Probably the only engineering fields that are doing really well are computer science and maybe, at this point, petroleum engineering. And most other areas of engineering have been bad career decisions the last 40 years … Nuclear engineering, aerospace engineering [were catastrophic fields to go into]
Where’s his evidence on this? This data suggests average salaries for engineers outside software engineering were not much different from software engineering. I’d guess there’s more exciting new companies in computing than in aerospace, but it doesn’t mean it was a “catastrophic career move”. US companies also sell a lot of products abroad and there’s been huge growth in use of aircraft, cars, and other engineered products worldwide (due to catch up growth).
Why did all the rocket scientists go to work on Wall Street in the ’90s to create new financial products?
Because the Cold War ended. There’s no big mystery. If you weren’t “allowed” to make rockets, how to explain SpaceX (started in 2002)? Not to say regulation doesn’t limit innovation, but I’d want to see actual data on this and not just bluster.
This data suggests average salaries for engineers outside software engineering were not much different from software engineering.
Average salaries don’t tell you about job prospects; I know several aerospace engineers who became software engineers because they couldn’t find a job in aerospace, but don’t know any with the reverse story. (Contrast to people moving between Texas and California, where I know several who moved in each direction, which tells you the two states are somewhat competitive, unlike Alaska and California, where I only know people who moved in one direction.)
As you bring up next, probably more importantly to Thiel’s analysis are billionaire prospects. That is, a software engineer could reasonably expect to have a narrow shot at making a mountain of cash and a company with a global brand; the last time an aerospace engineer could have that expectation was probably 50 years ago.
SpaceX (and BlueOrigin) needed a lot of private capital to get started. A college graduate who wants to build rockets doesn’t have that capital and in the ’90 there was no companies where they could go to build innovative new rocktets.
So I just looked up Boeing because I wanted to say “there’s an aerospace engineer who got filthy rich” but in fact Boeing was a timber magnate who bought a plane as a toy, and then when it broke said “well, I could probably make my own plane” and did. While “investor interest” is probably a factor here, it’s probably a lagging indicator instead of a leading indicator; it’s because investors aren’t interested in funding nuclear power plants we can tell they were a bad idea 5 years ago, not 5 years from now.
There’s technology that you can develop without much investor interest like most consumer internet companies. That’s not true for SpaceX.
When William E. Boeing founded Boeing Company in 1916 the amount of regulation in the space was a lot less then it’s post-1970 and the amount of investment needed to start an airplane company was likely much lower then today.
Where’s his evidence on this? This data suggests average salaries for engineers outside software engineering were not much different from software engineering. I’d guess there’s more exciting new companies in computing than in aerospace, but it doesn’t mean it was a “catastrophic career move”. US companies also sell a lot of products abroad and there’s been huge growth in use of aircraft, cars, and other engineered products worldwide (due to catch up growth).
Because the Cold War ended. There’s no big mystery. If you weren’t “allowed” to make rockets, how to explain SpaceX (started in 2002)? Not to say regulation doesn’t limit innovation, but I’d want to see actual data on this and not just bluster.
Average salaries don’t tell you about job prospects; I know several aerospace engineers who became software engineers because they couldn’t find a job in aerospace, but don’t know any with the reverse story. (Contrast to people moving between Texas and California, where I know several who moved in each direction, which tells you the two states are somewhat competitive, unlike Alaska and California, where I only know people who moved in one direction.)
As you bring up next, probably more importantly to Thiel’s analysis are billionaire prospects. That is, a software engineer could reasonably expect to have a narrow shot at making a mountain of cash and a company with a global brand; the last time an aerospace engineer could have that expectation was probably 50 years ago.
SpaceX (and BlueOrigin) needed a lot of private capital to get started. A college graduate who wants to build rockets doesn’t have that capital and in the ’90 there was no companies where they could go to build innovative new rocktets.
So I just looked up Boeing because I wanted to say “there’s an aerospace engineer who got filthy rich” but in fact Boeing was a timber magnate who bought a plane as a toy, and then when it broke said “well, I could probably make my own plane” and did. While “investor interest” is probably a factor here, it’s probably a lagging indicator instead of a leading indicator; it’s because investors aren’t interested in funding nuclear power plants we can tell they were a bad idea 5 years ago, not 5 years from now.
There’s technology that you can develop without much investor interest like most consumer internet companies. That’s not true for SpaceX.
When William E. Boeing founded Boeing Company in 1916 the amount of regulation in the space was a lot less then it’s post-1970 and the amount of investment needed to start an airplane company was likely much lower then today.