When Did Idealism Become Synonymous with Naivete?

An impassioned plea to Gen Z to make your work matter.

In the 1950s, Allen Ginsberg “saw the best minds of [his] generation destroyed by madness.”? Knowing the context of his life and era, this line and the poem it stems from seem like utterly inevitable observations.? Powerful and smart people were both prey and promoters of the cold war, societal shifts led to a new type of malignant materialism, and the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation lingered in the polluted air of the world’s biggest urban centers. Today, in 2023, many of these problems have been thankfully mitigated or solved.? In their place however, new and arguably greater challenges have come up to bat.? Climate change, growing chasms in our political institutions, the systematic rejection of scientific thinking, and income inequality immediately come to mind.? To solve these problems will no doubt require nothing short of the best minds of MY generation.? So, when I look around, what do I see?? Not madness, no… nothing that explicable.? I see the best minds of my generation plagued by apathy.

This may seem dramatic at first, but I don’t say this lightly.? For starters, each and every day here at Georgia Tech, I meet the best and brightest the world has to offer.? These were the freak kids in your high school who led five different clubs, competed in two sports, volunteered 20 hours a week at the local hospital, won their state science fair by curing a rare disease, and still managed to somehow get straight A's in every single one of their 15 AP courses.? You sat next to them in class and just knew they would be president or a Nobel Prize winner someday.? Now, as they all graduate, where are all these mini-Einsteins ending up?? The same damn group of FAANG, Wall Street, and consulting companies*.

Let me be clear, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with working in big tech or finance.? Hell, my own sister Varsha worked in investment banking for two years following her graduation from Georgia Tech.? However -- and this is crucial -- she had something I can guarantee many of her colleagues did not: PASSION!? Obviously, many people go into banking for the money**; it’s hard to blame them.? While the money was no doubt always a welcome addition for my sister, she took the job because she honestly loved that world, and she felt her work mattered.? Somewhat ironically, this drive to work on what she is passionate about is the same ethos that has now led her to quit that job and move to Singapore for a new one, even though it came at a significant social, cultural, and even financial cost.

So back to those best and brightest.? Many of them grew up alongside me; many of them are my friends.? I remember daydreaming with them about inventing warp drives or discovering dark matter or even just making the Billboard charts.? But somehow, at some unknown time between then and now, they decided that such dreams were naive, foolish, and counterproductive.? They decided the easy route of doing what everyone else was doing was the more practical one, and maybe even the better one.? Guys, where did we go wrong? Those dreams of yours were not naive; they were profoundly idealistic, and that’s a wonderful thing!? If naivete is blindness to the truth, idealism means seeing the truth and then striving for a better one.? Idealism combines the best of hopefulness, determination, and forward-thinking into one philosophy.? Being idealistic about your future gives you the confidence and strength to pursue what you have always known you should.? Sure, a naive person might foolishly believe they will change the world, but an idealistic person knows they should damn well try.

As an aerospace engineer, I can’t help but think about the stagnation in space technology that occurred post-Apollo.? If we had continued that momentum, it’s not an exaggeration to think we might have become interplanetary by now.? When I apply this to the broader world, I immediately think about all the innovations my generation is missing out on.? For some context, according to the US Census Bureau, only 28% of workers with a STEM degree actually go on to work in a STEM-based job***; instead, they simply tend to benefit from the pay bump associated with their degree (although admittedly, many do go on to work in other exciting and important fields).? However, I have to wonder what our world would look like if that percentage had been consistently higher over the past few generations.? Is it an exaggeration to say polio would have been eradicated, climate change would never have come to fruition, or that supersonic air travel would be the norm?? Maybe it is, but unfortunately, we will never know.? Then, my wondering switches to worrying when I see my generation doing the same thing to OUR children.

