Almost every high paying profession requires you to be good with working with people - eg. sales, law, high finance, consulting
Or be good at math - public accounting, quant, software engineering, etc.
Pretty much encompasses 99.999% of high paying white collar professions. Stands to reason you should ensure ur kid is good at least one of them lol
As someone who works as a software dev, i absolutely agree. Sadly, a lot of people (and companies) think that if you are good at math, you're good with logic because math is logical.
I don't agree with that opinion. Someone can be really bad at math but really good at analyzing stuff for example.
That was one of things that annoyed me when I was looking for an apprenticeship. Not because I'm bad at math but because it's just wrong
Oh, I'm terrible at math but great at coding, so it was really annoying for me until I got a job.
Logic and problem solving. I think the best engineers are those than can “figure shit out”.
I always say “I suck at math but I’m really good at calculators”
Yep, I really suck at IT but I'm really good at Google.
I’m also a software dev and I am TERRIBLE at math, but looooove logic puzzles
As someone with a bachelor's degree in mathematics: you're probably right if you're just talking about high school mathematics. However, any higher level of mathematics is basically the same thing as logic. If you study mathematics at a university level, it is all just to train your analytical problem solving skills.
However, if you think of mathematics as just solving equations etc., i do agree.
I have a degree in Applied Mathematics which essentially is just applications of mathematics (I mean if that’s not obvious) so not as intensive in deep math lore as a pure math degree, but when my electives were theoretical math courses or engineering courses I opted for engineering because some of that theory seemed.. I don’t know pointless? I distinctly remember crushing some sort of theory course in calc that was basically make up the end and prove how you got there and I don’t know that I really “learned” anything
Maybe that’s proof though, “given the tools at your disposal, reach this conclusion” or something
Ehh, as an engineer who had to go through DiffEq for math I never saw the change from the Calc 1&2 I was doing in high school. One I was working I remember four engineers sitting around trying to remember how to figure out the volume of a trapezoidal prism and it taking us half a day to work through what we needed. I once got into an argument with my boss because he believed you could change the circumference of a circle without changing the radius. Lots of highly paid engineers are terrible at math and have no day to day exposure higher than geometry and algebra.
Understanding abstract software topics is not at all the same as understanding abstract math. If you only have math experience you will find it very challenging to enter the world of software abstraction. Yes, they are able to understand abstract concepts, but from a purely mathematical point of view. Software abstraction isn’t that; it’s all centered around computer foundations and if you lack that experience it’s going to be a learning curve. You ought to have experience with software applications and the abstractions will be easy to understand.
Or some how need to solve a rubics cube... rubics cube is about repetitious patterns. My code is about avoid repetition and defining comprehensible functions that can be called. Long gone are the days where a loop is justifiable. Giant ass loops not needed anymore. They are okay for small one off tasks too much will destroy memory.
Eh? Loops are a staple of programming and can exist within comprehensible functions. Certain loops are inadvisable, in certain situations, but loops are very much justifiable in many, many situations.
No argument there. But keeping functions closed to their specific task and not making them run other functions to the point it becomes a loop is something I've seen people screw up. Functions are purposeful and should contain code that is exact and driven for their intent.
Recursion is still a stable in coding, and functions that call other functions is still a good thing.
right as long as it is done with timed exit otherwise recursion can in some language leave a zombie child thread in system. that stuff can get masked in kubernetes with pod restarts.
If you create an infinite loop, and you didn't want an infinite loop, you just coded something wrong.
I'm going to assume you're using the word loop to mean infinite loop....which is a very different thing, and obviously an error in code.
I am talking about keeping things self contained. Certainly an endless loops fails to do it, but loops in functions not calling functions with loops calling functions with loops is a good way to keep something self contained. A function should be a meaningful as the code itself that calls it otherwise the programs performance deteriorates over time. The more complex a tasks is in loop the less likely it is to be efficient in execution. Nothing wrong with a loop as long as the loop is contained to the function. If you exhaust all possibilities it is isn't BAD code it just isn't ideal.
I disagree.
As an example, if you have a list of products and you get the list of products, but you also want to see how many orders contain that product. there is nothing wrong with having a loop function calling another loop function within it's loop.
