Hi there guys, today I'd like to address a topic which is (relatively) well paid working class jobs. This all started during a discussion amongst the university students at my gymnastics club - one of them said that train drivers who can earn up to £65,000 are still going on strike to demand even higher pay. One of the other students said, why are we even bothering with university? I may as well become a train driver and earn that kind of money without a degree - you don't even need a degree to work as a train driver. Whilst it is true that some train drivers can earn that much in a job which doesn't require a degree, I had to then point out to those students that there are several reasons why they should not be rushing to become train drivers yet so here are seven important points about this that I shared with my students that day.
1. £65,00 represents the top end, it is not the average nor is it the starting pay.
Time for some basic maths. You could potentially reach about £65,000 at the end of your career as a train driver but only a rather small percentage of train drivers actually earn that much after two or three decades of working as a train driver. There is a pay scale that rewards train drivers for their loyalty with the company and your pay effectively increases with time as you become more experienced. You still need to get your train driver's license and that can take anything between 12 to 24 months depending on the type of license - then you need to start off as a trainee train driver and the starting pay is around £24,000 but that's an average. So you can expect to get a higher salary in London, but it would be somewhere like Scotland or Wales. The same principle applies to other jobs like teaching or nursing for example, whereby the entry level starting salary is quite low whilst those who have spent decades in the profession get rewarded with the top salaries. So if you were to look at the earning potential of a train driver over the full course of their entire career, the train driver actually earns a fairly modest salary for most of their career with it only becoming quite lucrative towards the very end of that long career. So if I were to use a long 13.5 hour flight from London to Singapore as an analogy, you get on the plane in economy and stay in economy for the first 11 hours of that flight, it is only when you are about 2.5 hours from your destination that you get upgraded to business class and you have 2.5 hours to enjoy the luxuries of business class after having had a an uncomfortable, sleepless night in economy class. In any case, it is not a done deal that you would reach the top end of the pay scale as a train driver, don't take that for granted. Any kind of mistake due to human error, if you face any kind of disciplinary action or have a dispute with your union or colleagues may all lead to a denial or delay of a promotion, thus stagnating your pay for years instead of progressing towards the top end of that scale. This is only the tip of the iceberg, when it comes to why train drivers don't really have a good deal.
2. The pay scale is fixed, you can't earn more.
Let's say you're super passionate about trains, you have obtained your train driver's license and you are totally committed, enthusiastic and hardworking - you are literally the best young train driver in the country. You know everything there is to know about trains, you show up for work early, you spend many hours learning all about trains and go out of your way to help the passengers you encounter in the train stations; but is there any kind of mechanism within the system to reward you for being so brilliant at your job, for literally being the best train driver in the country? No, there isn't - you're still paid a lot less than an older train driver who is lazy, often late for work and taking sick leave for the most minor reasons. In a system like that, you're totally stuck when it comes to career progression because there's just no way you can increase your salary even if you have gone out of your way to prove that you're more brilliant than all the others doing the same job. This is a double edged sword: it can be a very frustrating situation for an ambitious young person keen to get ahead in life, but it may appeal to someone who just wants to get by doing the bare minimum. My parents were primary school teachers for their entire working lives; they were in the same situation whereby they were paid exactly the same whether their students performed well or not, thus it wasn't just them but all their colleagues had no incentive to try to work any harder to produce better results - thus they all defaulted to doing the absolute minimum until retirement. How do you think this would affect morale, if the train driver or teacher looks at a colleague and realizes, hang on a moment, he is a lazy sod doing a terrible job but why is he getting paid exactly the same as me? Imagine if you have a situation whereby you need a lot more money, say you want to buy a bigger house to start a family or send your younger sister to university, there is no way for you to earn more money by becoming better at your job as a train driver.
3. There really aren't that many jobs available as train drivers in the UK.
There simply isn't that many jobs available as train drivers - it is estimated that there are approximately 20,000 train drivers currently in the UK (current population 68 million) and that number is not going to increase, instead it is going to fall. My sister-in-law lives in rural Scotland and has a disused railway line running across her garden - her town Kirkcurdbright used to be served by a railway line that closed in 1965 because of falling passenger numbers, making the line financially unsustainable to operate. The population in the countryside had been falling constantly as people moved to the big cities in search of better opportunities - today, small towns like that are served by bus services whilst the railway network is focused on connecting the big cities. So it is easy to travel from London to Glasgow on a train, but trying to get from Glasgow to Kirkcudbright would be a pain on public transport. Thus even if you do get your train driver's license, you may struggle to find an entry level position as a trainee train driver in the country - the rail company could simply turn around and say, "I'm sorry but we're not hiring at the moment, we have all the train drivers we need now." There is a limited number of train operators in the country and if they're not hiring, then you are literally waiting for someone to retire to free up a space for you in the industry. Let's compare this situation to teaching - there are about 563,000 teachers in the UK at the moment, that's more than 28 times more and if you're applying for a job as a teacher in a big city like London, you have the choice of over 3,250 schools in London (that's right, in London alone) vs just 28 train companies in the entire country. Thus if a teacher gets fed up with the poor working conditions at their school, they can easily just find a job at another school but a train driver doesn't have that option at all - they often have to just suffer in silence instead because the moment the train driver threatens to leave the job, his employer would simply say, "seriously, do you know just how many people to lining up around the block waiting to take your job? Do you still want to complain?"
4. What if you get sick of it, do you have any transferable skills?
This is a very specialist job, the training you obtain from your train driver course only prepares you for that one job. Let's say a train driver decides he is sick of trains and wants to work in finance instead - he declares to me, "I have over 12 years of work experience!" I'm just going to shake my head and say, "I can see that but all that tells me is that you're an experienced train driver - that's a world away from the world of finance so your work experience is irrelevant so you have no advantage over a fresh graduate who has absolutely no work experience at all." The train driver might be rather pissed off at me simply dismissing his 12 years old work experience as irrelevant and worthless in this context, but I would then turn around and ask him how his experience as a train driver is going to help in a work context that is so incredibly different? Now this is something you are going to encounter with any specialist job of course and that means that if you choose to go down this path, then there is no turning back or changing your mind a few years down the line. I'm not saying that a career change would be impossible after that, but it would be a lot harder as you have virtually no transferable skills from the previous job. Case in point, one of my readers Choaniki has transitioned recently from healthcare to finance with some help from me. Now he's a good example of how you can switch from one career to a completely different one and thus he has proven that it is possible but he would be the first to tell you that this transition isn't easy at all and he has faced a shockingly steep learning curve especially in the first month. Thus when it comes to picking a very specialist career path, you have to be 100% convinced that this is exactly what you want to do for the rest of your life until you retire, that this is something you are so passionate about you just can't imagine doing anything else with your career - you shouldn't pick this career path just because you like the idea of eventually earning £65,000 a year.
5. The job is boring, monotonous and tedious.
Nobody wants to have a boring job and driving a train is a very boring job - a lot of the process is now automated and hence there really isn't that much to do as a train driver compared to a bus driver, where you have to constantly pay attention every moment of your journey. The bus driver might be so jealous of the train driver who can simply take out their phone and watch funny videos on their phones for most of the journey. However, a train driver's job is exactly the same month after month, year after year and doesn't change at all - the train from London Charing Cross to Brighton will always follow the exact same route, on the same time table and it's not like they're going to bring out some kind of Harry Potter type magical flying train to make that journey to Brighton more exciting - no, can you face doing exactly the same task again and again, day after day, year after year, decade after decade for the entire duration of your working life? I don't know about you but that kind of boring routine and repetition would just drive me nuts. This is a feature of a lot of working class jobs where you simply do the same routine over and over again. I suppose this is the kind of job that would suit someone who hates having to learn anything new, they just want to learn how to do their job once and for all, then repeat that same process every single day at work for the next four decades. So do think carefully what your threshold of boredom actually is and if you would be happy doing a job like that. This might not be a problem if you just so happen to be totally passionate about trains and to be in an environment where you are surrounded by trains all day at work might be a dream come true. Furthermore, we also have to explore the concept of opportunity cost : so if you're just choosing to do this to earn £65,000 a year despite not feeling particularly passionate about trains, then you are missing out on a career that would make you so much happier, that would be so much more rewarding and that is quite a tragedy indeed.
