题记: 有网友在看了2008年诺贝尔经济学奖后在博客上写的一篇关于择业的文章后,就写来了篇自己的感受.我不这篇文章也找了过来,做了点翻译跟大家一起分享.

格鲁克曼在经济学界是无人不晓的人.他说以前大家都觉得最好的工作就是去学院里教书做研究.虽然赚得不多,但是这些聪明的家伙都愿意去,因为很有面子.最不成才的人才去去华尔街.十年河东,十年河西,进了华尔街的人发了大财,而当年最聪明的人却还在生存线上挣扎. 格先生觉得很无奈,虽然得了诺贝尔奖也还是无奈…

这真是个天大的讽刺…因此,命苦不要怨社会,只怪你的机会没到,反正十年河东,十年河西嘛

I’m a little late on this great Calvin Trillin piece, but it accords with my own more specialized memories from grad school. The year I got my PhD (1977), there was a very clear ranking of desirable career paths. The best economics grad students went into academic jobs; the middle went to the Fed or the IMF; the bottom went, poor souls, to Wall Street.

我真的有点讨厌这个伟大的Calvin Trillin的说法,但是根据我自己从研究生院毕业时的特别回忆来说. 在我拿到博士学位的那年(1977年), 已经有一条大好前程的道路摆在我面前了.最优秀的经济学研究生会去大学做研究,中等的会去美联储,或者国际货币基金组织,最底层的,可怜的孩子,只有去华尔街.

Even then this meant an inverse relationship between academic ranking and income, since new assistant professors were paid only around $15,000, equivalent to a bit more than 50K today. But the prestige differences more than offset the pay differentials, at least as we saw it then. And one thing that’s hard to convey is how boring business seemed in the 1960s and 1970s. (”I’ve got just one word for you: plastics.”)

即使在当时学术的级别和收入呈反向的关系,一个刚入门的助教的收入在15000美金左右,大约相当于现在5万美金,但是这羡慕的差别远超过收入的差别的,这也至少是我们当时所看到的.还有一件事让人难以相信的是做生意在60年代和70年代是多么枯燥无味.我当时是用一个”塑料”这个词来形容的.

But even a decade later, it was the guys who went off to investment banks who were buying the third homes, while the top students were trying to eke out their incomes with an occasional consulting gig. And it wasn’t just the money: business stopped being so boring, and was even getting to be fun for some people. The old conviction that the academic life was the ideal definitely began to fray at the edges.

但是在数十年之后,那些进入投资银行的家伙已经在买第三套房子了,而那时最优秀的同学却还在努力的靠做临时的咨询师生存.这只是因为钱. 做生意也不再枯燥无聊了,甚至对有些人来说觉得是一件有意思的事.学院生活就是最理想的生活的那种老的信条开始走到破碎的边缘.

Did the influx of smart people bring on disaster? That’s a longer story. But the change in who went where is utterly real.

难道这些改变对聪明的人来说是一场灾难? 这真的是一条很长的故事,但这种改变完全是真的.

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