Otherwise you have to design a separate function for this specifically which will just introduce alternative "bottlenecks", or have to do comparison in some way (generally in a loop) when you already have functions for getting orders and getting products, and the efficiency gains, whilst potentially there, would be pretty meaningless unless you are talking absurd numbers.
It's just shifting the problem and making more code, some of which will end up having either aspects of repeated code or redundant data...or both.
It's more efficient to plan ahead as much as possible and design the functions so that they don't have repetition or pull redundant data rather than focusing on whether a loop within a function calls another function with loops.
Case dependant though I guess.
sounds like a data object problem as well as a query issue
so for myself if it was python easiest one to understand in example, I would query the db for the item in set and do count as opposed to count in loop.
the database type is just as important since not all can do queries like that
I mean, there are multiple ways to count (dependant on language used and DB like you say). But in general, counting within a loop would be the last resort and would have very limited impact on efficiency and is nothing to do with the looping "problem" you are talking about.
Ultimately of the code works and is manageable do whatever suits, but know that in the actual loop examples being talked about previously it sounds like you're jumping through hoops that need not be jumped through, for other hoops that pretty much don't exist, which is a waste of your own time.
Sometimes making very pretty code is very rewarding in itself too though, so if it's not impacting you, continue on lol.
You need loops quite often when multi threading
You can just use abstractions and ensure the code is self contained. For concurrency there are ways to avoid loops too and some new languages do it out of the box.
Logic is just a sexier form of math
Math isn't used that much in many things it is all logic.
Yep - my brain stopped understanding math around Calc 2 (series + sequences). I am a successful software engineer because I am really good at logic and understanding how systems work and how data flows through systems. I'm pretty sure 95% of my success in my current job is just understanding data flow through systems.
If you understand math up to calc 2, you are good at math
Logic is a branch of mathematics though.
Being capable of reasoning logically is entirely different from being able to reason about logic itself as a mathematical discipline.
Not just a branch, it's fundamental to being able to prove anything at all in mathematics.
Nailed it. I'm an accountant, and people say "you must love math" and I blink slowly and say "why? I have a computer and adding machine to do math." Still working on the people skills. (kidding, I'm awesome at people skills, but humility works pretty well most of the time)
Logic (the formal kind) is a subset of math.
Critical thinking
Yeah, but a strong numerical background catalyzes your ability to grasp a lot of the logic used in programming
Sure, the structure of math can help, but I know plenty of strong DBA's that aren't great at math. Plenty of math people can't program for squat. So the skill required is more logic than math. I've been in IT for 30+ years and math is VERY little of it.
Interesting. My coding background is mainly the finance sector, so the amount of numerical analysis is substantial, but definitely makes sense that it’s not that way for 99% of programming fields
Sure, I worked for 3 years in finance industry as an application and dbase programmer. absolutely there was more math but mostly due to date handling and other fun numerical tricks that handled money and pricing (stocks). But in Aerospace/Telecom Manufacturing, I've really never needed any math above basic algebra.
not sure why this is being downvoted. working in quant finance requires crazy math/logic ability
IT and coding arent the same thing though. Do you have 30+ years of programming experience or IT experience?
umm it IS the same thing, depends on the company. I programmed UI's, API's, DB's.. took that coding experience into security, networking, management and still code for all of those, just in different ways. IT is NOT just hardware and endpoints. Started working Computer Sciences Corp when I got out of the Navy in 91. Worked for Aerospace and Telecom for 10 years building in house applications (front and back), then went to Finance where programming for applications and endpoint management, then into Manufacturing for Tech companies... All the skills were applied.. I still code in ways such as powershell and cgi for hardware along with data wrappers for endpoints. Along with Architecting network infrastructures with multiple data centers in multiple countries, but now I'm more management and have team of guys working for me, so I don't get code dirty as much.
