| Call this the 'Electrician Cycle'. A job is initially incredibly sexy, risky, and newfangled, requiring knowledge that is not widespread. Like being an electrician in 1922. There are no standards, and because everyone is therefore effectively trading on reputation, salaries are high, for the same reason that Heinz ketchup costs more than Kroger: the brand carries the value. The job eventually becomes normalized. As part of normalization, the delta in quality between the highest and lowest earners becomes much smaller. If the industry becomes regulated, this gap narrows further. Consequently, salaries fall at the high end of the profession. Eventually, being an electrician in 2022 is roughly as sexy as being a plumber in 2022, and both are approximately as sexy as being a plumber in 1922. We've already seen this cycle consume web development and what used to be called system administration -- two positions which were HoT Sh_T in 1995, but are increasingly generic office jobs in 2022. This cycle will eventually consume every technical field, a kind of sociological eutrophication, but the good news is, it starts fresh with each new gyre. The bad news is, it happens faster with each gyre, because of the 'complexity ratchet'. You'd think the ever-increasing complexity of technical fields would slow down the cycle! But no -- the human capacity for knowing and valuing is fixed; so the complexity ratchet just means that the social-value cache gets flushed more often. Data scientists are just plumbers from 2052 |