I would also point out that Sublight is in Japan where I don’t believe it’s illegal to discriminate (or if it is, the law is widely flouted) and many landlords do indeed refuse to rent to gaijin. So that may have colored his experiences.
It’s not a glamor job but many people idealize engineers and think we make tons of money and get to work on fascinating problems all day. In reality, the starting salaries are good but to make more, you have to move into marketing and we spend most of the time doing rote calculations.
Living in an appartment overlooking Central Park is glamorous. Having a Jaguar or a Hamptons house is glamorous. To have these things, you generally need to get paid like doctor, lawyer or investment banker.
I agree with all these things. However, my point was that many people are saying things like, “Investment banking isn’t all that glamorous. It’s a lot of hours and high stress, and you spend all your time crunching numbers.”
Did anyone actually think that investment banking (or being a doctor, lawyer, CEO, etc) was anything but stressful and difficult? Did anyone think investment bankers had thrilling, action-packed jobs?
I’m taking matters up with Rico via PM, so rather than hijack this thread further…
Gangster. Even in films that purport to show the downside of a life of crime, it’s typically presented as an easy, exciting life with immediate high rewards. Mostly it’s low pay, dim prospects, and a high likelihood of ending up in jail.
Similarly, ‘CIA agent’ conjures up images of excitement, danger and romance, while the reality is pretty much just hours of dull office work for the vast majority. Even for undercover agents in the field, it’s more a matter of spending years building up appearances of being an ordinary average professional than seducing heads of state while outfitted with the latest top-secret gadgets.
I think one reason that architect has achieved such a high status level in relation to comparably skilled professions is that for TV and movie scriptwriters, it’s a shorthand way of establishing a character as an educated white-collar professional, while providing an excuse to have the character independent and artistic enough to always be working from home or having plenty of free time to spend on family or adventure. If your script calls for someone with enough money for a nice house and neat stuff, but without having to deal with boring office work, bosses or co-workers, just toss in an establishing shot with the main character sitting by a drawing table with a T-square, and you’re free to have them do whatever you want for the rest of the film.
And for inveterate sitcom liars, it’s an easy way to impress the ladies. “Art Vandelay, architect. Currently working on an addition to the Guggenheim.”
I think a lot of people think certain jobs would be cool. I’m not sure what sort of geek thinks investment banking is a cool job (certainly many people think the money involved is cool) but I’m sure they exist.
“I want to be a doctor - saving lives would be really cool.” (Losing patients, not so cool).
“Being a courtroom lawyer looks really cool on TV. I love to argue with people and I’m really good at it.”
Certainly other professions on this thread - actor, athlete, astronaut - ARE seen by many people as exciting and glamorous.
That reminds me, back when I was teaching in semi-rural Japan, one of my school’s contracts was with the local Japan Air Force (sorry, Air Self-Defense Force) base. This base was where pilots on the fighter track stayed for six months to train in T-4s, and along the way they were required to take English lessons, since all the private radio towers use English, not to mention all the American bases that they frequently did joint exercises with.
At any rate, I got to know a lot of the pilots, and usually one of the first things I’d ask as part of the lessons was “why did you decide to join the Air Force?” In any given class (usually 4-7 students), about half would answer “I saw Top Gun”.
Being a moderator on a message board sure looks sexy on TV, but in real life, the stress of dealing with the petty bickerings of a bunch of yahoos can make you a might touchy.
It seems that most of the lawyering descriptions so far have been on big law firm law. But if you take a low paying position like PD or work solo as a litigator–there is a lot more courtroom action and beating up on lying witnesses. Nothing like TV, of course, but it ain’t all boxes of documents. And the hours can be very reasonable if you are willing to make less money. I know a few who don’t even work Fridays.
Is it stuntman exciting? No, of course not. But there are certain aspects of these jobs that seem very exciting - saving a patients life, winning a multi-million dollar court case, brokering a billion dollar business deals. I know a lot of traders get very excited by their job, much in the same way one gets excited on the craps table in Vegas.
A lot of people in business school thing consulting is exciting. You get to travel around to all these cool cities (and sometimes I do) and do high impact work. But for every trip to Amsterdam or Paris or Chicago, I’ve also had to take several trips to Jerkwater, IL, Bumfuck, NJ and Ass Junction, NC. Not to mention a hotel in an office park next to Schiphol Airport looks a lot like one next to Newark International. And most of it is just grinding through data anyway.
I-Banking and big firm lawyering aren’t about excitement though. They are about wealth and power. The people who go into those professions often have ambitions that far exceed your run-of-the-mill, house in the suburbs, high 5-figure salary 9 to 5er.
The same holds true for most “status” jobs. It’s not so much that the job itself is exciting. Most of the time it’s fairly tedious, stressful and boring. People go into them because there is a high earning potential and often you are working on things that have a huge impact.
I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned chef yet. The food network has given people this idea of chefs who flit around immaculately clean kitchens, assembling delicate plates of intricately prepared food before heading out on the floor to schmooze with celebrities.
In reality, you graduate from a $20,000 cooking school and then spend the next 5 years peeling potatoes and other back breaking scut labor for $7 an hour with the slight chance that you might “make it” to a $35,000 a year salary. You’re working when other people are having fun (including Christmas and mother’s day) and you don’t get off work until midnight.
Gosh, in all of this discussion about jobs that are thought to be glamorous, exciting, fulfilling and chick-magnetic, I can’t believe no-one’s brought up accounting yet.
