First of all, I was not making any recommendations. Just pointing out that you can get quite big bucks even from a job you don’t enjoy very much, in some fields.
Second, taking the moral rather than the pragmatic aspect of your comments about the finance industry: I think it’s clear that (a) the world has more people in finance than it needs and (b) some people in finance have been responsible for a lot of harm—but going into finance could still, for an individual, be the best thing they can do for the world. (By getting paid a lot of money, and then giving a lot of it away in a way calculated to do as much good as possible.) There’s a post on the 80000 Hours blog that does some calculations and concludes that even with very unfavourable assumptions someone who can do well in finance can do a lot more good than harm that way. And, of course, the fact that an industry has been responsible for some very bad things doesn’t mean that everyone working in it is doing a lot of harm; it seems pretty clear to me that a lot of what happens in the field does (to a very good approximation) no overall good or harm at all. And if a person of good conscience goes into finance, they’re probably in effect displacing someone with fewer scruples and may even on balance make the world a slightly better place by their work.
On the pragmatic point: If your prediction is correct, and some time in the nearish future it is likely that the finance industry will be hit by legislation that costs a lot of jobs and hugely reduces profits, then indeed it would be a bad career choice. I have to say that it doesn’t seem a very plausible prediction to me.
(This seems like the sort of discussion where disclaimers like the following may be useful: I do not work in the finance industry—I’m at a small technology startup—and neither does anyone close to me; but I’m a mathematician, lots of mathematicians end up in finance, and it’s not impossible that I might work there some day. I would have no particular moral qualms about that, for exactly the reasons given above.)
First of all, I was not making any recommendations. Just pointing out that you can get quite big bucks even from a job you don’t enjoy very much, in some fields.
Second, taking the moral rather than the pragmatic aspect of your comments about the finance industry: I think it’s clear that (a) the world has more people in finance than it needs and (b) some people in finance have been responsible for a lot of harm—but going into finance could still, for an individual, be the best thing they can do for the world. (By getting paid a lot of money, and then giving a lot of it away in a way calculated to do as much good as possible.) There’s a post on the 80000 Hours blog that does some calculations and concludes that even with very unfavourable assumptions someone who can do well in finance can do a lot more good than harm that way. And, of course, the fact that an industry has been responsible for some very bad things doesn’t mean that everyone working in it is doing a lot of harm; it seems pretty clear to me that a lot of what happens in the field does (to a very good approximation) no overall good or harm at all. And if a person of good conscience goes into finance, they’re probably in effect displacing someone with fewer scruples and may even on balance make the world a slightly better place by their work.
On the pragmatic point: If your prediction is correct, and some time in the nearish future it is likely that the finance industry will be hit by legislation that costs a lot of jobs and hugely reduces profits, then indeed it would be a bad career choice. I have to say that it doesn’t seem a very plausible prediction to me.
(This seems like the sort of discussion where disclaimers like the following may be useful: I do not work in the finance industry—I’m at a small technology startup—and neither does anyone close to me; but I’m a mathematician, lots of mathematicians end up in finance, and it’s not impossible that I might work there some day. I would have no particular moral qualms about that, for exactly the reasons given above.)