I had a think about the people from Philosophy I kept track of and I can honestly say they are now predominantly upper-middle, unless they stuck to academia, which about 30% or so did, and obviously, are poor (as far as I know), and somewhere on the road to a PhD.<p>There&#x27;s a schism in philosophy between analytic - the more &quot;logical&quot; side, with rigorous proofs and arguments - and continental - the more &quot;what is art&#x2F;ethics&#x2F;love&quot; side.  I was firmly interested in the continental side.  Of those that left philosophy, I found that continental people would often end up in some kind of community-oriented area, like education or sociology or social work or the like, whereas on the analytic side, people tended to end up doing physics&#x2F;maths&#x2F;comp sci type stuff.<p>Obviously that&#x27;s not a rule.  When I left university, I worked in an industrial site, and a magazine, and at a Salesforce implementation company, and then at the industrial site again, teaching myself more and more programming at each.  I got promoted to the IT department of the industrial site, and continued to learn, and then got a job doing ETL&#x2F;Database&#x2F;Automation stuff at a big telecom in the marketing department.  I&#x27;ve been lucky, and I&#x27;ve known the right people, but I honestly would still be happy if I was working at that industrial site.  There was a Theology graduate who also worked there, driving a forklift.<p>If people ask me, do I recommend getting a philosophy degree, I say I don&#x27;t.  That&#x27;s like asking if I&#x27;d recommend that people get a tattoo.  I&#x27;m very happy with mine, but its a decision that needs to be made by an individual. Like a tattoo, it reduces your job prospects, and there are no take-backsies.<p>Now comes my smug paragraph.  Everyone in philosophy, and who even starts philosophy, hears the same jokes.  Pretty much nobody is saying its a good idea to do a philosophy degree.  To do philosophy, people have to overcome the societal expectation that they will die in a ditch, poor and unable to do anything &quot;useful&quot;.  To do philosophy, you really need to love that shit.  I&#x27;ve honestly never heard someone speak with regret about completing a philosophy degree, whereas of the biologists, engineers and economists I know, some wish they&#x27;d done something different.  If you read philosophy, and you love it, do what you love.  Don&#x27;t do something just because you think it&#x27;ll make your life safer.<p>I&#x27;d rather live a happy &quot;burger flipper&quot; than discover I don&#x27;t love what I do in 20 years.