Why Science Is a Lousy Career Choice

Hugh Pickens writes "President Obama had a town hall meeting at Facebook's headquarters last week and said that he wanted to encourage females and minorities to pursue STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). However, Pastabagel writes that the need for American students to study STEM is one of the tired refrains in modern American politics and that plenty of people already study science, but they don't work in science. 'MIT grads are more likely to end up in the financial industry, where quants and traders are very well compensated, than in the semiconductor industry where the spectre of outsourcing to India and Asia will hang over their heads for their entire career.' Philip Greenspun adds that science can be fun, but considered as a career, science suffers by comparison to the professions and the business world. 'The average scientist that I encounter expresses bitterness about (a) low pay, (b) not getting enough credit or references to his or her work, (c) not knowing where the next job is coming from, (d) not having enough money or job security to get married and/or have children,' writes Greenspun. 'Pursuing science as a career seems so irrational that one wonders why any young American would do it.'"

Comments

Think before making your career choice

[Opportunist]

Think. Which job position will get outsourced more likely? Engineering or managing? Before you answer, consider: Managers make that decision.

Do I need to write anything more?

Re:Think before making your career choice

[Anonymous Coward]

This demonstrates the common strategy to achieve failure:

But the problem is more general than one of outsourcing.

As a company grows, it grows from a few engineers to engineers plus managers, to engineers plus managers plus managers of managers.

As a company shrinks, it often shrinks from the bottom, because the decision power is top down.

So a common failure state is a company full of managers, with no-one to do the work.
The upside down pyramid structure will inevitably fall.

Whether staff is reduced or outsource, the result is the same.

Of course with outsourcing, the pretense is that the US management can sit on top of a larger remote pyramid, but eventually either the remote headless pyramid fails because of missing local management, or the remote pyramid becomes the company because it is effectively self contained.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[jimicus]

If car manufacturing in the UK is anything to go by, the cycle works a bit like this:

1. Companies outsource manufacturing to cheap overseas country.
2. Manufacturing more-or-less collapses in UK.
3. The UK now has a large number of skilled workers who have experience building cars and a shortage of work for them. It's fair to assume they'll work for slightly less than they used to demand, and shipping cars is remarkably expensive. So a number of foreign manufacturers set up factories in the UK.
4. Manufacturing brightens up - though the factory owner is no longer a British company.

Examples: BMW manufacture the Mini in the UK. (They also manufacture a number of engines. Yes - the UK ships car engines to Germany for BMW cars!)

Toyota, Honda and Nissan also have factories in the UK.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[thsths]

> 4. Manufacturing brightens up - though the factory owner is no longer a British company.

And you notice a common theme there: management is not longer British either. All the successful automotive companies in the UK are run and controlled from outside of the UK - either from Japan or from Germany. I am not sure whether the famous thoroughness of the Germans and the Japanese has anything to do with it, but it seems as good a reason as any.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[jimicus]

So what you're saying is the workers who got sacked now have new jobs without having to re-train significantly. Their managers, OTOH, are SOL.

Don't see the problem there.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[CastrTroy]

Same thing happened in Canada. GM, Ford, Chrysler cut back on their employees, and Honda and Toyota now make quite a few cars in Canada. For things that are easier to ship, this doesn't happen, but for cars, it really makes sense to manufacture them close to where they are sold.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[cvtan]

I often wondered what would happen if the workforce of a typical US tech company outsourced their management to another country. But this is just not happening.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[Thud457]

This is exactly what happened in the US. We can still afford to build cars here, Honda, BMW, Subaru, Kia & others do so. It's just the American-owned companies that chronically can't seem to cut it. Some people would point out that Detroit manufacturers had a union workforce, while the foreign companies steered clear of that situation. The people building the cars stays the same, it's just where the profits go that changes.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[TemperedAlchemist]

Yeah, but which job position is more likely to survive the zombie apocalypse?

Re:Think before making your career choice

[geminidomino]

We should just cut out the pretense and change the name of the country to "B-Ark Mk II"

Re:Think before making your career choice

[vuke69]

Headhunter?

Re:Think before making your career choice

[lymond01]

True -- buying American doesn't necessarily mean supporting American companies. It might mean supporting American workers.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[bware]

Tariffs played a large role in this. Honda et al. can avoid paying tariffs if some large fraction of the car is manufactured/assembled here. Otherwise there's as much as a 25% tariff. For years the Japanese could make cars cheaper than Americans, so this didn't matter, but then when prices started approaching parity, they started moving factories over here to get around it.

The tariff on trucks was much higher, and that's why there were no full-sized Japanese trucks in the US until the laws changed around 1999. The Japanese manufacturers lobbied hard to get those changed (and the US companies lobbied hard against it - some deal was made) so Toyota/Nissan could compete in the very profitable F150 market, and traded off moving entire factories here to get it.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[houghi]

Who manages the managers? Why would they NOT also outsource the managers?

Re:Think before making your career choice

[Opportunist]

The result is the same, whether it's downsizing or outsourcing: Your chance to keep your job are simply higher in a management position, simply due to processes defined.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[Opportunist]

"Ask what you can do for your country" is outdated by about half a century. Today it's "me first, to hell with the country". And face it, why should anyone act differently since it's obvious that it's mutual?

Why should anyone "risk" going into engineering just for the sake of making sure that the manufacturing and engineering knowledge does not erode if the question is, will I have a job tomorrow or not? Because nobody's going to catch you if you fall because you made the "wrong" decision in your career.

Even I switched my software engineering hat for a manager one, drawing process charts instead of flow charts now.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[Opportunist]

Personally, I see this as more beneficial since the purchasing power stays in the pockets of those that do the consumption. Supporting a US company that is nearly completely outsourcing its manufacturing is certainly worse for the national economy since the wages go abroad.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[Opportunist]

I gave you the reason: The ones making the decision would be the ones being outsourced. Can you see yourself deciding that you should lose your job and it should go to someone overseas? Hmm?

Re:Think before making your career choice

[kent_eh]

So what you're saying is the workers who got sacked now have new jobs without having to re-train significantly. Their managers, OTOH, are SOL. Don't see the problem there.

Almost.
The workers have new, lower paying jobs doing pretty much the same thing they were doing before.
However, in the interim, the cost of living has generally increased.

Does that change the picture?

Meanwhile, their former managers are off to new, higher paying jobs with other soon-to-fail companies.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[Opportunist]

Managers. They just blend into the crowd.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[Opportunist]

Funny enough, most companies would rather trust their manufacturing, which dictates the quality of their product, to some overseas company than their finance, their marketing or their other management departments. I guess it's that they'd feel like losing control of the company.

Odd. Yes. Because by outsourcing the manufacturing you ARE actually losing control. But that's not management thinking. They're more concerned that the whole "reporting" stays local than whether they deliver crappy products.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[mibe]

Yeah, but which job position is more likely to start the zombie apocalypse?

Re:Think before making your career choice

[teg]

The owners. "Outsourcing management" is called "starting the business elsewhere", which many do.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Seeing as how the guys who make all the really bad decisions (mgmt) aren't unionized, you can't really blame them, can you?

Re:Think before making your career choice

[Teun]

This is an excellent example of where the manufacturing skills are fine but the management sucked seriously.

In this British example the reasons are well understood, management had a pre-occupation with limiting (exposure to) risk and maximising short term profits by failing to innovate.

Of course this type of management blames others like the unions but isn't willing to acknowledge the Japanese and Germans don't seem to have such issues.

Exactly the reason why I can't trust BP, British financials and American cowboy (Amoco) engineering, the other way around would make a much better company.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[TopSpin]

This is exactly what happened in the US.

The grandparents hypothetical 'cycle' had nothing to do with the presence of foreign auto manufacturers in the US.

During the late 70's and early 80's 'domestic content' laws and regulations were both enhanced and created in the US that assess tariffs on imported autos based on the percent of value add by foreign vs. domestic industry. As a result, multiple plants opened (and remain open) in southern US by the late 80's. By 1989 all imported autos were subject to these content requirements. Trucks and SUVs were eventually reclassified (yes, these demands were met) to fall under this regime as well.

The Reagan administration also negotiated hard limits on Japanese imports. Annual caps on imports were voluntarily agreed to between the US and Japan. Reagan also applied heavy tariffs on imported motorcycles; he noted in his memoirs that the only remaining US motorcycle manufacturer was on its last legs at the time. Today that company is healthy and once again has domestic competition.

The reason, the only reason, any foreign auto manufacturers pay for US labor is to avoid heavy tariffs. This paradigm was established back when the US had leaders willing to leverage the fact that importers needed the US more than the US needed the importers.

Which president most recently granted MFN status to China and signed NAFTA?

Look it up. Learn something. There is no need to resort to speculation and theory about why things are as they are; there is actual history one may study.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[jimbolauski]

You forgot about the third option when it is time to downsize. Acquire small company with profitable ratio of engineers to managers, relocate some of your extra managers to the formally profitable company making it barely profitable and making the larger company profitable, repeat until too large to fail then stop spending money on buying successful companies and start spending money on buying politicians.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[interkin3tic]

Think. Which job position will get outsourced more likely? Engineering or managing? Before you answer, consider: Managers make that decision.

Now yes, but a while back both seemed unlikely. Maybe 20 years from now, management of Indian tech firms will be taking advantage of cheap US engineers (just $2000 per hour... US DOLLARS TOO!) and tele-managing.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[DaveGod]

Whoa there. Outsourcing had nothing to do with the UK auto industry failures, if anything there wasn't enough. It collapsed because we made shit cars, had shit manufacturing processes, especially shit management and negligible government support.

The highly successful, foreign-owned car assembly plants in UK are highly successful because the foreign companies invested a ton of money on R not just on the actual cars but how to make them. For that we have, IIRC, Nissan to thank. The British auto industry was globally written off but Nissan spent the money and turned out one of the most productive plants in the world.

Of course it should have been Honda, who had hopes of doing similar with Rover decades prior, but a combination of government and British Aerospace left them with their fingers burnt.

BTW the workers aren't now on the cheap. The good plants take the best workers, train and pay them well. It's all about productivity.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[WamBamBoozle]

> Which president most recently granted MFN status to China and signed NAFTA?

Clinton. Right? Why is that important?

Are you saying another president would have protected American manufacturing jobs better?

Re:Think before making your career choice

[independent123]

You're absolutely right to emphasize tariffs and other pressures. Trade is more win-lose than win-win. Our elite have taken the profits and sold out the country. Reagan pressured the Japanese, but all the presidents since have done nothing. Can you imagine JFK or Reagan allowing large parts of the middle class to be reduced to poverty and the power of the country to wither? For what?

Re:Think before making your career choice

[russotto]

This is exactly what happened in the US. We can still afford to build cars here, Honda, BMW, Subaru, Kia & others do so. It's just the American-owned companies that chronically can't seem to cut it.

To be fair, Ford can.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[TopSpin]

Are you saying another president would have protected American manufacturing jobs better?

No. Those specific cases have sufficient notoriety to register with casual readers, and an answer (Clinton, as you say) that many find surprising. There have been precious few leaders that have been willing to rile the business world by jeopardizing their foreign investments. Reagan did specific things to prevent the destruction of the transportation sector. He let other industries suffer with no help. Textile manufacturing is a fine example. Whole towns died in the US as their plants evacuated to Asia. Since then companies have appeared that dismantle, ship and reassemble entire factories piece by piece from the US to Asia.

Even if the Foxconn factory that made the screen you're staring at were a paragon of virtue (it isn't) the rare earth mines that provided the minerals are an unforgivable crime. Miners in China are dying from silicosis. We no longer tolerate that among ourselves. We just export it.

Those dead towns? They're full of food stamp recipients, meth/oxy addicts and Walmarts with those low-low(tm) prices. The Government can't afford to keep the dependents in gravy so it borrows catastrophic amounts of debt, a fact that gives this situation a big fat expiration date.

That date is going to arrive. You can blame the rich, the corporations, Israel, white people, China or anyone else you've been taught to loath. It will come and you and yours are going to see it. Have a close look at those McDonald's 'hiring day' scenes you have carefully ignored. Learn about the place you live.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[antifoidulus]

One of the differences between China and Japan is how much of a cut the American CEO got(gets). The big mistake Japan made was pushing to cut out the American CEO by introducing their own brands and basically cutting out the middle man and selling direct. This pissed off the American managers who are the ones that really pull the strings, and Reagan reacted to save his financial backers. China was able to observe that trend and thus far has seemed to avoid the mistakes Japan made. Even though the deficit with China is much greater than the deficit with Japan was in the 80s(in both absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP) the anti-China pushback is but a fraction of the anti-Japan pushback in the 80s. Again, the difference is the CEOs. When the CEOs simply rebrand Chinese products and sell them in the USA, they get to keep a cut. If the Chinese company were to sell under their own brand, the CEO would see nothing and make sure that the politicians he bought and paid for knew that fact.

Think about it for a second, how many Chinese brands can you name off the top of your head? I can only name two, Haier and Lenovo. Now think of how many Japanese brands you can name off the top of your head? Nintendo, Sony, Hitachi, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Honda, Toyota, Mazda etc. See any differences?

Re:Think before making your career choice

[Renraku]

Eventually we'll realize (the hard way) that engineering is something you don't fuck around with. Answering phones and churning out barely workable code is not the same as designing bridges or turbine engines. While there is a lot of 'technician' level work in engineering, what would you rather have? A nurse doing everything BUT the actual heart transplant, or a surgeon doing most of the work?

Re:Think before making your career choice

[Anthony Mouse]

I don't think that's it. It isn't the middle managers who decide whether middle managers get outsourced, it's upper management. It isn't upper management who decides whether upper management gets outsourced, it's the board of directors.

The real problem is that as much as people say that CEOs get paid a zillion times more than factory workers or whatever, the fact is that your typical large company has far more factory workers on the payroll than they have C-level executives. A company can save a lot more money by outsourcing 20,000 factory workers and paying them $15,000 instead of $65,000 than you can save by cutting the salaries of a dozen top executives by a million dollars each.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[wwphx]

Exactly! With the exception of the first two cars that I bought in the 80's, every car that I've owned since has been American-made but not by the American car companies. My concern has been strictly on two criteria: quality and fitting my purpose. My objection to quality has consistently been upheld when I see the problems my dad and others have had with American cars, and fitting my purpose is entirely subjective and there's no point discussing it.

Re:Think before making your career choice

[Pollardito]

Wasn't there actually a cap on the number of cars that could be imported to the US from Japan, whereas there was no cap on truck imports? I thought the rise of small SUVs like the Suzuki Samurai was partly because they could be shipped to the US without a back seat, and since that made them a "truck" they didn't count against the cap. They'd throw a seat in it when it got over here and sell it as a passenger vehicle, but it was imported as a truck

Re:Think before making your career choice

[LordVader717]

What the hell? That's not at all what happened.

The first thing that happened, or rather didn't happen, is that British companies didn't invest a dime, and so by the 70s they were hopelessly outdone by German and Japanese car makers. Then came nationalization. Bear in mind that this was all occurring under fierce protectionism. There were no British car makers manufacturing overseas. Especially not to re-import them.

Unsurprisingly the government was unable to save the wreck and the industry rapidly collapsed. This was when the plants closed and the skilled workers had no job. But this was 25-30 years ago. The experienced people have long since retired, and the last generation of qualified people have moved on.

During this time the British made partnerships with foreign companies which essentially resulted in the UK becoming an outsourcing destination for the a limited production of specific cars. A small number of workers were able to keep their jobs, but the bulk of R&D and manufacturing were gone.

what's really going on?

[Hazel Bergeron]

Is it really that we have too many scientists, or just that we have too many mediocre science grads who don't realise that the quality of their degree comes nowhere close to matching that expected of the science graduate even two or three decades ago?

And of course Obama, and any member of the ruling elite, wants more people in a technician role. Supply up; wages down. It's only a matter of time the middle class is eroded sufficiently that onshoring's time will come.

Re:what's really going on?

[Osgeld]

doesn't matter how mediocre they are, why get 1 mediocre scientist in America thats going to bitch and whine about pay, when you can get 5 mediocre scientist in India who will suck your ass for cheaper all together

Re:what's really going on?

[paiute]

And these days, that Chinese or Indian scientists will probably be of higher calibre than the American.

You obviously don't work in the sciences.

Re:what's really going on?

[Hazel Bergeron]

What it a simple observation on the quality of university education (i.e. the simple fact that what never would have counted as a university education in the past does count as one today) that made you think I was wearing a tin foil hat? Or did the basic implementation of free market principles bother you?

Re:what's really going on?

[Bill Dimm]

or just that we have too many mediocre science grads

If that were the problem, you would expect the mediocre ones to be the ones leaving science due to not being able to get jobs, but that's not the case. If you look at the science people working in finance, they're mostly Ivy League. They aren't leaving science because they can't find jobs in science. They're leaving because they can have a much better life doing something else. Society benefits greatly from scientific discoveries, often for many decades after the scientists making the discoveries are dead, but society values scientists very little. Scientists that are flexible enough to do something else eventually figure this out and leave science.

Re:what's really going on?

[ThatMegathronDude]

Those Chinese or Indian scientists are likely to have been educated over here.

Re:what's really going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can assure you that those scientists will produce excellent results.

(Just don't look at the data too closely.)

Re:what's really going on?

[Hazel Bergeron]

This applies to a tiny minority of science grads - it's the Ivy League / Oxbridge label that gets you the job there, not the degree. The reason most science grads aren't going into science isn't because they have such an amazing alternative waiting for them.

And a science grad who runs to finance at the first opportunity is not necessarily going to make a good scientist.

The basic point is: our science grads aren't good enough.

Re:what's really going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

"And these days, that Chinese or Indian scientists will probably be of higher calibre than the American. "

In my experience that isn't the case. Sure I've met some brilliant scientists from both China and the US, but quality of the Chinese graduate students is dropping since the process for Chinese students to come to study in America used to be more of a meritocracy. These days there are many more opportunities for those who are well connected than in decades past, and I've seen some markedly unimpressive party princelings/princesses come over. It shouldn't be surprising either: science and engineering (and higher education in general) are status symbols in China just like they used to be here. The higher the degree at the higher-ranked university, the better. China has a growing middle and upper class with much more wealth than 20 years ago and they are able to send their kids over here to study*. The numbers are swelling and the proportion of the truly gifted is dropping. Chinese students aren't coming for just graduate school anymore either. There's a growing trend of the wealthy to send their kids over for undergraduate studies, just like in the past wealthy Americans sent their kids off to Europe.

*In the sciences there's often a "deal" given to cash-strapped American professors: the Chinese government will pick up 25% of the tab as long as the student comes straight back to China after they finish their degree. I know of several profs who vacation in China where they're treated like rock stars wining and dining with party officials and industrialists (but I repeat myself) and come back with another recruit every year. These trips are also the perfect opportunity for people to take advantage of their connections and get their kids over here.

Re:what's really going on?

[Cidolfas]

A good CEO is worth more than that in steering the company in the right direction. Of course, a bad CEO can do that much damage...

And traditionally, they get pay raises either way.

Re:what's really going on?

[joocemann]

NO!

If they will do it for a quarter the pay, but live in a cheap to live area in a completely foreign land, then it has nothing to do with pricing out of teh market, but rather a lack of PROTECTIVE TARRIFFS.

The issue is that our current policy enforces corporate capitalization and does not protect human resource.

STEM is worth the bother, but we need to reinforce it by protecting it --- you tax US businesses on their imported labor. And if they don't like it, they can move to india.. Then we can tax their products instead. THIS IS NOW UNEQUAL NATIONS STAY BALANCED.

Re:what's really going on?

[PickyH3D]

That was certainly the experience I witnessed in both undergraduate and graduate school.

Re:what's really going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what, America? If someone else is willing to do your job for a quarter of what you are, well, they are going to get the job and you aren't going to. That's what you get for pricing yourselves out of the market.

I know! Damn Americans actually wanting a "living wage" rather than working 3 jobs just to barely scrape by. Fuck that bullshit!

Re:what's really going on?

[Desler]

Of course, a bad CEO can do that much damage...

And get a golden parachute to boot!

Re:what's really going on?

[Maxo-Texas]

Equally good CEO's drive companies in india and china for about a million bucks total compensation.

The real reason they make so much money is
a) They all went to the same private schools (seriously- I was reading an interview with a CEO about other CEO's and he had gone to 7th grade with them).
b) They each decide each other's salaries. Not the shareholders. It's not quite as good as controlling your own salary but it's pretty damn good.

So Bob controls Jim's pay and Jim controls Bob's pay.

Re:what's really going on?

