171–180 of 198 posts
The job market in Canada is incredibly saturated though. Having all tests out of the way was not even enough to stand out it seems. And I ended up moving to Europe to work in data science.
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 have worked as a health actuary for the past 6 six years with degrees in both math and computer science. I am happy with my career choice. Prior to this I did work several years as a programmer and decided while I enjoy programming it is not something I want to do all day every day. My current position allows me to make use of some of those skills along with learning a wide variety of other skills. Although from th…
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…
As the brother of an actuary, one of my favourite jokes is "Actuaries are people who tried accountancy but found it too exciting." :)
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What if you don’t want to “learn to think,” whatever that means, but instead want to learn how to do a well in a low cost of living area?
By all means, if you can get through the exams, you will be left with a low stress, well paying job at an insurance company, and you’ll likely have great job security. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But as Christensen talks about in one of his books, those are hygiene factors. You can find fulfilling, motivating work as an actuary, but salary should not be the main reason for choosing a career.
Why?
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…
"Completely worthless" is not what comes to mind, when it provides your living. If it doesn't fulfil you, and you have a math degree, why not change careers?
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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 a…
what do you do in crypto? As a programmer I find bitcoin really fascinanting and was thinking about learning the codebase and trying to contribute something to community but I find it really hard to do so...
In this case, I thought Moodles meant cryptography. Also, I'm not sure whether you're joking by choosing to understand it as cryptocurrency. Or perhaps you're both talking about cryptocurrencies and I'm the only confused one here...
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Veterinarian. Though you need advanced degrees for that and it also helps to be entrepreneurial, as you make more starting your own practice than joining someone else's. Pre-med should be up there too for the same reason, though there's more diversity in degrees for people who go on to become doctors.
Thanks. Didn't think of that. But right, a zoology BS is the obvious prerequisite for vet school. But the data would be a lot more useful if aggregated by terminal degree. I tried to look at the data,[0] but it won't display for me. Too much stuff blocked in my Firefox, I guess :( 0) https://www.scribd.com/document/388081338/BANKRATE-Most-Valu...
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What interpretation of "valuable" do you propose instead? A discussion of remuneration was exactly what I expected when reading the headline.
First of all, there doesn't have to be a single definition. Here's some other factors that could be part of "value": - degree of job satisfaction - how much that sort of work benefits the world It's very narrow to equate value only with money. And because I know someone is going to misinterpret what I'm saying, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with equating value with money. It's just a bit sad when that's all v…
Both are hard to make comparable between different fields: In some (think med, law etc) the cost of education will prohibit changing careers, regardless of if you make millions as patent lawyer or heart surgeon (assuming that the latter adds more "value to society"). So I think it is hard to come up with a consistent objective measure of satisfaction. On the other hand, if you poll people, you might find, that fine arts majors were very happy with their college life, but actually work in a different field to pay rent (I happen to know some music majors).
The problem with the societal benefit definition is: It very much depends on your own system of beliefs. Is an education in business and employing 5 people, more or less valuable than a job as a veterinary? Since most of the undergrad majors also have a variety of possible jobs they could lead into, this is even harder to quantify.
So maybe just do away with rankings :-)
But I have also had actuarial work that was closer to accounting than I would have liked. Certainly you have to pick your roles carefully - which is perhaps only feasible in large markets.