6. It is not future proof
So even if you have read all the five points above and are perfectly happy with what you will be getting yourself into, there's still one more factor to consider - this job is not future proof. The population of the UK is projected to stagnate over the next ten years, it is currently about 68 million but it is not projected to ever exceed 69.5 million - the birth rate is currently at 1.56 and still constantly falling, that's way below the replacement level of 2.1 and thus like many European countries, our population is projected to shrink in the long term. The only reason why this shrinkage hasn't happened yet is due to immigration but that is not a sustainable nor a politically popular option. We are also facing an ageing population with very different needs - the older folks tend to be retired and will travel a lot less, whilst it is the younger people who need to use more trains to get to school, university and work. Then on top of that, there is also automation and AI, further reducing the number of train drivers that we need. Many cities from Barcelona to Singapore to to Sydney to London now have driverless trains on their public transport network. This started with lines of relatively short distances (eg. a transit between different terminals of a big airport) but has since evolved into a part of the public transport system within a city (most of the newer lines on Singapore's MRT system). The world's longest driverless train system is the red line on Dubai's metro system which measures 52.1 km long, proving that this kind of technology can easily be scaled up to connect cities that are quite far apart. The key reason why this hasn't happened is because of the existing train systems that already connect cities of that distance apart - take Brussels and Antwerp for example, the two big cities in Belgium are just 55 km apart and a train line has connected the two cities since 1836. The trains currently in use are still functional so there is little incentive to replace the entire fleet with driverless trains as that would be a costly exercise but when they do fall apart eventually, that's when a lot of Belgian train drivers will lose their jobs - that is a process will be replicated all over the world eventually so those working as train drivers are hoping it wouldn't happen before they retire.
7. Context is everything, everything is relative.
So in conclusion, at the risk of sounding like a total bitch, if you're totally incapable of finding a more pleasant, fun and enjoyable way to eventually earn £65,000 a year and if you are trying to support a large family, then the career of a train driver is probably a good option for you. So here's a little story to illustrate this point: in the post-war years (from the end of the war to 1970) the UK welcomed many migrants from Pakistan to help rebuild the economy - Pakistan was a very poor country at that time so many Pakistanis jumped at the chance to come to work in the UK, doing jobs that the white people did not want to do and this included on the train networks. So imagine, if you were one of these Pakistani migrant workers who moved to the UK in 1970 and managed to get a job with a train company as a train driver, it would be like a dream come true - you would earn in one year what people back home in Pakistan would struggle to earn in 20 or 30 years. Let's call our Pakistani train driver Ali - he is able to send so much money back to Pakistan that his parents now live in a big house and he is able to support various members of his extended family. If his niece Fatima wants to attend a course for computing, he will send her some money. If auntie Zainab needs money for her diabetes treatment, no problem he can send her some money as well. The perks of being able to support his extended family back in Pakistan this way makes any kind of boredom or hardship associated with the job worth it but more to the point, would someone like Ali ever be able to become an investment banker or a solicitor with one of the top law firms in London? No, never - I'm sorry Ali but let's be realistic here, becoming a train driver in the UK is really the best case scenario for Ali and he is right to consider it the opportunity of a lifetime. Hence if your circumstances are similar to Ali's then by all means, go become a train driver. But for those undergrads that I spoke to at my gym, I think most of them would have better options than this. Thus if Ali had a child, then I would imagine that Ali will want that child to go to university and aim much higher.
So there you go, what do you think? Would you be quite happy to do a job like that if it meant being able to (eventually) earn £65,000 a year? Do you think that's a rather good salary or is that just not enough for you? What would you be willing to do for that kind of salary and where would you draw the line? Do you think the university students today would be quite happy to choose being a train driver as a career choice? Or is there a working class stigma associated with jobs like that - would you for example be quite happy to tell your friends and family that you're dating a train driver and what kind of reaction do you think you would receive if you did that? Do leave a comment below and many thanks for reading!
At least I didn't waste my time in healthcare. As a radiographer, I managed to obtain photography skills which I have used in my new career for marketing purposes. And I have also developed a keen sense for detail as radiographers are supposed to spot abnormalities on patients' radiographs to sound out to the doctors or radiologists.
ReplyDeleteI hate to be a bitch, but you don't need to become a radiographer to develop that keen sense of attention to detail - that's something that a lot of people do anyway.
DeleteWell some never do. Which is why I spotted so many formatting and various other mistakes in OOM's website and marketing deck. And me pointing them out made me the evil person?!!
DeleteAs for the person/people in OOM who made those mistakes, well why do you think they were able to get away with it for so long then?
DeleteThe website was outsourced so there is that. Then again I have no idea who vetted or approved the other material. As to why they got away with it for so long? *shrugs*
DeleteHi Alex, I have to say that this post is very well written. However, here's something I would like to add. If you love trains, there are train simulators that exist on Steam that is way cheaper than getting a license*. Once you get your 1st taste of trains and see how life as a train conductor will be like, then you'll have a clearer idea of what life to generally expect and if the worst expects of said job will be a deal breaker.
ReplyDelete*From my experience with Truck and Flight Simulators, while it may be a far cry from actual Trucking or Pilot experience, it does however, give a good idea on what to expect from being a Trucker/Pilot (ie. Long hours on the move, seeing the world, procedures, safety precautions), after many hours on the Flight Simulator and actually flying a plane myself, I've actually decided that I want to pursue a flying career even though I might be lowly paid at the beginning. Or if that doesn't work out, I can use my flying experience to enhance the Flight Simulator experience.
Hi there, I hate to be a bitch but I think there's a serious flaw in your logic. If you love trains enough to spend time and money on a simulator, then you already love it and the experience is hardly going to change your mind. Allow me to compare this to spending a lot of money on a dinner at the finest Japanese restaurant in town - you do that if you already LOVE Japanese food so much you think it's worth spending that much money on a Japanese dinner, you don't do it to convince yourself that Japanese food is nice. By the same token, you don't book a crazy expensive holiday in Japan to convince yourself that you like Japan, no you only do that if you already are madly in love with Japan and thus can justify spending that amount of money on a dream holiday in Japan. There's a certain gut instinct when it comes to whether you like something or not. If somebody wants to love trains enough to make their career all about trains, then whom am I to judge but being Asian, I'd be like, "why don't you become an engineer who can design the latest high tech trains rather than be a lowly working class train driver? Haiyah. You think your parents will be proud of you if you become a train driver?"
DeleteBut if you wanna become a pilot, the Asian in me says good, very good - at least pilots can earn good money and you can have a comfortable life.
DeleteUntil another pandemic strikes and pilots will be left having to do food delivery and selling food in a hawker center to make ends meet.
DeleteHmmmm - again, we've covered this already, ref: Ricky who went from hero to zero. I'd like to think that a pilot would have other transferable skills that would enable them to have the option to find alternative work, but it is a highly specialized role and thus a lot of their skills and experiences are useless outside the airline industry. Tough one.
DeleteI mean I could dig out the newspaper articles of all the pilots who had to do delivery jobs or switched to a hawker career when COVID-19 struck. But you get the point. Maybe some pilot were just too complacent and didn't think to expand their network and/or skillset. Unlike someone like me who is always grinding and learning.
DeleteI suppose we all would think of a pilot as quite a respectable job since they do earn a lot more than cabin crew, but it is very specialist and so when the pandemic hit, they did realize that they really didn't have any real transferable skills that allowed them to adapt to a completely different set of circumstances.
DeleteNow sorry I have to be a bitch about it. But in the modern economy, it is simply to risky to bet it all on a highly specialized occupation.
DeleteNot only will you risk getting displaced by technology or cheap labour, but if another black swan event happens you are pretty much fucked.
