A little unsure if I chose the right major and career path

I’m a junior econ major and incoming IBSA and recently I‘ve been starting to regret not taking on a more technical major like CS, stats, engineering etc. Like many people here, I chose the easiest finance-adjacent major available so that I could focus on recruiting. I think I tunnel-visioned too hard on this job that I learned about and recruited for in my first 1.5 years of college and never gave other options proper consideration.

Now that I’ve seen what AI can do and how fast it’s developing, I truly don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility for IB analyst work to get automated away. I know banking is relationships-driven but that seems to only be on the senior level. With just an Econ major I now have no real practical skills and what leg would I have to stand on if my job became obsolete? My friends in data science and CS have tons of practical knowledge while I basically never progressed beyond AP Calc in high school. Not to mention they can make IB salary without IB hours lol.

Am I being too alarmist? If this worst-case scenario happens and AI takes over these menial office jobs would there be a way for me to pivot?

4 Comments
 

The grass is always greener. No guarantee you would have had the same success in CS/DataSci recruiting. you would be joining the cattle of 1000s of student who have programming “knowledge” if you tried to change careers now

 

You are being alarmist, and I work in tech. I use ChatGPT 4.0 daily for work but it’s far from perfect and cannot do everything. It’s definitely helpful, but more like a Google search 2.0 in my opinion. The thought that it can take away nuanced jobs entirely is ridiculous in the near term.

I think it’s a huge change and shift in our workspace and economy, it is NOT something to be ignored. Much like ignoring the internet would be a dumb decision in the early 2000s. But that did not eliminate all jobs, it certainly shifted a ton of job types but people adapt.

Also working in tech can suck too, there’s a lot of downsides. Pick your equation to solve for- if happiness then that’s internal. If it’s money, there’s lots of ways to be very comfortable in life financially. If even more money, then that’s a trickier path that isn’t clear.

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.” - Nassim Taleb
 

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