BBC
14 HN mentions · mentioned in 13 months, 2009–2026
2:09 · 5.9M views · Jun 9, 2009
A short That Mitchell and Webb Look sketch in which a rocket scientist and a brain surgeon trade jibes over whose job is harder. It is a BBC comedy clip from 2009.
Mostly posted as a joke or reference when threads touch on status, difficulty or jobs.
14 comments from Hacker News
There is no problem with it, but I assume there are many people who will look upon you favourably if they think you do a highly skilled job. While many of us may not care to impress those people, there are certainly those who do (possibly people with similar attitudes who care more about validation from people who think like them) A somewhat ungenerous characterization of the attitude may be something like the Rocket Scientist vs Brain Surgeon sketch - this video But we should also acknowledge that there's an entire culture built around valuing people and their time relative to one's perception of their "importance", that this culture can influence one's earning potential and acquisition of material possessions, and that many people do care about things like "seeming important" or moving upwards in this hierarchy as a result.
His point was he has the skills. I made the point about bootcamps, skills are easily obtained. Implying the janitor could not gain the skills is insane. Thinking a SE could begin a janitorial job tomorrow and do it as well as the janitor is laughable. SE skills are just a bit harder to come by, they aren't special. If your skills can be learned in a 6 week course you are not an astrophysicist nor a brain surgeon. SEs are paid well and so have an overinflated self-value. Again, now that this is crashing with WFH. We have code chop shops in India, yet we still try and pretend coding is some modern-day magic language. ninja edit- hit reply b4 finished 2nd edit- reminded me of this [1] infamous That Mitchell and Webb Look sketch =) [1] this video
I don't think plumber vs. theoretical physics post-doc is a great example. Plumbing is critical skilled work, taking years to master, and is paid accordingly. I imagine plumbing is also very stressful, at times, such as when you're being careful not to flood a building, or avoiding breaking something that would require ripping open a floor to fix. Though plumbing guild training sounds not entirely different than academia. (And postdocs tend to get paid poo because the market, and their guild, permit it.) We should also be careful of to avoid the oopses of: "Brain Surgeon - That Mitchell & Webb Look, Series 3 - BBC Two" this video
this video X_dot = A X + B U Y = C X + D U Rocket science I did simstructure -- rocketscience My master's degree is rocket science [LINK] Snort: you'll notice that little course called "nonlinear control systems" with the A after it? That's as far as you can go in math. Nonlinear differential equations. Ask any mathmetician. He'll tell you nonlinear differential equations is the end of the road.
I found his website, [LINK] , and the "2%" brag is the very first sentence, geez. Being the top x% is what OnlyFans girls brag about, professor... And it's not exactly brain surgery, is it? this video