and paid for, but again, let's not ignore it.

Now think of two generic families - one has a kid who just graduated law school, one has a kid who just graduated teacher's college. I don't think the teacher's family would be significantly more proud, in shallow terms. Probably the opposite, and that's sad af.

Think of what happens when a cop stops a teacher, compared to when they stop a lawyer - who are they more scared of overreaching with?

In many situations, the lawyer has more connections, and more capability in many ways to inflict consequences on people who mess with them.

I've heard many times that teachers are overpaid - seriously, I have. People complain that their job is too fulfilling (which is insane, for sure, but I do hear it). People are envious of the three month "holiday" every year, ignorant of all that needs to be done in that time.

I'm neither a teacher or a lawyer, but I know many teachers who deserve far better lives, and many lawyers who deserve far, far less.

[jesterson]

It may be a cultural thing, but it does seem to me you use prosperity and respect as interchangeable terms, while they are not.

If police guy stops a lawyer he indeed wouldn't possibly mess with him but certainly not because of respect, quite the opposite. The is russian saying which can be translated as "don't touch shit - it won't smell".

I personally don't have respect to someone just because they have 7 digits in bank account or huge villa in LA/SF. Or went to Cornell/Harvard - thanks to life experiences I've seen a lot of graduates from both institutions who were dumb af. That just doesn't make any sense.

Again, it may be a cultural thing, but respect is something achieved by someone's actions, not assets. I know few people (sadly very few) who sacrificed their wealth for a more meaningful things in life. Their assets are next to nothing, yet respect to them is tremendous.

Saying teachers are overpaid is ridiculous though. Wonder if people who say that send their kids to public schools.

[jd_illa]

my partner was a consultant at Bain and regularly worked 100+ hour weeks in a small town outside of Dallas where he ate all his meals at a hotel. The day he left was one of the best of his life!

It's a definitely a lot more than being confident. There's a ton of important data skills, people management and strategy skills involved, and a lot of times your "clients" are not on your side. It's pretty common for a CEO or department head to hire a consultant to work with a department that's not doing well, so the folks you actually end up working with can resent you (especially when they know how much you're getting paid).

[As_You_Wish]

Bain is different than what he is talking about. You are an employee at a services company. It's like being a lawyer or an accountant. You have to maximize the hours you work because the money goes to Bain so they work you to death for their money.

If you work for yourself, you are your own boss and can work how you want.

I know great companies that do work in the industry. I talk to business owners, find what they want and need, do an analysis, and then get the companies that I work with to come in and do the actual work.

I do the upfront work for free and then collect a cut of the work done by the companies that do the work.

Maybe I'm a salesperson, maybe I'm a consultant. I call myself a consultant, I guess, since I do the analysis report and bring in the solution?