[DCFusor]

Sadly, and as a scientist -- I have to agree. Most scientists aren't worth much, and often graduate with a high degree knowing less than I did in high school, in terms of actually having useful knowledge and the ability to apply it.

Further, the government funded big science system makes this worse, and self perpetuating. Back when at least some of it was privately funded, and therefore merit pay, the good scientists at least did well, and things progressed a lot faster than now.

Re:what's really going on?

[mrnobo1024]

Guess what, America? If someone else is willing to do your job for a quarter of what you are, well, they are going to get the job and you aren't going to.

I would gladly do the job of the CEO of Goldman Sachs for one hundredth of his (8-figure) pay.

But it doesn't work that way, does it? The ruling class doesn't have to worry about losing their own "jobs", simply because they're the ones calling the shots. Capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich; that's what we have in this country.

That's what you get for pricing yourselves out of the market.

Yes, clearly it's all our fault that a Chinese or Indian salary won't even pay the rent here. Do you seriously believe that in America, a worker gets to set the price of all the things he needs to live?

America has made it's choice

The tiny portion of Americans who control the country have made their choice. The rest of us get to suffer the consequences.

Re:what's really going on?

[Hazel Bergeron]

No, there is a glut of PhD scientists and it's getting worse every year.

Are you sure that the average PhD programme isn't just getting easier?

You may have a glut of PhDs, but are you sure that every PhD in science should call himself a scientist, in the way he might have legitimately done 30 or 40 years ago?

Ask why is it taking so much longer to get one.

Re:what's really going on?

[Dr. Spork]

That may be, but please don't suggest that Americans don't cheat. The problem isn't the country of origin. The problem is that US university professors are not very interested in catching cheaters. In the few exceptions to this rule, they manage to catch huge numbers, and the cheaters are surprised exactly because they had been using those same transparent tricks for years. There is cheating everywhere in professional programs, because ultimately, universities are not interested in expelling students who are paying their incredibly inflated tuitions.

Re:what's really going on?

[CastrTroy]

Also, is a scientist working at a financial firm no longer a scientist simply because they aren't in lab? Using a STEM (Sci, Tech, Eng, Math) degree for a non-science oriented company can many times be very rewarding, exciting, and pay quite well, assuming you get into the right firm. There's no rule that just because you get a degree in science, that you have to be doing pure research, working for a university or some such.

Re:what's really going on?

[WrongMonkey]

It isn't just that the science grads aren't good enough, its that the science itself it harder than it's ever been before. All the low hanging fruit that could be figured out by an individual or small team as already been done.

"It was a game, a very interesting game one could play. Whenever one solved of the little problems, one could write a paper about it. It was very easy in those days for any second-rate physicist to do first-rate work. There has not been such a glorious time since. It is very difficult now for a first-rate physicist to do second-rate work." -- P.A.M Dirac, DIRECTIONS IN PHYSICS, 1978, P. 7

Re:what's really going on?

[turkeyfish]

The real problem with your notion is its inability to explain why CEO salaries are increasing and our society is putting more and more and more and more and more resources into the already wealthy, with so little to show for it.

Lot of talk about "inferior" foreign scientists, but almost never any talk of inferior CEO's and managers. Why is that?

Re:what's really going on?

[demonlapin]

There may be too many mediocre science grads, but even graduates of really great programs have trouble.

Hint for the young: a career in science is almost certainly going to feature low pay and long hours. If you don't mind long hours, you'll be a lot better off going to med school (although this route will, like grad school, keep you poor throughout your twenties). If you want time off, become a teacher. If you want great hours and great money, become a dentist.

Re:what's really going on?

[turkeyfish]

You have hit the nail on the head! The only real question now is what can we do about it before its too late?

Re:what's really going on?

[memyselfandeye]

doesn't matter how mediocre they are, why get 1 mediocre scientist in America thats going to bitch and whine about pay, when you can get 5 mediocre scientist in India who will suck your ass for cheaper all together

And these days, that Chinese or Indian scientists will probably be of higher calibre than the American. There are still some excellent American STEM grads, but on average, their quality has been on the decline for at least a few decades.

Guess what, America? If someone else is willing to do your job for a quarter of what you are, well, they are going to get the job and you aren't going to. That's what you get for pricing yourselves out of the market. There's nothing wrong with that - it's simple economics. Either you compete with the world's best, or you suffer the loss of those industries and all that they bring to your economy.

America has made it's choice: STEM is not worth the bother. That's a valid choice to make. Over the next decades you will get to experience the consequences of your choice.

Spoken like people who don't know what their talking about. I've got a Chinese post-doc working for me right now who I'm training to take over my position after I retire. The kid is really smart, and given a couple of years will probably work out. However, right now he doesn't know how to use a screwdriver. He wants his own private parking space. He thinks the lunch hours should be standardized - he hates how I may eat at 11:00 one day and 3:00 the next. He doesn't think he gets paid enough. He doesn't know the difference between AC and DC current, a big thing in my field to not know. Finally, he wants his own office since I have my own office, which is nothing more than a communal library but I digress.

Now, he can do math like nobody's business. Nobody at my place of work, or in the department at the university we use, can do math like he can. So there's that. But he's education is just as lacking as anyone else. You do not get that PhD with a slap on the fanny and told "Congratulations, now you know everything and have nothing else to learn."

I would kill for an American post doc, however what American post doc would work for me when she can work for wall street earning 4x as much and have a lot more fun. If she still wants to do science, she can afford to do it on her own time in her own way, which is basically the science dream. If she decides she would like to become an experimentalist later on, she can return to the field without worrying about money nearly as much as my Chinese post-doc who went straight from University in China to a laboratory in America.

Re:what's really going on?

[NeverVotedBush]

Is it really that we have too many scientists, or just that we have too many mediocre science grads who don't realise that the quality of their degree comes nowhere close to matching that expected of the science graduate even two or three decades ago?

I don't think that matters. As one with a science Ph.D. degree, I found that there weren't that many companies that really needed my specialty. I had to go where the jobs were instead of being able to live and work where I wanted. After having to leave a very poorly managed company that was going under, I got lucky and landed a nice job until we got downsized.

That was when I decided it would be in my best interests to change careers. I'm now paid more and have more opportunities in a different field.

On the one hand the advanced degree opened doors and got me established with a track record, but in the end it was really more of a waste of time and a real pain in the ass. Anyone who has done the Ph.D. dance can tell you how political and fraught with danger the advanced degree track can be. I made it through ok but I saw others get their lives basically ruined. I don't agree by any means, but I understand why some students go postal at their dissertation defense.

It's a double whammy. Advanced degree can mean pigeon holed in the outside world and then there are the risks of not even getting the degree if you don't know how to play the game.

Maybe biochem/genetics is different but the more traditional sciences like chemistry and physics can really suck. Even if you go academic, what are the odds you get tenure? I've seen really good people get booted there too and have to go start over somewhere else.

It's not fun.

Re:what's really going on?

[arkenian]

No, there is a glut of PhD scientists and it's getting worse every year.

Are you sure that the average PhD programme isn't just getting easier?

You may have a glut of PhDs, but are you sure that every PhD in science should call himself a scientist, in the way he might have legitimately done 30 or 40 years ago?

Ask why is it taking so much longer to get one.

The classroom work is getting harder, but the research part is probably getting a bit easier. Why? Well the classroom work has increased because half of what they teach in grad school these days has only been KNOWN for 30 or 40 years -- but another side effect of this is that in many ways you know less when you're done, because to keep it from being truly mindboggling you're even more specialized than you used to be. The research part is probably getting a little easier, because its very hard to scope 'original research' down to something appropriate for a graduate student in many fields in terms of time and materials. In general at the top universities, though, things haven't really changed all that much. Granted there are many more mid-rank universities mucking stuff up. As to why its taking longer? Mostly because there's no real incentive to finish for anyone in the system. The professors don't want to lose their grad students, and post-doc life doesn't pay THAT much better than a senior graduate student, and in some ways has less security.

Re:what's really going on?

[spun]

American CEOs haven't made that little in decades, the average is 400 to 1 now. For all enterprises, not just Fortune 500 companies, where the inequality is even greater. And Fortune 500 CEOs make that income whether they perform or not. They make money when the company is losing money. This is not about retaining the best talent in order to increase profits for the shareholders. Shareholders are patsies, especially the little shareholders who likely are only in the stock market at all because of their 401k plans. That is to say, to Fortune 500 CEOs, most of us are patsies. They won't let you into their little oligarchs club for defending them in public, you know.

Re:what's really going on?

[memyselfandeye]

That was certainly the experience I witnessed in both undergraduate and graduate school.

Again I'm calling BS on this, at least in science. Where I work, almost the entire graduate department seems to be Chinese. But these are smart guys, and gals. They have a lot to learn, but they earned their way here.

But the real truth for the lack of 'white' in most science departments nowadays is this; foreigners are paying full tuition. Simple stupid.

Re:what's really going on?

[Hazel Bergeron]

So now people work in teams under supervision by senior scientists. There are lots of roles for lots of different strengths: there's structure to guide you and you don't have to be a lone hero (you still might be, but you still have to be singularly brilliant to do so).

And I question the idea that a "second-rate physicist" could do "first-rate work". Heroes of science, mathematics and engineering have since forever spoken as if anything not coming up to their level of output is trivial... then they get older and see all the new advances and new structure to academia and say, "Oh wow, these new ways aren't like back in my day, when everyone below me was quite simple!" Even among the merely quite good, people today talk of problems considered groundbreaking at their initial solution as if they were quite trivial. But they were hard not because people were stupid but because the background wasn't already established; the support of modern academia wasn't in place; the assumptions we so take for granted weren't clear at all.

Looked at another way, we also have a bit of Orwellian redefinition. Today, most "scientists" are helpers for greater minds who would have been traditionally considered lone scientists with mere technicians. These technicians wouldn't have achieved, nor necessarily been able to achieve, the higher degrees (by name) which they do today.

Re:what's really going on?

[Bucc5062]

That's what you get for pricing yourselves out of the market.

The US did not price its self out of the market, repressive regimes, wanting to increase their wealth, opened the doors to foreign companies knowing they had a plethora of vastly underpaid employees with unregulated work environments (who cares about safety). This was a CEO's wet dream for maximizing profit. Now that the formally exploited countries like China or India are getting a workforce that wants to get paid a fair wage, those same companies will look else where till we all hit the lowest common denominator.

Scientists did not price themselves out of the market, this country took a right turn and looked at science as either profit, or justification of political and/or religious validation of ones ideas. not for building on knowledge. (yes that sentence sucks, but this guy's got my blood on a slow boil). As yet, education, even at the highest levels, is still something that we export, not import. People come here to learn, then take it back and sadly for the US, use that knowledge to forge a better path for the future for their country. Overpriced ourselves out of the market? Bullshit, we sold ourselves to the lowest bidder and now reap the rewards. Had we invested our people, money, and time into the future...I'm to disgusted any more about what constitutes leadership in either politics or business these days.

Re:what's really going on?

[rangek]

That was certainly the experience I witnessed in both undergraduate and graduate school.

Again I'm calling BS on this, at least in science. Where I work, almost the entire graduate department seems to be Chinese. But these are smart guys, and gals. They have a lot to learn, but they earned their way here.

It is a mixed bag, honestly. And seems a lot of the best and brightest stay here while the dregs return home.

Re:what's really going on?

[rayzat]

I really think there aren't enough jobs. There's less bloody edge research. Less bloody edge production. Technology is replacing old man in the middle work and making scientists more efficient overall. I have two examples from a friend of mine. My friend is a hiring manager for a manufacturing division of Pfizer. They had a scientist quit and needed a replacement, which is rare for Pfizer, normally they just say do more with less, elaborated more later. They posted the job with needs at least a BS, MS preferred. They got almost 250 applicants in the first 36 hours after posting, just under 50 of them were PhDs. A couple of the PhDs were looking to swap companies but the vast majority have been unemployed or teaching the odd class at a college here or there. Another telling sign is the division my friend works for has shrunk every year for the past 11 years. They haven't removed product from production or reduced the amounts of any product produced. They've actually more that doubled the output of a couple drugs. Which directly doubles the amount of quality testing and other work that needs to be done. Some groups have seen better than 80% reduction in staffing. There are only about 40% of the number people with engineer/scientist titles at the site then there were 10 years ago, and remember, this is a site that's only increased the amount of drug being produced, so it's not like these people left because a product got cut.

Re:what's really going on?

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

Or your professor may ask you to stay in their lab as a post-doc :)

Either way, if you have sh*tload of federal student loans (private loans not included, and you should avoid them at all cost), after 10 years working in a public or non-profit sector, you get to discharge the remainder of your loans, as long as you paid your 120 monthly payment on time. (This is known as Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Non-profit orgs includes most private universities, for that matter.)

Re:what's really going on?

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

Oops submitting too fast.

So that is one incentive where you should graduate ASAP. If you don't have student loans yet, you may want to use this interest-free cash flow to pay off your high-interest debt, or contribute to a tax-deferred account such as IRA or HSA.

Re:what's really going on?

[rubycodez]

that's the tripe the gobalist elite, who claim they are "capitalists", spew while taking advantage of the lower labor costs of enslaved or partially enslaved people, while they are tearing the U.S. down to that level.

I would say by recent events it is they who will get the consequences of their choice, and the U.S. "austerity party" is going to make the european and middle east riots look like a sunday school picnic.

Re:what's really going on?

[tacokill]

It doesn't work that way because you are completely and totally unqualified to be CEO of Goldman Sachs. That, not your ruling class diatribe, is why you will not ever be considered for that 8 figure salary, despite your willingness to take a lower salary. It has nothing to do with the ruling class or workers of the world unit or any other such nonsense you espouse.

Believe it or not Slashdot, the guys at the top are usually there for very good reasons. They are not stupid, they are not idiots, and most of them are pretty damn good at what they do.

Now please return to your normally schedule mental masturbation about greedy fat cat overlord managers and their ilk.

Re:what's really going on?

[blueg3]

Well, at the school I went to, most of the engineering departments had Indian and Chinese students who worked long hours and were reasonably well-educated but cheated like the dickens and weren't that great at problem-solving (not compared to their American and European counterparts, at least). Almost everyone in the physics department, on the other hand, was very well-educated and clever. There were a few people who couldn't cut it, but they were evenly distributed demographically.

A quick review of journals -- especially if you're reviewing submissions -- will show you that there's a ton of low-quality research coming out of China these days, though.

Re:what's really going on?

[houghi]

So you know what is wrong. What are you doing to make it right? What is the rest doing?

Re:what's really going on?

[asher09]

I am thankful I have a job and a house, etc. However, my take home pay is barely >$2,200 / month. I got my PhD from UCSD in 2009 and I do get paid more than my peers who also have doctorates and hold the same position as I. But I still get paid less than a lot of high school graduates I know of... :(

Re:what's really going on?

[turkeyfish]

I too am a scientist and I simply don't buy your argument at all. The question of "worth too much" is rather irrelevant unless it is coupled with a clear indication of to whom and when and for what reasons. Certainly, these are judgement calls and there is a lot of latitude for informed opinion, but without a sufficient diversity of scientists, progress often grinds to a halt simply because unexpected things happen and society can not put all its eggs in one basket. There is no economic, social, or biological law that says we can't once again find ourselves living in the second "Dark Ages".

I work in the area of taxonomy and systematics. Fields that have been in serious decline for years and in which pay is almost non-existent (I fully support my own research now). However, when society reaches the point of recognizing the consequences of the fact that we are living in a historical period that can be only characterized as the greatest loss of biodiversity since the Permian, it may well be too late to do anything about it. This will be true because training people to identify organisms and developing a biological understanding of why and how they originate in the first place and thus sufficiently informed to keep the ecosystems we all take for granted healthy, will take too long to produce a material effect on the human predicament. Most of the public is oblivious as to how hollow many ecosystems have now become nor do they appreciate or comprehend what the consequences will be, almost all not particularly favorable for humanity's own future.

When all is said and done, it comes down to what is it that is worth doing with one's life. We presently presume that the system we have now, where one does something and someone else pays them for it, will be stable enough to sustain "business as usual". This is rapidly becoming no longer the case. The dying of the Gulf of Mexico is a prime example. In the past 50 years we have greatly depleted its bounty until industries that it used employ hundreds of thousands, now have shrank until only a few tens of thousands of jobs are involved. There are a lot of things humans "make" but very few of them do not rely upon some ecosystem services for their ultimate support. If people are even unable to properly identify the species that make up of what little is left of those ecosystems, there is very little reason to expect they will be able to "manage" them.

Again, it all comes down to value, but value can only be assessed in terms of to whom, when and for how much (relative to some other investment of time and energy).

As for government funding, if governments don't step up to the plate to act on societies behalf, then in the longer term society won't have much of a chance, since the changes in biodiversity and human ecology are changing too fast to expect that a few independent "private" efforts here and there in a very few firms able to hire "scientists" would amount to a tincker's darnn in the long run. The adverse accumulative effects of billions and billions of humans will simply outstrip the ability of politicians who want to provide such firms tax beaks or the best efforts of those few "commercial" scientists will be swamped. What is more likely to happen in the near-term is what we are seeing in the US, where its scientific infrastructure and educational systems are being torn up as fuel for more tax breaks for the already wealthy. Consequently, more and more science moves to those countries where governments have a more competitive and viable long term plan. It is not hard to find evidence of this in three of the most economically important areas of science: 1) development of alternative, "clean" forms of energy, 2) biotechnolgoy, and 3) high energy and particle physics.

The argument that government funded science makes it worse is simply preposterous. Virtually all major breakthroughs in science have come as a result of government investment of some kind, which includes a huge amount of R&D funding that went into for example,

Re:what's really going on?

[WrongMonkey]

Ok, but if it takes a large team to make the same kind of advances that used to be accomplished by a small team, then the value of each individual member of that large team is significantly less. And I think the pay scale reflects that. There are still super-star scientists who lead the large teams and make the big bucks, but most PhDs end up as replaceable cogs in the research machine.

Re:what's really going on?

[rhyder128k]

I didn't do very well academically, so there are a lot of things that I can't follow. For example, I can't understand how, if the majority of undergrads are female, why is there only affirmative action to help females? I mean, what with zero sum economics, surely the condition of female domination of a subject is more common than male? Even if there were an equal number of male and female students, it would be absolutely impossible for males to more often dominate a subject.

Then, I've always been a bit thick about things like this. I couldn't even work out how Obama earned his Nobel prize. Sure wish that I'd got a degree so that I could figure these things out.

Re:what's really going on?

[sydneyfong]

And why would they want to return home?

The academic environment in USA, despite all the whining here, is like heaven when compared to that in China. All sorts of ridiculous things happen in academia in China, you just couldn't imagine.

Don't know about India, but can't imagine it can be better than the US.

Re:what's really going on?

[Hazel Bergeron]

Believe it or not Slashdot, the guys at the top are usually there for very good reasons. They are not stupid, they are not idiots, and most of them are pretty damn good at what they do.

I'm one of those privileged cunts people whine about. I went to a nice private school and am quite familiar with the old boys'/girls' network.

I can assure you that while most aren't stupid, and some of them are even quite good at what they do, what they are not is uniquely able or qualified. The fact that they're in the position rather than any number of other people of equal or greater competence is that they know the right people and play the right tune (which is often very different from the tune the company claims to play).

In other words, a meritocratic market would certainly cause upper management pay to drop to one tenth of its current silliness. But why would you threaten your own security by actually practicing the competitive capitalism that you preach? No, you're far more secure and productive if you cooperate while preaching to everyone below you to turn against each other in ruthless competition.

Re:what's really going on?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

I'll probably get shit on for this, but if the average science grad is anything like the average CS grad, all they know is formulas anyway. The ones actually doing science don't stay in India.

Re:what's really going on?

[lgw]

Top CEO salaries and pro sports star salaries increase for the same reasons. There are about as many of either group, and neither group is a problem for the overall economy, despite what your sense of social justice might tell you.

Re:what's really going on?

[kubernet3s]

The difference being that the CEO of Goldman Sachs' only responsibility is to make money: for himself and others, but still just to make money. Our current financial system is certainly stacked on top of large financial firms in such a way that they rise and fall as one, but it's not as if "the guys at the top" are there because they are turning the wheels of the world with a steady hand. They're there because they clawed their way to the top of the pile, and them being there doesn't really help anyone but themselves. Its not to say such behavior is necessarily blameworthy: that's just human nature, but it certainly isn't anyone's responsibility to enjoy being looked down upon from such a great height.

