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Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

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Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#131

Post by barrkel »

mehrdadn wrote: post #77
plaguuuuuu wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know any actuaries, but it always struck me as odd that the hardest working people in my last company were the actuaries. I mean these guys were on presumably amazing salaries, were some of the smartest people, could work at any related insurance/finance/whatever company (of which there are a LOT hq'd in Sydney) and had worse hours than most other teams. I just don't understand it.

Is it implausible that they might be getting amazing salaries because they are the hardest-working? (Why?)

There's often an inverse correlation between hard work and salary. People who have to work extra jobs to make ends meet work harder than anyone else. If you have a salary that makes you comfortable, you're less likely to try and kill yourself for the marginal money.

Generally, rewards come from working smarter, not harder. Also, it's hard to make a lot of money purely on a wage. You usually need capital appreciation or other income streams for that.

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#132

Post by mehrdadn »

barrkel wrote: post #131
mehrdadn wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it implausible that they might be getting amazing salaries because they are the hardest-working? (Why?)

There's often an inverse correlation between hard work and salary. People who have to work extra jobs to make ends meet work harder than anyone else. If you have a salary that makes you comfortable, you're less likely to try and kill yourself for the marginal money. Generally, rewards come from working smarter, not harder. Also, it's hard to make a lot of money purely on a wage. You usually need capital appreciation…

Extra jobs kind of misses the point... we're talking about working harder on your job in a given company, not working harder as a person in general on whatever life throws at you.

To be honest I'm not even sure how you'd measure how hard someone is working when you're comparing across different jobs, but I would find it interesting if there was any kind of data on this. I'm not sure if I'd find it more surprising if the correlation was positive or negative, but what I do know is that in an ideal world the correlation would be positive...

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#134

Post by roel_v »

fnayr wrote: post #48
randomstring wrote: post #32

Having done my BS in Match and CS at a school with a parallel Actuarial program, I got a good look at what being an actuary is about. If you're good at math, and really good at standardized math exams you can advance through the various levels and work your way up the pay-scale ladder. I think this really appeals to people who are good at math, but maybe don't want to go into academia. That said of all the actuaries…

Anecdotally, I just came back from New Zealand and was staying at a farm house rented out on Airbnb. The owner was previously an actuary in Sydney, and hated his job so switched mid career to farmer. Pretty large change.

But was he an actual farmer, or just semi-retired to a farm house and got to play farmer? Quite a difference.

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#135

Post by roel_v »

50 wrote: post #106
fnayr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I just came back from New Zealand and was staying at a farm house rented out on Airbnb. The owner was previously an actuary in Sydney, and hated his job so switched mid career to farmer. Pretty large change.

That's pretty cool! Manual labor, personally, is appealing after a week of desk work in front of a computer - the sun, the frequent breeze, sweating, etc. It's one of the reasons I added philosophy as another major I'm pursing along with computer science - makes think about something other than computers and it gets me off the computer, even if it's for a tad bit.

"Manual labor, personally, is appealing after a week of desk work in front of a computer"

"It's one of the reasons I added philosophy as another major"

Couldn't help but LOL at that juxtaposition, sorry :)

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#136

Post by roel_v »

mr_overalls wrote: post #42
dv_dt wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do actuaries do from day to day? Are they old-school original data scientists, or something else?

A day in the life of an actuary: https://www.beanactuary.org/what/do/?fa=day-in-the-life

Does Karen have 36 hour work days? It's either that, or she should prefix every thing she did with 'dabbled a bit in ...'.

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#137

Post by Moodles »

p33p wrote: post #57

As an actuary, I can not recommend it to anyone with a technical background. I have degrees in mathematics and actuarial science, and I consider my actuarial science degree completely worthless. A mathematics and/or computer science degree will teach you more in terms of how to think than anyone with an actuarial science degree. If you’d like to take a major where your professors literally teach to the exam/test, the…

I started an actuarial science degree too and this is exactly my experience. But I then ditched it and took a different path. It was quite a risk at the time (not an actuary joke, oh my god just no).

I was 18 and dumb and knew I was good at mathematics and that it was a good career. But it was actually quite dull and, like you say, very robotic. So I was able to switch degrees to pure math and then computer science and then crypto. I’m glad I did. It’s more interesting, challenging, and despite it never being my goal, more well-paid anyways.

Basically it just strikes me as a very safe, stable, dull job. Also what kind of 18 year old was I to want this?!

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#138

Post by roel_v »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #93
kaitai wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's a stereotype, there's a bit of truth to the idea that actuarial jobs appeal to people who want a steady, non-adventurous 9-5. At most places, innovation is not prized in an actuarial position. A certain conservativism is demanded (I'm not talking politics here; I'm talking a cautious nature). That's one reason it's rare to see someone switch from actuarial science to machine learning, for instance. A lot o…

seems like a nice way to make good money, while being able to pursue your hobbies after work.

But is it? Being an actuary at a big 4 consultancy would expose you to the same stresses and resultant lifestyle than others at such a firm, I'd imagine (although I don't know anyone who is actually an actuary, just extrapolating from others who I'd thought could have a quiet life at bigco's yet are still sucked into typical bigco lifestyle (or 'lack of', rather)).

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#139

Post by barrkel »

mehrdadn wrote: post #132
barrkel wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's often an inverse correlation between hard work and salary. People who have to work extra jobs to make ends meet work harder than anyone else. If you have a salary that makes you comfortable, you're less likely to try and kill yourself for the marginal money. Generally, rewards come from working smarter, not harder. Also, it's hard to make a lot of money purely on a wage. You usually need capital appreciation…

Extra jobs kind of misses the point... we're talking about working harder on your job in a given company, not working harder as a person in general on whatever life throws at you. To be honest I'm not even sure how you'd measure how hard someone is working when you're comparing across different jobs, but I would find it interesting if there was any kind of data on this. I'm not sure if I'd find it more surprising if…

The better paid your job, the more unique it is, almost by definition: limited supply means the price of labour is higher. Well paid jobs aren't very fungible.

Even within a single company, people with the same title don't do the same work. And working smarter - aligned with the company goals - still pays much more than longer hours.

Re: Actuarial science ranked as most valuable college major

#140

Post by tudorconstantin »

fcuck_actuarial wrote: post #128
secabeen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Do you have any articles about the oversupply of entry-level actuaries? Actuarial science was a career path I considered, but I ended up in systems/network/devops instead.

Annecdotal, but I've experience this personally. These rankings grossly neglect the availability of entry level jobs. And you end up studying a bunch of stuff that is borderline useless for any other career path on a practical level. I consider trying to become an actuary one of the greatest mistakes and waste of time in my life. When I switched to programming, it was like some kind of magical door opened and all of…

Putting it in another perspective, perhaps that experience made you appreciate programming and software industry more. It might be a high price you paid (the years of pseudo useless studies), but you'll think twice when considering to change industries.

I worked in sales for a few years and even became a regional sales manager before switching to programming 12 years ago. Now, whenever I see the IT related problems (like bad programming parctices, lousy code, bad architectures and so on), I remember how bad and really unfixable things can be (for me as an employee) in the rest of the industries and love programming even more.

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