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I'd rather get paid below market value (considering either my current career path or an alternate I could have chosen) and do interesting work every day than ge

• dsacco 10y ago
  >>I'd rather get paid below market value (considering either my current career path or an alternate I could have chosen) and do interesting work every day than get paid a lot and work long hours doing something I hate. It's important to note that the spectrum you laid out has two other "corners". Many PhDs do mind-numbingly boring work, even if it's original research, while getting paid a pittance. Conversely, there are many ways to do fascinating, intellectually vigorous and challenging work every day with only a Bachelor's or Master's qualification while getting rich.
  • mattkrause 10y ago
    > Many PhDs do mind-numbingly boring work, even if it's original research There's a second trade-off here too. PhD/Postdocs do stuff that's mind-numbingly boring at a "micro" level (e.g., actually performing most experiments), but really exciting at a macro level (e.g., figuring out how the brain--or the Sun--works). In industry, there's often the opposite opportunity: exciting day-to-day work for uninteresting goals, like using state-of-the-art machine learning (fun!) to figure out whether a webpage should show a Papa John's or Pizza Hut ad (meh).