The debate is not over whether the greedy fat cats are blameworthy or not, it is over whether to apply a uniform moral standard to people across different economic classes. If you defend the means by which the greedy fat cats rose to the top, it's not fair to act like the starving cats at the bottom got that way by their own choice: the fat cats are undoubtedly helping.

In short, if we're going to treat scientists with sneering, capitalist intent, we should be similarly aggressive with the financiers who are accumulating far more money while contributing far less.

Re:what's really going on?

[brit74]

And of course Obama, and any member of the ruling elite, wants more people in a technician role. Supply up; wages down. It's only a matter of time the middle class is eroded sufficiently that onshoring's time will come.

Heh, heh. Gee, that seems like an awfully politically biased statement to make. Assuming that you even could divine Obama's way of thinking (which seems to be a particular talent of right-wingers everywhere), I have to ask: Is Obama more a part of the "ruling elite" than any other president, or are you imaging that Republican Presidents came from and are always part of the middle class?

P.S. Here's a list of the net worth of every US president since Eisenhower:

Dwight David Eisenhower (1953-1961), $8 Million, Eisenhower had no inherited wealth. He served the majority of his career in the military and five years as president of Columbia. Ike owned a large farm near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1961-1963), Although he never inherited his father's fortune, the Kennedy family estate was worth nearly $1 billion dollars. Born into great wealth, Kennedy's wife was oil heiress. His Father was one of the wealthiest men in America, and was the first chairman of the SEC. Almost all of JFK's income and property came from trust shared with other family members.

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1963-1969), $98 Million, Johnson's father lost all of the family's money when LBJ was a boy. Over time, he accumulated 1,500 acres in Blanco County, Texas, which included his home, called the "Texas White House." He and his wife owned a radio and television station in Austin, TX, and had a variety of other moderate holdings, including livestock and private aircraft.

Richard Milhous Nixon (1969-1974), $15 Million, Nixon was born without any inheritance, and was a public servant for most of his life including a term as a Senator from California. "Tricky Dick" made significant sums from series of interviews with David Frost and book advances. He sold his New York townhouse to the Syrian ambassador to the U.S. and purchased a large home in Saddle River, NJ. At various times, Nixon also owned real estate in California and Florida.

Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. (1974-1977), $7 Million, Ford had no inheritance, and he spent virtually his entire adult life in public service. Over the course of his lifetime, he owned properties in Michigan, Rancho Mirage, and Beaver Creek, Colorado. After he left the White House in 1976, he made nearly $1 million a year from book advances and from serving on the boards of several prominent American companies.

James Earl Carter, (1977-1981), $7 Million, Carter was the son of a prominent Georgia businessman. He was a peanut farmer for almost two decades. Carter left office deeply in debt, but made substantial sums from writing 14 books. Part of a family partnership that owns 2,500 acres in Georgia.

Ronald Wilson Reagan, (1981-1989), $13 Million, Reagan had no inheritance, but his first wife, an actress, had her own money. He was a movie and television actor for over two decades. "The Gipper" owned several pieces of real estate over his lifetime, including 688-acre property near Santa Barbara, California. Reagan was highly paid for his autobiography and as a GE spokesman.

George Herbert Walker Bush (1989-1993), $23 Million, Bush was the son of Prescott Bush, a Connecticut Senator and successful businessman. Aided by his friends in the financial community, he made a number of successful investments. One of his major assets is his home and 100+ acre estate in Kennebunkport, Maine.

William Jefferson Clinton (1993- 2001), $38 Million, Clinton was born with no inheritance, and he made little significant money during 20 plus years of public service. After his time in White House, however, he made a substantial income as an author and public speaker. Clinton received large advance from autobiography. His wife, the secretary of state, has also made mo

Re:what's really going on?

[bberens]

More specifically they each sit on the board of directors of each others' companies. And it's the board that decides the CEO's pay.

Re:what's really going on?

[bberens]

The problem with many industries is the McDonald's effect. McDonald's average worker makes very close to minimum wage, but I don't see any particular reason why the top brass of McDonald's shouldn't make similar pay to the top brass at GE, Lockheed Martin, Google, etc. Lower wages weighing down the average wage of the company really makes the CEO multiplier look a lot higher.

Re:what's really going on?

[bberens]

More importantly, bringing down that CEO's income doesn't negatively impact their standard of living. The goods and services purchased at the high end like that are priced much more on the availability of money than they are about production costs. Corn, for example, is sold at a very close to the cost of production. Rolex watches are priced at what the market of wealthy people have to pay for those watches. If you tax the ultra high end income workers and/or decrease their wages (assuming you do it to all of them) then the prices of the goods and services they purchase will come down to meet the new level of available funds, you'll see price deflation on high end products. This is basic supply/demand.

Re:what's really going on?

[Sta7ic]

Awful lot of meat in your post. Can't say much during a lunch-break post, but I'll observe that there are a few billion dollars in the USG's ARRA grants, aimed at increasing T+D energy efficiency and improving renewable energy integration. There's a remarkable degree of value in 'making something'. I've made 'fantasy stock' decisions based on whether or not a given company had a tangible product, and I wish I had a bit of money to throw at those decisions at times. Such decisions directly chase the idea of strategic value in certain industries, mainly in energy and material security. See last quarter's rare earth metal 'panic', and speculate on what airlines are doing in the oil markets to cover their fuel supplies. See the massive US export of 'high technology', especially arms sales (tanks, jets, radar, and other military-sized toys ~ I love the DOD's research budgets). Heck, see farm subsidies. The curious problem with capitalism is that it relies on there being disparity between the value of someone's work and the price they're willing to be paid for it. Eventually all the money winds up in the hands of the few who are paying for the work of many others', with only an increased disparity from the top to the bottom. If the 'top' isn't spending that money, preferably in a fashion that does not net returns, Bad Things happen to capitalism.

Re:what's really going on?

[RightwingNutjob]

My unscientific sample of two Chinese grad students at an elite engineering school on the east coast, that will remain nameless to protect the guilty, is that they' come in three types.

Either mentally on vacation because their families have money and a PhD is just another box to check off, like sailing lessons and polo used to be for the Old Boys.

Or if they don't come from money, they work very hard, but since Chinese culture is not particularly meritocratic, they work very hard to make it look like they're making progress, not to actually make progress. Sometimes I think they can't even tell the difference.

There's a third type, that works hard and does good work, but in my unscientific sampling, Chinese people of that variety are usually Americans who got their work ethic growing up in the States.

My estimation is that the dumb work, the kind that gets replaced by robots over here, is where the Chinese will wipe the floor with us for years and decades to come, but the engineering work, the design work, the kind that requires clear thinking and intellectual honesty (as opposed to putting melamine in baby formula so that it fools the chemical tests for nutrition content), that kind of work can't come out of a culture where it's more important to pad quarterly earnings and impress the Party bosses. That's what's eating away at America, and they've got a ton of it over there, and it'll take maybe a hundred years for their culture to catch up to ours.

Re:what's really going on?

[gutnor]

That's what you get for pricing yourselves out of the market.

Actually that is quite right. Companies moves their production where it is the cheaper and sell where it makes them the most profit. You are free to do the same. Well, except that you cannot buy wherever you want - sorry. But that's ok you can still get a master in another field, learn a foreign culture and move over there ? A company can do that in 3 month, surely a single individual would not take that long. /sarcasm

Re:what's really going on?

[spun]

If the average worker in many industries is making a McDonald's level wage, then we have a very serious problem in our country.

Re:what's really going on?

[Hazel Bergeron]

Sorry, are you saying there's no-one available better than the Chinese guy you've described? (since we seem to be talking "better" in the sense of knowing the difference between AC and DC) Did you choose him or was politics involved?

Re:what's really going on?

[Homr Zodyssey]

Exactly. Working in software development for 12 years, I've worked on MANY projects that were off-shored at some point. Then they had to hire me to make it actually work.

Re:what's really going on?

[mjeffers]

It doesn't work that way because you are completely and totally unqualified to be CEO of Goldman Sachs. That, not your ruling class diatribe, is why you will not ever be considered for that 8 figure salary, despite your willingness to take a lower salary. It has nothing to do with the ruling class or workers of the world unit or any other such nonsense you espouse.

http://www.bizjournals.com/triad/news/2011/02/01/bank-of-america-ceo-brian-moynihan.html

Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, got a 9 million dollar bonus this year. BoA lost 3.2 billion dollars. I think a trained chimp could at least equal losing 3.2billion dollars and you only have to pay him bananas. Hell, I'd volunteer to run a company into the ground for a third of that.

When CEO pay REMOTELY tracks to CEO performance, you can start claiming that any random person is unqualified to be a CEO. In todays world, CEOs and other upper management positions are just welfare for rich idiots. They rely more on having gone to the right prep school and summered in the right part of Martha's Vineyard than any real skill.

Re:what's really going on?

[Homr Zodyssey]

No, it was because his mind-control ray didn't affect you.

Re:what's really going on?

[Missing.Matter]

That advice is great if all you're motivated by is a paycheck. Each of those professions seems awfully boring to me, and I can't imagine spending over 10 years worth of advanced education for a career that might just potentially pay better. In the end, I'd rather do something I love than something I hate every day, even if my car is better.

Re:what's really going on?

[SETIGuy]

I'll probably get shit on for this, but if the average science grad is anything like the average CS grad

Well the average "science grad" isn't a scientist. A scientist is what they, or a CD grad becomes when they get a Ph.D.

And now I'll get shit from the "I'm smart and I don't have a Ph.D. and people with Ph.D.s are dumb" crowd.

Re:what's really going on?

[Phoobarnvaz]

It doesn't work that way because you are completely and totally unqualified to be CEO of Goldman Sachs. Believe it or not Slashdot, the guys at the top are usually there for very good reasons. They are not stupid, they are not idiots, and most of them are pretty damn good at what they do.

You're right. Most of the people who do these type of jobs have no morals or ethics...just a drive to screw anything and everything they have to to keep themselves in power and the paychecks they never earned from disappearing.

Myself and many others...I have morals/ethics and care for our fellow man. We will never be rich...but makes it much easier to sleep at night and shave in the morning by being able to look yourself in the mirror.

Re:what's really going on?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Could be worse - look up feynman's rant on the state of physics education in Brazil. Basically, at the time, nobody was learning physics, just memorizing facts

Re:what's really going on?

[timeOday]

"If you want great hours and great money, become a dentist."

What's up with that? Why isn't the market for dentists more saturated?

Re:what's really going on?

[danlip]

You can't move where ever you want because of immigration restrictions. This is why the free market rational behind outsourcing is bogus. Remove all immigration restrictions and then you have a truly free market. But I don't think many Americans would like the result - lots of people would move to America and other developed nations until pay more or less equalized all over the world (at a much lower rate). As long as there are immigration restrictions there needs to be restrictions on outsourcing.

Re:what's really going on?

[nwf]

And these days, that Chinese or Indian scientists will probably be of higher calibre than the American.

You obviously don't work in the sciences.

While not quite the same, it's fun to read discussion boards for various open-source technologies. You'll see tons of people with -looking names posting questions that reveal they know absolutely nothing about software development. They have a passing familiarity with .NET, and that's it.

I've also worked with companies who have out sourced their software development and it's downright hilarious the problems they encounter because they are trying to save money. They pay someone for a week to do what any half-competent programmer I know would do in 1/2 a day. That's if they actually do the work actually desired, which is even often not the case.

Managers think they are saving money, because they think all developers and scientists are the same. But, that type of cost can't really be factored into their spreadsheet, so they still think they are better off. What's really going to happen is these overseas outsourcing companies will improve their technical skills and then realize, "hey, we don't need clueless overseas management. We can do the entire thing ourselves." And so those domestic service-oriented companies shrink and the foreign service-oriented companies set up shop in the US. Just like making cars.

Cloud-based systems, in particular, like CRM, lead-management, accounting, and likely office software, will be produced overseas and sold here by a company with a small office wherever the taxes are cheapest.

Re:what's really going on?

[interkin3tic]

Is it really that we have too many scientists, or just that we have too many mediocre science grads who don't realise that the quality of their degree comes nowhere close to matching that expected of the science graduate even two or three decades ago?

Sounds to me like the problem is the "mediocre," not the quality or numbers of degrees. If a student is bad at being a scientist, he should not be a scientist. He should instead be a doctor.

Re:what's really going on?

[Hazel Bergeron]

Get off your partisan hobby horse and re-read what I said:

And of course Obama, and any member of the ruling elite,

But if you feel it appropriate to ignore where Obama is now and who he answers to, and it makes you feel better to tell the world that Obama is the grandson of a lonely goatherd, knock yourself out...!

Re:what's really going on?

[interkin3tic]

It isn't just that the science grads aren't good enough, its that the science itself it harder than it's ever been before. All the low hanging fruit that could be figured out by an individual or small team as already been done.

That's definitely not universally true if it's even true for any one field. Plenty of new tools are becoming available, opening up new trees with low hanging fruit to extend the metaphor. Genomic sequencing for example is fairly new. Sit down with a newly-sequenced genome or two and a computer, you can easily get low-hanging fruit. New microscopy techniques mean we can observe processes we couldn't before. Get access to a new super-resolution microscope, or start looking at cellular processes in time lapse, you will discover things not previously observed.

The smarter way to go about doing it of course is to look at what questions haven't been answered already and then look for new techniques to answer them. Maybe some fields like physics are devoid of such opportunities, but you can't get anywhere on, say, epigenetics without stumbling over hypotheses that have yet to be investigated.

Re:what's really going on?

[deadweight]

I guess that explains the booming economy from 2008 to now then.

Re:what's really going on?

[demonlapin]

The licensure process for foreign graduates is so arduous as to be nearly equivalent to starting over again as an incoming dental student in the US. By comparison, in medicine, foreign grads are at no particular legal disadvantage vis-a-vis American grads (although groups have a strong preference for hiring American med school graduates).

Plus, there are a lot of people with really disgusting teeth.

Re:what's really going on?

[demonlapin]

Well, if you'd hate it, then it's definitely not for you. And if you truly don't care about long hours, low pay, and poor job security, because you love it so much, go for it.

Re:what's really going on?

[robot256]

The only reason the value of each member is less is because the value of the whole remains the same. Shouldn't society be assigning *more* value to discoveries if they take more effort to produce? The trouble is that the impact on society is not guaranteed to be larger even if it takes more people to produce it.

Re:what's really going on?

[Missing.Matter]

For a grad student:

• long hours: check. Probably 12 hours a day, 7 days a week during conference season.
• low pay: Per hour I'm making about $5
• poor job security: a grant falls through and I'm on the streets

do I love it? Playing with robots all day? Absolutely!

Re:what's really going on?

[scot4875]

Now please return to your normally schedule mental masturbation about greedy fat cat overlord managers and their ilk.

Yeah, we all know that the *real* greedy fat cats are those union guys. Can't trust those leeches.

--Jeremy

Re:what's really going on?

[Eli Gottlieb]

I got into several top-of-the-line graduate schools for CS. I decided to leave academy for a well-paid industrial job. When they reform the scientific career path so that I can make enough of a living to raise a family with half-decent job security without moving every 3-4 years, then I'll go back.

Re:what's really going on?

[roman_mir]

The tiny portion of Americans who control the country have made their choice. The rest of us get to suffer the consequences.

- in a democracy (however it's implemented) the mob rules.

The mob has ruled that it wants bread and circuses and it wants somebody else to pay for all that, thus in USA and other Western nations the taxes are 'progressive', there are all these 'safety nets' and somebody else is paying for all of that.

The reason there is huge inflation (money printing) is because those, who are in minority, but who were forced to pay for all of this with very high taxes used an ingenious jiu-jitsu move against those, who are basically robbing them through the power of the majority vote. The 'rich' got into the government (since that's the force that is used against them) and then they used that force to do the opposite in by magnifying the effect of what it was doing in the first place - getting the gov't to grow much further and much faster, and getting ahead of itself and getting away from any sane fiscal policy and getting into a position where debt and printing was the only way to fund it.

Inflation is the counter-balance to the imbalance that is caused by the majority (mob) rule - inflation is taxes upon all, who work 9-5, upon all who have assets denominated in those fiat currencies.

Inflation devalues the currency in which the taxes are paid, and that's the goal - to devalue the currency, because those, who were forced to pay for the majority got sick of it (understandably) and rightfully so as well.

By inflating the money supply, the taxes are paid in devalued money and as long as the real wealth can be transferred around to more productive assets (commodities, foreign businesses, agricultural land), those with more resources can basically reduce the burden placed upon them by this so called 'social obligation' society - bread and circuses culture, welfare state, where those who work must subsidize those who do not.

There is nothing surprising about this, it's all part of the circle of life.

Re:what's really going on?

[memyselfandeye]

Sorry, are you saying there's no-one available better than the Chinese guy you've described? (since we seem to be talking "better" in the sense of knowing the difference between AC and DC) Did you choose him or was politics involved?

It's not that no one else was available. The truth is, only Chinese are readily available. I didn't choose him, but I did have imput during the interview. I really like the guy. He's very observant, incredibly mature academically, and polite. There was definitely no politics involved. My list of CVs consisted of Chinese, and Asians in general, with a smattering of Indians and Middle Easterners. There was one application from a Caucasian sounding name, you can never tell, but we never heard back about an interview.

It's a crappy job if you only want money. Experimentation in a materials surface laboratory is tedious at best. My real point was that no education is complete by virtue of graduating. In the West, students are sorely lacking in theoretical skills. In the East, their universities do not seem to be doing a good job in the practical skills area, but this is just from my own one off observation.

Re:what's really going on?

[memyselfandeye]

There is probably some truth to this. I'm not a professor, I just work at a University. The only students I see are the graduate students, and occasional undergrads, who actually show up to do their lab work. So that's my 2.5 cents.

My son complained about cheaters in his CS department a lot. In my own experience, I've had plenty of papers borrow ideas of myself and colleagues without approbation from all over the globe. 2.5 cents.

P.S It's a lot easier to get caught than it is to cheat with any kind of chance of success. These guys will not go far in life, but I wouldn't hold it against a population as a whole. One of the best technicians I've ever had was an Iraqi who accepted the position of, quite literally, 'test tube cleaner.' He loved the job, learned how to do the basics and worked his way up. Great guy who now works at Lawrence Liver-more doing incredible research for DOE secret squirrel type stuff.

Re:what's really going on?

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe it or not Slashdot, the guys at the top are usually there for very good reasons.

Yes, normally at least three excellent reasons: Daddy, Alma Mater, and the right golf buddies.

They are not stupid, they are not idiots, and most of them are pretty damn good at what they do.

Indeed, they are the best in the world at what they do, no doubt about it. It's a shame that what they do is seek short-term profits by digging a big pit under American industry, then, when it starts to crumble, lobby for huge taxpayer-funded bailouts to shore it up for long enough for them to strap on their golden parachutes. Maybe companies should try finding people who are actually going to have a go at running sustainable companies in pursuit of stable long-term growth for once.

But, hey, if you feel happier believing that the people at the top are better than you, by all means go on believing that. I believe many medieval peasants found it similarly comforting to believe that an omnipotent deity had personally picked the noblemen to feast while they starved.

Re:what's really going on?

[im3w1l]

Your points are irrelevant and your anti-intellectualism unappealing

Re:what's really going on?

[definate]

I would gladly do the job of the CEO of Goldman Sachs for one hundredth of his (8-figure) pay.

I don't trust that you could do that job. Why would the directors and shareholders trust that "mrnobo1024" would do that job? He obviously isn't able to get other jobs of a similar calibre, he'll he'd do it for 1% of what the other people applying for that job would. These other candidates that require more money, come from similar backgrounds and already earn this amount, so to attract them, we must pay more.

Yes, clearly it's all our fault that a Chinese or Indian salary won't even pay the rent here.

To use your same sarcastic tone... No, clearly it's the Chinese and Indians fault for doing the work you could do, for less than your rent costs.

It's at this point that you either introduce some argument about quality/etc, which is obviously false, as the quality is "good enough" else we wouldn't be arguing. Then you say something like "this sort of thing should be regulated", the consequences of which would be to take food from these desperate countries, just so that you can live your comparatively lavish lifestyle.

Do you seriously believe that in America, a worker gets to set the price of all the things he needs to live?

I see you're not used to dealing with formal systems. The relationship is not one such that "a worker" gets to set the price of "all" the things he "needs to live", but more so that the "workers" (of a certain class) get to set the price of their labour. No one said "Oh, you're a worker in the auto-industry? Then you may set the price which I sell milk for". That would be fucking stupid.

The tiny portion of Americans who control the country have made their choice.

