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These two particularly resonate: > 1) Academia - Potentially interesting work. However, grad students are underpaid, overworked indentured servant in a vicious

by Fomite 13y ago

These two particularly resonate: > 1) Academia - Potentially interesting work. However, grad students are underpaid, overworked indentured servant in a vicious dictatorial status hierarchy (do what the PI says or you're out). Very poor career prospects, guaranteed negative return on time invested. The road to PI is guaranteed to destroy your love of research. Potentially interesting work, massive opportunity cost, and starting at the bottom of a ruthlessly competitive advancement pyramid. I love academia, and very much intend to stay in it, but it's not exactly a rational choice. > 3) Professions (Law, Med) - Enter at your own risk. Savagely competitive and draconian entrance requirements, incredibly expensive education, inhuman hours, constant stress at every milestone, and a never-ending barrage of standardized tests. However, if you endure, you can start your own practice and potentially have a comfortable life. Bimodal incomes that mean mainly these jobs come with a huge amount of debt for what is, for many people, a comfortable upper middle class lifestyle, but no more than that. You're not going to get rich doing either of these, because your income is capped by the hours you can work. A hedge fund on the other hand, if you're doing your job, is making money all the time.

a3voices 13y ago
You're not going to get rich doing either of these, because your income is capped by the hours you can work. This is true for a while, but if you're smart about it you could expand your business and hire others in the same profession, and eventually become rich.
- Fomite 13y ago
  This of course also varies on your definition of rich - you can certainly manage "rich" in the traditional sense, but not to the scale that you'd talk about for finance. I can't reply to your comment, but pretty much yes, I'm sure. Doctors and lawyers are actually the canonical example of lucrative but labor limited professions. And being able to build a practice exponentially is vanishingly uncommon, enough so that no one should bank on it, whereas compounding is a fundamental trait of finance.
  - a3voices 13y ago
    Are you sure? For example I could imagine see a dentist eventually hiring other dentists, and then more and more, exponentially expanding their business everywhere and growing a brand. It's not easy, obviously, but feasible.
    - thecage411 13y ago
      What I've seen happen, at least with doctors, is a bunch of them get together and from a group/partnership and then the group negotiates with hospitals. This has the advantage of increased leverage as a group and thus much better conditions than just an individual working for a hospital, but you aren't getting high-finance rich with that arrangement.
mjn 13y ago
Although I'm not sure whether I'll stay in it, I haven't found CS academia as bad as the stories about Big Science academia. At least, if you look for a job outside the top-20 "R1" schools, which are more focused on big labs and big grants to support those labs. Industry hires away a lot of PhDs, and there are a lot of small to medium-sized CS departments, both of which improve the supply/demand situation and working conditions compared to areas like biology and physics. Things in parts of Europe are even better (which is why I took a professorship in Denmark out of grad school, rather than in the US), but there are a lot of small CS departments in the US where you can work on your research without having an insane life. It does require that you have the kind of research that doesn't need huge funding and huge labs (if you need >$1m/yr budgets, you more or less have to be at an R1 and play that game). And you should at least somewhat like teaching. But if those things are true it can be an ok job with some freedom to decide what to work on. And the odds of getting a tenured position at a smaller school aren't 1000:1 like trying to get to be a tenured prof at MIT.
- Fomite 13y ago
  One of the suggestions I've seen for how happy people are in their field is how readily available the "Eject" button is for leaving your field if things don't work out. For CS, and some parts of math and physics, it's fairly close. For many other fields, even STEM fields, being able to bail out is a much more distant prospect.
- dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  CS doesn't really suffer from the same issues.

by Fomite 13y ago

a3voices 13y ago

You're not going to get rich doing either of these, because your income is capped by the hours you can work. This is true for a while, but if you're smart about it you could expand your business and hire others in the same profession, and eventually become rich.

Fomite 13y ago
This of course also varies on your definition of rich - you can certainly manage "rich" in the traditional sense, but not to the scale that you'd talk about for finance. I can't reply to your comment, but pretty much yes, I'm sure. Doctors and lawyers are actually the canonical example of lucrative but labor limited professions. And being able to build a practice exponentially is vanishingly uncommon, enough so that no one should bank on it, whereas compounding is a fundamental trait of finance.
- a3voices 13y ago
  Are you sure? For example I could imagine see a dentist eventually hiring other dentists, and then more and more, exponentially expanding their business everywhere and growing a brand. It's not easy, obviously, but feasible.
  - thecage411 13y ago
    What I've seen happen, at least with doctors, is a bunch of them get together and from a group/partnership and then the group negotiates with hospitals. This has the advantage of increased leverage as a group and thus much better conditions than just an individual working for a hospital, but you aren't getting high-finance rich with that arrangement.

mjn 13y ago

Although I'm not sure whether I'll stay in it, I haven't found CS academia as bad as the stories about Big Science academia. At least, if you look for a job outside the top-20 "R1" schools, which are more focused on big labs and big grants to support those labs. Industry hires away a lot of PhDs, and there are a lot of small to medium-sized CS departments, both of which improve the supply/demand situation and working conditions compared to areas like biology and physics. Things in parts of Europe are even better (which is why I took a professorship in Denmark out of grad school, rather than in the US), but there are a lot of small CS departments in the US where you can work on your research without having an insane life. It does require that you have the kind of research that doesn't need huge funding and huge labs (if you need >$1m/yr budgets, you more or less have to be at an R1 and play that game). And you should at least somewhat like teaching. But if those things are true it can be an ok job with some freedom to decide what to work on. And the odds of getting a tenured position at a smaller school aren't 1000:1 like trying to get to be a tenured prof at MIT.

Fomite 13y ago
One of the suggestions I've seen for how happy people are in their field is how readily available the "Eject" button is for leaving your field if things don't work out. For CS, and some parts of math and physics, it's fairly close. For many other fields, even STEM fields, being able to bail out is a much more distant prospect.
dinkumthinkum 13y ago
CS doesn't really suffer from the same issues.