p.s. been programming since '81 on a TI99 then a TRS 80 and Cobol on mainframe... it's ALL pertinent.... yes, of course there was a LOT of hardware involved.. but IT isnt' just hardware. It's all of it
I have been in IT for a little while, as well as a lot of my much older connections. None of them would ever say programming falls under IT. Perhaps scripting in power shell but that’s about it. No IT department is going to tell a sysadmin to pull up Java script or C++ and start coding. And if they do, they better be paying the salary of both a sysadmin and a programmer
Sure, not a sysadmin, but 100% I've worked for companies that has IT doing the full programming developing systems for internal usage, even a full blown ERP. IT is not just sysadmin and pc support.. that might be for some companies but lot of companies put programmers under IT. C# and SQL (programming) are used to develop things for IT, regularly. It all depends on how a company wants it... I've never cared what you call me, call me a candle maker or a baker, if I'm moving and controlling data, it's data
If it moves and controls Data, it's IT, especially in Operations. I've even worked coding (not scripting) UI's under the Marketing Dept, doesn't make me a marketing guy.
Idk about that. I quit on the dream of programming and am attempting IT simply BECAUSE the math required.
Data structures and algorithms is basically calculus. So im not sure your claims hold up.
Well I have 30+ years in programming for mainly Aerospace/Telecom/Tech (some financial) and math above algebra has rarely been needed, but logic ALWAYS needed.
I mean why put such an emphasis on logic and math being separate. Logic IS math.
math is logic, but logic is not always math
You got it reversed
And this is why not everyone can have a high paying job
Square is rectangle, but rectangle is not always square.
Yes, squares are a subset of rectangles. Similarly, math is a subset of logic. All logic is, is a system of reasonsing that draws conclusions from a set of "ground" truths.
Lawyers, detectives, and philosophers are all very logical, but their reasoning process doesn't always involve math.
Logic is subset of math o.0
Ummm…. What lol. Have you ever taken data structures, algorithms or calculus? This is a ridiculously dumb take lol
I have, and failed both calc and data structures. Data structures which is literally math. Having to come up with algorithms that do all sorts of stuff
Well I’m sure you failed them if you think “data structures is literally math” so that makes sense lol
Do you get off on making people feel like shit?
Most high-paying jobs might require one or both of those skills, but they're not the only skills they require.
You can't just "be good with people" and have a high-end lawyer career, for instance.
Yeah, more so the foundational skills to build towards success in those roles. As another commenter mentioned, Software Engineering, for example, is more so databases and logic more than “pure” mathematics, but math is the jumping off point
You would be surprised how many lawyers aren’t good with people. As others have mentioned, many of the high level jobs require strong logic and problem solving skills. Most civil litigation is done through motion practice synthesizing and distinguishing procedural rules, statutes, and case law, all of which can be interpreted or used differently in many cases and then applying that information to a set of facts. Those facts might be just as complicated, especially in civil litigation and business disputes. Most jobs require people skills the higher you move up the chain, however, whether those skills are applied to managing people or bringing in business.
I think it’s possible for someone to be good with people but bad with language, and they will be locked out of law for that weakness.
Yeah, nah
You can learn to build up your skills in those fields...also no. There are many good programmers that don't know much about math.
Being attractive is the 3rd skill
As a dude who has a degree in math and computer science, and has been a software dev for 10 years, I can confidently say you do not need math skills to be a good software dev
It isn’t the math skills in so much as the analytical skills that being good at math tends to require.
Doctors can have absolute shit personal skills and very little math.
Was gonna say doctors are neither
My dad works at a hospital and he always talks about the surgeons having god complexes. But yeah I was gonna bring up dentists. Like, since when do personal skills and math help you screw around with people's teeth?
The only thing you need to be highly paid and successful in anything is not a skill but a trait, and it’s masochism.
99% of all high paying jobs? That looks like terrible math.
i sort of feel like OP is basing his assumption of high paying careers based on movies/tv where most positions of power are portrayed as something someone can bullshit his way into
Being good at surgery is also quite lucrative.
Good call. Any good youtube videos I can watch to start getting good?
Well I wish I’d known this before I wasted all those years learning all this damn biology.
One may argue a biologist is good with humans on a literally cellular level. So it fits 😂
You’re a sausage if you think that
I am in a high paying profession that doesn’t really require either of those, and it’s hardly a 1% deviation. What i believe you are missing is a huge segment of the work force that depends on skilled analysis, identify potential efficiencies, problem solving, and ability to efficiently execute solutions.
