Kind of curious what other people think about the skill classes.  To me there are really 2 main reasons to pick any of the skill classes.  One is to boost your stats enough in something to get a trait you want that has minimum requirements you can't get from boosting attributes directly (like Deadly Strike, Wildborn, or Crafter).
		
		
	 
Hunter and Businessman is only temporary requirement for wildborn and crafter traits. As soon as you have added them you can clear the background.
One thing that I suspect is adding bias to your entire analysis, is that you are sort of trying to speedrun.
From my point of view, Grimdark has successfully trapped you in a hamster wheel, where you keep adding running costs that forces you to add even more running costs, when in reality you could just relax and deal with all those stressful things later.
Most people probably starts with the default 30 year old mc.
But why would it be important for him to become sphere master by the age of 31? And if it is important, then why not start at the age of 27?
Expert Academic background literally removes all time pressure. You don't even have to go outside the door, unless there is something specific that you want to do. Like buying a slave or sell food at the market.
Now, I'm not saying that everyone should be a hermit who spends 24 months perfecting all skills before leaving his home for the first time.
I'm just pointing out that it is possible to do so and that different backgrounds can be be more or less helpful for it.
Yes, business connections is the strongest monetary perk, but also the most useless one, since you could simply just add a second workshop with a single worker in it to compensate for not having it. So it only actually makes a difference after you have depleted all resources for production or find 6 (or 4?) possible workshops to be a little too slow in bringing you income.
As mentioned before, I personally prefer to pick no background at all and just pour points directly on intelligence and manipulate skill, because those are very useful and very difficult to max out any other way.
Edit: Next time I start a new game I will most likely go with this 18 year old guy: