4 ms·
Why work for society's benefit at the expense of your well-being? I once asked an Oxford-educated post-doc, who had worked as a quant, "are you going to go bac
by kvathupo 5y ago
Why work for society's benefit at the expense of your well-being?
I once asked an Oxford-educated post-doc, who had worked as a quant, "are you going to go back to finance?" He replied that he simply doesn't know. He wants to do mathematical research, but both academia and industry stifle such ambitions. For the former, unless you're in the literal handful at IAS, you'll have to waste the majority of your time teaching, advising, and writing grant proposals. For the latter, one lacks not only the time, but also resources for research (seminars, journal access, colleagues, etc.).
The critical difference is that working in finance (or any ad factory) provides less stress and much more financial stability. Of the professors I've known, many work obscene hours every day of the week. Society will benefit, but at what personal cost?
- ceilingcorner 5y agoYes, one can’t really blame the individuals themselves. Especially when the incomes are double or triple that of academia. It is a deep structural problem.
- kristjansson 5y agoThat estimate seems … low
- dwohnitmok 5y agoYeah we're easily talking order of magnitude differences here if not even more (if you're not a tenured professor we might even be inching towards two).
- mellavora 5y agotry 10x. Because I fell into an edge case, had I moved from my post-doc to a professorship, I would have faced a 20% pay cut. And that's not because my post-doc was well paid; after I factored in the side-costs of the position I was not that far above minimum wage. And this was at an elite European research group where the professor was doing his best to take care of me. So I moved to industry.
- ProjectArcturis 5y agoYeah, I moved from neuroscience to a hedge fund. Since then I've had individual days where I made more money than my annual salary as a neuroscientist.