This has been sitting in my draft folder for months now, having been forgotten. Appropriately, I found this today and am posting.
This is the economist, Tyler Cowen, on career choice as distortion by short-term signaling issues.
“I think about this a lot: you’re young, you come from a smart, wealthy family, you’re somehow supposed to show that you’re successful quite quickly. Banking, law, consultancy allow you to do this; engineering, science and entrepreneurship less so. Your friends expect it, your parents, your potential mates do … So we see so many talented people very quickly having to signal how smart they are but that may not be the longest-term social productivity.”
takingpitches 