You were born into money yes? Also went to very privileged school and college from what you told me right? Are you saying you went to college and didn’t finish? Not sure that’s the same as not going to college
3 Likes
Get your 6 sigma green belt, and learn to apply it. Those skills will make you an asset wherever you go.
Your degree should support whatever you are good at, and want to do long term. If you like building or desinging things, and working with your hands, mechanical engineering is great. If you like working in the lab, go for chemical engineering or chemistry.
If you’re not into either but prefer the buisness side of things get your MBA.
It’s easy to say a degree isn’t worth shit, but a degree definitely makes it easier to sell yourself to a stranger. And considering most people don’t have it in them to start their own buisness I’d say that’s worth something.
5 Likes
Professional jobs like engineering, medicine or law.
or
Trades. HVAC, electrical, welding, etc.
Find something that you like and are good at.
1 Like
I’ve met plenty of people where their degree doesn’t mean shit. People with PhD’s that don’t use them - and people in the arts that don’t use them.
However - the statistics 100% take into account opportunity cost of going to school, paying off debt (for school loans, homes, etc of a normal American), and average investing expectations for a normal adult in the US. A normal adult in the US is in the 55-60k a year range and may or may not own a home, and almost always is in a lot of debt, plus almost zero in investments/savings.
There are entire institutions that study just these things - how to improve them and why they are the way they are. And entire political machines dedicated to both keeping them the same and changing them forever. 
In any case - @TeslaWRLD don’t worry about what might be relevant to the industry TODAY - cause by the time you finish school those things will be vastly different. 
Instead - take some general eds, see what you enjoy and plan to major in that. But only do that if you enjoy school or are good at school. Deciding to go to school when you suck at it and hate it is a recipe for disaster. There are many on here who gave no fucks about school and found their own way. Its a totally normal path for millions of humans.
If you want to go to school - you should figure out what your aptitudes are (any college counselor can give you this test and there are many online for free). See if any of those things you have aptitude for sound interesting and take a course or two to see what you like.
Would a 2-year program work better for you? Perhaps you really hate math - so maybe you lean away from anything with advanced math or physics. There’s a lot of options out there and the real truth is almost everything is needed in our industry.
Interested in communications? Awesome - communication sucks and we need people who love to do it.
Love chemistry? Tada - formulate, extract, make new nutrients and pesticides, figure out the next great material to use as a membrane. All in the chemistry/materials science realm.
Wish you could always be outside? Excellent - think about horticulture and environmental science - help make our industry more sustainable.
Really the sky is the limit for what you want to put your mind to - whether you want to go to school or not.
Feel free to DM if you want to chat about it. I’ve been mentoring high school and college youth for about 10 years now - there’s lots of cool stuff and plenty of completely dumb shit that can happen to you.
Also - try not to give a fuck about billionaires. There are only a few thousand of them on the planet and if you were going to be headed that direction you probably wouldn’t be asking anyone about it here. They certainly were not.
Trying to base any career decision on a one in 400 million chance of something occurring in your life seems a little far fetched. Randomly becoming a billionaire… because you dropped out of college or didn’t go at all. x.X Great stories - that we only know about because the fuckers are billionaires. <3
8 Likes
You don’t base career decisions off of being a billionaire - where did I say that? They worked their face off. Focused, persistent and failed a lot. That’s what they all have in common.
Being intelligent about how you place your flag is the same amount of energy on making 1mm and 50mm but being intentional in what you separates your from having a great corporate job, to a owner and then an institution.
The stats don’t take account for that. You loose our most valuable commodity - which is time. A plumber who pulls 6 figs at 21 and invest right will make much more then 2.4 million a over their life. I’m not sure how that is so hard to see.
The institutions that do these studies are paid to give certain results…
The funny thing is most of the wealthiest people in the world are completely unknown. As they say, the nail that is the most sticking out is also the most likely to be hit by the hammer. Forbes gets paid to not put people on list.
Ever heard of the BIS?
Who said I was asking? And when did I say that?
1 Like
I’d bet that the 30% of billionaires(I’d wager 95%+) were born millionaires.
You had enough privilege to attend a fancy school but didn’t finish?
2 Likes
I wasn’t born rich, living the American dream where a few generations back my blood was in poverty. Bad … genetics ?
I worked hard then I got a degree and now I don’t work hard. the people that pay me can’t do my job
I feel like a better statistic for this conversation would be that 88% of millionaires(soon to be middle class) are self employed. Which requires no college degree.
Art of war says college isn’t the play this day in age. A true passion for continued education(free), unrelenting drive, and humility is all it takes.
6 Likes
It’s not like just having a degree is good. Shitting on stem degrees is pretty dumb. A lot of y’all in this cannabis space have had good fortune in life to have exploited the unnatural profit margins and thus perspectives are skewed.
Not everyone can start a business. How does a poor kid from a poor community in some podunk county figure out how to bootstrap themselves to being a millionaire? It’s impractical for most people.
My advice to people trying to make it, take advice from multiple sources and keep it perspective the person’s situation. I’ve known plenty of rich kids that talked to people like shit and never knew what it was like to have to work to get somewhere. They like to mockingly offer to hire you at one of the businesses they started out of thin air with their parents money. That persons opinion won’t apply to you if you’re not born rich so , don’t let it get you down.
6 Likes
Eh, there are many focus areas where getting a college education is highly preferred, and the networking/access to resources that colleges offer should not be discounted.
If I could do it over - I’d get a degree in mechanical engineering at a school that also offers project engineering classes, minor in Accounting, and be a car salesman on the side to learn sales.
12 Likes
Best advice yet
The fact is that when you decide to enter a specific industry or choose a job, it is not a big deal with your major. Studying marketing, chemistry, programming, or economics is all fine. It only matters that you know this market.
1 Like
This sounds good till you have a job listing that requires a certain degree.
Most good paying jobs are this way in my finding. Not all but most.
1 Like
A degree is taught… knowledge is discovered, one is bought… the other is sold
So did you come from money or what? Noticed you’ve avoided answering that question, that’s kinda important with the advice you like to give out.
2 Likes
If it was 2000 I could probably understand this argument a little more. However.
The return on higher education is pretty much gone.
You don’t need an organized space to continue learning. Most of it is free. You don’t need an organized space to network, we have the internet. Places like future4200 are NOT few and far between. Websites just like this exist for almost every sector.
Engineering, and medical doctoring are one of few you can’t qualify on your own, and it’s simply paper related. Some of the smartest people from history, with some of the most influential invention (faraday, write brothers, and many more(some of the greatest engineers) didn’t even graduate high school. They simply had a passion for learning, and an unrelenting drive.
I have 3 kids, and if they decide college is what they want to do I’ll support that. This is just my opinion/experience.
Honestly college is starting to look like pay to play shit. And when you are compared to a self made, well. The tides are turning. Large corporations like Tesla etc, are already making non traditional educated hires a priority.
1 Like
It depends on the industry. There are plenty of fields where you’re not going to get an interview without a degree.
How does one start a business? Capital. Where does a poor boy get capital? Hard work or luck but usually both with the former being persistent. Just because someone gets an engineering degree and works in the field for a decade or 2 doesn’t mean they don’t have entrepreneurial ambitions.
There’s not one path in life
1 Like
If you pay to learn… you are only taught what is known.
Innovation requires unconventional thinking, the variety of thought that isn’t taught.
1 Like