I've wondered at times why so many Indians go along the path of engineering and medicine (and may be a law or commerce as well these days- exceptions to these are almost entirely people who aren't capable of doing well in these fields), at least relative to the developed countries. Now it's not just India to be fair. Most developing countries see a large number of people focusing on things like school and college education while disregarding arts, sports and so on. Isn't it strange that we have highly intellectual and skilled people (though the ratio to overall population is a bit sad) capable of making movies or playing football or just painting stuff yet they don't do it? Developing countries are miles behind developed ones in terms of science and infrastructure but light years behind in terms of art. There isn't even an effort. One easy explanation would be that poorer people cannot afford to play music or play football or whatever. The real reason could be a mixture of complicated things including our tradition. For instance, countries in South America do in fact give a lot more attention to music and football and a lot of cultural stuff and we Indians have our sole cricket- which among chess and ISRO are among the few things that gives the nation pride (along with times when Indians are recognised by the western media- latest being Satya Nadella). Careers in arts (lets' club all non-conventional careers into this word for convenience) are significantly riskier than the conventional ones and Indians seem to be far more risk averse than say a Brazil or a South Africa.
First thing for me is the influence of parents and the Indian social fabric. We are surrounded by relatives, friends, relatives of friends and so on who generously bestow upon us their endless wisdom. Only that this wisdom has a problem. The advice consists not just of things that they did and wished to do but also things they've seen others do. It's generally a bunch of nonsense that no human being can ever do. Except friends advice which is generally way to far on the other side and tells you- don't work, play, party, booze etc! Now, older people naturally tend to be more risk averse and they would've seen the risk-return profile of several career paths. When I'm talking about the risk of a career path, I'm talking about the risk of getting educated (formally and informally) in a subject, intending to work in a related field. For example, doing a B.Tech in IT. And for the uninitiated, a risk-return profile is a set of values for risk and return and in this case, time and effort are the main resources being invested. For example, a person spending a lot of time learning the guitar would undoubtedly be good at it but then he may not be creative enough to earn a living out of it. It's a high risk-high return investment compared to getting an engineering degree and it may not give you the same average returns as an engineering graduate (this is just an example and I think that a guitarist would actually get on an average lesser returns than an engineering graduate in India. Film or politics might be better suited as high risk- high return investments) . Now it's difficult to objectively say which investment is better than the other even if we know the risk and return of both investments exactly. This is because different people have different utility functions. For example, an individual might prefer stock A which gives 20% average returns with 10% risk (risk here is standard deviation of returns) over stock B which gives 18% returns with only 8% risk. Close calls can go either way and it's all up to individual preference. But bring in a stock C which gives 25% returns at 5% risk and all (sane) individuals would pick C over the other two. On an average, I think engineering jobs and especially those in IT give the best risk adjusted returns since the risk is very low- you'll almost surely get hired and returns are good compared to traditional engineering fields; at par and possibly superior to them. Thus if all individuals wanted to maximise their money, in my opinion they've to get IT jobs. But we know that not everyone does it and that is indeed partly why IT remains so attractive. This could be because (A) people have different perspectives and some may agree and also some may disagree with me and even if I were right, it may not even be possible to measure the risk and returns of any career path OR a far more interesting (B) people do not want to maximise their money in the long run.
Option (B) seems right by intuition and should be a common case. Individuals do not think long-term and often are happy with short-term rewards. Watching a movie or playing a game gives instant pleasure compared to reading a book which (for me) is not as rewarding. But this only covers what we call laziness. It doesn't talk about a Sachin who didn't study much and decided to play cricket or an A.R.Rahman who decided to compose music. They were not lazy- they just put their efforts into something they liked. Something they were passionate about. Passion is the most sensible answer to the question -why don't people want to earn maximum money. Sachin and Rahman are obviously rich as well but I'm sure that they were not looking for money in the first place, when they initially invested their time. Passion can make your utility function invalid and force you to take up careers which may be high risk and low return. Now passion could cover hobbies or even laziness. One could be passionate about sitting on beaches or travelling. Or just sitting idle. Theres a great amount of happiness and pleasure to be derived from a whole lot of activities and IT covers a miniscule part of the pie. I believe that each individual has a utility function which is unique and only he can know what makes him happy. This means that he would have to try out many things to find what he likes. Including doing nothing. This doesn't mean however that you should take no advice. In fact I'm a huge fan of taking advice. Once you've figured what to do, you can take advice from people on how to do it. Or if you've not figured out what to do yet, you can ask people for their experiences doing different things and choose for yourself what you want. There is however a problem here. As people grow up, their needs change. And almost always, egos become bigger as people grow older. I don't mean this in a bad way and feel that it is probably required for good parenting as well. To satisfy those egos, you've to be good at something. Really good. Or you can shrink your ego to make up for it but that's not a very natural thing to do as self-respect is a basic human need (though you can decide how much of it you want) like food or shelter. So when adults tell you to read and get a hig paying job, it's what they wish they'd done or what they did but it's from an ego-hungry point of view. Adult's needs are very different I feel and money and self esteem and a big family are most important.
