6 ms·

Terence Tao makes about only half a million or so every year (his salary at UCLA is public). Not sure about other income, but it is pretty much just the same ba

by NhanH 4y ago

Terence Tao makes about only half a million or so every year (his salary at UCLA is public). Not sure about other income, but it is pretty much just the same ballpark as good doctors, lawyers, accountants at big 4 etc. At that range of income, it’s job-dependent on whether they would have an assistant or not, so no surprise here either way.

jacknews 4y ago
So you think 'good accountant' and 'world class mathematician' are equivalent, based on their salary?
- NhanH 4y ago
  No I don’t, but they have to pay for assistant all the same. I was describing how things are, not how they should be. University could have paid for Terence Tao’s assistant, but then they could have paid him more too.
  - jacknews 4y ago
    I think their company or institution should be paying for the assistant, just as they pay for the office, security, executive, HR, etc.
Q6T46nT668w6i3m 4y ago
Only?
- NhanH 4y ago
  I thought about that word, and whether to put air quote around it. But Terence Tao is one of the few that could claim to be one in hundred of millions, if not billion. So yeah, “only”.
jonahx 4y ago
It's a surprise even if you restrict your point of view to the narrow economic interests of his employer, UCLA, who benefits from Tao's discoveries. Shelling out another 50k or so for an assistant, even if it boosts his productivity by only 10%, is a no-brainer. If you expand your point of view to the interests of all mathematicians, or society at large, the waste here is even more extravagant.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  An assistant who could do what Tao did is not going to be $50k.
  - valarauko 4y ago
    The assistant's job would be to take low-hanging fruit non-research administrative tasks off his hands - pretty much like the tasks here.
  - joshspankit 4y ago
    The assistant would have gone through the documents manually and that’s very much a $50k/yr task
Uehreka 4y ago
Dawg. If $500k isn’t in the ballpark to have an assistant, then nobody outside of actual CEOs or Fortune 500 executives has an assistant. I know people who make less than $200k and have an assistant. I feel certain there are people who make less than $100k who have an assistant.
- jackmott42 4y ago
  How does someone making less than 200k afford an assistant?
  - joelthelion 4y ago
    Their company could realize that giving them one would be a wise use of resources.
  - kgwgk 4y ago
    Just like that someone can afford to make $200k in the first place: someone else is paying those people and their assistants to get things done.
  - explaininjs 4y ago
    The assistant's salary comes from the same corporation that pays the figures salary, not the figure themselves. To the GP's point, a friend of mine makes 80k but is still provided an assistant. That's in the entertainment industry, where PA's are dirt cheap and union laws prohibit multitasking.
WastingMyTime89 4y ago
> Not sure about other income, but it is pretty much just the same ballpark as good doctors, lawyers, accountants at big 4 etc Either salaries in the US are extremely higher than what I thought, you have a very idiosyncratic definition of "good" or you are significantly overestimating how much people make.
- NhanH 4y ago
  That’s a different topic, I think. So you can consider my definition of “good” idiosyncratic, or to substitute it with “highly paid” or something. The point is that amongst people that I know who are making 500k, the majority of them aren’t having assistants. And I do think it extrapolate to the population of people with 500k income too (no proof here, just a hunch).
  - nequo 4y ago
    Don't doctors have a lot of the administrative duties, preparation of equipment, etc., done by other staff in the practice? For practical purposes, wouldn't that count as having an assistant? In the case of this post, one could argue that collating statistics should be done by ICM staff rather than the committee chair.
  - WastingMyTime89 4y ago
    Having a personal assistant has become a rarity but I know a lot of people who are paid far less than 500k and can indeed delegate this kind of work. I work in consulting and I would most likely ask a junior member of the team to do data crunching. Similarly we share an assistant in my department whose job is to take care of scheduling complicated meetings, organising business travels, making sure than the documents required for billing have been collected.
- returningfory2 4y ago
  Maybe a bit of everything, though in my experience people outside the US significantly underestimate how much successful professionals in the US earn. For example, this article [1] says that to be in the top 1% of earners in the US a family needs to make $600k or more. There are 330 million people in the US, meaning that 3.3 million people are in a household earning $600k or more. I think that's a lot! [1] https://smartasset.com/data-studies/what-it-takes-to-be-in-the-1-by-state-2022 https://smartasset.com/data-studies/what-it-takes-to-be-in-t...
layer8 4y ago
So, you’re saying that collating conference statistics in a spreadsheet is worth a $500K yearly salary? I would have thought that you can get that cheaper.
microtherion 4y ago
He made ~650K gross in 2021: https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/ https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/ That is a bit more than 1/9th of what the head football coach at UCLA makes, who has two assistants (offensive and defensive coordinators) who each earned a bit more than Tao. Additionally, UCLA still paid more than $3M in 2021 to another head football coach whom they had fired in 2017. The university seems to have fairly clearly defined priorities.
- explaininjs 4y ago
  UCLA football is a profit center. It costs 32MM to operate but brings in 37MM in revenue. I suppose Tao might bring in some government grants (maybe?) but I doubt its anywhere near the same ballpark. https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-california-los-angeles/student-life/sports/#:~:text=The%20head%20coach%20and%2010%20assistant%20coaches%20train,in%20expenses%20and%20made%20%2437%2C548%2C589%20in%20total%20revenue https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-califo....
  - microtherion 4y ago
    It's not entirely clear what year those numbers refer to. Overall, the 2019-2022 period seems to have been extremely unprofitable: https://www.latimes.com/sports/ucla/story/2023-01-26/ucla-athletics-budget-lower-deficit-big-ten-conference https://www.latimes.com/sports/ucla/story/2023-01-26/ucla-at... But even IF this were a profitable activity, should a university really be in the business of running an enterprise that literally causes irreversible brain damage (Story about USC, but undoubtedly applies to all football programs: https://www.si.com/college/2020/10/07/usc-and-its-dying-linebackers https://www.si.com/college/2020/10/07/usc-and-its-dying-line...)?
    - explaininjs 4y ago
      You’re confusing the football program for the athletic program as a whole. If you scroll down in the link I posted you’ll see every other athletic program at UCLA is indeed running at a significant loss. Football is the only profitable one. With respect to the brain damage, he spent much longer in the professional setting than college, it’s more likely the damage came from there. I don’t think colleges should be in the business of restricting what students should be allowed to explore based on the possibility they might choose a career where brain damage may occur. And if they did, Engineering should be the first to go. Just think of all the brain damage resulting from professionals engineers of the military industrial complex!