Why do people think to diversify their investment portfolio, but when it comes to their career they want to dump all their eggs in one basket?
Hey Alex, I googled UK's income distribution and 65k pounds is the top 20%. It doesn't feel like a lot compared to finance or engineering, but like you said, that's not a starting salary. I also googled what is the starting salary for a mechanical engineer in the UK, the person who would design new trains, and it's only 24k pounds:
ReplyDeletehttps://uk.jobted.com/salary/mechanical-engineer
and after 20+ years of experience it increases to 96k pounds. I live in the US where the salaries are higher for engineers, so a starting mechanical engineer makes 75k usd/year and after 15+ years it becomes 110k/year(glassdoor data). At first I wasn't sure if in the UK "mechanical engineer" refers to a trade or a job requiring a university degree, until this website confirms it needs a degree and the income is even lower than the previous website:
https://www.payscale.com/research/UK/Job=Mechanical_Engineer/Salary
To be fair, 96k pounds is definitely more than 65k pounds even if the starting salary is the same, and you have the option to switch to other industries/roles if you have a degree. So salary or even starting salary is not everything, a mechanical engineer has more prospects than a train driver because it is easier to leave engineering than train driving. I know some mechanical engineers who took an MBA and switched to management to make more money.
The key difference between a train driver and an engineer's career is that the train driver's earning power is on a schedule, like the train and there's just no way the train driver can accelerate it by being brilliant at their job. The engineer can go into management, can come up with their own designs to launch their own start ups, they can take their knowledge and go work for the highest bidder. The engineers can thus accelerate as much as they want whilst the train drivers are on their way to £65k a year but over a much slower, longer process. Don't forget, not everyone makes it to 65k. Allow me to use teaching as a comparison as I know it only too well in the UK - the starting pay and top pay is pretty much the same as train drivers, head teachers can earn as much as £55k to £65k but here's the catch! Imagine we take the local secondary school just down the road from me (Camden School for Girls) - they have ONE head teacher and plenty of teachers who are not head teachers. So imagine if Ms Amanda is a brilliant teacher at Camden School for Girls, but you're just one of about 35 teachers there at the school. Even if you think, "I'm such a good teacher, it's high time they promote me to be head teacher so I can earn £65k a year!" Well, the school would say, we already have a head teacher and so you can't be the head teacher here - but if you can find another school looking for a head teacher, then we would be happy to give you a good reference. But say you find another school (ABC town school) looking for a head teacher due to their current head teacher retiring, guess what? There are already like 10 teachers there at ABC town school hoping to be promoted internally and as an outsider, you don't stand a chance. The fact is just because £65k is the top salary doesn't mean that everyone in the industry makes it to that top tier as there are far fewer jobs at the top of the food chain then there are at entry level.
DeleteHealthcare workers pay is also on a schedule. Did I mention I had a classmate who left healthcare and went back to his previous engineering position? His pay immediately doubled!!
DeleteFrom what I still know out of the 9 from my batch who made the switch to healthcare only 2 are still left working inside. 1 is because he is too old to go anywhere else and 1 is because I suspect he was given a comfortable position (relative to his previous job) and didn't feel the need to leave.
Yup, the pay is highly performance based for an engineer but not for a train driver or a teacher. On the flip side, if an engineer is bad at their job and just can't come up with a new patent to improve current train designs - they're sacked. In contrast it's very hard to fail at being a teacher or a train driver, while engineers can fail even if they try their best. I think the university students are thinking "if there's a job where I don't have to think so hard to get paid, and have to try really hard just to get fired, maybe I'll take it." But that's the mindset of someone scared to fail, so their earning potential is a lot less. The engineer is facing a lot more risk than a train driver, so they're paid more, but it's a lot less certain. By the way my new employers made me sign a non compete. Because they were scared I'd develop a good algorithm then shop around their competitors to try to sell it to them, because that's what you can do to negotiate a higher salary as an engineer instead of striking like a train driver. But non competes aren't legal in California so...
DeleteY'know, this discussion reminds me of one your past blogposts "How can Vera get rich?" In that post, you talked about how highly variable the pay of a law graduate can be. On the high end you have multi-millionaire senior partners like Harvey Specter on "Suits", but on the low end you have law graduates who work an average salary in a rural law firm, or graduates who can't land a job as a lawyer at all. Engineering is similar, but the spread is even more inflated as some of the richest people on the planet are former engineers (Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, etc.). And on the other end you also get engineering graduates who can't land a single engineering job. I think the type of university student who marvels at the (top) train drivers making the top 20% wage in the UK are the kinds of students who think they are destined for the low end of a graduate career path, i.e not even landing a job to do with their degree. When one only has bad options, one is less fussy and the worst options don't look as bad. Also since you brought up teaching, that kinda reminds me of your friend Chua whose wife told him to be a teacher for an iron rice bowl. It may not pay as much as being an engineer, but it's very hard to get fired.
DeleteI remember in undergrad in Sg I had a roommate in computer science who told me that after graduation she couldn't land a single coding job, not even at a startup, so had to settle for a tech support role which was more like a glorified secretary for coders. The pay was bad, it probably didn't even need a degree, but she also had student loans to pay so took any job she could. On the high end, I also had a friend from undergrad who took computer science that got a job at Google in Singapore right after graduation. 6 years later she got promoted to senior software engineer and transferred to the main headquarters in San Francisco. Those two women were classmates in the same major and the same batch, but had radically different trajectories. Though I could kinda see it in undergrad already, one of them was struggling just to pass classes, while the other was acing every single class and coding random projects just for fun. Holding a degree is one thing, but being good at a career is a totally different thing whatsoever.
Those who are more risk averse would therefore take the path that would be less dependent on their job performance. It's often not so much a question of how difficult the job is but how you respond to competition - take the head teacher example I gave you earlier. In a school with 35 teachers, there's only one head teacher and a few deputy heads + a few more senior titles like "head of department" (like head of science or modern languages etc). Are you prepared to face the competition to rise to the top even in a situation like that or do you just wanna drive trains for thirty years and get promoted/rewarded for your loyalty? Some people just don't have what it takes to thrive in a competitive environment. It is stressful - sometimes I'm like, "okay I've had a good week, but have I just raised expectations? Is my boss gonna expect me to deliver as much output every single week like this? Holy crap have I raised the bar too high?"
DeleteContrast that to the work a gymnastics coach does - as long as the lesson finishes on time, nobody got hurt, the lesson may have been uneventful but at least peaceful and the gym is left in a tidy condition; the head coach would be satisfied. That's the opposite of setting the bar high - the bar is set pretty low in that kind of situation in sharp contrast to my job.
DeleteYup, in a competitive environment, to rise to the top nobody tells you what to do. You have to figure out the best move out of 1000 possible moves like it's a chess game. But a lot of people went through school thinking it was a simple game like Bingo where you just wait to be told to make a move by some authority figure, and somehow you "win" or "lose" at the end. I just started my new job, and because I'm CTO rather than a normal software engineer, I have some say in what software product gets made. And the sales guy likes to constantly bring up market research to my boss, and I have the choice of "just code whatever the boss tells you", or "listen to the sales guy, and try to come up with the product that would make the company money and convince both the sales guy and my boss it's the right thing to code." I can't do the former because even if I were to be a "yes woman" and just code whatever the boss tells me, if it's not a good product the sales guy can sell, then the company won't be profitable. But in a regular software job (which pays less, has less room for advancement), it would just be "code what the boss tells you."
