I have many classmates who are 10th-year associates, waiting as the partnership opportunities keep getting pushed back or due to demands of clients like @CocaCola.

Should they keep slaving away? Should anyone with options invest effort in such a path? https://twitter.com/aaron_reitz/status/1354963063737356298

Smart and disciplined people have so many better options. Why subject yourself to arbitrary and increasingly inhuman policies?

Why participate as our Big Law firms and other once-elite institutions gradually sink into mediocrity?

Isn’t it better to prepare for the next era than play the game of the last one?

Our country will suffer when our elite institutions fall as the best people opt out of the game, but the pain will only be prolonged if we continue to subsidize their self-destructive behavior.

Do not—I repeat, do not—give your life-defining years to a corrupt and dying regime.

If you can play this game for quick advantage with the exit always in view, more power to you. But it’s naive to enter expecting to realize any of the implicit promises of past generations.

This is becoming more widely recognized. Thiel noted decades ago that Big Law firms are effectively Ponzi schemes, unable to meet implicit promises to new associates.

@aaron_renn just wrote a good article making similar points and exploring alternatives: https://themasculinist.com/the-masculinist-48-rethinking-career-scripts/

A year ago I invested in a business-focused bootcamp, @DiscoverPraxis.

Though it was still perceived as a risky alternative to college, the tide is changing. Far more people are recognizing the conventional path is the one laden with risk, pain, and unfulfillable promises.