You actually think that someone controls the country? The government/companies/etc can hardly control themselves, as controlling a giant amorphous group of people is fucking hard, let alone in the context of them somehow affecting a market on this scale. If you believe an entity could do this, then you're fucking deluded, even communists with essentially unlimited control, couldn't achieve this.

So, if you can't negotiate the salary that you would like, then you better retrain, and find a job which attracts that salary, or you better be partially compensated via other benefits such as "doing a job you love".

Re:what's really going on?

[The End Of Days]

Yeah protectionism has worked so well in the past. Let's do it again!

Re:what's really going on?

[Weezul]

Any cheating you witness inside the U.S. and E.U. is likely endemic of the whole discipline. There are specific political factors massively encouraging cheating and crap publication in some other countries however. In particular, there is a very mindless "paper counting" mentality in China, even ignoring impact factor.

China could greatly reduce this problem by counting eigenfactor instead, but that'd make the central government look bad, as well as penalizing their professors who've been playing their system and/or got their job via family connections. Don't hold your breath!

Re:what's really going on?

[ATMAvatar]

that kind of work can't come out of a culture where it's more important to pad quarterly earnings and impress the Party bosses

Clarification - which country are you talking about here?

Re:what's really going on?

[blueg3]

So, you're mixing "crap publication" and "cheating". I have limited experience with crap publication -- that is, I see people submitting terrible papers, but I don't know why.

As far as cheating goes, I only have experience with my school. In physics, people didn't really cheat. It was a hard program, and if you cheated, you were likely to fail miserably anyway, so there was no motivation to cheat. In engineering disciplines, there was a ton of cheating, and it was to some extend endemic to the discipline. Even professors thought it was reasonable to cheat if it meant that you succeeded (as long as you weren't cheating in *their* class, of course). However, American students were for the most part unwilling to cheat, whereas Indian students thought that it was an acceptable path to success.

Re:what's really going on?

[Stuntmonkey]

Believe it or not Slashdot, the guys at the top are usually there for very good reasons. They are not stupid, they are not idiots, and most of them are pretty damn good at what they do.

I've worked directly with a lot of CEOs and other senior leaders at companies. My observation is that there is always a baseline of high personal drive and ambition, and usually a good amount of charisma and intelligence as well. The people who get to the top get there for a reason, and it isn't usually prep school or family connections. Many CEOs come from typical middle-class backgrounds.

That said, at the senior-most level it's hard in practice to determine just who is "pretty damn good at what they do". At a large company it can take five or more years to figure out whether a given strategy was brilliant or misguided. Contrast that with a line factory worker, whose contribution is easy to measure. Because it's so hard to measure the performance of a C-level leader, there gets to be this self-perpetuating aspect to the people in those roles: Once you attain that role (somehow), then wherever you go in the future will also be a C-level role. And if you're a corporate board looking to hire at that level, you go with someone that has prior experience because you don't really know how to measure them anyway, and you're pretty risk averse. In effect the pool of candidates is artificially restricted because of a lack of good information. Ironically C-level people end up making more money precisely because it is so difficult to measure how well they perform.

In net, I'd guess at least one person out of 100,000 has what takes to be a credible CEO of Goldman Sachs, if they were given the chance. Of course we'll never know.

Re:what's really going on?

[Truth is life]

While I generally agree with you, as a (very) interested semi-layman myself I would disagree with your assertion that high energy/particle physics is in the top three most economically important areas of science--solid state physics, perhaps (it is an amazingly broad field, after all).

Re:what's really going on?

[joocemann]

I urge you to watch the presentation by Elizabeth Warren on youtube about the death of the middle class.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A

Outsourcing/Insourcing isn't the only culprit, but by the end of this 57 minute demonstration you should more clearly understand how and why wages for skilled employees have halted since the mid 70s, and thus becoming extremely devalued in the face of inflation.

Our parents made way more in respect to what we make now; and while their day to day goods costed more, at least they could afford to provide for a family of four with one trade or college education related job.

Protecting our human resources is necessary. We can't all move to India, can we? (Many have speculated that the recent sitcom series 'outsourced' is actually a social-political push to make light and common what is actually a serious issue that is rapidly destroying the necessary foundation to keep us on our feet).

Re:what's really going on?

[bzipitidoo]

This article raises difficult questions. Is the US anti-science? More anti-science than other nations? Is a career in science lousy?

On the individual level, the US is not exactly anti-science. Most citizens do respect science, openly and freely. But there is a very noisy minority who are noisy because they are in the minority, and they know it. There are the religious crazies of course. There are jealous trolls everywhere who will hate you just for having a PhD. They try to set traps for you, try to cut you down to their level. They always have stories about PhDs who were stupid. A bad position is one that is subordinate to such a person. And yet they do respect science, or at the least see that most others do, as they make clear in the very act of scorning it. They wouldn't bother sneering about "academics" and "ivory towers" otherwise. There are the distrustful, micromanaging sorts who drive themselves and "their" scientists crazy trying to figure out whether they are doing honest work, or not, trying to treat scientific endeavor as if it is an assembly line, trying to measure productivity. There are incompetents who managed to cheat their way to an advanced degree, and cutthroat scramblers for what seems to be a scarce resource, jobs. They will stab the real scientists at every opportunity, usually by stealing their work. There are never more than a few of them, or the places they infest would quickly collapse. But why should some people strive so hard to get a degree that they even stoop to cheating? Like the trolls, they must believe in science at some level.

On the national level, these are no longer the glory days of sending man to the Moon, of Cold War competition to prove who's the best. So science has been in a long slide of declining resources. Complicating this however is that America is also in relative decline. One of our political parties, the Republican, has swung dangerously close to denying that science has value. Yet they themselves do not really believe that, not yet, as they show when they strive to manipulate our scientific research, rather than destroy it. However, too much of their brand of "science" will destroy it. They've confused the public on some very important matters.

We have a lot of problems to solve, plenty of challenges to engage our ingenuity. We need science. Need it badly. In a way, we should be grateful. AGW is perhaps the most urgent problem. I would prefer a more uplifting and less dire problem, like going to Mars. Who wouldn't? However, the various stresses we are mercilessly placing on the environment, such as AGW, pollution, ocean acidification and overfishing, deforestation and loss of biodiversity, are what we must face. At least we're not looking at World War. But the Republicans, rather than rising to these challenges, are afraid, and greedy, and in denial. Cowards. Fools. We are closing in on a world where everyone could be free, really free. Imagine if you didn't need to buy electricity from a power company, or gas from an oil company, or even food, because you could produce all you needed yourself, with inexpensive consumer appliances. What if you didn't have to have a job? Technological paradise! (I dislike that "singularity" term.) The Earth receives immense amounts of free energy from the Sun. There's also a good deal of heat within the planet, even after 4.5 billion years. We just aren't very good at harnessing it. But we could be. Or we could blow it, and watch our civilization crumble as the ice sheets melt and flood our coasts and cause crop failures and massive famines and millions of refugees on the march, and ultimately war and the use of nuclear weapons, which just might kill us all off. If we're lucky, a few of us will survive, and we will surely get a little smarter. If not, we will be an object lesson to whatever intelligent species arises after us, if any. These are the 2 extremes that could be.

Re:what's really going on?

[other-different-nick]

doesn't matter how mediocre they are, why get 1 mediocre scientist in America thats going to bitch and whine about pay, when you can get 5 mediocre scientist in India who will suck your ass for cheaper all together

I don't think it works that way: the top Indian scientists are already here. Can you name any Indian university that's in the same league as MIT, Stanford, and CMU? Do you know of any Wall Street firm that only hires native born quants? Scientists know that they are all in the same boat globally, because they all end up at the same conferences. What's holding back you, Osgeld, from rooting for your peers?

Re:what's really going on?

[synthespian]

Scientists are badly paid everywhere.
My dad's a scientist and he tells me colleagues of his, in Germany, where pretty pissed off because they didn't make much more money than the skilled technician, but the responsibilities of a scientist...well, no comparison.

BTW, believe it or not, my mother (also a scientist) did her master's with a Nobel laureate in her field. She's a doctor and she always made a lot less money than, say, her neurologist best friend, who didn't have a research career. I've never seen anybody work as hard as she did...I mean really...Countless weekends at the lab. Many, many week days of coming home very, very late. For years, she would put out very long hours (in fact, my dad worked alongside her with the same intensity too). This compiled with a high dose of stress due to the pressure to publish or perish, while getting nagged by the bureaucrats that distributed the grants.

Today, she absolutely hates the academic institution. She had breast cancer and retired (she's doing very well) and it's like she went on vacation.

The fact of the matter is that scientists are treated as a bunch of stupid morons by the political establishment, because they will work for little money just out of love for science. But this will inevitably backfire. For instance, you don't see many doctors going into a research-only career. IMHO, that bad. Physics departments have ever dwindling numbers (should we say asymptotic?) of graduates...

Research supported by public money is research that filters back to society, unhindered by the slew of stupid patents for every insignificant little thing such as we see in the private sector. It is the type of research that private enterprises cannot and will not pursue...investigating phenomenons that as of now have no practical application, but that in the future may become a part of our daily lives. There are many examples, such as lasers, retroviridae, number theory, etc. Society needs basic research.

Re:what's really going on?

[synthespian]

There's a book called "My Life as a Quant" which is an autobiography by a physicist that ends up working for Wall Street (doing "quantitative modelling", hence the term). He tell of the hardships of the academic career, the never ending supply of nigh-insuperable walls he always had to climb, only to lay flat on his face, even without decent work/pay opportunities.

Turns out he made ton of money on Wall Street. It's no wonder so many turn to finance.Pretty interesting read.

http://www.ederman.com/new/index.html

About what you wrote: I agree 100% with you.

Re:what's really going on?

[detlefvonberg]

It isn't just that the science grads aren't good enough, its that the science itself it harder than it's ever been before. All the low hanging fruit that could be figured out by an individual or small team as already been done.

I'm guessing you aren't a scientist? What you've said there is total bullshit. Absolutely inaccurate. There is tons of "low-hanging fruit" being plucked by scientists, young and old (and by "low-hanging fruit," I'm guessing you mean "basic science that has been crying out to be completed for decades.") I work with several such postdocs. They're doing great work, and they're earning barely enough money to make ends meet. One young mathematician I know, who has just developed an exceedingly promising tool for understanding diabetes, is seriously considering leaving science to start a bakery. She's tired of the low pay, the antisocial "colleagues," the inane institutional politics, and all the other bullshit. Can't really blame her, but her departure would be everyone's loss. I assure you that she and many young scientists like her are "good enough" to do the work we all need done. They're just tired of seeing science as a necessarily sacrificial job.

Re:what's really going on?

[Osgeld]

no one is talking about TOP men, were talking about mediocre ones

and I am not a scientist

Re:what's really going on?

[wwphx]

My wife is an astronomer, two major telescopes at her facility. On her telescope, 100% of the staff is "American". The other telescope, about 50%: three Russians and a Chinese or two. I'm not discussing employee quality as I don't know the other telescope, but they seem to be quite competent based on my interactions with them.

I did not read TFA, but I think they probably over-generalize. Astronomy is a pretty stable field as I see it, granted, I don't work there. There's a mild amount of turnover, the pay is pretty good, and the benefits seem acceptable considering it isn't possible to put in 40 hours a week running a telescope. The problem in astronomy is the number of job openings, people frequently tend to stay in one place for quite a while, which makes upward mobility at one facility sometimes difficult.

Re:what's really going on?

[roman_mir]

. Prinitng money does not equal inflation.

- by definition inflation is expansion of monetary supply.

Rising prices are only a symptom of expansion of monetary supply. Inflation is created by counterfeit fiat - government counterfeits the money by printing it without having any backing behind it.

Money can and is printed while prices fall

- yes, this only means that the printing is not fast enough to offset the deflation, which is the preferable state of economic affairs for those, who are not in debt (thus not for governments, but instead for savers) and for consumers, who enjoy lower prices and higher standard of living by having more purchasing power.

This is what USA had in 19 century and what China will have this decade, as they let their currency appreciate and finally can start consuming their own products and stop subsidizing the West.

The rich benefit from society and must support it

- society benefits from the rich much more than they benefit from it.

The 'rich' are a minority, so when they create jobs that employ most of people, they benefit the society. When they organize capital and tools and land and labor to create products that the society needs, they benefit the society.

Any person who creates jobs and products by organizing capital and labor is the real producer and benefits the society much more than anybody who simply ends up working 9-5.

Saying they 'must support it' is ridiculous on the face of it. It's exactly where China finds itself today - giving USA money AND giving it products and getting nothing back but worthless IOUs they can't get rid of without crashing the US bond and dollar.

Must they support US and give it everything (products/money) just because they are the producers and they became rich off of that? Hmmmm. I think very soon they will realize they absolutely do not have to.

It is robbery when the rich do not pay taxes.

- it is robbery when somebody, who benefits society a thousand or maybe a million times more than any other person is forced to pay income taxes.

The kind of societies were the rich don't pay taxes and there is no government do exist on earth, and nobody in his right mind wants to live there.

- there are plenty of places where there are governments and yet the people are not forced to give up their income. Welcome to the real world of competing communities. Lucerne and Hong Kong and Singapore are not really such terrible places to live in. Sure, they have some taxes, but in Lucerne for example you can negotiate to pay 100K a year and then nobody cares what you make at all.

The american rich, with a few notable exceptions, are socipathic egoists who will

- who create jobs and bring products to the market that the rest of 'society' wants and needs? :) You make me cringe.

by lobotomizing government, bring your whole society down.

- I don't live in USA, it's not a free market society, which I personally prefer. It's a centrally planned economy, which is dying. So are most European economies as well. They are dying precisely because they are socialist welfare states where people believe they can live and produce nothing and must be supported by those who do.

This is coming to an abrupt end. If one good thing is to come out of this coming destruction is that the people will be forced to compete and produce again and socialist ideas will be finally shown for what they are - destructive to economy and society.

It will dawn them at some point that being rich in a broken country is less fun than it seems.

- oh, it's really not that bad. In fact during such times most money can be made by providing goods and services for new type of money - real money.

Anyway, good night.

Re:what's really going on?

[The End Of Days]

Simple, stupid question: why do you deserve a comfortable middle class existence more than any given Indian?

Re:what's really going on?

[joocemann]

Because the utopian balance of resource and interdependence that your 'stupid question' assumes DOES NOT YET EXIST.

Reality is here right now. Quit dreaming.

Didn't you ever learn that you're supposed to reach for your dreams, not pretend they are real? Yes. I want whole world normalization and balance. But it isn't here yet and reality keeps pecking at our lives. Protect me not, support me with welfare - this is reality.

Re:what's really going on?

[roman_mir]

blah blah blah says some AC.

Re:what's really going on?

[The End Of Days]

I didn't say anything about balance - I just don't see why I should care if your or some Indian dude or some Chinese dude gets my dollars. You aren't any more important to me than they are.

Thanks for reading so much into my question, it's very enlightening re: your thought process.

Re:what's really going on?

[joocemann]

Apparently you missed the last line and the point of my whole argument -- that being that because the utopian existence that would be required for you to not actually face 'reasons' doesn't exist. The reality being that if you don't make efforts to protect your own countrymen you will be faced with consequence of some sort -- consequence that you may be ignorant to, but consequence nonetheless. And from there, the difference is the choice between that consequence or not. Like I said, protect me (your fellow citizens) or support me with your taxes. I guess you're not really thinking into it very much...

Because we're passionate about it

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why.

Re:Because we're passionate about it

[im_thatoneguy]

I'm confused. I've been told that environmental scientists do it for money not because they care about the science! Now I'm hearing they don't make much of that. My world view is crumbling!

Re:Because we're passionate about it

[Belial6]

The discussion is about scientists. Environmental "scientists" being a different thing, much like a phrenology "scientist".

Dont forget....

[Lumpy]

long hours, potentially hazardous working conditions (get splashed with 1 mol sulfuric acid.), and heavy work loads.

Yeah, there is a reason I gave up my career and degree in chemistry for IT.

Re:Dont forget....

[Black Parrot]

long hours, potentially hazardous working conditions (get splashed with 1 mol sulfuric acid.), and heavy work loads.

Yeah, there is a reason I gave up my career and degree in chemistry for IT.

Presumably that reason is the hazardous conditions; surely you still get the long hours and heavy work load. And no respect.

Re:Dont forget....

[macwhizkid]

long hours, potentially hazardous working conditions (get splashed with 1 mol sulfuric acid.), and heavy work loads.

Yeah, there is a reason I gave up my career and degree in chemistry for IT.

Long hours of menial tasks (how many times is it possible to jam the same printer anyway?), angry users (not my fault you didn't backup), and heavy work loads.

Yeah, there is a reason I gave up my career in IT and got a degree in physics.

Re:Dont forget....

[lucifuge31337]

Long hours of menial tasks (how many times is it possible to jam the same printer anyway?), angry users (not my fault you didn't backup), and heavy work loads.

That's not a career in IT. You described a job at a help desk.

Re:Dont forget....

[kikito]

Respect is not given, but earned. This is also true for IT people.

Re:Dont forget....

[Lumpy]

Yup...

Just like last week, The new sales manager learned new respect for us in IT. He learned that if you bitch to the CIO about your laptop, then you will get the crappiest replacement we can find. Enjoy that Panasonic Toughbook CF-28 we found in the basement "to throw away" pile. Oh and setting his ethernet ports to be forced 10baseT half duplex will make a nice dent.

Anyone know where I can get toner for a LaserJet-III? He is also whining that he does not have a private printer as well.....

Re:Dont forget....

[Black Parrot]

Respect is not given, but earned. This is also true for IT people.

The problem is, sometimes people earn it and still don't get it. This seems to be a frequent problem in IT.

Re:Dont forget....

[kikito]

The frequent problem in IT is that IT guys are not very good at understanding other people. And respect depend a lot on understanding other people. Like 90%.

It's not possible to "earn respect and still not get it". It's not even possible to "deserve" respect and still not get it. Respect is an image thing; a marketing thing, if you want. If you think you deserve respect from one person, but you don't get it, then it means that you misjudged what you needed to with that person, or you judged correctly but performed badly.

Saying that someone deserves respect but didn't get it is like saying that a salesman deserved a sale but didn't get it. Sales are not "deserved". They are done, or they are not.

Re:Dont forget....

[gbeagle2112]

Yeah, there is a reason I gave up my career in IT and got a degree in physics.

Why would you do this? Long hours of menial tasks, angry colleagues*, heavy work loads, the ever cracking whips of the slave drivers in the histogram mines... I pray you escape before they brand you with the mark of ownership. 'Overqualified' It shall be burned upon your brow. Forever marked! A token of your slavery, it shall close all other paths.

I hope against all hope that it is not particle physics you chose! Doublely damned are its acolytes! If this is so, then I as one of the fallen beseech you not to follow my path! Is but a small corner of supersymmetric parameter space worth your eternal soul?

*Note: politics devoid of social skills doesn't make it better it just makes it different.

Reward

[internerdj]

The reward of solving a problem through hard work and proper application of knowledge is the feeling at the end. That is why young American's still choose to do it. There are a number of hurdles to get addicted to that feeling, not the least of which is that I can probably make more money doing something else.

Re:Reward

[joocemann]

That is true for the people that stick with it.

Americans could be more greatly innovative and productive, but globalization and our lack of protective tarriffs..... well.... now outsourcing and insourcing has pretty much washed what 'value' is left of our educated and skilled workers in the US.

When rent is $100/month in India, its very easy for someone in India to take $5k a year pay. When it is $1500/month in the US, and there is now an overabundance of willing-to-work scientists due to pushing STEM education and not protecting with tax on imported labor, you end up with scientists who can barely afford to get by, and yet feel lucky to even have a job due to the scarcity.

It's a shame. Biotech truly *is* the next wave of technological revolution. But because the US does nothing to protect its human resources/assets, pandering to the corps that want more labor for cheap, only the few that come up with ideas in the US are getting paid, while so much is being carried out elsewhere (or devalued in-house so a B.S Biochemist makes as much as an ace hardware sales rep).

Re:Reward

[fermion]

Honestly this is my point of view. I do not think we necessarily need more scientist, or need to make science more attractive. What I do think is we need to do a better job ushering students with the skills and interests into opportunties that will let them explore those interests and desires. I do not think the problem is that everyone from MIT goes into finance. Frankly, I do not see MIT in the forefront of basic science. The problem is that every elementary, middle and hight school is not equipped to provide curious students with the ability to explore the world scientifically. We have people who read books and talk about the theoretical wonderfulness of the world,perhaps even get them to pass an AP test, but few who actually know who to scientifically explore the world.

