Mike S

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• October 29, 2003, on Career Guide for Engineers and Computer Scientists:

  Joe, You are greatly simplifying the problem as for a Ph.D. Smart choose "intellectual pursuit" and are happy "stupid" chose "money" and are disappointed, how simple. It's NOT true. You may chose "intellectual pursuit" and get quite disappointed (add there $ disappointments also). Here is why: 1) Having a Ph.D. greatly limits your real world options to "intellectually pursue" things outside of academy. You are automatically being considered as a loser for applying. To be polite, they will use the word "overqualified" instead. 2) Modern science is not as much "intellectual pursuit" as brain numbing grunt work. Low market value of fresh Ph.D.s in postdoctoral trap invites the increase of the ratio "grunt jobs"/"intellectual pursuit" beyond any reasonable limits. An example from the national lab (not the last place to be): $55k/year technician (HS! graduate) does NOTHING all day long for weeks (3 weeks in a row was a record) because "he's too expensive" for PIs compared to the "...

• October 29, 2003, on Career Guide for Engineers and Computer Scientists:

  Why "intellectual pursuits" should be always made on janitorial salaries? Is there some law stating that well paid scientist cannot do science? Some posters described the importance of "intellectual pursuits" for society. Then why its market value, on the average, is so low? Nobody owes Ph.D.s a living, but why they "owe" a living to the fresh community college graduates better "appreciated" than the average Ph.D. graduate? BTW, I think market does not lie, but it's a different subject. For optimists: few Ph.D.s indeed get lots of $ with or without "intellectual pursuits", quite a few Ph.D.s "pursue the knowledge" and make decent $. However, I think that optimists on this board are either very young (and did not taste science well yet) or very old who made their careers in absolutely different conditions/had easy ride. Seekers of "intellectual pursuits" beware of science. Great chances are that you'll be byproduct (i.e. waste) of the big, greedy machine. Nothing is 100% efficie...