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MIT alumni in their 50s

blogs.law.harvard.edu

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Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#51

Post by brlewis »

calinet6 wrote: post #39
justonepost wrote: post #24

Ugh. Confirmation bias and sample size aside, these are MIT alumni. Aren't they already supposed to be above average? That being said, he didn't exactly say what sort of engineers these folks were. Electrical? Software? Big difference.. Also, one thing that didn't jive, if they are in financially uncomfortable retirement, why exactly are they showing up at a donors gathering?

Alternatively, these are MIT people, so perhaps the problem is that their education and career are both overly specialized. Breadth would certainly be an asset to deal with change over a longer term. It's another great argument for a broad liberal arts education.

An MIT bachelor's degree includes a decent amount of liberal arts. The HASS requirement has been around for a long time -- 1980s? http://web.mit.edu/hassreq/

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#52

Post by ghaff »

neolefty wrote: post #28
justonepost wrote: post #24

Ugh. Confirmation bias and sample size aside, these are MIT alumni. Aren't they already supposed to be above average? That being said, he didn't exactly say what sort of engineers these folks were. Electrical? Software? Big difference.. Also, one thing that didn't jive, if they are in financially uncomfortable retirement, why exactly are they showing up at a donors gathering?

> "why exactly are they showing up at a donors gathering?" Yes, this probably means the problem is even bigger than the sample demonstrates. Most of the people in uncomfortable retirement are not going to show up at all.

I wouldn't be that inclined to make assumptions about what sort of selection bias there was. I could also argue that people who show up at such gatherings are more likely to be people with time on their hands or who are making a concerted effort to network, while those who are working full-time are busier.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#53

Post by madcaptenor »

arethuza wrote: post #25
vanderZwan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't wish to move into management or elsewhere, there isn't anywhere else for you to go except laterally. I find it almost insulting how you imply that "not desiring to be a manager" is the same as "being complacent in your career" Were the doctor, the professor and the attorney forced to move onto management?

When I worked in a UK university for a Professor (a title which only the most senior academics have) his role was arguably almost entirely "management" - he was a very bright guy and did get involved in the research his team did (about 15 of us) but it was obvious that 98% of his time was effectively "management" responsibilities. Similarly for medics and lawyers - certainly for lawyers (in the UK anyway) getting pas…

I double-majored in chemistry and math. I remember talking to a few of my chemistry professors and finding that they missed actual lab work; managing their research labs, getting grants, etc. was a full time job. This wasn't true of the math professors; they actually had the time to do the research instead of just supervising graduate students.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#54

Post by ghaff »

brlewis wrote: post #51
calinet6 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, these are MIT people, so perhaps the problem is that their education and career are both overly specialized. Breadth would certainly be an asset to deal with change over a longer term. It's another great argument for a broad liberal arts education.

An MIT bachelor's degree includes a decent amount of liberal arts. The HASS requirement has been around for a long time -- 1980s? http://web.mit.edu/hassreq/

I don't know when that particular name for it dates to, but some sort of liberal arts requirement has been around for even longer. To be sure, if you take the minimum and take courses that aren't really liberal arts (e.g. accounting or microeconomics), it's fairly minimal. But the opportunity is certainly there to get a fairly broad education.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#56

Post by IkmoIkmo »

dba7dba wrote: post #17
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doctor. Lawyer. Professor. All important, no doubt. But which one of those truly helped advance our society or nation? As in improving GDP or trade balance? Ehh... all three? Try running a country without them and see where your GDP ends up. As for 'truly helped advance' and linking that to just GDP is incredibly myopic. I have all the respect in the world for engineers but let's not fetishise over them.

Eh, maybe I was a bit harsh. But still, consider this. Doctor: Was the doctor in research? Lawyer: No comment. Professor: How good was his research? Or was he one of those the taught from same note year after year and just took credit for work done by grad students? And my mistake in linking it just to GDP. How about advancing the society by building better tools, transportation, medicine, improve efficiency in this/…

Sure I'll consider it

First of all, what's with that standard? 'if you didn't invent something new, e.g. through research, it doesn't count.' Or, if you kept things together without making progress, it doesn't count? So a police officer or a fireman or a nurse, who cares about that, they're not advancing society because they didn't happen to build a better tool or a new medicine. I mean what are you even arguing here?

