31–40 of 128 posts
I'm getting ready for a change in career, and for the exact same reasons.
I received my PhD (Physics) in 1999 and went directly to industry. At that time I saw industry as a well paid post doc. My intention was to work a few years and then seek an academic position. In 2001 I had an offer from a top engineering school in Canada to join their faculty. And I said no. Academia attracted me with the promise of intellectual freedom -- the ability to work on what ever problems I wanted to. This…
Being locked in is my biggest fear for going for a PhD. I don't want to spend the rest of my life on a single topic, perhaps I don't even want to stay in theoretical physics.
I recently left my PhD program too (I'm "mastering out" in local parlance ;)) and what this post doesn't address is what I found to be the hardest part: making a decision to leave a world where people that leave are construed as a failures (note: contrary to my expectation, I've only received support in my decision from my awesome and anomalous department.) (Also, I should note that I left a software industry job to…
Until I was actually out. Then I started getting furtive emails asking me questions like, "how do you write a resume?", "is the pay ok?", and most often, "are you happy?"
I still think a PhD is absolutely worth it in many cases, and trains you to be a scientist better than any other path. But it's a long hard road, and there are many people out there (me included) who do it because it's presented as the default path. If you're interested in physics, or biology, or any other science, it's just what comes next after undergrad. And that's not a good enough reason.
Edit: 'You know, most Ph.D.ers are smart and successful people. Hence they have a difficulty in saying “This is not for me”. They instead say “I’ve been successful all my life, and I finished everything I started, so I should finish this as well”. By saying that, they choose to hang in there for many years in a depressed state.
This.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Slightly offtopic question: I re-read Odysseus a couple of weeks ago and was wondering about the name Telemachos. My rudimentary knowledge of etymology tells me that he's a "far away man". Given your username and the fact that you have a PhD in classics: what's your opinion of how the name/etymology of the character relates to the role that Telemachos plays in the epic? Obviously he's far away when Odysseus is out an…
tele = far machos = battle Perhaps it means that he was far away from the battle or it means that he battles from afar? The latter would seem a better fit for Odysseus himself.
Seriously? Learn web development? No one hires PhDs for web development skills. It is only useful if you want to be a pure software developer, not a quant or a data scientist. It might even be a negative when applying for some jobs.
Also, you don't have to sell your soul to work outside of Academia. For example, we find terrorists and drug lord hiding cash in USA banks (Anti-Money Laundering) using machine learning. It's very satisfying and the pay is good too.
Why work like you are working at a startup in some research lab with no stake?
> 100 passengers have queued up to board a plane, and are lined up in the order of the seats on the plane (n=1..100). However, the first person lost his ticket and selects a random seat. The remaining passengers will occupy their assigned seat if it is available, or a random seat otherwise. What is the probability that passenger 100 sits in seat 100? It really worried me that I couldn't figure out how to work that ou…
Just tossing in that Finance isn't your only option for a healthy PhD paycheck in NYC. With exactly those same skills you could work in silicon alley or at a company like mine which does analysis on bank (or other corporate) data. Also, you don't have to sell your soul to work outside of Academia. For example, we find terrorists and drug lord hiding cash in USA banks (Anti-Money Laundering) using machine learning. It…