Doug Smith

A member of the Philip Greenspun's Homepage community since October 21, 1999

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October 21, 1999, on Career Guide for Engineers and Computer Scientists:
Career's are funny things. Right now I'm making more money than I ever dreamed possible in college, and not really enjoying it at all! I have a master's degree in (of all things) Public Policy Science (SUNY Stony Brook 81), which is a combination of applied math and econometrics. Of course this did me about as much good as my bachelors degree in Education (Wisconsin '78) once I moved to the SF Bay Area. I'm slightly ashamed to say, I'm now a bloodsucking yuppy scum who makes a living doing contract programming. Some days I wish I would have stuck with Policy Science (is that an oxymoron or what!??). The main reason I've turned to technology as an occupation is my long experience during college and graduate school, when the US Economy was not what it could have been. I was almost one of those cab driving PhD's. My friend Paul Steinert, (a former MIT Masters student and now a PhD), put it this way: "Graduate School is all work and no pay". My tinkering in Economics led...