I have written a few articles about the economy, in particular the tech industry. Among others, I presented arguments that tech is a clown-world career. The bigger question, though, is whether it is worth pursuing clown-world careers. There are ebbs and tides in the culture wars, and clown world has persisted for a long time. This may lead some people to even consider going into a clown-world field in order to make a living. In fact, a lot of people do that when you look at the number of students in bullshit degree programs like gender studies. I do not want to claim that computer science is a clown-world degree, but tech nonetheless is a clown-world industry, which will stagnate if not decline as we are moving away from clown world.
Depending on when you were born and, subsequently, the year you leave school, a clown-world career may be very tempting. In the wake of the Summer of St. George Floyd, for instance, countless companies created very well-paid jobs in HR. Plenty even created an entire “diversity & inclusion” function, with a Chief Diversity Officer sitting at the top. Some incredibly incompetent people were able to make a lot of money for a few years. Yet, as we have also recently learned, the gravy train is coming to an end. The most obvious example is Walmart, the biggest private employer in the world. Walmart scrapped DEI completely. Of course, it will take some time to get the rot out, but chances for untalented diversity grifters to land a cushy job at Walmart that allows them to promote their hateful ideology and getting paid for it seem to be over.
A proper clown-world cycle can last two or three decades. This may be enough to set you up for life. Had you gone into a clown-world job in the 1990s your career would have lasted into the 2020s. Perhaps you would now take a fat retirement package as a diversity officer somewhere. The problem, though, is that you cannot predict where in the clown world cycle you are. In the 1990s, such a career choice was a gamble. Once it was obvious that the left was completely dominant, the competition for clown-world jobs was heating up already, and when it became obvious for mainstream society that something is seriously going wrong, which perhaps coincided with fiery-but-peaceful protests, the remaining years for a clown-world career were limited, even though it surely did not feel this way at that point.
I think the next clown-world cycle will be a lot shorter as the rapid information spread via social media accelerates how quickly trends develop. We have seen this with the vaxx as well. Nowadays, there is widespread skepticism towards the vaxx. Without social media, 80% of society would get five booster shots a year. I would not be surprised if the next clown world cycles only last about eight to ten years, roughly coinciding with two US election cycles. Of course, once the US loses its global hegemony, all bets are off. We may even enter an era in which clown world will not exist for half a century.
Cynical trend-chasing as a career strategy is too risky, no matter how long a clown-world cycle may be. It is even worse when the careers in question are not built on actual skills. While there are plenty of computer science graduates who will have a hard time finding adequate work as software engineers, they still should possess a lot of skills that make them potentially useful in many other fields. Working as a business analyst may not be as glamorous as an engineering gig at a hot startup, but it will put food on the table. On the other hand, there is not that much someone with a degree in gender studies or perhaps even inequality studies could do. If there is no institutional support, these people will struggle quite severely. They can only hope that Starbucks will be hiring.
Do you think language teachers will be a clown “career” and will become completely redundant as automatic translation advances?
I am teaching English and Chinese to students but I cannot stop myself from worrying that one day there will be no jobs for people like me.
Perfected machine translation would be a godsend for the Visual Novel community. That will open up the entire library of the medium. I wonder if I’ll see such a thing in my lifetime…
People are already using machine-assisted translations, i.e. they let the translation software do a first pass, followed by their own revisions. This probably saves a bit of time. I have also seen some “scanlations” that were apparently machine-translated without any subsequent human corrections.
There will probably less of a need for them but I am quite certain that there will always be a demand for high-quality, in-person tutoring. However, this is only a fraction of the market.
I am planning and saving money to take courses in accent reduction (helping foreign learners to speak more clearly and comprehensibly). This is a field much less explored and might not be invaded by AI soon. The most suitable candidates are speech pathologists. But going through 6 years to study that field just for specifically accent reduction would be too impractical.
I hope teaching foreign languages will not virtually vanish while I am alive.
This seems to be a great niche. I also do not see how AI or automation would make it redundant. Besides, you may often deal with corporate customers, so costs are not much of a concern. Think of the foreign-born VP of Something who needs to give presentations and would like to be better understood. That being said, I do not know how easy it is to break into this field. Speech therapists are in high demand in many countries, though. Some have waiting lists that are months long. What I also did not know is that they are relevant at basically every age. Some children may have impaired language development, some people may have acquired speech defects like a lisp, which they want to get rid of, while others suffer a stroke and need to relearn how to speak.
It’s a great idea in theory, but I’m not sure. Having lived in Southern California my whole life, I would say that people with thick accents have them for a reason. They don’t care about improving their English. I sincerely hope I’m wrong about this. But I’ve run into many people who get pissed or condescending towards ME for not understanding them.
CQV:
So far AI is pretty bad at both translation and language instruction. In the short-term, I’d say there is no threat at all. I find it unlikely that AI will become a threat in the medium-term either. Long-term anything is possible in theory, but while I think there is great potential in AI, I don’t think the current models are as amazing as some people seem to believe. The whole thing reminds me of the dot-com bubble hysteria of the late 90s.
GLAS:
While José at the taco stand or Abdullah at the kebab shop may not care about their accents, they’re hardly the intended clients. Take Aaron’s example of the corporate bigwig who has to give a presentation. They’ll probably care.
@Karl
I agree, but how big of a market are we talking about here? Not sure if it’s sustainable. Like I said, “great idea in theory, but I’m not sure.”
GLAS:
Yeah, most new businesses fail within the first few years. Getting enough clients, and keeping them, is always a challenge.
I don’t see any inherent flaws with CQV’s idea, and I believe there are certainly enough potential clients to sustain the idea and make for a profitable one-man business. Reaching the potential clients and getting them to retain you would be the main challenge, I believe.
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, marketing…….I think she should give it a shot. I wish him the best 😊
@CQV
Jesus, sorry man. I swear to God that was a typo!
My little nephew is on the spectrum (with its subsequent language-learning symptoms), being raised in Norway and exposed to 3 languages (Norwegian, English and Spanish), which I’ve always thought counterproductive, but I’m not his father so I don’t have a say. I think, when he grows up, he could be the type of perfect prospective client for someone like CQV (maybe with a Northern European background).