Sales is standard advice for people with high verbal ability, and there’s plenty of sales jobs for technical subjects that do not require direct technical ability. (Someone sells MRI machines to hospitals, and they aren’t an engineer.) There’s a fairly large industry in machine learning enterprise solutions, where all you would need is the ability to tell apart Spark and Impala and R and Hive and Hadoop, not necessarily the ability to use any of them competently.
Two issues: ‘social cognition’ is rather important, and there will be multiple issues or assignments at once.
I think most other verbal fields are in a bad way and have declining prospects. Verbal + abstract reasoning has historically screamed law, but going to law school now is a terrible mistake. Similarly, journalism has very poor options that I suspect will continue to get worse.
Yes—sales at the corporate level is mostly about gladhanding and networking. People who can’t seamlessly insinuate themselves into the local old-boy network will do poorly.
going to law school now is a terrible mistake
Well… going to some law school has been a terrible mistake for years by now. On the other hand, if you can get into a top-tier law school (and there about half a dozen of those in the US), I would hesitate to call it a mistake.
On the other hand, if you can get into a top-tier law school (and there about half a dozen of those in the US), I would hesitate to call it a mistake.
Yes, there are still top tier law firms, and you have a chance of getting hired by one if you go to a top tier law school.
My point is more that even conditioned on knowing that you would survive law school and make it into a top tier law firm, it’s not obvious to me that law is the best path to take: options in other industries may be far more valuable. (Consider claims about how doctors only get rich in real estate, or compare physics PhDs in academia and quantitative trading, or Peter Thiel narrowly missing out on a Supreme Court clerkship and founding a company instead.)
it’s not obvious to me that law is the best path to take: options in other industries may be far more valuable
It all depends, of course. Each path has its risks and its rewards. However, if—and that’s a huge if—you can get admitted to a top-tier law school, get hired by Biglaw, and spend a few years in, say, a white-shoe NYC law firm, that doesn’t sound like horrible fate to me (subject to the sensitivities of your soul, naturally).
Sales is standard advice for people with high verbal ability, and there’s plenty of sales jobs for technical subjects that do not require direct technical ability. (Someone sells MRI machines to hospitals, and they aren’t an engineer.) There’s a fairly large industry in machine learning enterprise solutions, where all you would need is the ability to tell apart Spark and Impala and R and Hive and Hadoop, not necessarily the ability to use any of them competently.
Two issues: ‘social cognition’ is rather important, and there will be multiple issues or assignments at once.
I think most other verbal fields are in a bad way and have declining prospects. Verbal + abstract reasoning has historically screamed law, but going to law school now is a terrible mistake. Similarly, journalism has very poor options that I suspect will continue to get worse.
Yes—sales at the corporate level is mostly about gladhanding and networking. People who can’t seamlessly insinuate themselves into the local old-boy network will do poorly.
Well… going to some law school has been a terrible mistake for years by now. On the other hand, if you can get into a top-tier law school (and there about half a dozen of those in the US), I would hesitate to call it a mistake.
Yes, there are still top tier law firms, and you have a chance of getting hired by one if you go to a top tier law school.
My point is more that even conditioned on knowing that you would survive law school and make it into a top tier law firm, it’s not obvious to me that law is the best path to take: options in other industries may be far more valuable. (Consider claims about how doctors only get rich in real estate, or compare physics PhDs in academia and quantitative trading, or Peter Thiel narrowly missing out on a Supreme Court clerkship and founding a company instead.)
It all depends, of course. Each path has its risks and its rewards. However, if—and that’s a huge if—you can get admitted to a top-tier law school, get hired by Biglaw, and spend a few years in, say, a white-shoe NYC law firm, that doesn’t sound like horrible fate to me (subject to the sensitivities of your soul, naturally).