DeleteExactly, I'm meant to bring projects that I want to do to my boss and say, "here's my plan, here's what I wanna achieve in this time scale, now do I have your permission to go ahead and carry it out?" That's opposed to someone passively asking the boss, please give me my instructions, what would you like me to do this week? Of course, it's a lot more scary and stressful being in this position. I constantly have to brush aside any self-doubt as I ask myself, what if my boss hates my ideas? What if it is a good idea on paper but I fail to execute the plan? What if I do everything I said I'd do but the clients hate the product? And if anything does go wrong, then my boss could turn around and say, "Alex, what the hell were you thinking?" Contrast that to someone who merely carried out instructions from the boss, if the whole project just failed, that person could just shrug their shoulders and say, "don't ask me, I just did as I was told and I was following instructions, so I can't be blamed for the failure of this task." It is just like the reality TV show The Apprentice - the project manager has to come up with all the ideas and manage the team, it's a position of responsibility. Whilst the members of the team can just sit back, take orders and when it all fails badly, they can just turn around and say, "I didn't think it was a good idea at that time, but since Amanda was the project manager, it was her call and thus I was merely following the instructions she gave me."
DeleteThe way you put it I am like the CRO, CMO, CTO, COO for my company in Asia. I am not given anything (even manpower) so I have to think up a marketing strategy and find people to work with in various countries, and market there to gather leads, and hopefully be able to close the leads one day. Right now the company doesn't even have a functional CRM and I am testing out various solutions which will be able to help me (and the company) close more sales.
DeleteYeah, I was thinking even though I'm paid more than the average software engineer and I have performance-related bonus pay, there is just a lot more thinking involved over "okay I'll wait for my instructions and carry them out." But at the same time, if I come up with good ideas, then I'm more valuable to the company and way harder to replace, which means I can negotiate a higher salary. It's a double edged sword, more pay but more quality work, and no school can teach you how to do that extra "think for yourself" secret sauce. Although it's more relaxing to just follow instructions, those kind of employees are more replaceable because there are more people who can follow instructions than make good instructions, and as a result they can be made to work longer or under worse conditions. My first engineering job was one of those jobs in Singapore. It was shit pay and long hours in person at a windowless factory, with very little opportunity for advancement. Maybe I didn't have to think much, and engineering is still one of the better paid jobs in Singapore, but I still had to do a lot of repetitive actions which were extremely boring.
DeleteBy the way, because I now work remotely, I have more opportunities to travel. I was wondering, have you ever been a digital nomad? I was thinking of getting a tourist visa for the Schengen area and moving from country to country every week in the cheaper European countries. I'd like to take the chance to see Europe while I'm still young. I could also try South America, but I think Europe is safer for now since I don't speak Spanish or Portuguese. Maybe I could pick it up though...
@Choaniki is there some form of IT support? In my company, I have a colleague who does all the admin functions including IT related stuff and she is so brilliant.
Delete@Amanda No I have ever been a digital nomad, I don't see the point. I rather just live in London and take a lot of holidays - currently planning my next trip already to Croatia and Serbia (country no. 74 for me) and I guess I have just too much to tie me to London. I like my gymnastics training so much, so I am happy to go on holidays every so often but I want to always be able to continue my training the moment I get back to London, so this current arrangement suits me fine and that's the way things have been for a while. South America without Spanish or Portuguese is very tricky but then again, there's technology. I'm sorting out my travel in Croatia now and using Google translate to communicate with the locals. Having to scramble to find plan B as there was a website with inaccurate information about the bus time table between two cities and when you're in rural Croatia, the bus runs 4 times a week (not 4 times an hours like in New York city or London) and I'm glad I found out now, so I can figure out what I am gonna do - just relieved I can plan ahead now.
Here's part of the email I got today, "the information on the website is wrong, the Osijek to Novi Sad bus runs on 4 times a week on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday at 15:45 and there isn't a service on Saturday." I had to Google translate that from Croatian of course but you'll be amazed how great the technology is when it comes to this aspect, loads of people are now traveling the world using Google translate to help them communicate in places like that.
Delete@LIFT there is no IT person. The website was outsourced and the company screwed it up so much we have decided to change to a new vendor.
DeleteThere is only back-office admin support for now. The team is that lean.
As Uncle Roger would say, Haiyah, how can like that?
DeleteOh okay, so you like doing gymnastics at the same club every week too much to live in a different country every few months. Hmm, I suppose my dad got to travel a lot regardless of living in one place, it's easy when you have lots of money. I'm still just upper middle class right now, and I can't leave America for too long while waiting for my us passport, so I cant be out of the country more than 2 months a year anyway. Oh gosh we once went to Italy when I was 7, and getting lost was a pain because Google translate and Google maps didn't exist back then. Technology has made travel so much easier nowadays. Like sure travel agents were out out of work, but now solo travelers can do so on their own. Wow 4 times a week. What are you gonna do in Croatia and Serbia? Visit the beach and mountains?
DeleteThere are two aspects to the gymnastics - firstly, I'm actually improving a lot this year at the ripe old age of 47 and doing new skills that I wish I had trained 30 years ago. As you remember, I had a health scare earlier this year and as a result, I had to lose a lot of weight - a side effect of that was that gymnastics because a lot easier and I'm enjoying this new body in the gym. Secondly, I have a good relationship with a lot of the gymnasts that I coach and I love seeing them improve over time, they need me and thus I'm quite happy doing a lot of traveling to explore beautiful places, seeking new experiences whilst always returning to London. Well we're resigning ourselves to the fact that we have to get a hire car and drive ourselves around given how limited the public transport system is there in rural Croatia/Serbia. I am visiting 2 cities - Osijek (Croatia) and Novi Sad (Serbia) so it's a double city break.
DeleteOh it's good you got your health under control. I also had a health scare a month ago, but with major lifestyle changes it went away. Yes it is easier to do gymnastics when you're lighter. I think I should go back to gymnastics too, but I'm moving soon so I'll have to find a new gym. My brother is buying a house soon and he invited me to live with him in exchange for much lower rent than an apartment, which would help me save for my own house faster. Coincidentally (the topic of this article), my brother said he might want to leave his software engineering job to join the military to become a fighter pilot, even though he'll have to take a hit to his career earnings long term. I think financially it's not a good decision because he is a really good software engineer whose had recruiters from Google and Amazon try to poach him pre-tech layoffs. Instead I proposed a compromise where he uses his coding skills to get a job programming drone software instead. I previously studied robotics for my masters and knew some students who were drone engineers, and a lot of code is involved. My brother could still work in the military, there were some representatives from the US Navy giving talks at my university trying to hire the masters/PhD students to work for them as military scientists developing planes, drones, and submarines. If he spent years training to became a fighter pilot, I'm afraid he'd be jobless once drones render fighter planes obsolete.
DeleteOh cool, those sound like unique cities that are outside the capital. Novi Sad has the Danube river running through it, which must be very pretty.
Take Novi Sad for example - I think it'll be a fun city to visit for a weekend but would I wanna live there for 4 months? I think I'd get extremely bored. Like put me in a big city like Tokyo or New York and I won't get bored, but from a visa POV it's a lot harder to be a digital nomad in these more popular destinations and it's places that desperately need financially independent rich people to come and live and work there. So take the Philippines for example, they're quite welcoming to digital nomads - they don't need a job, they are already gainfully employed, they come to a small island in the Philippines and they spend a lot of hard cash there, injecting life into the local economy. A sunny tropical island with a nice beach would fall into the category of "nice place to visit" but I'd just get awfully bored there after a few days I swear. I adore big cities where there is so much to see and do and whilst I do enjoy my countryside vacations once in a while, it's really not for me at all. That's why I am happy to live in a big city like London whilst traveling regularly. Good luck to your brother, I hope whatever he decides to do, he will be happy and fulfilled.
DeleteOh yes, I heard that Croatia is courting digital nomads with special visas for them. I suppose they need tourists because they're not as industrialized as Germany, France, or Sweden. Greece is heavily tourism dependent, I wonder if I could rent a boat and sail around some islands for fun. I also heard Singapore's rents jumped up 30% in the last year which made a lot of expats have to leave because they could no longer afford housing. Their companies proposed a compromise where they would relocate their workers to cheaper nearby Asian cities like Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, or Jakarta, and only require their employees to fly into Singapore when absolutely necessary. I just went kayaking this morning in a lake that was in the middle of nowehere. It was great, but I think I'd also get bored after a while and miss going to regular sports clubs to see my friends (like gymnastics), or trying new restaurants in the city. I guess because a global pandemic happened in my mid-20s, I feel like I have to make up for lost time and travel a whole lot once I had the time and money to. But I don't have to live somewhere for months to enjoy it, and also it's hard to make friends to avoid loneliness as a tourist if you have to stay longer than a few weeks.