by NhanH 4y ago

jacknews 4y ago

So you think 'good accountant' and 'world class mathematician' are equivalent, based on their salary?

NhanH 4y ago
No I don’t, but they have to pay for assistant all the same. I was describing how things are, not how they should be. University could have paid for Terence Tao’s assistant, but then they could have paid him more too.
- jacknews 4y ago
  I think their company or institution should be paying for the assistant, just as they pay for the office, security, executive, HR, etc.

Q6T46nT668w6i3m 4y ago

Only?

NhanH 4y ago
I thought about that word, and whether to put air quote around it. But Terence Tao is one of the few that could claim to be one in hundred of millions, if not billion. So yeah, “only”.

jonahx 4y ago

It's a surprise even if you restrict your point of view to the narrow economic interests of his employer, UCLA, who benefits from Tao's discoveries. Shelling out another 50k or so for an assistant, even if it boosts his productivity by only 10%, is a no-brainer. If you expand your point of view to the interests of all mathematicians, or society at large, the waste here is even more extravagant.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
An assistant who could do what Tao did is not going to be $50k.
- valarauko 4y ago
  The assistant's job would be to take low-hanging fruit non-research administrative tasks off his hands - pretty much like the tasks here.
- joshspankit 4y ago
  The assistant would have gone through the documents manually and that’s very much a $50k/yr task

Uehreka 4y ago

Dawg. If $500k isn’t in the ballpark to have an assistant, then nobody outside of actual CEOs or Fortune 500 executives has an assistant. I know people who make less than $200k and have an assistant. I feel certain there are people who make less than $100k who have an assistant.

jackmott42 4y ago
How does someone making less than 200k afford an assistant?
- joelthelion 4y ago
  Their company could realize that giving them one would be a wise use of resources.
- kgwgk 4y ago
  Just like that someone can afford to make $200k in the first place: someone else is paying those people and their assistants to get things done.
- explaininjs 4y ago
  The assistant's salary comes from the same corporation that pays the figures salary, not the figure themselves. To the GP's point, a friend of mine makes 80k but is still provided an assistant. That's in the entertainment industry, where PA's are dirt cheap and union laws prohibit multitasking.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago

> Not sure about other income, but it is pretty much just the same ballpark as good doctors, lawyers, accountants at big 4 etc Either salaries in the US are extremely higher than what I thought, you have a very idiosyncratic definition of "good" or you are significantly overestimating how much people make.

