There's a also a hidden message - why don't the legions of unemployed/underpaid go into tech? Or why don't occupy wall street people join the 1 percent, ie. get trained in finance/tech and compete in that sphere, take some of the rich folks money from them.
I don't think people are equally good at all things. I mean, I'm good at tech, but I'm not that good at music. If suddenly violinists were the hot commodity, I'm not sure I could transition. I'd probably just keep doing tech for lower pay. Similarly, if writing well became a big thing in 10 years, I'm not sure what percentage of Google engineers could successfully transition. Not sure why we'd expect the other direction to be more doable. Google in particular I think goes out of their way to only hire people who are really techies through-and-through.
As for the latter point, I think the perception is that the 1% overall is about old-boys' networks, scamming, crony capitalism, corporate/government entanglement, and general under-the-table sort of business. Nobody wants to go into that; they want it gone.
Right, we actually had that problem in the .com boom where a guy with a month of Flash training was commanding 100k, the problem was when it popped those guys did not just flush out of the industry in a few months and managers are notoriously bad at spotting talent. It lead to some tough times for many developers while the market corrected. Eventually those 1 month Flash in the pans got their real estate licenses and moved on, but not until it dealt some real damage to the industry. One of which was it gutted the CS programs which has created some of the supply deficiencies we see now.
I keep hearing that - most people won't have the intelligence to do tech/finance etc. However, a recent datapoint, the stanford ai class had over 1000 brilliant students, but only a handful in class at stanford itself. Watch the recent video chat sebastian thrun, peter norvig, and salman khan had on this topic.
Also, you could go back in history and say the same thing. 200 years ago most be people were "unintelligent" illiterate farmers, and yet today there descendents are literate, many doing highly intelligent work. The implied "genetic potential" arguments on intelligence are all wrong i believe, though i have no data to back it up.
Relative differences matter of course - there can only be one chess world champion - but most of tech or even finance is not in that winner-take-all space yet.
200 years ago most be people were "unintelligent" illiterate farmers, and yet today there descendents are literate, many doing highly intelligent work.
The parent commenter was speaking about making a transition in one's own career. Like him, I have doubts about my ability to become a top-notch violinist, especially since you have to find the tone centers by ear for that instrument. I don't know of anybody ever developing perfect pitch as an adult. Similarly, I doubt my grandmother, who even now is an extremely talented cellist with perfect pitch, could ever become a good programmer.
However, her son did become an excellent programmer, I am confident that my own children could become excellent programmers, musicians, visual artists or speakers of any language... if they start as children or adolescents. Yes people can change an learn... but drastic changes rarely happen after a certain age.
It's not about intelligence as much as the kind of intelligence you have. I don't really consider myself a stupid person, but I don't know if I could go into, say, finance, even finance-related programming. I particularly doubt I could do a decent job and stay sane.