If you’re talking about managerial and leadership skills, I’d argue that that would fall under the realm of “people skills”. Maybe my initial phrasing isn’t the best, I’d be more EQ than people skills precisely.
Identifying potential efficiencies and such, depending on the field, can also be a math-heavy endeavor I’d imagine. Lots of %s and ratios you’d have to analyze
I’m talking about process and system efficiencies, and I stand by what I said.
“Process and systems efficiencies” is just a word soup. Specifically in what? In what sector? Doing what?
Read his username lol
Industrial and systems engineering would be my first guess, but that is reliant upon statistical knowledge... aka some math.
From context clues, my next guess was going to be scam calling.
You don't actually need math for software dev, but you do need way more people skills than most people are led to believe. Your job as a software dev is 45% understanding people, 45% making people understand you, and 10% telling the computer what to do.
To get to the upper echelons, it’s who you know not what you know.
Being good with people = networking
Ass kissing?😀
And being good looking helps a lot
Viewing that as ass kissing is very wrong. No one likes an ass kisser, and it’s very obvious when someone is just kissing ass.
You have to be actually likable, competent, unique, and confident in your own way. Anyone can “kiss ass,” it’s always the same and annoying.
The top echelons? Sure.
But this train of though is such a cop out. The average lawyer or developer making $150 a year didn't "know someone" to get their job.
Tell that to the nepotism running rampant in pretty much all the top law schools. Also I think you missed a couple digits there xD
You’re wrong unfortunately
I’d argue being adequate with basic technology (like sending emails or record-keeping) doesn’t fall under either
Yeah you’d be shocked what portion of the workforce making 6 figures right now still think something like vlookup in Excel is some kind of advanced sorcery.
Learn some basics about the tools you have available to you. Click on some buttons and see what can be done.
People at my job think I’m magically able to access hoards of data that no one else has access to. When the reality is they all have access to it, they just never bothered to click around the tools available to them to see how they work and what can be done with them.
Yes, exactly - I work in IT. If I had a dollar for every time someone said that I was a miracle worker, wizard, computer genius or something similar, I could retire. I tell them they could do my job but most of them scoff at the idea. Some people claim they can barely work a cell phone, I disagree. They are just lazy.
Before I got into IT, I was a food service manager. I ran large institutional kitchens with twenty, thirty forty employees and budgets in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, feeding hundreds or thousands of people every day. That took a lot, that was hard work, setting up an office with computers and printers is a breeze compared to that.
Well even though that is kind of pathetic I guess it might weirdly be job security?
“I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?”
~ Tom Smykowski; Office Space
Well I'm fucked then.
Software Engineering has a requirement for logic not maths.
Similar, but not the same.
logic is a branch of mathematics
Maybe, but it’s different
I excel at computers and logic - very much not at math
Actually, it only requires being good with people. If you are good at math, problem solving, logic thinking, building infinite energy sources, etc; but can't interact with people, someone with more people skills will probably steal the credit for your work. i.e. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, etc
Emotional intelligence is so important. I'm not academically bright, although I can get by fine, I've found being moderately likeable has helped hugely professionally. Learned how to get on with different and sometimes difficult people through playing lots of sports and going to an insane high school for boys.
You need to be a decent writer too. Sending emails or writing letters with errors or poor grammar sends a clear message.
Problem solving skills
True - a skill so lacking almost everywhere
AI is coming for y’all math folks. Mark my words.
Being good at learning*
When you say math you mean logic. And logic kinda covers all jobs in a generic way.
Does getting a job through connections fall under having people skills?
Software engineer here, I am not good at math lol. I break out the calculator as much as a cashier at mcdonalds, in fact, I am expected to.
Financial advisor specialized portfolio management.. You’d be surprised how little math is required.
Right, but your great with people caise rhey have to trust you with their money
So being intelligent..
As someone who is married to an attorney, and their father also an attorney, they would disagree vehemently that being good with people is part of it. Lawyers make famously bad managers in fact. Being a lawyer is critical thinking and being able to read huge amounts of information quickly and being able to understand very complex circumstances. Most lawyers that son’t do corporate client work don’t really care about how politely they put their advice. They will put it professionally and plainly, your feelings be damned.