To some of you, it may seem like I am stressing about first-world problems, and in a way you’re absolutely right.? The fact that I can even ponder such highbrow questions is a testament to the sheer will and toil of my parents, who sacrificed many of their own dreams so I could pursue mine.? This is a debt I can never repay, and trust me, that’s not lost on me.? In a sense, these values of duty and family that my parents embody is a type of ultimate idealism in and of itself.? As such, please do not think I am passing judgment to the scores of my peers who shape their career due to financial or familial obligations, much like my parents had to; I deeply respect and admire this.? My message is primarily to the folks like me, folks who went to the best schools, have been blessed with the best resources, and contain the potential to solve the problems that matter deeply to us.? When we reject our own potential in pursuit of an extra 50K salary or to fit into a predefined image, we may not be committing an immoral sin, but we are certainly representing an amoral failure, something that is arguably worse.? To me, it feels like watching your parents cook you a delicious, thoughtful meal, and then tossing it in the garbage in favor of the new restaurant that opened up down the street.

So again, why do I take such deep issue with my friends who have, with severe indifference, taken a SWE job with a 200K starting salary at Google?? After all, I even said there is nothing wrong with working for Big Tech etc.? However, there is something wrong with working for Big Tech when you yourself don’t even want to, as you all have made clear to me many times!? And that second part is precisely my point.? Folks, do not forget that I know y’all.? At one point, you wanted to change the world.? You wanted to build your own public health company or explore the cosmos for the good of humanity.? Why did you decide to stop living up to your own idealistic standard of yourself and start living down to something else?? What was it that caused this shift?? Image?? Security?? Fear?? Maybe greed even?? It baffles me.

In writing this, my goal is that maybe my words will resonate with folks in my network who are at a crossroads in their life.

• To any students: make sure you study subjects that matter to you, whatever that may be. The first step for your work and life mattering to the world is your work and life mattering to you, and that comes from living up to the most ideal version of yourself.? And hey, if you’re not sure what you’re passionate about, that’s OKAY!? You’re young.? But never use that as a justification to do things you’re definitely NOT passionate about.? You’ll eventually discover your passion by engaging not with the work you want to do, but the work you need to do.
• To my peers who are about to graduate and are struggling to find jobs: take this difficult software market as a blessing.? Do you really need to land that big tech job?? There are countless smaller, innovative companies in fields as diverse as aerospace to biotech to social policy that would kill for your skills.? Most of you have no dependents and have great financial support networks, so is the extra 40K salary really worth the opportunity cost of not being able to do something exciting and important?? I am not saying you should grind for free, but I AM saying that if you are going to spend 40+ hours per week working on something, you might as well make it something you feel is important.
• To my friends who are slightly into their careers: I ask you to reflect too.? Many of you have told me you aren’t passionate about this first job, but you took it as a “resume booster” for bigger and better things.? Well, consider whether your resume is boosted enough to now pursue the dreams you had shelved, the dreams of developing yourself, helping the world, and working on the bigger picture.
• To the managers and career professionals reading this: the companies we work at are increasingly expected to have a mission and stand for something.? I think it’s certainly fair for you to expect in return a personal mission from those you interview.? Take the second-best candidate over the best if the former is truly passionate about the work.? Trust me, you’ll be doing both candidates and yourself a favor.? You can teach a new-hire the skills they are missing, but teaching a skilled but apathetic new-hire to care about their role is much harder.
• And finally, to the educators and parents who discourage their children from slightly less lucrative fields:?simply stop.? If it is something your child is resonating with and it isn’t completely impractical, they’ll find a way to make a living.? Sure, they might not be rich, but they’ll be helping themselves, and in the long term, they may genuinely help the world in the process.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my thoughts.? I know I’m just a kid in many ways, so I understand if you are reading this with a heaping of salt.? However, I really do believe solving this issue will make it much easier to solve the bigger problems out there.? When the people with the brains, willpower, and potential apply themselves to the things they care about, progress is inevitable. Furthermore, when we chase idealistic dreams and values higher than ourselves, we tend to help those around us in the process, making the world a tangibly better place for future generations.? To think that good can come from anything less is simply naive.

*As an example, a whopping 50% of Penn’s recent grads went on to work full-time in finance and consulting, according to Penn’s student paper The Daily Pennsylvanian.

**?An interesting news article that shows the mentalities of college graduates that go into banking.? Clearly, many are motivated by money and status more than anything else.

***The US Census Bureau provides valuable data on the career choices of various demographics, including STEM degree holders.