My father was a mathematician. In graduate school, he didn't do quite as well as expected on his oral exams. As a result, afterward one of his committee members

My father was a mathematician. In graduate school, he didn't do quite as well as expected on his oral exams. As a result, afterward one of his committee members talked to him about possible career alternatives to mathematics. This professor told him "You could go into computing, but you wouldn't really be getting in on the ground floor." This was in the mid-1950s.