[Cheer2171]

I entered grad school at 22, thinking I would become a CS prof. I loved CS research I did as an undergrad in a prof's lab. That prof was my role model for my still not fully formed brain. I wasn't told all these things by him or the program, but I did my research and found stats about how so few PhDs become profs. Side note: all the profs are those who made it, so their advice about how to make it is like taking financial advice from lottery winners.

I read lots of these kinds of "grad school isn't worth it" confessionals. But many were about humanities PhDs, not STEM. And I thought I was special, above average, even maybe a genius. And I was special, but apparently not special enough. I dropped out to work in tech and have a better salary and life than my few ex classmates in my program who did make it in academia.

But one of my housemates was a humanities PhD who also started at 22, and was smarter and a harder worker than any of us STEM PhD students. We all thought that if any of us deserved to make it in academia, it was him. But the humanities are shrinking in the academy. What the article describes is his current life. An PhD from an R1 university who can only find a patchwork of adjunct positions at different 2 year community colleges. He can't go work in tech, who is going to pay a historian six figures or even a living wage? He got some work doing freelance writing and editing, mostly helping college applicants with their essays, but ChatGPT is destroying the freelance writing market.

We all made these decisions at age 22, after spending 4 very formative years in college. I made the same stupid decision he did and mine worked out, but the intellectual bug that bit me just so happened to be infinitely more valuable to industry than the one that bit him.

[ryandrake]

> Side note: all the profs are those who made it, so their advice about how to make it is like taking financial advice from lottery winners.

Or taking business advice from successful entrepreneurs. Everyone is looking for the magical advice—The Formula. But there is none. You can execute perfectly and still lose. You can also bumble through without trying and succeed. You can grow up in the wrong country. You can have the right parents. So much is out of our control. We almost always underestimate the outsized role luck and chance play in our endeavors.

[throwawaymaths]

This kind of talk was bubbling around STEM phds, too at top institutions in the 2005-2015 era, so even if you're in your early 40s, you should have at least been able to make an informed decision.

[ghaff]

There were a number of careers that undergraduate me was somewhat enamored of. But undergraduate me, surprisingly, was also aware that the odds of my attaining them at the levels I would find satisfying and at least reasonably lucrative were vanishingly small. So I should just stick with a job from my good engineering school.

[ghaff]

>ChatGPT is destroying the freelance writing market.

As someone very close to this area, I seriously question this. Yes, there are very low-rent content mills with material being cranked out by people who are being paid pennies per word. But serious freelance writing being commissioned by many corporations (where the pay is more in line with $1/word) are not going to be replaced by ChatGPT anytime soon. The writers may use ChatGPT as an assistant and perhaps rates will decline further over time but this basically falls in the same category as we won't need programmers any longer.

Maybe? But now you're in the category of AI will take all the jobs.

[mitthrowaway2]

I'm also close to this area, and executives see the writing on the wall.

ChatGPT doesn't even need to be nearly as good as the writers it replaces for those writers to lose their jobs. It just has to be good enough that the people who write the cheques can't tell the difference, and such people don't all have a good eye for quality writing.

[post-]

> He can't go work in tech, who is going to pay a historian six figures or even a living wage?

I appreciate the thinking that went into the parent post, but I want to challenge this statement, which is emblematic of the kind of reasoning that paints training in the humanities as frivolous and out of touch with the demands of the market, as if the market is the sole arbiter of reality.

I recently earned a PhD in a humanities field, and I'm currently gainfully employed as a research software engineer at a major university. I'm making less than I did when I was in tech just out of college, but more than many of my humanities colleagues in various positions between the PhD and the tenure track.

My point is not to brag about being able to get into tech with a humanities background, but to say that I don't think I'm anything special. When I was first applying for tech jobs out of college, I drew on my training in literature and human languages to guide my learning and application of CS fundamentals. I admit that I caught a lucky break with companies willing to take a chance on someone with a non-traditional background, and I'm grateful to have these skills to draw on if a traditional academic career doesn't work out for me. But I think my story is repeatable.

But back to the original point: rather than denigrating the value of a history PhD, it's important to question the market forces that have created this kind of precariousness for people who possess not only important knowledge about the past but, more importantly, the training and skills to use that knowledge to interpret the present.

The assumption that jobs are available to people because of what they _know_ is based on faulty logic that comes from the MBA-ification of everything -- the obsession with "deliverables."

Really, what PhD training in any discipline brings is both a deep pool of knowledge and the training to synthesize and use those "facts" in novel ways.

> ChatGPT is destroying the freelance writing market

Relatedly, this statement only makes sense if one assumes that we have given up on teaching everyday people -- non-specialists -- the importance of the medium for a message's delivery, dissemination, and broader understanding. "ChatGPT is destroying the freelance writing market" because we have collectively failed to reinforce the value of human perspectives on an issue.

Allowing "The Market" to dictate reality has led to schisms in shared truth like climate change denialism. We need interpreters of history, literature, drama, etc. in order to get back to any hope of getting back to broad agreement about what the world is.

Will we ever get everyone to agree? Of course not, but market forces can't repair these divisions.