Suppose every high school, no matter their socio-economic makeup, graduated a few students who were honestly prepared and wanted to engage in a PhD track science path of study. That would be great. But what we have is are school that educate kids, some of which would be excellent scientist, but are training them to other equally valuable professions. They do this not because they of what the kids interest are, but the assumption that kid can't afford to go to school for 8 years and needs a job where they can make good money now. As rich as the US is, and as much of the GDP has been due to tech, I think this is a poor reason to lose a potentially valuable scienctist.

Re:Reward

[Anonymous Coward]

Your statement reminds me of one time long ago I was walking back to the dorm with a friend after finishing a tiring programming project. I told him "You know, this is really why I like programming, it feels so good when you finish the project."

He looked at me funny and said "Thats why you also like banging your head against the wall, because it feels so good when you stop??".

Re:Reward

[chispito]

The reward of solving a problem...

This only holds up if you assume that "How do I pay for my kids' braces?" or "How can I make a living off the labor of others?" are not satisfying problems to solve.

Re:Reward

[internerdj]

A coworker of mine once said that education should be absolutely free but radically more difficult than it is. A country should pay to educate citizens to the level they are willing and capable of.

Re:Reward

[bugs2squash]

I want to see children graduating from grade school that have a basic understanding of how most modern things work. I'd trade a few PhDs for a greater general understanding of science in the general populace.

Re:Reward

[Have Brain Will Rent]

If you manage to get to be a tenured prof at a decent university then it is probably pretty satisfying... you have a *reasonable* income, job security and a tremendous amount of freedom compared to most occupations.

If you are a project scientist developing something amazing then it is probably pretty satisfying and maybe even financially rewarding.

For pretty much anything else it seems like science sucks as a career unless you have for some reason ended up with a passion for science, or the idea of science, that makes the drawbacks sufficiently unimportant.

What actually bothers me is the lack of regard society has for scientists. Our society tends to show high regard by bestowing large amounts of money - not always, but mostly. IMHO people dedicated to truth, the pursuit of knowledge and, usually, improving the human condition should be held in very high regard but seemingly aren't - says a lot about our society and the prevalent values.

Re:Reward

[SETIGuy]

If you manage to get to be a tenured prof at a decent university then it is probably pretty satisfying...

Which is why every tenure-track job at a decent University will get 300 or more applicants. Most people who graduate with a Ph.D. won't end up in that position.

If you are a project scientist developing something amazing...

There are even fewer of those than there are faculty positions, and that position is going to run out of money in 3 years. So you spend all of your time writing proposals while grad students and postdocs do the actual science.

For pretty much anything else it seems like science sucks as a career...

That's probably pretty accurate. Mainly it's endless disappointment when your proposals aren't funded while you compete for funds with all the people that didn't get tenure-track positions. Meanwhile the funding agencies don't want to pay for your salary even if you do win, because you should be a faculty member who only needs summer salary. They want to fund grad students who will graduate and compete with you for funding.

There are some major misunderstandings in congress, the white house, and the funding agencies. There is no shortage of scientists. In fact there's way to many of them. Open a few thousand jobs for physicists tomorrow, and I promise you'll be able to fill them in two weeks, so long as you don't expect every one to have spent at least 10 years as tenured faculty or to have won a nobel prize. Till then for a lot of them, it's $100 a classroom hour teaching at the community college and a day job as IT support for the library.

Re:Reward

[bberens]

It's an amazing feeling when one of my children (programs) gets released and successfully helps a business/user do whatever it is they wanted to do with that program. I can imagine civil engineers get the same feeling when someone drives across their bridge, and a similar situation for any of the engineering type fields.

Re:Reward

[interkin3tic]

Too true. It's curiosity, not money, that drives most scientists. The answer to "Is science a good career choice" depends on your own standards, which vary from individual to individual.

I'd have to be making in the millions to willingly give up science. When "CEO of a large corporation" becomes a career choice, maybe science becomes the lesser option.

Re:Reward

[tqk]

... and our lack of protective tarriffs ...

That's the second time I've seen this mentioned. Tariffs don't fix anything. They're hacks and bandaids attempting to fix the real problems. Look into that long and costly pissing match about softwood lumber Canada had with the US. Only the lawyers came out ahead.

Re:Reward

[joocemann]

Pffftt.... you clearly have no grasp of how international trade is carried out and how nationalized and localized economies play out. It isn't even something of my regular purview but at least I understand what tarriffs do so I'm not as boldly ignorant like you, denouncing them in the face of the obvious truth. Point to more anecdotal crap, lets see how much I believe it... lol.

Didn't you pay attention in economics? Don't you realize that US automobiles wouldn't exist at all if we didn't tax foreign cheap cars? Use your noggin, look around your room, and see where tarrifs actually worked.

"tariffs don't fix anything" sounds pretty dumb with about 30 seconds of looking around and thinking.

Re:Reward

[tqk]

... you clearly have no grasp of how international trade is carried out and how nationalized and localized economies play out.

Clearly? You're sure now?

Don't you realize that US automobiles wouldn't exist at all if we didn't tax foreign cheap cars?

Yeah, that's probably really helping against BMW, Mercedes, Porche, Audi, ... Oh wait.

Use your noggin, look around your room, and see where tarrifs actually worked.

JVC, Philips, Philips, LG, Ikea, and I'm pretty sure none of the computer equipment was manufactured here. Nope, you're wrong.

Here's what you miss: all tariffs do is make the things foreigners want to sell your consumers, which they'll willingly pay a premium for, more expensive. That's it. Oh, and it's a tax cash cow, and a subsidy to local producers. Like the Wall St. bailout.

Re:Reward

[hinesbrad]

I found that when I was in school there was an outright contempt towards students that applied themselves from others. There is a huge pressure to not succeed, but simply be 'nearly above average'.

Re:Reward

[joocemann]

BMW, Mercedes, etc, are sold to higher paying markets where the cost to the consumer is less important. I should remind you that a BMW in europe costs WAY less, about as much as a ford sedan. I lived in italy for two years and happily owned a BMW M5 at WAY less cost than you would ever own one in the US.

The point I was making is that Japanese (and now Chinese) autos would go for even cheaper and would have severely undercut our own vehicles in cost. The european cars would be of much more comparable cost than being higher..... And the end result would be a nearly complete adoption to purchasing foreign vehicles.

From what I can garner, you would be glad with that outcome. But your shortsighted approach to economics is in the point of sale. You are focused on the consumer savings at that moment. The actual cost comes in to play when hundreds of thousands of US automobile manufacturing employees are no longer employed. Not only do you now have LOTS of families that are out of work, but those that are skilled in that work are now flooding the other related markets with worker-supply. Since the related markets are likely not seeing a big increase in demand, that excess supply in skilled labor ends up devaluing the labor as a whole -- those that are currently employed are lucky to see raises because they can now be easily replaced by the unemployed auto workers that are now eager just to have an income.

The net result is that nations of low economic resource have an exploitative advantage over their people, or at least a relative advantage in cost of living (china vs india). And in both cases, their products are simply cheaper to produce. Their products are cheap to them, but should not be cheap to us. This drives the cost of goods up, but it retains our ECONOMY local. This means that when you buy shoes, your neighbor was part of the company, and then he buys the toaster you made.

Right now, thanks to outsourcing/insourcing and globalization, the US is rapidly sending its wealth OUTSIDE of the country. And even though our corporations are growing off the cheap labor and products, our PEOPLE are suffering from the net loss. The loss is visible in this data here.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2187rank.html

I'm still curious how the net export of our economy is not yet obvious to you. If you pay your neighbor to fix your PC, he has a job and pays taxes and buys your kids' lemonade. If you pay an Indian to fix it remotely, your money leaves and likely won't be coming back. Many industrialized/westernized nations use tariffs, and we do still to some degree --- the issue is that the degree to which we apply it is not appropriate to protect our people and economy as a whole. You can see that Germany and the Netherlands clearly have it balanced in their favor.

Thanks for playing.

Re:Reward

[internerdj]

I agree. Even at the level of a Bachelors degree at a University there is a culture of hatred to work. That is why this will never just be a problem of better funding for education.

Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[sdguero]

That is my main reason for sticking to Engineering.

Sales guys, stock brokers, marketing people... Those positions are not rewarding, and you have to leave your soul at the door. Science, Engineering, Construction, Mechanics are the jobs for me. Always will be. I couldn't live with myself knowing that my livelyhood came on the back of others, earned by shiesting a percentage out of something I didn't build because I shuffled some paperwork and talked on the phone. Those people live empty soulless lives. They cheat on their partners. And they drive like assholes on the freeway.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[smelch]

Jesus christ, finally I know what industry to direct my hate at for the series of douches driving 60 in the left lane, going the exact same speed as the guy they're right next to in the center lane. Now that I know where they work I can pay to have them forcibly entered. In the butt.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[no1nose]

That sums it up quite nicely. That paragraph nearly brought tears to my eyes. Too bad we are the backs, those soulless beings live off :-(

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[0123456]

I used to live in a commuter town outside London full of people who worked in finance in the City. I can totally confirm that they drive like asshats; either they're 'I'm super-important and must get somewhere and everyone else must get out of my way' or they're driving their Ferrari at 40mph in a 60 limit.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[DittoBox]

What kind of twisted, self-righteous bullshit is this? I've known plenty of underhanded, socially-maladjusted, smarter-than-thou, back-stabbing engineers in my short time here. Explain that.

If you're going to start throwing out anecdotal crap as evidence to justify your blind hate for people with other talents than yourself you might as well give up. I'd expect a man of science such as yourself to at least try harder.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[dkleinsc]

Another way of describing it: Sales guys, stock brokers, marketing people, managers, accountants, and a lot of other people are professional liars. They operate in an environment where people are constantly lying to them, and they in turn are constantly lying to others. When you're lying at least 40 hours a week, then lying to your friends, family, spouse, or children becomes a lot easier.

Engineers, scientists, etc by contrast are in an environment where attempts at lying will likely be caught very very quickly.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[tacokill]

....but they never, and I mean never generalize.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[bennomatic]

Me, I always speak in hyperbole. Always.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[Anonymous Coward]

i've worked in both industrial and academic biosciences for 10 years. i've found scientists to be just as back stabbing, nasty, soulless, and scheming as any marketing spiv or middle manager in both sectors. scientists become worse the higher up the ladder they go. In 7 years of industry I watched scientists associating themselves with the right meetings and buzz words to climb over their colleagues on the career ladder, hiding their work to retain their employability in an atmosphere of constant paranoia and distrust of your colleagues. Making up results to go in reports to get promoted at the expense of the company was a daily occurrence, not to mention employing friends as high paid consultants. Over the last 4 years in academia I've witnessed scientists falsifying results, getting fraudulent papers published through networks of contacts, making mistakes and blaming their staff, hiding financial irregularities in their funding budgets. The academics are even more socially maladjusted than their industry equivalent with very little social interaction in their lives. I'm looking to get out of science as soon as possible. The wages are poor, the quality of science is poor, and nearly everybody I work with has some serious mental abnormality. The career path is entirely random chance or getting on a fashionable project or washing up as a failure if you haven't got lab and 50 staff before you're 30. The culture of science needs to change dramatically if it hopes to continue in the west.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Those people live empty soulless lives. They cheat on their partners. And they drive like assholes on the freeway.

And are regarded as the finest men in the country. Never forget that.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[sdguero]

Socially maladjusted and smarter-than-thou is pretty standard in Engineering. Both of which are side effects of people who live with passion. In a dark world full of people trying to get at you, passionate people tend to become jaded and feel isolated. The smart ones tend to assume everyone else is stupid.

Backstabbing and underhanded happens rarely in Engineering, and not usually by Engineers. Rather, its the people that don't have the brains to hack it, and/or don't understand the feeling of reward that comes from building something. So they become defensive and resort to that kind of behavior. In my experience they usually end up as project managers (not to say their aren't some great PMs out there).

When I see a marketing team spend $5 million to launch an ad campaign that rips off Angry Birds, a pair of Sales guys hobnobbing about the $50 lobster ravioli they expensed last week, or billions of our taxes getting redirected into some bankers' bonuses, I know in my heart that I couldn't be in their shoes without feeling fucked up about it.

I'm not a man of science. Just a simple guy with a flicker of passion left in me. If I worked in one of those fields, I wouldn't have that anymore.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

I am sticking to computer science (learning sciences) for the same reason. Don't want that kind of life style and deal with those kind of people.

If I want to make $ I will maintain my own investment portfolio for that purpose.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[Blakey Rat]

Backstabbing and underhanded happens rarely in Engineering, and not usually by Engineers. Rather, its the people that don't have the brains to hack it, and/or don't understand the feeling of reward that comes from building something.

No true Scotsman!

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[MBC1977]

You know I was gonna leave this alone, but as I'm both a science guy and sales guy, I'll play the bad guy today.

First, thanks for assuming that sales and marketing guys are "soulless"; because all products can sell themselves without someone talking them up. I don't comment on the maniacal god-complexed wanna-be hackers and FOSS types who think that "information wants to be free" and that we should give up the crown jewels in the interest of making life better.

The soulless sales types are the ones who get people to notice your products and get them sold so you can continue to create more toys for your amusement. Clearly, if most techies didn't have such an arrogant attitude about their products - you know the ones who get butt hurt when asked a simple question about how to do something a non-technical person does not have a clue about - they might be able to sell a product or two, other than their insular circle... ON THEIR OWN.

Finally, I will say I find my sales job highly rewarding, both monetarily and for the services I bring to my customers. I also have a deep respect for those who create technologies that I am currently unable or unwilling to do at this time.

And yes I do admit to driving like an asshole sometimes. lol (but only late at night when no other cars are around me).

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[Lord Ender]

Those people live empty soulless lives.

They lead empty, soulless lives in gigantic mansions, luxury cars, and private jets, while surrounded by beautiful women.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[sdguero]

Yeah yeah. The article started it (all Scientists are underpaid) and I kept the theme going (all non-scientists/engineers are sell outs).

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[sdguero]

Much inspirational.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vHT6b7u1_Y&feature=related

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[Rakishi]

Oddly enough, wealth beyond the upper middle class level has not been found to be correlated with happiness.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[Bucc5062]

I agree with you which is why I've stayed with programmer to the point where now it may hurt me. How does one change a career with an established life at 50+? The US has snipped away at the safety of risk to the point where only the financial jobs have potential, and I cannot lose my heart.

i will say though that sales, marketing, even stocks are a necessary part of the engine. We build something, that is what we do well, but to get people to buy it, in numbers takes *good* marketing, *honest* sales and the distribution stocks to continue innovation. I emphasize good and honest because that is what lacks in today's world. It is easier to lie to an uneducated populous, it is easier to sale crap to unsuspecting people and it is becoming acceptable to look the other way when people cheat on the market. As a society we don;t enforce basic laws or immoral behavior anymore. The action of sales is not bad, it is the person behind it that flavors it with morality one way or another.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[sdguero]

It was a bit of a troll post dude.

The premise of the article is "scientists don't make any money" and my counter was "sales people don't have souls." I'm sure there are a few sales types out there who are passionate about their work (vs doing it for the money), just like there are a few scientists out there who make millions of dollars (vs doing it because they are passionate). You sales engineers walk a delicate tight rope. I don't think i could handle the disparity between what is sold and delivered while maintaining a straight face to a customer.

It really tugs at the more general question:
Is having more money than you need a bad thing?

My answer to that is no, as long as you understand that having more money means you need to manage your life more responsibly. Otherwise you end up like Charlie Sheen.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[19061969]

Although I don't agree with the darkness of your picture, I can certainly understand what you mean. I speak as an ex-research fellow who saw similar things and got primarily fed up with the lack of security and lack of money. So I went into industry as a freelance 'consultant' and while job security is still lacking, the pay is way better and my ideas get treated with more respect because the people I work with are mostly interested in creating the best product. I think a bit of my soul has died since then, but I'm providing for my family and they are a darn sight more important than my career. However, my soul died a lot more in a 5* university dept, trying to hack out a career. I'd give you mod points if I had any.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[Dripdry]

I'm sorry, but it shouldn't be the job you direct ire toward, it should be the people themselves and their work ethic. As a financial advisor and ex IT person, I found IT to be completely unrewarding. There was no meaningful interaction with people, I got no recognition, and the hours were awful!

Now, by working very diligently to inform my clients about their benefits, researching investments and applying strategies to help them make more money than if they'd hired me, and finally presenting it to people in a manner they will understand *follow through on* (something IT could stand to learn from), I have 1) Meaningful interaction with people, 2) occasional recognition and self-satisfaction in the short term, with long term results and recognition that i can get someone to/through retirement or their kids to college, and 3) Even longer hours. But I sort of like doing those longer hours, and I have the flexibility to tell my boss (mostly me) to shove off.

Yes, you have to talk to lots of people, and you do lose a little bit of your soul, but that happens in EVERY job out there and I dare anyone to show me otherwise.

In closing, blame charismatic lazy people (a lot of advisors) for screwing their clients out of dollars. There ARE those of us working to help everyone who will listen be educated and, one hopes, do business with us to have a better future and less worry.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[GodfatherofSoul]

They also bang super models and live in mansions. There are hordes of people willing to make the sacrifice, unfortunately.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[bware]

Wait, you mean I can be just as unhappy being rich as I am being middle class?

I'll take rich, please.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[i kan reed]

It's not "horseshit." There's philosophical possibility to what he's saying. The problem with his argument is that it's uncited and unproven, but not inherently unbelievable. The potentially biases that allow for this to be possible are trivial to note, as you have, but that doens't make the argument demonstrably wrong. I take issue with your debate style, and hope that you're willing to entertain the possibility of his statement being accurate, while discounting any certainty of it.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[Registered Coward v2]

That is my main reason for sticking to Engineering. Sales guys, stock brokers, marketing people... Those positions are not rewarding, and you have to leave your soul at the door. Science, Engineering, Construction, Mechanics are the jobs for me. Always will be. I couldn't live with myself knowing that my livelyhood came on the back of others, earned by shiesting a percentage out of something I didn't build because I shuffled some paperwork and talked on the phone. Those people live empty soulless lives. They cheat on their partners. And they drive like assholes on the freeway.

Couple points:

At some point, you need to sell the wonderful things you create - companies (at least for profit) don't exist to let engineers et al play with neat toys. No money, no mission.

The real soulless asshats are design engineers - who seem to think a really cool design is all that's needed; and aren't around when the crap breaks in the field and the real engineers - field engineers - get it running and keep the client happy. They should be forced to come to the field, with their ties and pocket protectors, so we can stick the tie into some rotating machinery and beat some sense into their tiny little brains. they only good thing is they don't have partners so maybe, just maybe, they won't reproduce.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[turkeyfish]

Thats because the guy has 50 slashdot accounts and uses them to mod himself up.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[HeckRuler]

Totally agree. And this little RSA animate thing is a really good explaination about why you're right.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[bberens]

The main target of most engineering jobs is to increase the efficiency of production. Maybe you make a robot that bolts parts together or a machine that bakes cookies in mass quantities... somewhere down the line you are making a living by putting other people out of work. In fact, the more people you put out of work, the more valuable your work is.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[sdguero]

Your argument is moot because increasing efficiency frees up resources to do other things and employ people in other industries. If the cost of a cookie goes down 50% less money will be wasted on inefficient cookies. Then those out of work bakers can make cupcakes that people will buy because they can now afford them thanks to more disposable income.

Decreasing efficiency to achieve higher employment levels is folly. You don't work for the federal government do you? It would explain a lot...

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[Lonewolf666]

Attepts at lying in science and engineering may not always be caught quickly, but they can be proven long after the fact and come back to bite you in the ass. Recent example:
The former German Secretary of Defense, Guttenberg. Someone took a closer look at his dissertation and found plenty of plagiarism.

In marketing and management, people often work with more subjective statements where they might be able to get away with claiming a "misunderstatement". I guess the exception among non-scientists are accountants, who have to make numbers match as well (and can be caught if they fudge them imperfectly). Like the guys behind the Enron scandal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal)

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[kikito]

"What kind of twisted, self-righteous bullshit is this? I've known plenty of underhanded, socially-maladjusted, smarter-than-thou, back-stabbing engineers in my short time here. Explain that."

They are all spies! They are sapping my teleporters now.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[Xaositecte]

Well yes, it's entirely possible to be a soulless engineer, but it's also possible to not be soulless.

The accusation is it's damn near impossible to be in Sales/Stocks/Marketing without selling your soul first.

Is there truth in this? Maybe, I don't know enough sales guys to make the call.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[next_ghost]

I don't comment on the maniacal god-complexed wanna-be hackers and FOSS types who think that "information wants to be free" and that we should give up the crown jewels in the interest of making life better.