So when you go behind your non-mainstream passion , make sure you do a decent job of it if you want to be an average adult with self-esteem and all and more importantly make sure that it falls within your required risk return profile. If you cant take failure don't try to be a movie star- unless of course you're that passionate about it. And a small tip when you don't know what to do- go for what's mainstream i.e. accepted by the public. If you're not sure between investment banking and wealth management go for wealth management because people say it's better and if you're confused between core jobs and IT jobs as a mechanical engineer, go for the core job- so long as you've no strong biases towards either. Do a degree in engineering even if you're interested in making games because the market is just not there. Again, unless you're that passionate about gaming in which case you derive enough pleasure from a low-paying low-profile job (you could be the exception and make it big but you would've taken a sufficiently high risk already- which would be because of your passion for it in the first place). Something I've not considered in the entire analysis is talent and if you're really talented at say chess, it doesnt matter what anyone says, you can take it up and succeed (like say Magnus Carlsen) ; I'm just talking about the average human. I'm sure I would've left out many more things so you're always free to add new ones or criticise these in comments.
P.S: If you're not comfortable with risk and return, these are major things and almost always the only things that matter in assessing an investment. Let's assume that a share of ITC on an average (geometric mean, from the time it got listed) has given 20% returns annually with say 10% risk (stdev). While Kingfisher Airlines let us assume has given -50% returns with 25% risk. Here ITC is undoubtedly the better investment. Assuming of course that past values are indicative of future values which is in fact what we assume when choosing career paths- that we would get similar pay as our seniors or dad or whatever. It doesn't matter if someone who picked up journalism became really famous because he is just an exception. It doesn't matter if Kingfisher rose 100% in a month because that was an exception and on an average Kingfisher sucks compared to ITC. And similarly journalism would probably suck on average, in monetary terms (if an analysis is done considering all the people who tried to make it big in journalism) compared to an engineering job even though some exceptions are there.
First thing for me is the influence of parents and the Indian social fabric. We are surrounded by relatives, friends, relatives of friends and so on who generously bestow upon us their endless wisdom. Only that this wisdom has a problem. The advice consists not just of things that they did and wished to do but also things they've seen others do. It's generally a bunch of nonsense that no human being can ever do. Except friends advice which is generally way to far on the other side and tells you- don't work, play, party, booze etc! Now, older people naturally tend to be more risk averse and they would've seen the risk-return profile of several career paths. When I'm talking about the risk of a career path, I'm talking about the risk of getting educated (formally and informally) in a subject, intending to work in a related field. For example, doing a B.Tech in IT. And for the uninitiated, a risk-return profile is a set of values for risk and return and in this case, time and effort are the main resources being invested. For example, a person spending a lot of time learning the guitar would undoubtedly be good at it but then he may not be creative enough to earn a living out of it. It's a high risk-high return investment compared to getting an engineering degree and it may not give you the same average returns as an engineering graduate (this is just an example and I think that a guitarist would actually get on an average lesser returns than an engineering graduate in India. Film or politics might be better suited as high risk- high return investments) . Now it's difficult to objectively say which investment is better than the other even if we know the risk and return of both investments exactly. This is because different people have different utility functions. For example, an individual might prefer stock A which gives 20% average returns with 10% risk (risk here is standard deviation of returns) over stock B which gives 18% returns with only 8% risk. Close calls can go either way and it's all up to individual preference. But bring in a stock C which gives 25% returns at 5% risk and all (sane) individuals would pick C over the other two. On an average, I think engineering jobs and especially those in IT give the best risk adjusted returns since the risk is very low- you'll almost surely get hired and returns are good compared to traditional engineering fields; at par and possibly superior to them. Thus if all individuals wanted to maximise their money, in my opinion they've to get IT jobs. But we know that not everyone does it and that is indeed partly why IT remains so attractive. This could be because (A) people have different perspectives and some may agree and also some may disagree with me and even if I were right, it may not even be possible to measure the risk and returns of any career path OR a far more interesting (B) people do not want to maximise their money in the long run.