DeleteThanks, that means a lot. I suppose my brother is in a really good position in life where regardless of whether he becomes a pilot or an engineer, he will still make enough to be comfortable as he doesn't have any dependents. So he can pick what makes him happy rather than what makes him the most money. I heard part of what makes climbing out of poverty difficult is that usually when one member of a family succeeds, they're expected to support other members of the family who are still poor. This makes it harder for the successful one to get ahead in buying a house or saving for retirement compared to their peers who grew up middle to upper class, so they'll tend to pick the job with the most money because they need it for their extended family.
I think there's also a sense of feeling at home in London because my network of good friends are all here and I get to see them regularly when I am here. If I became a digital nomad in Croatia, then okay, I'd have to make new friends and it's not that I would have a problem trying to do that but imagine being surrounded by people who have known you only a few weeks versus friends whom have known you for years. Don't get me wrong, I love meeting new people when traveling and that's a huge part of that experience but I'm quite happy to get my fix of nice holidays without becoming a digital nomad. Don't forget, a huge advantage of being a digital nomad is cost - a computer programmer can make his earnings go a lot further if he is paying rent in rural Philippines as opposed to downtown Manhattan. But for me, I actually like living in places like downtown Manhattan and I really don't like being stuck in the middle of nowhere with little to do.
Delete@Amanda, 30% must be the lower bound, I have heard of increases being 100% or more!! Actually I am ready to GTFO of SG (whether as a digital nomad or for good) because it is so freaking crowded and prices are bloody high (I think inflation is probably more than 10% and set to increase next year).
DeleteSo recently I had the CEO of my company remark not once, but several times that whenever he calls me my background is very noisy (when I am out and about). Also the connection speed is usually quite horrendous as he assumed that SG has one of the best mobile/wifi network in the region.
So just from these two comments I can see he knows nothing about SG. 1) SG is so freaking densely populated, I think it is just behind Monaco in terms of density. The only place I can think of which is quiet would be the Lim Chu Kang cemetery. 2) SG exists to make profits for corporations, period. Infrastructure can be bursting at the seams, housing rents could be shooting up sky high but fuck the residents. There won't be any building up of excess capacity whether for mobile networks, housing or public transport unless there is a profit to be made.
Oh yeah, having a stable set of friends is so important. I suppose some digital nomads have a set of friends/family in their home country which they talk to over the internet, but try to make some local friends for every few weeks they spend in one place.
DeleteHey Choaniki. Wow 100% rent increase, that's crazy for the foreigners who can't buy a hdb. I'm curious, what are your options for immigrating as a remote worker? Usually work visas are given for working for employers of a particular country, but with remote work, I dunno how that would change unless there are specific visas for that.
@Amanda apparently rich people are price insensitive who would have guessed: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/landed-homes-property-rents-rise-demand-luxury-3527311
DeleteAlso the whole point of being a digital nomad is moving around and not to have a work visa (which I can't get since I am not employed) or pay taxes.
Well some countries are wooing digital nomads and handing out digital nomad visas which are not the same as a regular work visa, they want you to go there and spend money.
DeleteYes I am aware of that. This is for @Amanda's benefit https://nomadlist.com/
DeleteI checked out that website and am surprised how expensive some cities can be. Then I realized most of the monthly budget is going to takeout because digital nomads don't usually bring cookware with them. It doesn't seem quite worth it for me to be a digital nomad vs. staying in place. I'll just take vacations like a normal person.
Delete@Amanda we are at different stages of our life/career and I wouldn't recommend this path for anyone who have attachments.
Delete10 years ago I have already met consultants who are basically living out of hotel rooms (at clients expense).
Now that I am somewhat in their shoes, I can understand the allure of it and hence am taking steps to extricate myself.
Hey Alex. I've been at my new software job for a week now, and I'm starting to get bored because the things they ask for don't take me as much time as they think, or are not particularly difficult or challenging. But then I look at my bank account and see "wow, 6 figure salary for not doing that much?" I feel like the proof of concept they made me do to audition the job was way harder. I think I'm kinda in the same position as you were before you started being a contractor and taking multiple jobs at a time (but with way less money). But unlike the train driver in this blog article, I have extra options. I could propose new projects if I'm bored, but that will take me time to think of.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me think, a lot of jobs have a really high barrier of entry (like the stunt exam you mentioned in the UK), but once you get there the actual work isn't as difficult as the gatekeeping hurdles to get there. The university students are asking "why bother doing a (difficult) degree?" but sometimes the degree is harder than the actual job only because of gatekeeping. But if they make it to the other side, congratulations, they now have a nice salary and a cushy life.
There's something incredibly wrong with it, given the way you've described it - the whole system is designed to keep people out from a small quantity of very nice, cushy, well paid jobs. The fact is there are so many graduates out there right now with record numbers going to university and just not enough jobs for every single graduate out there, hence the barriers of entry for these good jobs just keep going up as a result. At my gymnastics club, I meet loads of university students who are struggling under a heavy work load and I'm like, why the heck is the university cramming you with so much work when most of this bullshit is irrelevant to your future working life anyway? Why are they working so much harder than me, when I am the working adult at the age of 47 in a senior position? It makes absolutely no sense at all. Shouldn't the university reduce the workload considerably but tell the students, go get a part time job and report back to us how you get on with it - that will be a side project that is just as important as your degree itself and it will give you a taste of working life.
Delete@Amanda I wish my actual job were so easy. @LIFT knows how difficult I have it. But it only gets easier the more I do, so....
ReplyDeleteWell Amanda, just to give you an idea of why Choaniki has a harder job than me, I waltzed into a new company on a nice package (fat basic + nice bonus/commission structure) then they say, "Alex you speak Chinese/Spanish/French/etc - can you take care of this important client please?" And I am given the big client on a silver platter to manage the account, which takes little effort as it's an existing client but they also trust that the client is being handled by a very experienced pair of hands. Choaniki is starting on a very low basic and expected to top that up with commissions when he makes sales - he is expected to go out there and get his own clients, to get his first client and none are given to him the way I was simply given a whole bunch of clients literally on my first day. So ironically, my job is so much easier than his.
DeleteI mean I relish the challenge and opportunity to learn new skills. If I wanted a comfy easy job I have so many others to fall back on. But I wanted a challenging job where I am paid for my brains, not to put in man-hours to man a clinic.
DeleteFor eg. it used to take me over a week to translate a marketing deck into Mandarin. I did a new set within hours yesterday even while chilling at an adio cafe in Sim Lim (Zeppelin & Co).
Yeah unfortunately there's more and more graduates every year but not necessarily more graduate jobs. China I heard has a graduate unemployment rate of 20%. It's not quite Italy, France, or Greece, but it was a huge uptick for China in recent times and causing some unrest. By the way my brother told me why he was considering leaving software engineering to train to become a pilot, he's scared of being replaced by ChatGPT. He thinks it's a lot harder for ChatGPT to replace a blue collar job, so he picked the one with the highest barrier of entry and pay. Lately ChatGPT is capable of writing very simple code, which would replace a lot of people who went to coding boot camps and low cost coders in India. It wouldn't be good enough to code solutions better than current knowledge, which the masters or PhD students in computer science come up with, but most company requirements aren't that sophisticated in terms of requests. This again raises the barrier to entry for software engineering(for a human worker) and removes the lower rungs for people with limited means to get on the career ladder in the first place.
DeleteWow that sounds a like a huge difference in expectations for day 1 of the job. But for you Alex you already come with a network of business connections and experience the company can tap into, which is why I think the company made it easier for you to come aboard. Choaniki does not have the same network to offer, but asking him to get his own clients is a test of networking skills. I suppose I've already "ate shit" being a PhD student for 3 years and a researcher for another 3 years before that, all for less than half the salary I currently make, so my employers trust me to write reliable code on time that they give me a relatively cushy job.