Those FOSS types don't do it to make others' life better. They do it so that others polish their piece of dirty rock until it becomes a crown jewel and in the process make their own lives better. There are still many ways to make money off that, they're just less obvious than in the world of proprietary software.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[The End Of Days]

Well to be fair, that post is basically the equivalent to walking into a Baptist church on Easter and screaming "I LOVE JESUS!"

Not exactly a controversial position in front of this audience is what I'm saying.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[sjames]

I'm sure the OP was over-generalized, but you must admit, there is a growing noise floor of bullshit in the marketing half of tech. That's not to say all sales and marketing people are soulless liars. I have dealt with sales people who are merely "up beat" about their product (fair enough) rather than "irrationally exuberant" or "flat out lying". However, I think we're all well aware that "unlimited" rarely means "without an imposed limit" anymore (though that's how we're meant to interpret it when shopping), that rebates are deliberately nearly impossible to actually get from some companies, and we've all seen ad-slicks that try to claim credit for even the basic technology behind the product (as if every other competing product didn't have exactly the same features). It's to the point where no matter how honest you are, you must either get a bit "imaginitive" in your ad slicks or have zero sales in way too many markets.

I'm sure you must have the experience of losing out to a vendor that made a promise you know to be actually impossible to fulfill (and you're 99% sure they knew that too). The other end of that is the technical people saddled with the pig that won't fly because a less honest sales person pulled the wool over management's eyes yet again.

At a more fundamental level, an economy driven by a combination of desperation and talking each other into buying stuff constantly feels like it CAN'T be optimal, even if we don't know what would work better right now.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Sales Engineer :) It's the best. I get to see applications that blow my mind every day and stay technical. Case in point, I'm nerding out on Slashdot when I should be building my pipeline for activity this week :)

I think you can have a balance. Being an entrepreneur doesn't mean abandoning your scientist hat. The Scientist in me is my soul. It's what examines everything: not just emerging answers to mysteries or technological advances, but my relationships, my diet, my mood... That's my core. I'm thinking of Descartes', "Je pense, donc je suis." The Engineer in me wants to create and to build, to apply everything I know about this world that I have the Scientist in me to be thankful for to some value-added creation. The Salesman in me wants those daily strokes to my ego when a customer demonstrates that (s)he accepts me or my technology solution. There is so much soul in the way I approach my life. My job is highly rewarding. Could just be a good personality fit - I don't know. Maybe I've just mastered this art of lying to myself ;)

But you can see I'm not offended, because I've heard countless views on the sales profession. Bottom line for me is this: If you create something, and you believe in it, don't wait for people to "beat a path to your door." Yes that's a bit cliché but there's a reason that phrase sticks around.

Much love to all y'all.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[bberens]

That sounds good in theory but that labor we freed up generally moves onto jobs that require less knowledge and have lower wages. That's the retail, restaurant work type jobs. I'm all for improving efficiency, but let's not pretend that when we put middle class workers out of a job via efficiency gains that there's another middle-class job waiting for them.

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[sznupi]

...I emphasize good and honest because that is what lacks in today's world. It is easier to lie to an uneducated populous, it is easier to sale crap to unsuspecting people and it is becoming acceptable to look the other way when people cheat on the market. As a society we don;t enforce basic laws or immoral behavior anymore...

Spoiling an ok argument like that... What you describe (& with my emphasis) is the history and pretty much an innate characteristic of human civilization. Of humans. Of us. Demonstrably getting better over the centuries... though still far from optimal of course.

It will have a hard time getting there as long (also) as too many people are repeating to themselves such myths about ourselves and about our past. Not trying to jump over cognitive biases (check their list). Having generally quite poor grip on ourselves: the myth of "monolithic me" while split-brain patients appear almost unchanged, while we are generally closer to our peers than to ourselves at different life stages; only believing how decent memory we have, convincing ourselves about reliability of it, not remembering how little we remember (and how, when people get older, they tend to start believing myths about the greatness of their youth... not the least because it makes us feel better when faced with "frustrating" reality of how much better in fact it is "now", for most cases of "now" - this one gives tiresome political results); there's even one very localised brain trauma which results in people becoming completelly blind... without them realising it; popular harmful BS lies / myth of "we're so important, gods love us, more of us live now than have ever lived!" & ignoring 100+ billion dead homo sapiens sapiens (at least we will be similarly ignored very quickly, so there's some "balance"...)); even about how decent and freedom loving people we are (it's a bit sad how our deep need for Just World gets derailed so easily :/ )

I guess you might also envy the middle-class society from the times when you were born?

Re:Because hedge fund managers are asshats

[sznupi]

It's even more odd, it would seem (the best part of course: which side of the political spectrum more typically subscribes to this myth and its implications)

They don't.

[xanthines-R-yummy]

As a relatively young MD/PhD student I've noticed that there are relatively few Americans in any of the PhD programs at my university. My perspective is from the biomedical sciences, but still. Most are Chinese or Indian students and most of the American students are already planning for industry, consulting, or some other non-research job. I would also add that e) stressing about writing grants every few years and progress reports for those grants every year - is a deterrent for continuing a career in science.

Re:They don't.

[xtracto]

As a Comp. Sci. PhD I have a slightly different point of view.

I went out of my country (Mexico) to do my PhD with a scholarpship from my government. However, due to the lack of jobs in my own country, I chose to stay in Europe to do a Postdoc.

In Germany at least (in the Science circles I am moving now) there is quite a lot of money for research. In fact, in my institute there is more money than researchers (because generally people do not want to live in the city where the institute is).

However, I can see that the main problem in USA is the same as in Mexico; the government wants people to study science but does not want to impulse job creation for those scientists. In the case of Mexico (and other underdeveloped countries) we have the option of going to other countries, but in the case of the USA (mainly due to cultural limitations) people may not have that option.

The problem is how can the government *impulse* such job creation. The private sector will never offer a lot of research jobs (specially theoretical research), and as someone else said, they want useful, commercial results in a very small amount of time... because they do not know how science work.

The other option is for government funded research institutes. This is how Germany research assassinations work (Max Planck, Fraunhofer, Leibniz, UFZ, Helmholz, etc...) and to a lower degree how Mexico works (Cinvestav). But in a country (like the USA) where government "control" is seen as being a bad thing, I cannot imagine this approach being accepted.

Re:They don't.

[mochan_s]

My perspective is from the biomedical sciences, but still. Most are Chinese or Indian students and most of the American students are already planning for industry, consulting, or some other non-research job.

There are more graduate school positions available than American graduate students interested in them. Consequently, all American grad students flock to tier 1 universities while the lower tier universities get filled up with foreign students.

Re:They don't.

[Maximum Prophet]

I would also add that e) stressing about writing grants every few years and progress reports for those grants every year - is a deterrent for continuing a career in science.

Except for the computer scientist that writes a working grant generating AI. (as long as he only publishes the results of the AI, not the AI code itself)

Re:They don't.

[iluvcapra]

This is how Germany research assassinations work (Max Planck, Fraunhofer, Leibniz, UFZ, Helmholz, etc...) and to a lower degree how Mexico works (Cinvestav).

Typo of the day. I myself belong to several professional defenestrations and get my health care through a unabomber.

Re:They don't.

[PickyH3D]

I actually agree with everything you said, except the very end. I am a big believer in government "control" being a bad thing, however I also see the point of government as a way to invest in projects that people and corporations are unwilling to do. In fact, I think that is the most justifiable expense of the government: researching the state of the art and beyond.

Corporations will never get fusion working, unless through luck, due to cost. However, government(s) probably will. Space exploration would have never started without government intervention. Quantum communication? I am honestly not sure who is funding it, but I imagine that at least the early grants were from governments.

Anyway, I agree that you successfully described a real problem. I just disagree that that's necessarily the reason we have it. Our politicians just tend to have other priorities, such as being self-serving waste's of space.

Re:They don't.

[Dr. Spork]

I think that's pretty insightful, and it's great to get your perspective. You know, in the USA there once was a time when the government just made research jobs for scientists. Now that generally happens only if your research can kill people somehow. In medical research there is still a lot of private money, I hear. I think that US-Americans would be intimidated to go compete for research positions in Germany partly because Germans themselves educate a lot of scientists, but your "more money than jobs" comment made me wonder. BTW, I think you mean "institutions" instead of "assassinations" - but hey, that's a pretty good post for what must be your third language!

Re:They don't.

[xanthines-R-yummy]

Quit your (please learn the difference betwen your and you're) bitchin'. What type of school are you talking about? I've seen medical school stats and white males are in 3rd place behind Asians and white females in GPA and test scores. That probably holds true for most other types of schools, as well. And yet...white males are pretty much the major group at most medical schools, corporations, hospitals, etc. I am a white male and not a minority, BTW.

Re:They don't.

[Rakishi]

You've never been to a tier 1 university, have you? International students are possibly even more numerous at the top schools. Stanford and MIT graduate engineering programs both have over 40% international students.

Re:They don't.

[turkeyfish]

Cut the guy some slack. His native language is not English and it was an otherwise useful and important post.

The problem is NOT the "craziness" of people wanting to go into science. It is that we as a society seem to value 7 an 8 figure salaries for CEO's more than the steady but in the long run far more important and longer lasting POSITIVE contributions of thousands of scientists, who won't make much personally but give back to society far more than any CEO I have ever heard of.

Re:They don't.

[turkeyfish]

This is total BS. Most of these foreign students are paying full freight on their tuition, unlike most US students. They typically get in now because they are better motivated and often better prepared. Sure there are exceptions, but it is a mistake to generalize.

Re:They don't.

[turkeyfish]

Lots of self-proclaimed "super programmers out there". Indeed they are a dime a dozen, but I have yet to hear of a single one this good.

Re:They don't.

[hxnwix]

Our politicians just tend to have other priorities, such as being self-serving waste's of space.

Bollocks! Is it really so hard to pluralize? WASTES. WASTES OF SPACE.

Re:They don't.

[Missing.Matter]

I started a computer engineering in the fall. Literally (I counted) 90% of the incoming first years were foreign. The breakdown of the foreign students is 75% Chinese, 25% Indian.

Re:They don't.

[lahvak]

Our politicians just tend to have other priorities, such as being self-serving waste's of space.

Do you really think politicians in other countries are different?

Re:They don't.

[dbIII]

The main reason is the locals don't want to do it. Another quite significant reason is US undergraduate education is crap on a global scale but the US has graduate education that is among the best in the world. I suppose the undergraduate system has to have such low standards to get a decent pass rate from what a decaying high school system gives them. What do you do with an entire class of second year engineering students that can't extrapolate a point on a straight line? You can't fail the lot of them.

Re:They don't.

[dbIII]

If anywhere near the amount of money that is spent on the doubleplusgood "think tanks" was spent on real research institutes full of people that could actually think (and had a functional use of their native language) then the USA would be a much better place.

Re:They don't.

[xtracto]

Hahaha, no offense taken. Actually the work I was looking for was associations but somewhat managed to choose the wrong wrong while doing the spell-checking step.

Re:They don't.

[xtracto]

And I did it again... shit, let me get a coffee...!

Re:They don't.

[xtracto]

I actually agree with everything you said, except the very end. I am a big believer in government "control" being a bad thing, however I also see the point of government as a way to invest in projects that people and corporations are unwilling to do. In fact, I think that is the most justifiable expense of the government: researching the state of the art and beyond.

F*** yeah! Just look what the USA achieved with that... they went to the moon! Unfortunately (IMO) in their race to privatize everything, the USA has stopped doing research unless it yields results in the next 2 to 5 years. Nevertheless, in theory the best research places are still in the USA according to a lot of international people (MIT, CMU, Stanford, etc).

Re:They don't.

[mochan_s]

Compare that to >90% in the lower tier universities.

Re:They don't.

[Maximum Prophet]

Whoooosh... It's a joke son, a joke. Strong AI has always been about 5 years away.

Anyway, I used to work for an AI company. There was one customer that found a bug in our software, so we asked for the code that was giving them trouble. They wouldn't even give us a code fragment. Finally, they were able to write a different program that replicated the bug, and then we could fix it.
This Australian company would drill boreholes somewhere looking for diamonds. Each meter of core would have hundreds of measurements taken, but not every measurement was taken for every every sample. The AI would take all that data, and I presume some more from echo studies, and determine where to find the diamonds. It was successful enough that they kept it extremely secret.

My point is when most people discover the golden goose, they keep quiet about it. Remember, most millionaires are not the Donald Trumps of the world, but the guy next door driving a car that he paid less than $30,000 for. (old data, adjust for inflation)

Scientist here... hits VERY close to home

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a young scientist. All of Greenspun's point hit right on the mark. In particular, the comments about job security and not making enough money for a family. If you're likely and good enough to get a post at a tier 1 university, this isn't so much an issue but people are the top 1% in our fields. For the "ordinary scientist" who works in a lab or supports a larger group, these are major concerns. And as you get older they only become more of an issue.

Re:Scientist here... hits VERY close to home

[cvtan]

As a former EE professor who switched to industry I find it very hard to deal with a large number of people who are technically idiots and make tons of money. Why go into science when you can be rich playing basketball or being a rock star or a crook on Wall Street? As proof, I offer Snookie who is richer than all of us and knows nothing. Reality TV is the answer. Yeah, that's it!

Re:Managers make that decision

[TaoPhoenix]

Wait, did 10th grade call asking for the In Crowd back while sticking nails in the tires of Nerds?

Deja vu

[Anonymous Coward]

"The average _____ that I encounter expresses bitterness about (a) low pay, (b) not getting enough credit or references to his or her work, (c) not knowing where the next job is coming from, (d) not having enough money or job security to get married and/or have children"

Same could be said substituting "teacher", or many others.

Re:Deja vu

[vlm]

"The average _____ that I encounter expresses bitterness about (a) low pay, (b) not getting enough credit or references to his or her work, (c) not knowing where the next job is coming from, (d) not having enough money or job security to get married and/or have children"

Same could be said substituting "teacher", or many others.

At least w/ respect to (c) I can safely assume you don't know any teachers. Teachers job hop like any other field for a couple years, until they get a "real job" at the district and level they want, and then union seniority kicks in and they pretty much have a guaranteed job until retirement. Its very much like the police/fireman situation. Lately with the second great depression, they've been whittling away at the lower seniority teachers... my sister in law is now one of the lowest seniority / youngest teachers at her school... everyone hired after 2000-ish has been downsized. That means a demographic collapse in the school system when "everyone retires at once" and the district transitions from all senior citizens with 30+ years of experience to all total newbies.

Re:Deja vu

[prefec2]

I would say: Found a union. But unions are not allowed on Feregninar. Even though I have a research post in Germany getting 38K EUR a year (before taxes) or 20K EUR after taxes, state retirement funds and health care, which runs for three years. At the end I have to look for the next project. But due to the normal payment for a MSc degree, I can save some money and bridge the payment gap at the end of the current project.

Re:Deja vu

[PickyH3D]

The lack of respect that teachers received recently from the GOP was disgusting.

I am not a GOP member (although I am definitely conservative, I hate the Republican party because it is just as political and stupid as everything I can pin on the other party) but how much respect do teachers honestly deserve?

I respect people that earn my respect, and not people that crow about such a hard job that does not even span an entire work day, while working for a fraction of a year. There are absolutely some amazing teachers out there, but the reality is, the majority are garbage

Not only do most teachers not work an entire work day, but they generally are given a break ("planning period") during that day. Yet somehow they deserve our thanks when they retire at age 50 with a pension that a state cannot afford, and they don't even remotely deserve, except contractually?

That said, most young scientists make *less* than teachers.

People doing real, sometimes-sophisticated work are making less than teachers. That is why they did not get or deserve respect. Teachers that teach the exact same curriculum year-after-year. There are exceptions, and those exceptions are the ones that should be propped up and rewarded financially. The rest should stay quiet and be happy that they even have a job that they can almost never be fired from, which is a perk often always neglected.

Less time. More job security. Equal or higher pay. Yeah, they have it rough.

Re:Deja vu

[turkeyfish]

Yes, the money is running out to find ways to continue to give the ultra-wealthy more perks and tax breaks, so now we are at a point where we are making every effort as a society to target the expense of having teachers and scientists. One would think people might have pause to consider the consequences, but hey I guess the CEO's and already wealthy shareholders and their court of lobbyists, lawyers, PR men, middle level managers, etc. would be so traumatized that we must continue on instead with shrinking America on their behalf.

Re:Deja vu

[tp_xyzzy]

I think it's other way around. Science is actually very interesting and there are people who would do it even if they couldn't get any money for it. The reason why pay is bad, and job security even worse, is that those people would do it anyway. It's just so interesting that they have to use very efficient ways of discouraging people to do it to regognize who have lost their faith in the science they're doing. Once that happens, it's known that it'll lead to nothing and the people should be doing something else. This is why job security and pay in science is very bad. Those are the only way to regognize which research is actually going to be valuable. Ask the scientists themselves. If they jump to do something else, they're no longer believing their research is going to be useful.

Re:Deja vu

[jo_ham]

With all due respect, you know very little about the workload of a teacher or the stress of the job.

Especially putting scare quotes around "planning period".

It's so easy to claim "they get 3 months off in the summer! unlike everyone else who works!" or "they don't work a full day!" (hahahahahahaha, oh wait you were saying that seriously, let me laugh even harder HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH).

I am not a teacher, but I know several - two of whom are close family members, and I can assure you they are not cruising along living the life of riley with luxurious long vacations or "not working a full day". They are overworked and underpaid, and critically not given the respect they deserve because they a criticised for having an "easy life and yet still complaining" by people who have no fucking idea.

Re:Deja vu

[iceaxe]

Alas that such is the case. Teaching should, in a world not turned upside down by rampant selfishness, be the most respected of all professions.

The only job more important is 'Parent'.

Re:Deja vu

[PickyH3D]

The best proof is certainly family members. Nothing like unbiased viewpoints. Even better is simply laughing off claims with a basis in fact, by countering them with... nothing.

I have teachers within my own family. A lot of people do. They complain too. Everyone complains about their job (some more than others).

They're also home before I am. And they are rarely grading. In many cases they actually are spending more time on vacations as well. Not luxurious ones (they're mostly not paid exuberantly, after all), but more.

Here's a few pro-tips on the matter:

1. Complaints don't make it true, in either direction.
2. Teachers are told that they are overworked, and that they have too many students. People tend to fall for hype surrounding them.

Hopefully your family and friends are some of the exceptions. You might have noticed that I brought them up in my last post. For instance, there are magnet/governor schools where the teachers do [mostly] work hard, and they push on a different level. I've found that they tend to work longer hours. However, considering your method of argument ("screw you for talking about this!"), I am inclined to think they're not.

Re:Deja vu

[jo_ham]

Here's a pro-tip for you, I was also a teacher. I have *actually done the job and been paid money for it*, so have some experience to be able to directly comment, as well as my direct family experiences - two siblings, a parent, an aunt and a best friend are all teachers.

The fact that you are writing it off as confirmation bias is just funny.

Teachers aren't "told they're overworked" - no, they're told that they are workshy moaners who only work half days and have huge vacation time and should be thankful. Of all the hilarious things to level at the profession "they're told they're overworked so they believe it!" is one of the most wide of the mark I have ever seen.

not really concerned

[Anonymous Coward]

The lack of scientists doesn't bother me nearly as much as the lack of architects (system architects, computer architects, etc.) and entrepreneurs.
Most of our major global problems aren't going to be solved with science, but, rather, in figuring out how to apply those things learned with science.
We need to focus our schools and legal system to encourage risk and creative thinking.
The very fact that most "scientists" don't actually do science - rather, they do work more equivalent to better trained lab technicians - shows that our economy and our way of life has changed and has new primary concerns.

Re: not really concerned

[Alex Belits]

"Entrepreneur" == "risk sink". An overwhelming majority of "entrepreneurs" failed, and yet society felt no effect of their failures because they just died in poverty, and those few who succeed, end up creating the companies that make up for the loss of production and employment due to failures. Without a method to predict at any extent if something is valuable enough to develop, "entrepreneurs" making nearly completely random choices and funding everything from their own pockets, it was the best way to drive progress.

A very long time ago (the end of Industrial Revolution) society outgrown the need for this -- we don't need every successful thief or descendant from aristocratic family to bet his life savings on some crackpot idea to determine those few ideas that weren't really so crackpot after all. Too bad, people who would otherwise destroy themselves in >99.999% futile search for riches, now have a reliable method of mooching those riches from the society by becoming financial middlemen. Effectiveness of the system is exactly the same as with crackpot "entrepreneurs" -- except now it is low because all profit is skimmed by those crooks.

