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I've wrestled with this in the past. As a CS PhD student, I will be working full time as a web developer when I graduate. For me it came down to either (sweepi

I've wrestled with this in the past. As a CS PhD student, I will be working full time as a web developer when I graduate. For me it came down to either (sweeping generalisations): 1) Continuing research on interesting problems, or perhaps working for interesting companies like the Bearau of Meteorology or the CSIRO (the Australian governments industry research organisation). The problems would be intriguing, and you would feel very satisfied with what you have done most days at work. However when you get home, I imagine you would be pretty mentally exhausted, and may not find much time or energy to work on your own projects. or 2) Working for a web dev company, where the problems are (not always, but often) relatively straight forward, and don't take too much mental energy to solve. Sure, building business apps is not the most satisfying job for everybody, but the people are great, the company is great, you get looked after well, etc. The best bit is that when you get home, there is probably more mental energy to work on your own side projects that interest you. I like contributing to Open Source projects, and I also find that after a difficult day at work or uni, I don't have the energy to punch out an hour of coding when I get home. So for me, I'm currently leaning towards option 2.

aheilbut 13y ago
There are more than those 2 options.
- jdotjdot 13y ago
  Such as?
  - petercooper 13y ago
    3) Use your R&D skills to create a useful technology or service in an area that interests you and either license it or found your own company around it. Quite a common route for academic types.
    - pserwylo 13y ago
      I'm familiar with a few people who have done this, and they really enjoy what they do. I wish anyone doing this all the best. However it suffers the same problem as 1). That is, you may not have the energy for other projects. I understand the sentiment of your suggestion, which is: "My side project is also my work", but then you are committed to that project for X amount of time. Whereas with a typical side project that I might play with on the weekend, or with open source contributions, I am free to dabble with whatever interests me on that particular day. It is this freedom and flexibility that I am seeking in my life (partially because I have the attention span of a newt :)
- pserwylo 13y ago
  Oh of course. I didn't mention: 3) One day I'd like to own a caravan park. And indeed, they were complete and utter generalisations. I'm sure there are people in interesting jobs, who come home and are able to work on interesting side projects. Either because their jobs are interesting but not brain-draining, or because they are particularly driven, or any number of reasons. I have just found that at this point in my life, those are the two prospects that I am weighing up.

aheilbut 13y ago

There are more than those 2 options.

jdotjdot 13y ago
Such as?
- petercooper 13y ago
  3) Use your R&D skills to create a useful technology or service in an area that interests you and either license it or found your own company around it. Quite a common route for academic types.
  - pserwylo 13y ago
    I'm familiar with a few people who have done this, and they really enjoy what they do. I wish anyone doing this all the best. However it suffers the same problem as 1). That is, you may not have the energy for other projects. I understand the sentiment of your suggestion, which is: "My side project is also my work", but then you are committed to that project for X amount of time. Whereas with a typical side project that I might play with on the weekend, or with open source contributions, I am free to dabble with whatever interests me on that particular day. It is this freedom and flexibility that I am seeking in my life (partially because I have the attention span of a newt :)
pserwylo 13y ago
Oh of course. I didn't mention: 3) One day I'd like to own a caravan park. And indeed, they were complete and utter generalisations. I'm sure there are people in interesting jobs, who come home and are able to work on interesting side projects. Either because their jobs are interesting but not brain-draining, or because they are particularly driven, or any number of reasons. I have just found that at this point in my life, those are the two prospects that I am weighing up.