Hey Alex, to answer your other question about why universities wouldn't reduce the workload and ask their students to do a part-time job to gain work experience, I think it's because although the success of a university depends on its overall ROI for every student, its "prestige" only depends on a small percentage (say < 10%) who become mega mega successful. So they prefer to cater to those students most of the time, who probably don't break a sweat at all getting straight As compared to the average student who can get all As but needs to study 4 hours a night to do so. Plus it's "prestige" which contributes most to the value of a degree in landing an interview. The median Harvard graduate makes $82k/year by age 34, but having the presence of billionaire alumni like Zuckerberg and Gates who dropped out because they didn't need the school, raises the average Harvard graduate's reputation by a lot.
DeleteAnd also, if universities reduce their workload then that creates less jobs for people in academia, so it goes against their self-interest unless the university is controlled by the government to a close extent. This happens in Singapore, where the government controls places at university for different majors depending on the unemployment statistics from the previous year. But if there are less places from the previous year, then some lecturers may be laid off. Though people could argue, reducing university places to reduce competition for university graduates just increases competition at the high school level to get into these fewer uni places. As long as there is a limited supply of cushy jobs and the same demand, then the price that young people are willing to pay in terms of studying will go up.
People could say this is a failure of society to distribute resources equally that there is a lot of "wasted people-hours" on things that don't contribute much to society (e.g studying for an exam) only because everyone wants the nice jobs. But on the other extreme end, if a train driver gets paid the same as a software engineer or investment banker, then there's no incentive for people to work hard purely on money alone. People say this is what Star Trek's communist utopia is based on, where people work for fun or social prestige rather than money specifically. Maybe if things get so bad with capitalism, society just might consider trying communism again.
Hi Amanda, that's why it is so important now for young people like you to plot your career path carefully to make sure it is future proof in light of AI. I am at the stage in my life where people do reach out to me - I just got a call from someone whom I have not seen since February, but he has set up his own new company recently so he wanted to touch base to explore how we could work together. Yeah when that kinda thing happens, I immediately start connecting the dots but otherwise I've been around long enough for things like that to come out of the blue whereas for Choaniki he is starting from scratch.
DeleteAs for the university workload, you've hit the nail on the head when you talked about wasted people hours. These young students are spending thousands of hours cramming for exams and they will promptly forget most of that information within days of the exam given that it's unlikely to be used outside the context of the exam and society is no better off. Therefore, I have a different theory. I think there's an element of bullying involved. I'm a real bitch in believing in this but hear me out - if you are really brilliant, you'll take that brains + talent to go make loads of money. But if you're mediocre, you end up teaching at a university. So these teaching staff at the university are resenting the fact that some of their students will go on to become so much more successful and richer than they ever will be, so they are using this heavy workload as a form of bullying to vent their frustration at the situation. Even at primary or secondary school, the teachers want to exert that control over the students not because that knowledge is going to be useful to them, but it is all about the teachers' ego at the end of the day in that situation.
And let me just add one more thing - I just came across a situation whereby the boss of a big company in London hired the guy who was dating his daughter (ie. a probable future son-in-law), he probably wanted to make sure that his daughter would marry a rich guy and the only way to ensure that was to give that guy a job (he has no qualifications to work in finance, but this is pure nepotism). I believe that anyone can learn what to do in finance, you just have to find your niche, but that's an example of how no amount of exams at school or university can overcome the fact that you still need nepotism to get the good jobs out there and you cannot say to the boss, "don't hire the guy your daughter is dating, hire me instead - I am a top graduate from this really prestigious university." This is an issue that those working in education casually brush aside and ignore, because it just means it really doesn't matter how hard you push yourself to score well at school or university, without the right connections, the odds are still massively stacked against you. The answer isn't more education, but more networking, more social skills, more work experience and of course, less time spent studying for useless exams!!!
DeleteI agree. In 2 hours I manage to connect one very high profile guy who was a former UBS MD. He then referred me to some very smart and driven people to help me. Could I have done it without his help? Maybe, but it will take me longer and with much more false starts.
DeleteYou bring up a good point about "trust", this is something A.I cannot automate at all. An A.I may be super smart, but would you trust one to invest your retirement money? Maybe if it was cheap and you had no other options like a retail investor, but if you could afford to pay a bit more you'd hire an expert human instead. And it's those jobs that are dependent on trust and connections which pay the most and are most stable. By the way, the sales guy in my team is also frequently asked "can you get us in a room with the CEO of XYZ company?" And he usually says "yeah let me make some calls..." And that reminded me of how you described part of your job once in a blog post. Using your vast network of connections to help your employers talk to the right people.
DeleteWith the future son-in-law and nepotism, I was thinking that the future son-in-law is less likely to betray his girlfriend's dad because it would directly affect his personal life. I mean how many times have we worked with people and wondered whether we will be paid in the end or if the other side will ghost or even lie to us to get more money for themselves? I was thinking of this when wondering why in high school a friend's mom said I could maybe do the energy infrastructure for a property she wanted to develop after I finish my undergrad degree. And I guess the answer is that although I may not be as qualified as a total stranger who could apply for the job if she advertised, I'm less likely to embezzle or quit the job halfway when it's my friend's mom's money I'm playing with. That would directly fuck up my personal life so much it wouldn't be worth embezzling or finding another job. But if I worked for a total stranger, I suppose I can just run with the money or even find a new job halfway and quit no hard feelings. However it's not fair that people who grew up rich or have rich friends are the only ones who can take advantage of their connections. And it isn't 100% foolproof because rich people can acknowledge that some of their rich friends or family are just straight up incompetent and more likely to lose money than make it. My best friend has a friend whose dad is a portfolio manager in Switzerland, and she said her dad got her brother a job in a UK bank, but he was so lazy that all the staff complained about him and he eventually got fired. The dad was very upset because he lost face.
Yes I 100% agree with you that the solution is not more studying, but learning to develop social skills better to connect with other people better. The question is, how can someone from a working class background learn this faster. Because people from wealthy backgrounds learn it from their parents who already do a lot of networking.
Oh I totally agree about the bullying in schools. There is an element of "look I'm so smart you can't even understand what I'm teaching", but this only serves the professor's ego and not the students' careers. It's very prevalent in Singapore. In the west it's not as much because the students can complain about bullying to the university. But in Asia they just gotta suck it up. There's already a brutal exam culture at the high school level to get into limited university places, so if a teacher says "if you don't learn what I teach, then your life is gonna be very tough" then they could say "I was just being honest" instead of trying to attack the student.
Delete@Amanda, it took me 20 years to learn about the importance of connections and how to ask experts for help.
DeleteYou can't force a working class person to learn that no matter how much you try. For e.g. I posted on a very (in)famous local forum about how I made the switch from healthcare to finance. 99% were haters only 1 person asked me for help to achieve the same.
I think students are just as guilty in being suckered into a system that doesn't benefit them at all. Let me give you an example: there's this rich kid at my gym who is 18 years old (so I can forgive her for being terribly naïve - let's call her Money as she's rich. She met my friend Tony who has been in a band in the UK for many years, he is still touring though this band was big in the 1980s so they're playing to very old audiences now and in any case, Tony only joined the band after they became super famous to replace one of the original members who decided he had made enough money and wanted to retire rather than spend the rest of his life on stage screaming, "remember this hit from 1985!?!" But regardless, Tony has made a lucrative career having played to packed stadiums from Germany to Russia to USA to Australia over the years. Not a bad way to make a living if you ask me.