Put it another way

[guspasho]

Basically, honest labor is so passe. Why would anyone choose to do it when you can make so much more money through corruption and fraud, and theft? It's so much easier and more rewarding!

Re:Put it another way

[MickyTheIdiot]

I've been talking a lot about this with my family lately... the culture in the U.S. is so screwed up right now that people almost always get punished for doing what is morally and ethically right while people that ignore those rules almost always get rewarded. Let's face it, knowing that you "did the right thing" doesn't put food on the table or assure a decent retirement... at least not in our age. It certainly doesn't make a corporate loyal to you if you live in the corporate world.

Japan has such a successful corporate culture and they aren't like this at all. The CEO gets on his knees and begs forgiveness if he has to do something like lay off workers that have devoted their working lives to the organization. In the use this is done with no remorse and at the blink of an eye. The U.S. has lost all sense of right and wrong and sacrificed it on the altar of a corporate god.

Re:Put it another way

[strangeattraction]

After he begs forgiveness he lays them off anyway and has a driver take him to the driving range to relax hitting a few balls, then goes and singa karoke and drinks himself into a stupor.

Re:Put it another way

[guspasho]

I found this Wikipedia article rather interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg's_stages_of_moral_development

Of the various stages of ethical development I take pride in guessing (not necessarily objectively, mind you) that I may be at stage 6 of ethical development. But take what you know of the typical corporation and they are almost always at stage 2. Only the smaller ones who have a large stake in the communities in which they operate, ie not investor-owned, and tied to a single community, even reach conventional development. I find it interesting that the justifying "philosophies" of libertarianism and objectivism would reject this model, saying that only stage 1 and stage 2 exist, stage 2 obviously being morally superior, and any further stages are still manifestations of stage 1. But our culture as well as our economy do not reward anything beyond stage 2, they disregard it or even punish it.

Re:Put it another way

[joocemann]

I sleep much better, albeit in a cheaper bed. That's why good people choose it.

Even if you get rich, and even if you don't go to jail, dishonesty still marks you a douchebag and you can't undo that.

Money can't buy integrity.

Re:Put it another way

[bennomatic]

Stop that! I like romanticizing other cultures, imagining they're better than my own.

Re:Put it another way

[Rich0]

Yup, I know somebody whose US employer had layoffs in Japan. Apparently it was quite traumatic with all kinds of special counseling required, due to the huge culture difference.

I don't believe the CEO flew over to get down on his knees and beg forgiveness for his failure to grow the business. I think he might have bowed his head in a moment of silence before depositing his bonus check, however.

Re:Put it another way

[joocemann]

Money can't buy integrity.

True, but it negates that feeling of powerlessness and hopelessness because you see cheats, liers, frauds and charlatans rake in money on your back.

WTF? Doing wrong for more money wouldn't negate, it would equate. You clearly missed the point. Doing wrong for money would put you right on the same level as those you see around you doing the same. That isn't negation, it is equation. You become the scum, too.

Re:Put it another way

[turkeyfish]

If cynicism could solve the world's problems, there wouldn't be any.

Re:Put it another way

[turkeyfish]

Sadly, all of the GOP and way too much of the Democratic Party are tools of the traditional energy companies (oil/gas/coal). What is happening is that real economies of scale are already being led by other countries and except for the dubious value of "ethanol fuels", they are quickly dominating these markets. It looks as if this opportunity is rapidly closing for an America that seems to want to "shrink" rather than grow.

Re:Put it another way

[u17]

After he begs forgiveness he lays them off anyway and has a driver take him to the driving range to relax hitting a few balls, then goes and singa karoke and drinks himself into a stupor.

No, of course not. He drives a tanto knife through his guts and bleeds to death, thus saving his honour. Don't you know anything about the Japanese?

Re:Put it another way

[WamBamBoozle]

wrong. He quits in disgrace. The parent's characterization of Japanese corporate culture is accurate.

There is also a much smaller wage disparity. A CEO in Japan making more than 10 times the average worker would be considered shameful. Yes -- there are CEO's capable of feeling shame left in the world.

Re:Put it another way

[kikito]

OK.

How about not having a single supermarket vandalized for supplies, after a tsunami? And instead, getting a perfectly self-organized queues of hundreds of meters, for getting basic things like water?

Can you honestly say that the same thing would happen in your country? I can tell you in mine (Spain), it wouldn't. They are just better at this social, group thing.

Re:Put it another way

[steelfood]

Stage 6 sounds a lot like the golden rule.

There are entire cultures predicated on that rule, though few consistently follow it.

Re:Put it another way

[dbIII]

I thought it was the desire to be something like a Chinese unregistered coal mine owner and be able to pay and treat your workers any way you like without the government interfering even if a some workers die. If the workers complain that's when you call in the portion of government that you actually like to violently protect you from them.
I prefer the rule of law to the stupid and simplistic "might makes right" of your anarchist warlord philosophy.
The liberty in the name is the same sort of camoflage that East Germany used when it called itself a "Democratic Republic" in the days of communism.

Re:Put it another way

[cavebison]

I found this Wikipedia article rather interesting.

That's an interesting article, thanks for posting that.

It seems it's not a logical progression of one level to the other though... think of the thief who steals to feed his family. Contravening level 4 (rule of law) to accomplish level 6 (or 5 perhaps).

And then again, does anything really get past levels 1 and 2? There's an argument that we don't do anything which isn't out of self-interest. Pursuing a natural desire for leadership and a desire to "do good" is just that - pursuing your personal desires.

If we did not have any psychological bias to be good or bad, then it would come down to a purely conscious choice, and you could really say someone is "good" because they're making a choice to do good when it makes no difference to them, psychologically, either way.

But I think we just label someone "moral", "good", "law-abiding", or the opposite, just because of how they behave - which follows from their own in-built inclinations to do so. But then I'm not convinced we have free will really either, so my view of morality follows from that. :)

Re:Put it another way

[Reservoir Penguin]

Anything beyond stage 2 is for losers.

Re:Put it another way

[guspasho]

That's stage 3. I'm afraid I don't understand how you got that from anything explained about stage 6.

Family

[rogueippacket]

The simple answer for a lot of people is that their families tell them they should pursue a "higher career" - anything requiring multiple degrees and loaded with professional prestige. In North America, this particular idea is reinforced by High Schools which tout "University level" streams vs. "Applied level" streams, where you are either destined to become a well-educated individual with a prestigious career, or you are going to be a laborer barely living paycheck to paycheck because you didn't study enough calculus.
So long as the notion that prestige is more important than what you are passionate about, this problem will exist.

Re:Family

[drb226]

But if you are passionate about being prestigious, it's a double win. Hm...

Re:Family

[DrgnDancer]

While interesting, and perhaps somewhat true, your point is complete ancillary to the topic at hand. Both financiers and scientists have almost certainly followed a "college track" in high school and graduated with at least a bachelors, probably (almost certainly in the case of scientists) more. If anything management and finance are (slightly) easier to get into with less education than science or engineering. While it's certainly true that to a guy making 25K a year fixing cars both science/engineering and management/finance seem like laudable careers making fantastic money; this article focuses on the discrepancies between those STEM guys and the finance guys, not on how either of them compare to someone who never went to college.

Re:Family

[Rich0]

I have to agree here.

I know somebody who had a daughter of average intelligence who had a real knack for cosmetics, but really struggled to get mediocre grades in an academic track.

I have no doubts that she could have been accepted into a college (likely with no merit-based financial aid), and graduated with a degree in something. Many pressured her to do this. In the end she was persuaded by her mother to pursue cosmetology.

Most of her friends now envy her - she is about to enter the working world and already has jobs lined up. By the time they are midway through their sophomore year of college she will be past entry level. She is doing something that she has the potential to perform at a regional or maybe with time even a national level if she expends the effort. With college she might have gotten a job as a secretary somewhere barely able to pay her loans, and with a trade school she will probably make money, have numerous employment options (self-employed, employee, etc), and have the opportunity to make a name for herself if she wishes. She'll also be working in a trade that is easily transfered anywhere in the US.

In contrast I know somebody else who sent their son to college for four years. He wasn't terribly enthusiastic about doing anything in particular, and now works as a clerk in retail. His parents are presumably paying his loan payments, as I doubt he can afford to do so. He was contemplating the military - too bad he didn't do that back when they could have just paid the college bill for him.

College is incredibly expensive these days, and I'm not convinced that the average teenager has the life experience to determine that it is a wise use of $100k or whatever they plan on borrowing. In many cases their parents just pay the bills for their kids, which is nice I guess when you have the money. Kids just view college as the next step they're supposed to take, and consider it more of a life-changing experience socially than academically.

I think that most college-bound students would do far better in something more applied. College is a means to an end and not just 13th grade. I'd never write a tuition check for somebody or cosign on a loan unless they've already proven their ability and interest in making money in the field they want to study, and that college is the best way to advance in that career and is self-funding with a reasonable ROI.

The endgame of outsourcing.

[MickyTheIdiot]

While there are plenty of stupid people out there, not everyone is. The smartest are moving away from these careers in droves because of these outsourcing issues. The final result of outsourcing in the messed-up corporate mind is that *everyone* will become a manager and that's the only job that holds any worth and it is the only job worth doing. It's also the only job, therefore, that deserves a living wage. If we stubbornly follow this as a country then we're is MASSIVE trouble.

Re:The endgame of outsourcing.

[magamiako1]

We've already made that choice.

Re:The endgame of outsourcing.

[rolfwind]

Especially when the engineers/scientists/etc over in India realize that they can break away and form their own company that will undercut their former boss by not having to support his American middle/upper_management lard ass.

There are the consequences of building up your own future competition.

Re:The endgame of outsourcing.

[Chemisor]

Management can also be outsourced. Eventually those engineers in India will realize that having the manager in your own timezone is a good thing. It isn't like management requires years of training and heaps of intelligence. All you need is good people skills and some competence in assigning the right resources to the right problem. Most people have some of the former, and the latter can be easily learned by playing Empire Earth. Once the manager is in India, why bother having a US presence at all? The only thing it gets you is having to pay US taxes. India is not a bad place to live, when you have a job. The endgame, therefore, is to have everyone and everything move to India. The US will be populated exclusively by HFT traders, who will be too busy grabbing each other's money to notice.

Re:The endgame of outsourcing.

[Black Parrot]

While there are plenty of stupid people out there, not everyone is. The smartest are moving away from these careers in droves because of these outsourcing issues. The final result of outsourcing in the messed-up corporate mind is that *everyone* will become a manager and that's the only job that holds any worth and it is the only job worth doing. It's also the only job, therefore, that deserves a living wage. If we stubbornly follow this as a country then we're is MASSIVE trouble.

We had a problem with that mentality even before outsourcing started. Even 20 years ago, if you wanted top pay and any respect you had to switch from whatever productive thing you did into management.

Re:The endgame of outsourcing.

[microbox]

Even 20 years ago, if you wanted top pay and any respect you had to switch from whatever productive thing you did into management.

I suspect that this has been the way since the beginning of time. The difference today is that market fundamentalists reify the ruling class as somehow exceptional, when in reality, the hard work is done by the low paid, and all the great ideas come from (pretty-much) marginalised trouble makers.

Market fundamentalism has its roots in liberalism, and was reactionary against the totalitarian socialism of Austria. Neo-liberalism is not without merit. But by taking the market as the source of morals, we have neglected what really drives value in society.

Neo-conservative clash-of-civilisation cultural chauvinism is a reaction to the very same neo-liberal market fundamentalism that drives right-wing politics. It is a deeply flawed reaction to the problems of market fundamentalism, and has given voice to racists, religious fundamentalists and other bigots. They know they are correct, and have little need of education, scientific or otherwise.

Climate change will shape the future of politics, and unhappily, scientists will be at the centre of an irrational scrap-fight. We are in for a whole lot of pain. I recommend standing on the side-lines with a large serve of pop-corn.

Re:The endgame of outsourcing.

[houghi]

Wait till they figure out that people in India can be managers as well for a much lower wage.

Re:The endgame of outsourcing.

[Rich0]

Well, I don't know that climate change will ever itself directly shape the future of politics. Economics certainly will.

Right now the main economic effect of climate change is that people want to spend a lot of tax money on stuff and make some things more expensive due to concern about what might/will happen 20 years from now. The average taxpayer will just say "I care about the planet - as long as somebody else pays for it." Not much will happen - at least not in the US.

If the climate change folks are right then 20 years from now NYC will start going underwater. That also has a direct economic effect, and now you'll see all kinds of appropriations to mitigate the effects of climate change (or relocate NYC - not likely considering New Orleans didn't get moved). You'll also see funds to put a navy in the arctic ocean.

People pay for problems they are having now, or which based on personal experience they feel like they'll have in a few years. They're much less likely to pay for something that has never happened in the last 30 years, like ocean levels rising, or whatever. Them's the breaks...

Agree on the popcorn bit...

Re:The endgame of outsourcing.

[turkeyfish]

There are also consequences to letting those at the top acquiring far too many perks for the workers to sustain. If the workers are overworked the colony dies.

Re:The endgame of outsourcing.

[Black Parrot]

Well, I don't know that climate change will ever itself directly shape the future of politics.

Oddly enough, those liberals at the Pentagon and the various US intelligence agencies rate climate change as one of the most significant threats to the USA for the rest of this century.

(Presumably they're thinking about the social disruptions it will bring, rather than the climate change itself.)

Re:The endgame of outsourcing.

[dbIII]

Given what I've seen of US management style people are kidding themselves if they think people overseas can't do a better job. A lot of it is about who they know instead of what they know - and if they don't know anybody in the country where the work is going on and where the suppliers and customers are then they are nothing but an expensive and noisy liability.

Re:The endgame of outsourcing.

[Rich0]

Nah - they say that for the same reason that grant writers say it - if you want money you say "climate change" right now. In the last administration the same guys would be talking "TERRORISTS!"

Look, the Pentagon just wants its new $50B aircraft carrier or whatever. If a Republican is in the White House the USS "W" will be pitched as helping to secure the seas from the evil terrorist task forces. If a Democrat is in the White House the USS Gore will be pitched as preserving democracy for penguins when the icecaps thaw and as a platform for oceanic research. Either way the ships will spend most of their time bombing 3rd world dictators somewhere.

We do the same thing at work. New boss comes along and has new buzzwords. Everybody pitches the same ideas they would have pitched to the old boss, but now they're all about the new initiative and have nothing to do with that old way of thinking...

Finance

[0123456]

Because finance jobs could never, ever be outsourced to a country where they don't expect multi-million dollar bonuses every year.

Re:Finance

[Rich0]

Well, they never would be outsourced per-se. However, it is likely that once all the expertise is in China or whatever the local companies will just take over the market, and never hire American executives in the first place. Perhaps they might outsource some of their lower-value work to the US where people will accept any salary.

Solution

[Alex Belits]

Solution: destroy "financial services" industry. At this point it serves no purpose whatsoever, just sucks resources. Trade and investment can be handled without giant middlemen running their scams.

Re:Solution

[DesScorp]

Solution: destroy "financial services" industry. At this point it serves no purpose whatsoever, just sucks resources. Trade and investment can be handled without giant middlemen running their scams.

You think financial services aren't important? We're a market economy. Money is the grease in that engine. Who else would you want to handle financing?

Yeah, lets get rid of people that handle capital and arrange financing. We'll replace them with, oh, maybe a committee?

While we're at it, let's get rid of engineers. I mean, they don't DO anything... just sit around in a fancy office and draw on paper or play with their computer all day. It's not like they do real work or anything.

Re:Solution

[0123456]

You think financial services aren't important? We're a market economy. Money is the grease in that engine. Who else would you want to handle financing?

'Money' today is just made-up numbers in a computer. Why should people get rich for taking a number from one account, transferring part of that number to another account and taking a few bits as a fee along the way?

Wall Street would collapse if we had a real free market economy.

Re:Solution

[purpledinoz]

They did destroy themselves in 2008, but thanks to the Fed and the US govt bailouts, they were saved. Now they're bigger, more powerful, and more destructive than ever. Note that Bush started the bailouts at the beginning of the crisis, and Obama continued them. So essentially you have a two party system where both parties have the same policy on the financial system. Yay for democracy!

Re:Solution

[Bill Dimm]

Yes, stomp out the only opportunity that math/science people have to make a decent wage, then they'll have to work for peanuts!

Re:Solution

[dkleinsc]

That's not entirely true, as satisfying as it would be.

If I'm, say, a college president with a background in history, charged with among other things managing a large endowment, I'm going to hire some folks who know what they're doing to handle the finances. I'll have them vetted and watched by the people in my college that understand economics and business and finance and stuff, but in the end I'm going to need a financial services provider to handle it. Same story goes for anybody inheriting huge sums of cash, or finds themselves suddenly incredibly wealthy because they're Steve Wozniak or something. They have to watch their financial services providers carefully, but they'd be idiots not to hire somebody to take care of it.

What that does mean is that Joe Schmoe doesn't need a full-service broker to manage his day-to-day trading, but those finance guys do provide real services to people.

Re:Solution

[Alex Belits]

In 2008 no one could predict when exactly they will destroy themselves, so when shit hit the fan, the fan was spinning and we all were still standing around it. So government converted the fan into a shit pump, as that was the only thing that could be done at that point without being prepared to get rid of the shit.
If the government will know when it is going to happen (because it will orchestrate it), thing will go into a completely different direction.

Of course, US government will be the last on Earth to do that, but such course of action is not just the only reasonable way to deal with this situation, it's inevitable. Just as inevitable as Catholic Church losing its complete control over science, culture and politics in Europe when development of science and culture had to go ahead -- it just taken a truly disgusting amount of time then.

Re:Solution

[Alex Belits]

Are you a moron?
If there will be no "decent wage" in financial scams, productive jobs will be paid decently.

Re:Solution

[Alex Belits]

Average Americans can go jump off a cliff -- this is a job for a government. It's not like government ever cared what average American thinks.

Re:Solution

[Alex Belits]

Answer this, you supposedly intelligent person:

WHY finances are complex and convoluted if their sole purpose in the society is resource management?

Re:Solution

[Bill Dimm]

Why should people get rich for taking a number from one account, transferring part of that number to another account and taking a few bits as a fee along the way?

Wow. Is that seriously what you think they do? Take even the most pedestrian banking function performed by your local community bank -- borrowing money from depositors and lending it out to people buying houses or cars. They need to model the probability of getting the loan repaid in order to charge an interest rate where they'll be able to pay their depositors back. They need find the right deposit/loan ratio to make sure they have enough cash on hand to satisfy depositors who want to make withdrawals while not leaving too much money idle (which means they wouldn't be able to pay as much interest to depositors). That is dead simple stuff compared to what math/science people do in finance. Most of the quants are working with derivative securities, which require sophisticated math (look up "stochastic calculus") and numerical methods to price and hedge. On a deal with hundreds of millions of dollars of notional value, you might expect a $50k profit, so the tiniest error means that you lose a ton of money instead of making money (hence the demand for the best and brightest to do such calculations). Blow the hedge and you can lose millions of dollars. It's hard work that requires a good understanding of math, numerical methods, and logical thinking (steel testicles also help). And, it allows massive amounts of risk to be shifted around to those most willing/able to bear it. If you don't think finance is necessary, consider paying cash for the next car/home you buy.

Re:Solution

[dkleinsc]

WHY finances are complex and convoluted if their sole purpose in the society is resource management?

Well, there's the rub: Resource management is hard, because everyone more-or-less wants as much as possible while producing as little as possible. That leads them to want to take as much of other people's profits as possible while pushing any of their risks onto somebody else.

If you're talking about corporate accounting, then the reason that's hard is because corporate executives are motivated to lie about their earnings if they can get away with it in order to get raises and bonuses. If you're talking about stock trading, then any seller will try to describe their stock as better than it really is and any buyer will try to describe the stock as worse than it really is unless there's a way to independently verify it, and it's hard because not only are the liars everywhere but the prices are shifting around faster than most people can properly evaluate their holdings.

And so on. Note that I didn't say that we should ever trust these guys further than they can be easily thrown, just that many of them actually provide a real service to somebody.

And even people who ought to know what they're doing screw this stuff up: One of the many reasons Larry Summers pissed off a lot of people at Harvard was because he was screwing up the management of the endowment, and this is a guy who's a former Treasury Secretary and top-notch economist.

Re:Solution

[Rakishi]

What makes you say that? Remember, supply and demand still applies. You will have even more, even better qualified people competing for the same number of jobs. They would work in finance before but now they can't. So more demand, same supply. Wages go down even more. Enjoy.