And second, alright so let's apply your standard to engineers who spend their entire lives applying laws of physics they didn't invent or models that existed for decades, sometimes even before they were born. e.g. designing the 10000th sewage system in just another city according to existing principles, would you call that 'taking credit for work done by grad students / previous engineers' and dismiss it as unimportant, when it's a truly significant part of society? And how do you rate a software engineer building the millionth crud app for some use case? Say like Hacker News? Unimportant? Of course not.

I mean the heuristic here to help think about value is to remove from society/laborforce for a moment anyone who ever does something that's already done before. And then keep anyone who's building something new. And then compare it with the opposite. The former will result in chaos, the latter will result in a more or less stable society with a lack of progress.

Now obviously you need both. If we didn't have the guys doing new stuff, we'd still be living like we did 50k years ago. But we need both, and the implication that it's somehow only engineers who do the new stuff just isn't true. I mean hell just consider how far engineers get without the professor teaching them all those lame things other people already figured out like laws of physics.

Anyway I get the feeling I'm misconstruing your points but you kept offering questions as things to consider so I just try to interpret what you're implying as best I can. Feel free to just concretely make your point instead.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#57

Post by arethuza »

madcaptenor wrote: post #53
arethuza wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked in a UK university for a Professor (a title which only the most senior academics have) his role was arguably almost entirely "management" - he was a very bright guy and did get involved in the research his team did (about 15 of us) but it was obvious that 98% of his time was effectively "management" responsibilities. Similarly for medics and lawyers - certainly for lawyers (in the UK anyway) getting pas…

I double-majored in chemistry and math. I remember talking to a few of my chemistry professors and finding that they missed actual lab work; managing their research labs, getting grants, etc. was a full time job. This wasn't true of the math professors; they actually had the time to do the research instead of just supervising graduate students.

I should be cleared about the use of the term "Professor" in a UK university compared to the US - in the department I worked in that had maybe 50 lecturing staff (i.e. full time permanent academic staff) and 6 or 7 people at the level of Professor:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_ranks_in_the_United_Ki...

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#58

Post by gcb0 »

wimagguc wrote: post #6

The other conclusion is, always be hireable. I guess it’s hard to be 50 and pride yourself to work for senior-senior level salary when a 30 year old can easily do your job. Hierarchies worked very well in the uni prof’s favour, but engineering companies tend to apply flatter structures. If there’s nothing that keeps the young folks competing, they will. So for us, engineers it may be a good idea to move to supervisor…

good programmers can always consult.

old managers can't do nothing unless he is hired at a big company, which is exactly what won't happen according to this

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#59

Post by Zigurd »

I can provide a data point that might be less biased toward the successful. At a recent informal reunion of my dorm, I saw much the same thing as Phil saw (in fact he was there). If you're not running a business, or in a professional role where age discrimination can't touch you, you better be exceptionally well-known in your field. If you are doing the kind of technical work, like coding, design, etc. you did most of your career, the only way to be compensated in line with your experience level is to be in a senior technical management position (VP Eng., or CTO) or consulting.

Based on what I saw then, I think Phil's observations are accurate.

On the other hand, consulting isn't so bad. There is such a lot of bad engineering out there, there is an infinite market for old guys (and the few women of our cohort) to fix things that are fucked up.

Re: MIT alumni in their 50s

#60

Post by codingdave »

whiteheat752 wrote: post #12

As an MIT student... should I not become a programmer? I do feel like I'm nearing the peak of my programming ability, and now would be the time to switch to a field with more "lock-in". What would that field be? Medicine? Mechanical engineering? Consultancy?

A student feeling like they are nearing their peak of ability is more likely to just be reaching the point that, 10 years from now, you will consider to be simply a base level of competency.
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