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Don't Become a Scientist (1999)

yangxiao.cs.ua.edu

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Re: Don't Become a Scientist (1999)

#111

Post by williamDafoe »

cryptography wrote: post #84

Here's what nobody talks about: the author was RIGHT about the structural problems. But completely wrong about the solution. The PhD glut? Real. The postdoc treadmill? Absolutely real. The funding crisis? Still here. But here's what changed: The same skills that make you survive a PhD—deep research, systems thinking, hypothesis testing, data analysis—became the EXACT skills the market desperately needs. 2025 reality:…

If you only understood how White Hot and Stone Cold a research field can be! Five years ago crypto was white hot and today it's almost Stone Cold! People get intoxicated with the money beams that get blasted at people in the white hot subfields but realize that only 5-10% of phds are majoring in the white hot subfields and they simply got lucky 5 years ago to pick that subfield and all that attention hopefully lasts for 10 years which is enough time for them to get tenure or succeed with a startup! if the field isn't white hot for 10 consecutive years they will get fired at tenure time!

Re: Don't Become a Scientist (1999)

#112

Post by trod1234 »

cryptography wrote: post #84

Here's what nobody talks about: the author was RIGHT about the structural problems. But completely wrong about the solution. The PhD glut? Real. The postdoc treadmill? Absolutely real. The funding crisis? Still here. But here's what changed: The same skills that make you survive a PhD—deep research, systems thinking, hypothesis testing, data analysis—became the EXACT skills the market desperately needs. 2025 reality:…

The problem with your take is that you neglect the nuanced difference between demand and need.

Demand is where people are willing to pay you at the right price, and you aren't struggling to find work. Need is where they aren't, and you are struggling, and people only get jobs when there is suitable demand.

Jobs where there is great need but distortions that cause zero or extremely low demand, you don't get people. These jobs have great need, but there is no economic benefit that justifies the people development cost for that crop. These resources are wasted resources after demand is met.

A lot of this is basic economics, and the tragedy is that just like in science, structure dictates function. Distortions beget more distortions, and when they are not based in the core principles that determine wealth of a nation, then they may become chaotic at which point structure fails.

The lesson the OP author is trying to make is, make sure the juice is worth the squeeze, and be extremely discerning because there are a lot of people that will lie for imaginary personal benefits. Enough that he says don't do it, and that's coming from an insider who has known and seen how it goes bad in detail, but was still successful.

Re: Don't Become a Scientist (1999)

#113

Post by lo_zamoyski »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #99
harimau777 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's really relevant. If capitalism fails to allow people to live worthwhile lives, then I don't think it helps much to say some other system is worse. That doesn't change the fact that capitalism is a failed system.

True, but if you don't have a better alternative, then it doesn't help at all to clamor for "something better", as it doesn't exist. The best you can do is put up with reality. Frankly, that's just a general principle for living. The world will always be full of things you don't like that you can do nothing about, save to make things worse. (I happen to think there are cultural changes and political and economic refo…

s/as it doesn't exist/if it doesn't exist/

Re: Don't Become a Scientist (1999)

#114

Post by prerok »

jltsiren wrote: post #77
prerok wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industries that want PhDs are quite limited IME. Very few companies are running their own research labs. I guess pharma would but in CS? Not one company in my country. I also don't remember seeing PhD requirement/advantage in who's hiring on HN. There may be, but they are for sure rare. In my country, in some job positions, a company is also required to give higher salaries to PhDs, so they reject such candidates bec…

CS is an outlier, as most software jobs require relatively little formal education. STEM in general is not as forgiving. In many sciences, your primary job options are teaching and research. And if you are going to do research, employers generally expect a PhD. Physics is probably the most extreme case, as it's common to see physics departments award one PhD for every three bachelor's degrees.

To do what, exactly? I was replying that there are very few research labs in industry. As stated, pharma is the potential outlier. What physics research is conducted? This is a real question, I would love to point this out to my PhD in physics friends, who are now in CS because of scarcity of jobs.

Re: Don't Become a Scientist (1999)

#115

Post by jltsiren »

prerok wrote: post #114
jltsiren wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CS is an outlier, as most software jobs require relatively little formal education. STEM in general is not as forgiving. In many sciences, your primary job options are teaching and research. And if you are going to do research, employers generally expect a PhD. Physics is probably the most extreme case, as it's common to see physics departments award one PhD for every three bachelor's degrees.

To do what, exactly? I was replying that there are very few research labs in industry. As stated, pharma is the potential outlier. What physics research is conducted? This is a real question, I would love to point this out to my PhD in physics friends, who are now in CS because of scarcity of jobs.

My point was that there are even fewer jobs for a physics BSc that require specifically a degree in physics. If you want to work in physics, your main options are teaching or getting a PhD.

Re: Don't Become a Scientist (1999)

#117

Post by piznaul »

drjasonharrison wrote: post #6
PlunderBunny wrote: post #3

(1999)

The first copy of this essay captured by the Internet Archive was in October of 2001: https://web.archive.org/web/20011013031756/http://wuphys.wus... The same timestamp at the bottom of the essay can be found on other pages by Professor Katz, such as his list of publications which includes papers from 2019. I suspect that the timestamp of 1999 is incorrect. https://web.archive.org/web/20191206233227/https://web.physi…

I was a TA for this professor in ~2000, and this article had already existed (and made the rounds of the grad student offices). I suspect that 1999 is correct.

Re: Don't Become a Scientist (1999)

#118

Post by contrarian1234 »

phillipharris wrote: post #104
contrarian1234 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> still postdoc 10 years after getting his Ph.D I think this is just a matter of what position you want. A classmate of mine wrote one paper on machine learning (he basically barely know how to run the Python to train some ancient neural net), did a short 1 year postdoc with his advisor and got a job as a professor at some no-name university in Japan. I'm sure your classmate could get a professorship somewhere if he…

Was he Japanese, or fluent in Japanese?

no, not at all.

in asia many many international professors and postdocs work 100% in English. Its the norm. Extremely rare to meet the exception. Many dont even have a conversational grasp of the local language

Even if you aquire the local language, getting to a proficiency level where you can discuss scientific topics is nearly impossible (bc in the meantime youre doing all your work in english)

Re: Don't Become a Scientist (1999)

#119

Post by n4r9 »

gsf_emergency_2 wrote: post #75
n4r9 wrote: post #73

One of George Orwell's essays (I forget which) talks about how writing only suits people who feel compelled to do it, even to the point of starvation if it doesn't reap an income. When I left academia in the mid 2010's I had a similar feeling about it. > The struggle for a job is now replaced by a struggle for grant support, and again there is a glut of scientists. Now you spend your time writing proposals rather tha…

> Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention --EAB, Why I Write (The trick could be for some of us amateurs to preferentially attend to the preternatur…

That may be what I was thinking of. An AI-assisted search suggests I may have conflated that passage with this one from Keep the Aspidistra flying:

> Over and over again he tried, quite vainly, to explain to them why he would not yield himself to the servitude of a ‘good’ job. ‘But what are you going to live on? What are you going to live on?’ was what they all wailed at him. He refused to think seriously about it. Of course, he still harboured the notion that he could make a living of sorts by ‘writing’ ... The next seven months were devastating. They scared him and almost broke his spirit. He learned what it means to live for weeks on end on bread and margarine, to try to ‘write’ when you are half starved

And there's also this other passage from Why I Write:

> The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition – in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all – and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class.

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