Option (B) seems right by intuition and should be a common case. Individuals do not think long-term and often are happy with short-term rewards. Watching a movie or playing a game gives instant pleasure compared to reading a book which (for me) is not as rewarding. But this only covers what we call laziness. It doesn't talk about a Sachin who didn't study much and decided to play cricket or an A.R.Rahman who decided to compose music. They were not lazy- they just put their efforts into something they liked. Something they were passionate about. Passion is the most sensible answer to the question -why don't people want to earn maximum money. Sachin and Rahman are obviously rich as well but I'm sure that they were not looking for money in the first place, when they initially invested their time. Passion can make your utility function invalid and force you to take up careers which may be high risk and low return. Now passion could cover hobbies or even laziness. One could be passionate about sitting on beaches or travelling. Or just sitting idle. Theres a great amount of happiness and pleasure to be derived from a whole lot of activities and IT covers a miniscule part of the pie. I believe that each individual has a utility function which is unique and only he can know what makes him happy. This means that he would have to try out many things to find what he likes. Including doing nothing. This doesn't mean however that you should take no advice. In fact I'm a huge fan of taking advice. Once you've figured what to do, you can take advice from people on how to do it. Or if you've not figured out what to do yet, you can ask people for their experiences doing different things and choose for yourself what you want. There is however a problem here. As people grow up, their needs change. And almost always, egos become bigger as people grow older. I don't mean this in a bad way and feel that it is probably required for good parenting as well. To satisfy those egos, you've to be good at something. Really good. Or you can shrink your ego to make up for it but that's not a very natural thing to do as self-respect is a basic human need (though you can decide how much of it you want) like food or shelter. So when adults tell you to read and get a hig paying job, it's what they wish they'd done or what they did but it's from an ego-hungry point of view. Adult's needs are very different I feel and money and self esteem and a big family are most important.
So when you go behind your non-mainstream passion , make sure you do a decent job of it if you want to be an average adult with self-esteem and all and more importantly make sure that it falls within your required risk return profile. If you cant take failure don't try to be a movie star- unless of course you're that passionate about it. And a small tip when you don't know what to do- go for what's mainstream i.e. accepted by the public. If you're not sure between investment banking and wealth management go for wealth management because people say it's better and if you're confused between core jobs and IT jobs as a mechanical engineer, go for the core job- so long as you've no strong biases towards either. Do a degree in engineering even if you're interested in making games because the market is just not there. Again, unless you're that passionate about gaming in which case you derive enough pleasure from a low-paying low-profile job (you could be the exception and make it big but you would've taken a sufficiently high risk already- which would be because of your passion for it in the first place). Something I've not considered in the entire analysis is talent and if you're really talented at say chess, it doesnt matter what anyone says, you can take it up and succeed (like say Magnus Carlsen) ; I'm just talking about the average human. I'm sure I would've left out many more things so you're always free to add new ones or criticise these in comments.
P.S: If you're not comfortable with risk and return, these are major things and almost always the only things that matter in assessing an investment. Let's assume that a share of ITC on an average (geometric mean, from the time it got listed) has given 20% returns annually with say 10% risk (stdev). While Kingfisher Airlines let us assume has given -50% returns with 25% risk. Here ITC is undoubtedly the better investment. Assuming of course that past values are indicative of future values which is in fact what we assume when choosing career paths- that we would get similar pay as our seniors or dad or whatever. It doesn't matter if someone who picked up journalism became really famous because he is just an exception. It doesn't matter if Kingfisher rose 100% in a month because that was an exception and on an average Kingfisher sucks compared to ITC. And similarly journalism would probably suck on average, in monetary terms (if an analysis is done considering all the people who tried to make it big in journalism) compared to an engineering job even though some exceptions are there.
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