DeleteSo Tony came to my gym and I introduced him to Money - as Money wants to become a dancer/actor one day. She then began describing to Tony all the many courses and classes she has taken, her parents had indulged Money's ambition by giving her the chance to learn how to dance and act. And then I asked a simple question, Tony gets paid a lot of money to perform. All you've done is pay to perform on a stage as part of a course, have you ever been paid to dance, act or sing before? The answer was no, she said "but I'm still young. I've got the rest of my life to earn money." I drilled down further and it turns out that she had absolute faith in her dance/acting teachers as daddy paid a LOT of money for those lessons, so they must be useful, right? Nope. She still thinks that she can mind her own business in the gym or dance studio then one day, someone like Tony will walk in and say, "I want you in my show, you are brilliant." Even Tony rolled his eyes and said, no that's not how it works in the real world. That came as a shock to Money and she was like, but but but daddy spent SO MUCH MONEY on those dance lessons, we were told that the teacher was very good so why did my father pay so much money for that teacher then if it wasn't all gonna make me famous?! I have no doubt that Money's dance teachers worked her till she had blisters on her feet and that her acting teachers kept her up all night with long rehearsals, but at the end of the day, she had made the assumption that all that would lead to paid work when really, she had merely paid those teachers to keep her busy. Many people assume that if you work hard, success will come your way but that's wrong on so many levels.
As for Choaniki, I refer you to the story above of the big boss who gave his future son in law a job. Roll eyes. Nepotism rules in this industry.
"Money" sounds like a coddled rich kid who was given a side hobby to keep busy rather than a kid who would be trained to inherit the family business later. So many of those exist. It sounds like she was only gonna go to auditions when she finished undergrad, but even then have daddy call up some connections to get her roles in movies and plays. Yup that really feeds into the "nepo baby" trope in Hollywood. I kinda wonder if she would even try to go to auditions after that talk with Tony. Waiting in line with 1000 other people for hours, getting criticized and not getting the job. Though I think her dad would just bribe the best agent in London to take her.
DeleteHmm, when was the first time I was paid for engineering work? I had a summer internship with a company after first year undergrad, but I must've sent out 20 applications and only got one interview and one offer. Still not as cutthroat as showbiz though.
https://youtu.be/pCeYZ7eaeIw
DeleteThis video encapsulates everything about showbiz. If you are not connected or young and beautiful forget about making it big.
Aaaah but here's a catch Amanda, her parents have absolutely nothing to do with showbiz, they make their money in a totally different industry. They're rich but they simply don't have the connections in showbiz. It's not a question of rich = you must have all the right connections, showbiz is a very niche industry. Let's say Money's father runs a chain of factories making industrial solvents, that is absolutely nothing to do with showbiz and thus he can throw money at her artistic endeavours by paying for every single course she wants to attend, but when it comes to knowing who the decision makers are in showbiz, he can't do a thing as they don't need his industrial solvents.
DeleteFurthermore, there's no such thing as 'waiting in line with 1000 people for hours' anymore, that's called an open audition and that's a myth, a legend. The casting director will say, "I know what I'm looking for and I'm not prepared to see more than 20 people in 1 hour - they each have 3 minutes to impress me as I'm very busy." Then a casting notice would go out to the top agents and they would be invited to submit their actors for the role, the assistants of the casting director will then invite say about 100 actors to submit a self-tape whereby they record themselves performing a part of the script that's no more than 1 minute long. That's when from the 100 self-tapes, that would be narrowed down to the final 20 who will actually get to meet the casting director in person for no more than 3 minutes. After that, you'll get the call back, which is when 20 goes down to like 2 or 3 only before the casting director makes the final decision.
At which point, the decision making process works like this - if it is for a movie or TV programme, there will be a joint decision between the production studio, the director, the funders and the casting directors as to "which actor would be best for this role." If it's for an advert, then the decision is almost 100% exclusively at the hands of the client, say if it's for a shampoo ad, it'll be the big bosses at the shampoo brand to decide literally which hair model to hire for their ad, as this is funded entirely by them. It's never a case of "just bribe this one casting director and you'll get the part." No, it's not that simple.
As for Money's dad bribing the top London agent to take her, again, tough. It would depend on whether or not she has any merit. Part 2 below TBC.
Let's examine 3 scenarios: if Money was talented (10/10), if she was totally useless (0/10) and if she was so so (between 4 to 6/10). If she was super talented, then there would be no need to bribe the top agents to take her. The agent only makes money when Money gets the part and the agent is financially incentivized to take someone who can score successful audition after audition and always get the part. If that's the case, then there's no need to bribe. If she was totally useless, then the agent's own reputation would be on the line if the agent kept pushing a talentless actor who was rubbish at everything. It'll be the equivalent of bribing a top London restaurant to serve your uncle's wine, even if you knew that wine was terrible. The customers of the restaurant would be so upset when they tasted that terrible wine and complain, the restaurant's reputation would be on the line - so that's a model that simply won't work. But what if Money was average? Say if she was 5/10 - well, then the agent would plug Money into the process of submitting her for auditions but she would simply be unsuccessful. The father would then have to bribe the entire casting agency consisting of a team of casting directors + all the people who work for them who narrow the field down from 100 to 20, then the final 3. That's a LOT of people to bribe but wait, don't forget, this is a very competitive industry and there's a problem there. There are SEVERAL casting agencies in London.
DeleteSay Amanda & Co casting starts accepting bribes from rich parents with mediocre kids who aren't that talented, this becomes evident after you've tried hard to persuade a few clients to accept a less-than-talented actor over a truly talented one, so it becomes clear: either Amanda has terrible judgment as a casting director, you can't trust her to do any casting as she would pick the wrong person (there goes your reputation down the drain) or you're incredibly corrupt and taking bribes, thus you cannot be trusted (again there your any trust and integrity associated with your brand name). If people ever started questioning your integrity and judgment, you're finished as a casting director and other casting agencies would be like, "don't deal with Amanda, she's corrupt, we're not corrupt, we'll do a much better job than her."
So if you were Amanda & Co and accepted a bribe from Money's parents, there's only so far you can go without totally destroying your own reputation. And this is your career on the line here, Money could get bored and decide to go do something else in a few years, but the career that you've built up over decades is destroyed for a bribe that has ruined your reputation and career? That bribe had better be in the millions for you to accept it but if Money's parents were willing to pay say a £5 million bribe, then they may as well do a vanity project like hire a team to write, shoot and produce a movie with their daughter as the protagonist just to make their little angel feel like a Hollywood star.
Ironically, in this industry, Money's parents' money isn't going to be that much of a help - best case scenario? She finds an agent willing to take her (I probably would rate her talent a 5/10 at best if I am feeling generous) so she gets paid work about once or twice a year. Her rich parents support her whilst she is unemployed and waiting for the next audition. This goes on indefinitely as she is rich enough not to have to work, but she will never find the fame that she has been dreaming of in showbiz.
Wow showbiz is more meritocratic than I thought. The process you're describing seems to apply to lead or supporting roles though. I was assuming that Money's parents would probably settle for getting her a job as an extra or just an extremely minor role. It's relatively meaningless in the grand scheme of things, but might be enough to keep their daughter happy. Hmm, I guess famous actor's kids like Kevin Bacon's daughter (lead role in recent horror flick "Smile") and Kiefer Sutherland are really talented actors who just happened to have it easier to get a foot in the door, but after that it was their talent that kept them going. Considering all the number of bad movies which don't turn a profit, showbiz can't afford to be as nepotistic as other fields like say the government. Funny enough I heard when Denzel Washington's son John David Washington became an actor, he didn't tell his dad or mom who also works in showbiz(but stage, not screen). Originally he was a football player too, and only took up acting at age 30 after retiring from professional sports. And when casting directors asked what his dad did, he would lie to them saying he was either in prison or a construction worker, or pick a job from one of the roles his father acted as. When he got famous it was a total surprise to his family, especially considering his dad didn't help him at all even though he was a famous actor and recent director. And he's scored some big roles, like the lead role in a Christopher Nolan movie. Denzel Washington does have 3 other kids though, which he did help into showbiz, two of which are working behind the camera as producers or writers, and another one who is an actress.
DeleteYeah it sounds like Money lives in a sandbox. She hasn't tried to make money using all her expensive tutoring. But you could argue the same applies to many students still at university when they're hit with cold reality upon their first job search after graduation. Even I question whether things I learnt in school are relevant to the industry sometimes. But I landed a job which was more theoretical than usual simply because there are so little existing experts in this new field (A.I for legal work). So they just wanted someone who was a problem solver.
