Can't speak for parent, but when I find an interesting subject I'll read up on it. I Might even buy books in the field.
While my primary motivation is curiosity, you never know when knowing a specific thing might come in handy. Or you might be able to apply some principles in a different field.
Of course time is limited, so when deciding if I'm going to invest the time I do a quick check on ROI. How much time do I think I'll have to invest. This depends on how much I know in the general area of the subject and how specialized I assume the subject to be. So basically how much time do I have to spend to learn the required vocabulary. I value that against how useful I assume the knowledge to be. Can I directly apply the new knowledge, or do I assume it to have synergies with my main subject of interest.
But sometimes a subject is so interesting to me that learning about it is its own reward.
Three days of reading on a specialist applied subject (like quantitative finance) which is super-competitive (because huge money, and literally competing against other market participants) and very high barrier to entry makes it seem like the reward is very low. If that same time were spent in general machine learning techniques, for example, it would have an outsize return as it could then be applied to any field. Indeed it is possible that minimal sophistication might yield excellent returns on the market if one is a machine learning expert, trains a model on historical data, and then applies its predictions using a pretty dumb web interface and no sophisticated stack at all. This is why I'm surprised grandparent is investing the time.
This is a very sensible mental model. the time to learn something increases in cost as we move through lifestages, and this ROI calculator is deeply useful for me. however I really do think i need to bias for action as it can easily be a procrastinator excuse
Sorry, what does "this" refer to when you write "This is a very sensible mental model"?
I'm trying to read your whole comment, it's interesting especially since most hackers are somewhat self-taught and there are many fields we can become proficient in (such as dozens of resume keywords) if we want to invest the time.
So I'm interested in how people make these choices. Could you elaborate?
this was the downvoted parent saying "I can't go learn everything so i look at the likely ROI. Learning hard complex up and down stack optimisation that benefits a few hundred companies globally and they are already massively oversubscribed with brilliant 25 year old mathematicians is not a good ROI".
but take a month of hourly commutes in learning basics of NLP or bootstrap or PGP or ... is likely to have much higher ROI
my mental model is
- There are few fields that are wide open right now - it's ML (vision 90%, text 50%), process automation, robotics, security.
- It's got to be widely applicable to more than one industry
- It's got to not involve going back to college for a year of maths training.
- It needs some kind of moat. Learning to use bootstrap better is nice cos your stuff looks better and is cleaner. It's kind of table stakes, but it has zero most.
Intel secure enclaves looks interesting to dive into and will have some decent moat factor.
- it's really got to be uISV suitable. This means I can come up with at least two businesses that conceivably will work, selling element extraction from text is not a business but "capturing ten kpis from your base of legal contracts" is (and probably a hotly contested area)
I did the whole "walking through lists of industry SICs to generate ideas - even read every ycombinator investment. no dice" Good business opportunities are hard to imagine.
GP here. I have no plans to work in this area, and have a stable employment/financial situation that I don't anticipate changing any time soon. My learning in this area is purely for enjoyment.
Of course time is limited, so when deciding if I'm going to invest the time I do a quick check on ROI. How much time do I think I'll have to invest. This depends on how much I know in the general area of the subject and how specialized I assume the subject to be. So basically how much time do I have to spend to learn the required vocabulary. I value that against how useful I assume the knowledge to be. Can I directly apply the new knowledge, or do I assume it to have synergies with my main subject of interest.
But sometimes a subject is so interesting to me that learning about it is its own reward.