I'm a computational psychologist so I'd like to think I'm decent at both but I make less than some friends who flunked out of HS. Don't go into academia kids, it's a horrible shitshow.
As someone who works in a high paying ($500+k/yr) tech job and creates AI. The future is people skills and being able to effectively use AI. AI will do the rest.
possibly some ability to deal with resposibilities/stress/pressure too?
Being good at math doesn’t mean you have to understand advanced mathematics. Some people sit in HS math classes and literally can’t compute what is happening with the numbers being discussed around them,
If you are an engineer, you are good at math. If you are a biology major, you are good at math. If you are a (decent) contractor, you are good at math.
I’ve always said there are two types of high paying jobs ones where you have to be smart and ones where you have to be not dumb. You’d think being smart and being not dumb are the same thing. Then you talk to a really smart engineer and are like I really need someone 50% as smart as you to make what you just said not dumb.
or being good at memorization like lawyer and doctor
I’m good at maths, but I’m better at problem solving and critical thinking..
I’m good at maths, but I’m better at problem solving and critical thinking..
Of course all high paying jobs require speech 100.
Because to really make money, you need to be in charge of a massive number of people. No one person is really making "a lot of money" just decent money. But when you team up hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people, that's where real money is made.
No one does that without being a good people person.
Law isn’t really about people it’s about language and logic.
doctors and lawyers would like a word
Accounting isn't really much beyond basic maths though
I don’t know many accountants in the 1%
Just how many 1%ers are you acquainted with? Lol
I have background in PE so a few of my supervisors have been 1%ers. None were accountancy background.
If you wanna broaden the scope I don’t know any 10%ers in accounting either.
I'm surprised you know that many people who openly tell you their income.
Most people wear their income on their wrist. Or they drive it. Or they tell you through their posture and their disposition. The details about how a person presents and acts is more than enough to tell how much someone earns, esp. in banking.
Accurately judging someone’s background is an essential intuition for many high earning jobs. Just because I’m not doing payroll doesn’t mean that I can’t know with absolute certainty who makes 70k and who makes 700k. And the question here is not whether or not I know everyone’s exact salary but whether the guys I knew in accounting were making as much as my bosses. And the answer is no.
Not sure why you need this explained word for word, I thought most of it was implied.
Lol at the people in here saying software engineering doesnt require math.
A software engineering degree requires math for sure. But day to day, many software engineers don't use anything past the basics. It really depends on what kind of software you're working on and what field you're in. "Software engineering" is pretty broad.
I just dont understand why a degree which is supported to teach you this line of work is going to have curriculum completely unrelated .
And no, this is not like an English major requiring college algebra, because yes, every degree requires unrelated classes, but you arent going to catch an english major or music major required to take up to calc 3 because it simply not required for that field of work.
So what you are telling me is, all these software engineering degree requiring calc 1-3, differential equations, etc. are doing it for no reason, as you only use basic math. Im not buying that. Especially when you go on the programming subreddits and realize math is a huge part of coding journey
You need math to grasp the theory behind a lot of the algorithms involved. That's where the calculus comes in. But you don't use that in probably 95% of software engineering roles.
As an example, if you're creating new sorting algorithms from scratch, it would be a good idea to be able to get what it's doing and why this method may be faster than another method (and again, even this isn't really advanced math).
But if you're writing code and need to sort something, you can just type `someList.sort()` and it's done. Because some other engineer has already done it for you and it's baked into the language/library you're using.
And that's where the breakdown between "software engineering" in theory and practice comes in. If you're designing systems or writing things at a very basic level, more math might be required. But most people with a software engineering degree don't do much, if any, actual "engineering".
I think you need to talk to real programming friends and see how much math they use on the job
The only math i can remember doing is some hex conversion bullshit for file carving or subnet calcs. Or maybe trying to figure out my off by 1 errors lol
I haven't used any math in my software engineering job aside from basic arithmetic and maybe some 3rd grade level algebra.
I outside of my job, I've done some hobby game dev that required some pretty difficult trigonometry.
Math not so much, logic more. Software/Dbase programming and infrastructure you don't really use math so much as logic.