Aah but you have to understand Amanda, Money is a rich spoilt brat - daddy I wanna play the leading role! Daddy I am more talented and beautiful than all the girls out there, I would settle for nothing less than the lead role and have thousands of fans lining up outside my house each morning to adore me! Spoilt brats tend to have a very distorted view of reality. If Money's parents scored her the role of just an extra or something equally minor, she would throw the world's biggest tantrum. "Daddy how dare they insult me like that? Do they know who I am? How dare they give me a non-speaking part when I am the most talented actor in the country at the moment? Daddy are you going to fix this? I am so insulted, how dare they do this to me, to me!!" Nooooo, there's just no way Money can get that if she's only a 5/10 in the talent scale and the only way they can give her what she wants is if daddy bankrolls the entire production by investing about minimum $10 million USD and even then, that would be considered a low budget film. Most proper Hollywood films have budgets of around 100 to 200 million dollars but with big names, they feel confident that they can earn all that money back and make a profit. With Money and her parents bankrolling a production like that, they are effectively throwing $10 to $20 million dollars down the drain just to make their daughter happy. Listen I said they were rich, but I think they may stop that throwing $20 million down the drain like that just to please Money. But that's the only way Money can ever play a lead role in a movie - you can't bribe your way to the top in this industry. Nepotism can get your foot in the door but you still have to have some talent in order to deliver in an industry where the number one objective is to make money. It is very brutal - the wrong casting decision can mean a difference between a movie making a big profit or a huge loss, so no one involved would dare to stake their career on the line. "Oh that's Amanda, she's the corrupt casting director who put that rich kid in the role and now that movie bombed because of her poor decision - Amanda is FINISHED, her career is over, no one will ever trust her judgment again, she has no integrity." How big a bribe would you need to take in order to willingly put yourself in that position where everyone looks at your like you are so corrupt and untrustworthy? The answer is simple - no bribe in the world would be big enough for you to put yourself in that position.
DeleteI guess the reason why showbiz has such high levels is because a single person could make or break the entire project.
DeleteLike for example, the singer Sia Furler goes to great lengths to hide her face since she doesn't want to be recognized on the streets. So her success who boil down to her vocal talent and nothing else. In fact in Japan there is a singer called Ado who performs in complete darkness and usually releases MTVs with a virtual avatar. No one has any idea what she looks like (maybe producers included).
Hey Alex, wow Money is one spoiled princess. Since you brought up the rich guy who hired his daughter's boyfriend, I think what Money should do if she wants to guarantee herself a lead role is to find a boyfriend who is a young and upcoming(re: broke) director. Someone like Bong Joon Ho or Steven Spielberg before they became successful. Then she can introduce her boyfriend to her dad to find financing for his next Indie film, with the promise that he'll cast Money in the lead role. Then there's other logistics like finding a distributor, or getting into a film festival. I dunno if it's financially realistic for Money's dad to grease the wheels in the Indie scene even if he can't with big budget mainstream productions. But for Money to be that strategic and calculating she can't be an entitled spoiled brat who demands a lead role right away. But even if Money doesn't have her dad finance an indie picture , simply being rich enough to have her bills handled whenever she is in between jobs is like you said a huge privilege. One case I can think of is Armie Hammer who was born into a rich family but had to spend a few years making Indie films before he made it big with Call me by your name. Of course his career fell off due to controversies in his personal life. But like money, he could afford to take on low paying roles for years while attempting time and again to break into mainstream Hollywood.
DeleteAnyway, aren't you at least glad that nepotism does have it's limits? That's when social mobility is possible, and when society gets high quality goods rather than just mediocre but politically motivated ones.
@Amanda you just stumbled upon the uncanny relationship between Tim Burton & Helena Bonham Carter, Luc Besson & Milla Jovowich, and Quentin Tarantino & Uma Thurman. I'm sure there are many more that @LIFT can name.
DeleteAh Amanda, you're thinking as 'Amanda' and you're really practical and good at problem solving but in the case of Money, she has a massive ego that comes from having been brought up in a very rich family, with her parents buying her anything she ever desired. She isn't even interested in university at this stage of her life (she will turn 18 later this year) and instead, she is paying for these very expensive acting, dancing and singing classes given that if you wanna get into Oxford or Cambridge, you need straight As and she's way too lazy to work hard enough to get grades like that. But for these classes, all she needs is her parents' money and she is the only student in the class with a famous teacher in singing/acting/dancing and she is made to feel special. Your plan of dating a young, upcoming but broke director would fall apart the moment Money takes a look at him and think, "what a loser, he can't even take me out for a date." A practical, even desperate person would understand the concept of exchanging sexual favours in exchange for money or privilege - that's is 100% being a prostitute and let's call a spade a spade. You're asking Money to be a prostitute to a director (whom she may not be attracted to, given that she is used to only looking at very rich and successful men that she grew up with) and that's just never ever gonna happen. She would be like, "have some self respect Amanda, only poor and desperate people have to resort to being prostitutes - not only am I so rich, I am also beautiful and talented. People like me don't need to become prostitutes. Only poor people do that." Therein lies the problem: Money believes that she is a 10/10 in terms of talent and beauty when objectively, I would put her more at a 5/10, she is average. Then there's her parents - even if they are very rich, where would they draw the line at their daughter's wish list? Daddy, give me £250 million to fund a film where I am the lead and hero. At which point would daddy say, fuck off Money, you're just being stupid. I may be rich but that's just throwing money down the drain. Within a few weeks, you'll get bored and wanna do something else and that'll be a waste of money. Nepotism does have it's limits of course. Young princess Money has all the cash in the world to spend to enjoy a lifestyle that I can only dream of, but she will never have the means to earn her own money by being an actor as she doesn't have the talent and no amount of bribery will make that happen. Imagine her daddy paying a bribe of £1 million to get her a part in a film which pays only £10,000 given that it is a non-mainstream indie film that didn't get much attention, in business terms, that's a massive loss. Her father became rich through business and at some point, he'll be like, "why can't you just stick to being a dumb bitch by buying expensive shoes, dresses and lipsticks and playing princess at home? Even that's cheaper than asking me to throw money down the drain by paying people to hire you to do a job that you're crap at."
DeleteYes but Choaniki, you've listed examples of very determined people who were willing to do whatever it takes to achieve success, including prostituting themselves. They are realistic enough to know that without prostituting themselves, their chances of success are greatly reduced. The problem with Princess Money is that because she believes she rates 10/10 in both talent and beauty, she does not need to prostitute herself and that only people who score around a 5/10 need to resort to that - however, Princess Money at best scores a 5/10 in the talent and looks department, therein lies the problem. It is this massive mismatch between her perception of herself and the harsh reality.
DeleteI see this as an ego problem. I have no issues asking experts for help. The worse that could happen is them saying no. But I have not been turned down so far (I also don't take no for an answer). And I suspect if Princess Money weren't so rich and more desperate she would find ways and means to ask for help and receive it!
DeleteYou would be surprised that everyone on the street, even the ugly talentless hack has an ego and refuses to ask for help! Like even the poor uncle and aunties are too egotistical to seek financial aid because it is "throw face".
One would ask for help if one knew that a) one needed it and b) it was available if we asked for it. It would also help you know what form that help ought to take. In Princess Money's case, if she has been brought up with the impression that she is so talented and beautiful that she doesn't need help, then she might have thought a lot more about what kind of help she would need. When I witness someone like that, I just take a step back as I believe in the principle, you can bring a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
Delete@LIFT, personally I treat unsolicited advice, especially from non-experts (e.g. my boomer dad) as nagging or lecturing. I suspect many zoomer feel the same way which is why I never provide unsolicited help.
DeleteYes this made me think of the other story of your friend "Ricky" - ie. Mr Hero to Zero in one step, the story that inspired an entire post about it on my blog.
Delete