As the old Upton Sinclair quote goes, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

[FredPret]

The market doesn't dictate reality - it is part of reality.

If a skill isn't needed, there won't be a demand for it, and it won't pay well, no matter how many years of learning and personal growth are required to acquire the skill.

The big bad market refusing to pay historians a good wage is just society's built-in mechanism for trying to guide people into doing things that are most needed.

A lot of the humanities were historically aimed at rich kids who don't need to engage with the labour market; we really shouldn't be encouraging middle-class kids to take on a mountain of student debt when they should be focusing on maximizing their earnings.

[nonrandomstring]

Your explanation is an exemplar of constrained thinking. Thinking inside the box, or having limited horizons [0].

You start off correctly; markets are "part of reality". That rightly implies some other "rest of reality", does it not?

You then define all value only within the limited logic of markets. And wish to a universalise it as "society's built-in mechanism".

Mathematics is a "humanity". Reading some, you'll gain understanding of Gödel, Whitehead and Russell who would alert you to the logic that a system can't deal with what's outside itself.

Markets are a system. A very simplified one.

Humanities are precisely that project that transcends simple models like markets. Humanities attempt to cover a bigger, meta-reality. It has nothing to do with "rich kids". Some of the greatest philosophers, writers and scientists (what we call 'STEM' now was once "natural philosophy") were dirt poor.

To be more frank, to think only about markets and "maximising earnings" is stubborn, insular and self-limiting. It's a great way to stay cloistered and never contribute anything of value to the world.

Sure we have professional economists. But not everyone should reduce them-self to the level of economics.

[0] EDIT: these are not words meant to insult or belittle - they are to mean exactly what they mean on face value. There is no 'shame' in thinking with limited horizons, or seeing in an involuted way if you've been exposed to nothing else but are open minded to imagine there is more to the world.

[badpun]

> You then define all value only within the limited logic of markets.

Not all value, just monetary one. There's plenty of valueable activities that do not pay much or even a dime. However, the discussion revolved about making a living, not what's valueable in the abstract. And, regarding making a living, it's true that plenty more people want to be paid as historians that other people have a need for.

[nonrandomstring]

I respectfully acknowledge that you aren't the parent to whom I was responding and that you're jumping in with your own contribution.

But I do not think the "discussion revolved about making a living" Indeed, it's something of an irritating HN trope/style to try steering the narrative by telling other people what the "discussion is actually all about"

As I see it the main theme here was the low social status of academic work in general.

I realise, and sympathise, that a lot of HN posters are deeply anxious about "making a living".

My disagreement with the parent is the claim that "the market" is:

  "" just society's built-in mechanism for trying to guide people into
     doing things that are most needed. ""

Markets are awful at determining what is "needed". They're great at figuring out how to satisfy people's superficial desires and great at making money. Look around you. Millions of people doing pointless make-work jobs in advertising and "the financial industry". Meanwhile, we keep failing to solve the most elementary challenges of a sustainable, healthy environment, which is surely a fundamental need.

For me, this where Neo-liberalism falls flat. Markets cannot tell society anything about what is needed. Society must tell markets what is needed... however we achieve that. And so to see things only from within the frame of "market think" is to remain blind to most of reality.

[FredPret]

Markets aren’t telling society what is needed.

Markets are society telling itself what is needed.

People want lots of plumbers, so they pay for it. Not many people want to be plumbers, so they get paid a lot.

People want one or two historians, so they vote and pay tax for it. Lots and lots of students would rather be historians than plumbers, so they don’t get paid a lot.

If you want people to want a sustainable economy, be less smug and judgemental and convince them to vote and pay for it.

[currymj]

the problem is that having a healthy community of scholars doing good historical research using sophisticated methods, produces a lot of positive externalities. most people never engage with it but having such people around does limit historical bullshit. this has been good for society. but it's now falling apart.

[FredPret]

I agree it’s a positive, but each one of us has to sell our value-add to the rest of society. This is actually a wonderful constraint to have because it keeps each of us in touch with the rest of humanity

[hobs]

Except for all the people that are born rich, they don't have to do anything.

[FredPret]

But becoming a historian is a good option for them.

[badpun]

Is it really falling apart? The US universities hire many, probably thousans or even tens of thosands, of excellent history professors. What's the problem with it?

[cka]

I'm a math PhD, was a tenured professor and then transitioned to industry. We've got two humanities PhDs that work as QA testers on our team. They're both fantastic, especially in thinking about either big picture questions or nuanced takes that others missed out on.

[WalterSear]

Considering the length of the road they took to become QA testers, they had better be. This is more evidence that humanities studies are a substantial stumbling block, in terms of career growth.

[life-and-quiet]

Appreciate this post, and will add my voice to it. Current senior manager in technology whose only academic credentials are undergrad and grad degrees in history and (non-quantitative minor) economics.

I do think my career stalled a bit as a result of studying these things, but that's a consequence of the same market thinking you're challenging. The people who hired me are happy they gave me the chance, and presumably like OP said, we aren't that special and there are tons of other talented people who can do this work being ignored because of an excess concern for credentialism.