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Career Path ... Unfortunately, the problems I gravitate towards are not normally assigned to engineers and attempts to marry my interests with my domain of ex

by 001sky 13y ago

Career Path ... Unfortunately, the problems I gravitate towards are not normally assigned to engineers and attempts to marry my interests with my domain of expertise [1,2] have met with understandably tepid responses. ,,, All of that makes perfect sense but it means I can't focus on the problems that I'm interested in. --- What Interests Me The things that keep me up past midnight working and learning are technical. Problems both large and small that remain unsolved or problems where the solution seems unsatisfactory to me. A short and incomplete list in no particular order: ... A few of these might align with a job posting somewhere but most don't. More importantly, I'm not as interested in the implementation as I am in conceiving a solution and understanding its value. ... === I guess you could say I'm taking The Fourth Path™. While I may be new to the academic environment, I have taken efforts to ensure that my impressions are not naive. === I think what is Naive here is that even with a phd you will be working for someone. to do something. So, not having a functional goal for your work is Naive. Even if its research it has a "market". There are people who value it or they don't. The trade may be "in kind", be it social favours or prestige/ego polishing, if not in discrete financial incentives (grants, etc). Its illusory to think your "career" is independent. At best, you are captive to customer if nor directly to your employer. This all might be formalistic oversights for a blog post, but still...your a mid-career executive...this stuff shouldn't be off the radar entirely. Good luck.

javert 13y ago
People do get paid to do the kind of work he is talking about, you know. As a sidenote, I found your sporadic quoting of his post to be annoying and completely worthless.
mathattack 13y ago
I agree with your thoughts on this being Naive. As an undergrad I wrote off the idea of pursuing a Phd (my initial intent) because I saw how the senior professor I assisted spent his time. A lot more mental energy went to grant writing than teaching or research. The other thing is it will be very hard to do this at 30 with kids. Best of luck with this!
- javert 13y ago
  > A lot more mental energy went to grant writing than teaching or research. As a PhD student, I can tell you firsthand that that is not true for all professors. I was naturally very skeptical of the academic-governmental complex, but it turns out that academia can come fairly close to the idealized image people have of it. The professor I work for spend around 10% of his time on grant funding, and gets plenty.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    I was very poor at applying my stats knowledge at the time, a sample size of one is hard to draw conclusions from. One thing that is very true is there is not a lot of control over research. As a Phd you are bound to your advisor (which you can choose) and as a non-tenured faculty you are bounded by what can get funded. As an undergrad I thought, "Being a faculty member is great, you get to create whatever you want in Computer Science." Once I realized that it was indeed a real job, my enthusiasm wrenched very (too?) hard in the other direction.
asabjorn 13y ago
This is essential. Research needs funding, and professors are working for grants in a manner deceptively similar to contract work. The grant work might not align well with what the community views as novel research so satisfying grant and research goals can be very challenging. In the end I believe the most important focus of a PhD is to publish three papers at great venues in something that amount to a thesis topic. And don't distract yourself with something "fun" until this is done, because it is extremely common that the research topic will stop being fun at some point during your 5-7 year journey. People, including your advisor, will ask you to work on problems unrelated to your thesis when it fits their interests so it is up to you to manage your time. Since a PhD labour is cheap skilled labor you can not expect anyone else to take the high-road and manage your time.
PeterisP 13y ago
A big point in academia is that you can research whatever direction and niche you want, but you'll get paid only to research directions and niches chosen by others.. If those directions happen to overlap at the right time and place, you can have a great time getting a PhD; if they stop overlapping (possibly suddenly), then the choices aren't that nice.
- cossatot 13y ago
  Successful research strategies typically involve working on what is funded, and simultaneously bootstrapping what isn't until the early results are sufficient to get funding or at least collaborators on board. It's maybe tougher overall, but it's the only way to have interesting work longer term. It's also nice when you're mind is blown-out and you're stuck and sick of your current project to do something shiny and new for a little while. I would assume that this is exactly how most businesses operate; you have to not only serve your current customers but line up new ones as well.
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    Yep, the funding requirements typically meant a process somewhat like - if you've got result A done or nearly done; then you apply for funding to do "A", but in fact do B for all that time. Then you apply for funding "to do B" while working on C for that funding... repeat ad nauseam for decades. Amazingly, it results in a process where each individual step is technically fraudulent but the total result is the intended one. But this is not how most businesses operate, academic funding is a very different mindset. Well, perhaps defense contractor companies need to plan about their funding in similar terms.

by 001sky 13y ago

javert 13y ago

People do get paid to do the kind of work he is talking about, you know. As a sidenote, I found your sporadic quoting of his post to be annoying and completely worthless.

mathattack 13y ago

I agree with your thoughts on this being Naive. As an undergrad I wrote off the idea of pursuing a Phd (my initial intent) because I saw how the senior professor I assisted spent his time. A lot more mental energy went to grant writing than teaching or research. The other thing is it will be very hard to do this at 30 with kids. Best of luck with this!

javert 13y ago
> A lot more mental energy went to grant writing than teaching or research. As a PhD student, I can tell you firsthand that that is not true for all professors. I was naturally very skeptical of the academic-governmental complex, but it turns out that academia can come fairly close to the idealized image people have of it. The professor I work for spend around 10% of his time on grant funding, and gets plenty.
- mathattack 13y ago
  I was very poor at applying my stats knowledge at the time, a sample size of one is hard to draw conclusions from. One thing that is very true is there is not a lot of control over research. As a Phd you are bound to your advisor (which you can choose) and as a non-tenured faculty you are bounded by what can get funded. As an undergrad I thought, "Being a faculty member is great, you get to create whatever you want in Computer Science." Once I realized that it was indeed a real job, my enthusiasm wrenched very (too?) hard in the other direction.

asabjorn 13y ago

This is essential. Research needs funding, and professors are working for grants in a manner deceptively similar to contract work. The grant work might not align well with what the community views as novel research so satisfying grant and research goals can be very challenging. In the end I believe the most important focus of a PhD is to publish three papers at great venues in something that amount to a thesis topic. And don't distract yourself with something "fun" until this is done, because it is extremely common that the research topic will stop being fun at some point during your 5-7 year journey. People, including your advisor, will ask you to work on problems unrelated to your thesis when it fits their interests so it is up to you to manage your time. Since a PhD labour is cheap skilled labor you can not expect anyone else to take the high-road and manage your time.

PeterisP 13y ago

A big point in academia is that you can research whatever direction and niche you want, but you'll get paid only to research directions and niches chosen by others.. If those directions happen to overlap at the right time and place, you can have a great time getting a PhD; if they stop overlapping (possibly suddenly), then the choices aren't that nice.

cossatot 13y ago
Successful research strategies typically involve working on what is funded, and simultaneously bootstrapping what isn't until the early results are sufficient to get funding or at least collaborators on board. It's maybe tougher overall, but it's the only way to have interesting work longer term. It's also nice when you're mind is blown-out and you're stuck and sick of your current project to do something shiny and new for a little while. I would assume that this is exactly how most businesses operate; you have to not only serve your current customers but line up new ones as well.
- PeterisP 13y ago
  Yep, the funding requirements typically meant a process somewhat like - if you've got result A done or nearly done; then you apply for funding to do "A", but in fact do B for all that time. Then you apply for funding "to do B" while working on C for that funding... repeat ad nauseam for decades. Amazingly, it results in a process where each individual step is technically fraudulent but the total result is the intended one. But this is not how most businesses operate, academic funding is a very different mindset. Well, perhaps defense contractor companies need to plan about their funding in similar terms.