NhanH 4y ago
That’s a different topic, I think. So you can consider my definition of “good” idiosyncratic, or to substitute it with “highly paid” or something. The point is that amongst people that I know who are making 500k, the majority of them aren’t having assistants. And I do think it extrapolate to the population of people with 500k income too (no proof here, just a hunch).
- nequo 4y ago
  Don't doctors have a lot of the administrative duties, preparation of equipment, etc., done by other staff in the practice? For practical purposes, wouldn't that count as having an assistant? In the case of this post, one could argue that collating statistics should be done by ICM staff rather than the committee chair.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  Having a personal assistant has become a rarity but I know a lot of people who are paid far less than 500k and can indeed delegate this kind of work. I work in consulting and I would most likely ask a junior member of the team to do data crunching. Similarly we share an assistant in my department whose job is to take care of scheduling complicated meetings, organising business travels, making sure than the documents required for billing have been collected.
returningfory2 4y ago
Maybe a bit of everything, though in my experience people outside the US significantly underestimate how much successful professionals in the US earn. For example, this article [1] says that to be in the top 1% of earners in the US a family needs to make $600k or more. There are 330 million people in the US, meaning that 3.3 million people are in a household earning $600k or more. I think that's a lot! [1] https://smartasset.com/data-studies/what-it-takes-to-be-in-the-1-by-state-2022 https://smartasset.com/data-studies/what-it-takes-to-be-in-t...

layer8 4y ago

So, you’re saying that collating conference statistics in a spreadsheet is worth a $500K yearly salary? I would have thought that you can get that cheaper.

microtherion 4y ago

He made ~650K gross in 2021: https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/ https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/ That is a bit more than 1/9th of what the head football coach at UCLA makes, who has two assistants (offensive and defensive coordinators) who each earned a bit more than Tao. Additionally, UCLA still paid more than $3M in 2021 to another head football coach whom they had fired in 2017. The university seems to have fairly clearly defined priorities.

explaininjs 4y ago
UCLA football is a profit center. It costs 32MM to operate but brings in 37MM in revenue. I suppose Tao might bring in some government grants (maybe?) but I doubt its anywhere near the same ballpark. https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-california-los-angeles/student-life/sports/#:~:text=The%20head%20coach%20and%2010%20assistant%20coaches%20train,in%20expenses%20and%20made%20%2437%2C548%2C589%20in%20total%20revenue https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/university-of-califo....
- microtherion 4y ago
  It's not entirely clear what year those numbers refer to. Overall, the 2019-2022 period seems to have been extremely unprofitable: https://www.latimes.com/sports/ucla/story/2023-01-26/ucla-athletics-budget-lower-deficit-big-ten-conference https://www.latimes.com/sports/ucla/story/2023-01-26/ucla-at... But even IF this were a profitable activity, should a university really be in the business of running an enterprise that literally causes irreversible brain damage (Story about USC, but undoubtedly applies to all football programs: https://www.si.com/college/2020/10/07/usc-and-its-dying-linebackers https://www.si.com/college/2020/10/07/usc-and-its-dying-line...)?
  - explaininjs 4y ago
    You’re confusing the football program for the athletic program as a whole. If you scroll down in the link I posted you’ll see every other athletic program at UCLA is indeed running at a significant loss. Football is the only profitable one. With respect to the brain damage, he spent much longer in the professional setting than college, it’s more likely the damage came from there. I don’t think colleges should be in the business of restricting what students should be allowed to explore based on the possibility they might choose a career where brain damage may occur. And if they did, Engineering should be the first to go. Just think of all the brain damage resulting from professionals engineers of the military industrial complex!