Re:Solution

[tacokill]

Ha! You might as well go fight a war on jealousy. Destroy the financial services industry? Is this supposed to be serious? This isn't Fight Club and you aren't Tyler Durden.

Ok, I'll play along just for fun....
1. What financial services would you destroy first?
2. What financial services would you leave intact?
3. Are there any necessary financial services according to your model of "how things work"?
4. What would you replace this system with that would work better?

Re:Solution

[Piata]

Financial services are important but when financial services are valued and rewarded more than actually creating/manufacturing/producing something physical of worth, you have an upside down pyramid that's eventually going to collapse on itself. Which is pretty much what's happening to the US right now.

Even if you don't think the financial services industry needs to be destroyed, I hope you can at least see the need to reduce it and limit it's profitability.

Re:Solution

[Rakishi]

Do you know why the Fed exists and has actual power? Because last time things were allowed to work on their own we got the Great Depression. That was the second time the market imploded, the first time was the Panic of 1907 which narrowly averted a meltdown. That's not even getting into all the fun currency deflation causes and the amusingly large number of recessions in the 1800s.

Then there's the fact that a free market in practice is simply another word for oligarchies and monopolies. Without some form of outside control those in power will abuse it ruthlessly as they have done in the past.

Re:Solution

[Bill Dimm]

Are you a moron?

No.

If there will be no "decent wage" in financial scams, productive jobs will be paid decently.

Wow, and you accuse me of being a moron? If your current job pays you $30k/year, and another company across town offers you $80k/year, you can go to your current employer and say "You have to pay me more, or I'm going to leave." If there is no $80k job across town, if you have no other options, you have absolutely no leverage to demand higher pay. Why should anyone pay you more if you have no better prospects available to you?

To put it differently, if you eliminate all of the jobs that math/science people are doing on Wall Street, you've increased the supply of math/science people chasing jobs in academia or industrial labs, while the number of such jobs is basically fixed. That drives wages down, not up. If an industrial lab doesn't have to compete with Wall Street to hire the best and the brightest, they don't have to pay as much.

Re:Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I happen to be lucky enough to have started an engineering services company with a friend and sold it to a Fortune 500 Company 12 years later for midteen $Ms in 2005. If I had listened to ANY of the 5 financial advisors I interviewed (and paid several $Ks for initial consultations) to manage my nest egg I would have lost over 50%. Either I'm incredibly unlucky in selecting recommended financial advisors or they basically don't know dick unless they are already playing in a game where they have inside info on the stacked deck.

Re:Solution

[SydShamino]

While I'm not the OP, all I'd do is change the system so that trades only execute once every five seconds, all simultaneously, all trying to best match the closest buyers and sellers. No more millisecond trade bullshit where the trades are re-ordered to maximize the split-second revenue for the trade house.

I think anyone who runs a regular (non-financial services) company, and who doesn't want his or her stock to be manipulated by the financial industry, would appreciate a market that followed those guidelines. And someone who created such a market can tout how more of the profit goes to the stockholders, not the middle men.

Additional changes - like preventing people from wrapping bad debt in a derivative and calling it good debt - already fall under fraud laws and merely need adequate prosecution.

Re:Solution

[bugs2squash]

Of all the millions of financial transactions that have some reasonable use (like financing business or housing loans), the vast majority should be straightforward enough to be handled by a well established computer assisted system.
What remains, the extremes of complex derivative trading or whatever could probably be dispensed with without bringing the financial world to its knees (and have probably done much to create crisis in the past).
In short, if it was so complex that it was not done prior to 1970 then we could probably live without it now. The risk these stochastic calculus wielding geniuses are taking affects more than just their own bonuses, their irresponsible pursuit of their $50k harms us all when they screw it up.
How about they devote some of their talents to making markets more functional and reliable for ordinary investors. Oh, but then that would deprive them of the "grease" they raid from 401ks and other ordinary savings to pay for their stochastic calculus.

Re:Solution

[Maltheus]

Don't worry. The financial services industry is itself a huge bubble which will pop within five years.

Re:Solution

[turkeyfish]

Don't destroy it. Nationalize it by taxing the proceeds to buy it.

Re:Solution

[stms]

This is the third or fourth time I've seen a comment in this vein on /. promoting this notion that the financial sector provides nothing to society. While I will defiantly concede that the financial sector may have become a bigger problem than solution it does allow people and organizations with the means to raise capitol without the need to put their entire estate at risk.

Re:Solution

[turkeyfish]

Wall Street does generate wealth, but it largely does so through defrauding investors, 1) either by hyping and selling short the stocks that are being recommended, or more often by insiders paying themselves in stock options and then paying only a small fraction of their salaries in tax and using corporations to hide insiders using them as piggy banks for personal gain. Make both practices illegal and much of the abuse ends.

Re:Solution

[bye]

In your hypothetical scenario the milliseconds game (well, these days it's a nanoseconds game really) will simply move to another venue. There will be even larger secondary shadow/derivative markets that allows real-time trading anytime, and which markets propagate their inventory to the underlying regulated market every 5 seconds.

You would have to outlaw a timely, real-time market in every jurisdiction of this planet, and you'd have to effectively prosecute and bust every secondary market on this planet for your plan to have any effect. Include game servers with virtual money and with lower than 5 seconds network lag in that list of places to bust ...

Good luck with that.

Re:Solution

[turkeyfish]

"Life is hard, and the world is cruel"

Therefore don't let the ultra-wealthy suffer, they simply wouldn't be used to it.

Re:Solution

[TheSync]

Do you know why the Fed exists and has actual power? Because last time things were allowed to work on their own we got the Great Depression.

Actually the Fed screwed up during the lead up to the Great Depression. As documented in Milton Friedman & Anna Schwartz's history of the Great Depression, the Fed forced a rapid deflation that may have turned a slight bubble pop into a horrific series of years known as the "Great Contraction" from 1929-1933 (the worst losses ended after FDR devalued the dollar in 1933).

Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Fed, said about the Federal Reserve: "Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry."

Why the economy did not recover well during 1933-1941 ("The Long Stagnation") is a matter of more dispute.

Re:Solution

[Rakishi]

You do know the Fed was around during the Great Depression right???

And as I stated it was largely without power to do anything.

in fact, I would argue that they, though increasing credit during the 20s, were the main reason for it!!!

The Panic of 1907 which mirrored the great depression would argue that the great depression was unavoidable if measures were not taken to prevent it. None were.

I would also suggest you learn about the Great Depression of 1920, where the fed did nothing!!

The modern Fed and the early years Fed are two very different entities. Both due to the powers that they posses, which were granted after the great depression and expanded after every crisis since, and also the increased knowledge of how to control the economy.

And you do know that GDP growth before the Fed was been much higher on average than with the Fed right?

And right now the GDP growth in China is higher than the US. Same reason.

Re:Solution

[PaladinAlpha]

I'm seeing this attitude everywhere, and it's baffling, because the most trivial analysis tears it apart.

Your obvious lack of knowledge concerning the financial sector aside, how do you propose to keep people from trading in derivatives in a "real free market economy"? There will -always- be value in the transfer and management of risk. You cannot construct a working, competitive market without there being money to be made strictly from studying where the money comes from and where it goes.

Re:Solution

[Alex Belits]

Do you understand that all those "jobs" and "salaries" are nothing but decisions made by people as a result of a situation made by other people? That overwhelming majority of "jobs" in finance exists for one reason -- to allow financial company steal profits from everyone else? They are your enemies, not your company's competitors. They create a situation when it's a bad choice to pay scientists and engineers (or anyone, really) more than idiotic starvation-level wages that are paid now -- because they starve everything productive.

Re:Solution

[PaladinAlpha]

What's your utopia market with no complexity? Do you even understand the "complexity" you're talking about?

Let's put it like this. What happens when you deposit money in a savings account in a bank? Why do they spend money keeping your money safe? Where does your interest come from? What happens to the money they lend out? What happens to the money after that? That's Econ 101, pal, and we're not even getting into the real stuff yet.

Finances are complex because they're, by definition, the highest-utility good (i.e. everyone wants it) and there are some millions of people trying everything they can to achieve it. Which they have every right to do -- there is nothing noble about refusing to prosper.

It will never be 'simple.' The financial sector is the fundament of a stable economy, which is a fundament of a stable country. And I say that as a Comp Sci PhD candidate.

Re:Solution

[Alex Belits]

Accounting may be hard, but it's by definition easier than engineering (because engineering involves resource management as a small part of itself) and it's done by accountants, just another kind of employees. Employees who do not demand giant percentage of profits, and would be laughed out if they did.

There is absolutely nothing to justify privileged position of financial companies -- they don't do anything more difficult that a simple accountant does, yet they are allowed to control access to other people's resources and insist on reward that would be too high even if it was their own resources to begin with.

Re:Solution

[dkleinsc]

There is absolutely nothing to justify privileged position of financial companies -- they don't do anything more difficult that a simple accountant does, yet they are allowed to control access to other people's resources and insist on reward that would be too high even if it was their own resources to begin with.

We agree on that at least. I think we just disagree with the solution.

My general goal would be to have the financial sector so heavily regulated as to be safe and boring. That way, so all the Monty Python jokes about accountants become accurate again, bankers would be competing with each other primarily with interest rates rather than arbitrary fees, and stockbrokers would be mostly in the business of selling financial advice to clients who wanted it. It would eliminate a lot of the jobs in finance, make the whole industry a lot less profitable, but would allow the good stuff it does actually continue to happen.

Re:Solution

[Alex Belits]

But that would destroy financial industry as we know it. Not a single person who works for it now, will want to work in it when it is boring and does not provide opportunities to obtain ridiculous riches by doing nothing useful -- this is why they are there to begin with! They will all move into organized crime (and they will be less dangerous there).

Re:Solution

[Alex Belits]

WTF are you talking about? Everything you have mentioned is well within abilities of a trained accountant, statistician and a programmer -- three guys employed by some company that pays them salaries. Most of complexity in what banks do comes not from performing banks' functions but from intentional obfuscation (ex: mortgage based securities crap) performed in hope of outsmarting someone else.

Re:Solution

[Rich0]

Yup. No reason that exchanges can't operate in a fairly simple way:

1. You send money to an exchange, which goes into an account.
2. You log into a website and place orders.
3. At midnight every day the book is processed and shares/money change hands. The exact time varies randomly with a standard deviation of 30 seconds - no gaming the system with last-nanosecond offers. Companies are prohibited from releasing news after 6PM. Can't do anything about external events obviously.
4. At 5:01PM every day the daily cost to run the exchange is divided by the number of dollars that changed hands. Then everybody who had a transaction is assessed a proportionate share of the operating expenses.
5. At 5:02PM everybody gets a deposit into their account of interest at the current treasury bill rate.
6. The government holds all money in accounts and guarantees the value of the cash in the accounts, and that your shares won't mysteriously disappear. The value of the shares is whatever you can get somebody to trade for.
7. Shares can only be traded on the exchange, and requests to transfer shares to a specific person at a specific price will not be filled.
8. The contents of the order book are secret before trades execute, and are publicly disclosed afterwards. Orders placed by the same person/institution will be linked, but with a number that is randomly generated and modified daily to allow everybody to see how orders are being placed but maintain privacy.

Even with typical government inefficiency the cost to operate an exchange like this probably would amount to a transaction fee of maybe 0.001%. There wouldn't be any gaming the system, and ordinary people would have a good chance of being able to not lose their shirts, since you could hear about news and react in a few hours and still get the same price as the institutional trader with twitchy fingers.

The only thing this system does away with is the 40 bazillion middle-men and institutional traders skimming money off the system no matter which way the market moves. Stock ownership is nothing more than records in a database - it should be trivial to administer.

Re:Solution

[Alex Belits]

Oh wow, an American patriot.

Re:Solution

[laddiebuck]

Much as I hate them, they also drain Johnny Foreigner's wallets, and just as badly as ours. Destroying the financial sector would not be a good thing for the West.

Re:Solution

[Alex Belits]

Oh, it is nothing. At this point they literally can be replaced by perl scripts.

Re:Solution

[Alex Belits]

So you want me (I am a foreigner) to suffer more than you want to get rid of people who are destroying your country's economy?

Your country indeed has a bright future...

Re:Solution

[Alex Belits]

They reduce the cost of lending.

Why there is a high cost to begin with? This is all resource management, in any healthy system it is not supposed to take any noticeable percentage of resources to begin with.

Re:Solution

[Rakishi]

before 1913 where we had higher GPD growth

Except we didn't, I decided to check, per capita the GDP growth rate was higher after the Fed was created than before. Something like 2.1% afterward versus 1.7% before with horribly noise all around. That's adjusted for inflation, etc, etc, etc. From what I can tell, even people who don't like the Fed don't disagree with that one amusingly enough.

So there goes your main argument I suppose, been fun.

Re:Solution

[Rufty]

We're a market economy. Money is the grease in that engine.

Yes, but we've got an engine that's all grease and no metal...

Re:Solution

[PaladinAlpha]

WTF are you talking about? Everything you have mentioned is well within abilities of a trained accountant, statistician and a programmer -- three guys employed by some company that pays them salaries. Most of complexity in what banks do comes not from performing banks' functions but from intentional obfuscation (ex: mortgage based securities crap) performed in hope of outsmarting someone else.

Yeah, everything I have mentioned that I also posited as part of the very beginnings of the most basic cursory education in Economics.

It only seems like obfuscation because you don't understand it. Most people find programming languages to be full of arbitrary obfuscation, because they don't understand syntax and parse trees and whatnot. Does that mean natural languages are better for writing code? Think about that.

You are one of these people who believe that someone is getting screwed when money is made. Let's look at it like this. If I see a sale, good for ten minutes, on $5 loaves of bread, and I buy one for $1 even though I don't need one, and later on sell it to you for $3, I've made two bucks, and you've saved two bucks. Do you see what happened there? I assumed the risk of selling the bread, and profited from it. That's your 'obfuscation'. Anticipating your objection -- what if I just bought a coupon for a $1 loaf of bread, paying $1 and selling it to you for $2? That's derivatives, and there's nothing wrong with it. Indeed, it increases the stability of the market -- which, if you will reflect upon, of course comes at the detriment to the extreme low and extreme high end.

The things that banks do -- the ways that money moves around the economy, even the oft-lamented (even by myself) speculation, are the things that allow a market to exist in the first place. There's no "outsmarting" anyone going on. Merely people assuming responsibilities for varying degrees of financial risk, and profiting (and not profiting) thereby.

Re:Solution

[trout007]

Did you learn about banking in grade school? You think banks borrow from depositors and lend it out? How quaint. This is isn't 1850. Read about the Federal Reserve System and fractional banking. Money is no longer backed by anything. It is created out of nothing and then lent out to you to with interest. There is no need to figure out a deposit/loan ratio because the Federal Reserve is there to pump in as much cash as they need. Ever hear of TARP and the trillions created to prop up banks all around the world? Plus they use FDIC to make sure there are no more runs on banks. Plus they create lots of inflation so the only way to maintain your purchasing power it to "invest" it. Hmm who can I invest with.. Let's see... Oh the same people causing the inflation to begin with. And I can't just invest normally because capital gains will eat it all up. Nope I have to lock it away in a 401k which has lots of restrictions on how often you can move your money around. But the big banks don't have those restrictions so they have a nice system to force you to keep your money with them and then suck it away as your struggle to save.

Re:Solution

[roman_mir]

In 2008 no one could predict when exactly they will destroy themselves

- my signature begs to differ, enough people saw the incoming crash with high precision from a number of years before 2008, they saw it specifically because they understood the precise reasons for it.

Re:Solution

[trout007]

Hell it's worse than that. The Feds monetary expansion led to the boom of the 20's. Just like giving a teenager a credit card it's all fun until the credit runs out and there are bills to pay. The panics leading up to the creation of the Fed were caused by the big bankers in order to get a Central Bank.

Re:Solution

[kikito]

So, go ahead, join the Fight Club

Re:Solution

[Alex Belits]

Who cares about "free market" except people who need it to run their scams without fear of retribution?

It's the dumbest thing ever -- hey, let's protect the rich when they fleece the rest of the society!

Re:Solution

[Alex Belits]

You are one of these people who believe that someone is getting screwed when money is made.

Marx already demonstrated it -- by seizing control over resources that allow productive work to happen, people in control of companies inevitably screw everyone who does not have such control, and the only solution is to remove such degree of control from the hands of those people. American society just can't get out of denial (European one did -- mostly).

Re:Solution

[laddiebuck]

You're not a foreigner to this, your country has a financial sector too. (I'm not American, nor does my country have a big financial sector, but I am from a Western country.)

I don't want anybody to suffer. I think a fast route to suffering would be for the West to destroy its financial sector, because some of that money (not nearly enough, by the way), to use Reagan's words, trickles down, and some if it is taxed, so they are an important prop to Western economies.

Nor does a financial sector that profits from selling to foreigners mean suffering for the same foreigners, so please don't be melodramatic. Most of the time you enjoy buying its services. I grant you that when it crashes, it's bad, but the fix to that is better regulation, not destruction.

By the way, in the case of any big Western country -- say the G7 -- if the financial sector were destroyed, it wouldn't be just that country that would be crippled; the knock-on effects would cause a major depression in the world economy.

Re:Solution

[Alex Belits]

some of that money (not nearly enough, by the way), to use Reagan's words, trickles down, and some if it is taxed, so they are an important prop to Western economies.

Don't lie, you ARE American.

Re:Solution

[PaladinAlpha]

Yes, the most technologically and economically successful nation in the modern world can't get out of denial; they're clearly doing something wrong. We may speculate on the future, but the past is set in stone.

And we weren't talking about capitalism, son. We were talking about Economics, which applies to any market, free or not. Thinking you can't sell derivatives in a socialist structure is called "missing the point."

Re:Solution

[Alex Belits]

the most technologically and economically successful nation

I see -- more American patriots.

And we weren't talking about capitalism, son. We were talking about Economics, which applies to any market, free or not. Thinking you can't sell derivatives in a socialist structure is called "missing the point."

Emphasized role of control over production and society through accumulation of capital is specific to Capitalism -- this is why it's called Capitalism in the first place. If you don't like comparing it with various forms of Socialism (Americans have irrational fear of thinking about such things, thanks to half a century of propaganda demonizing it), you can compare it with, say, development of economy under Feudalism, and find lack of the same defining characteristic.

Re:Solution

[laddiebuck]

I see you've run out of arguments. Don't worry, it's easier to attack than to think.

Re:Solution

[PaladinAlpha]

There's no patriotism to it -- it's simple fact. You're welcome to posit otherwise. Are you claiming that the US is neither of those?

And no one was talking about "control over production and society through accumulation of capital." That is, indeed, specific to capitalism, but has nothing to do with what you first were talking about, and which I replied to -- the supposed 'obfuscation' of the financial sector. A financial sector which I am attempting to communicate exists in any large economy.

Pot calling kettle

[Chemisor]

Tell us, Mr.President, why did you major in law instead of engineering?

Re:Pot calling kettle

[Khoa]

Law is another lousy choice (non-top 15) right now. But that's a whole 'nother can of worms....

Re:Pot calling kettle

[dtmos]

Law is another lousy choice (non-top 15) right now. But that's a whole 'nother can of worms....

Quite literally.

Re:Pot calling kettle

[Tablizer]

Tell us, Mr.President, why did you major in law instead of engineering?

He does have an Eng. degree, but he won't show it to anybody ;-)
     

Re:Pot calling kettle

[Hooya]

Another questions for the POTUS:

Why personally call one Mr. Vick?

Now, let's talk about pursuing a career in sciences.

Re:Pot calling kettle

[DriedClexler]

Because no amount of moving speeches can ever make an airframe withstand its design loads.

Re:Pot calling kettle

[Chemisor]

That's like asking him to "admit" he's too stupid

He's being paid $400000/year + $50000 for expenses. How much are you paid, with your engineering degree? Who's looking stupid now?

Re:Pot calling kettle

[jedidiah]

You know, Law is a graduate degree. It is quite possible for someone to have an engineering degree and also be a lawyer.

You usually call those Patent attorneys.

Re:Pot calling kettle

[Chowderbags]

Seriously, out of 15 cabinet members, exactly one (Stephen Chu, Department of Energy) has a degree in science.

The only other high up one I saw was Lisa Jackson of the EPA who has a chemical engineering degree.

Almost all the rest had economics, history, political science, and/or had JDs.

Re:Pot calling kettle

[Garst]

Because it's easier to sue for what you want than to build it yourself.

traders & quants

[jmcvetta]

What makes the diversion of science grads into finance jobs even worse for the overall economy is the type of finance jobs they are filling. The work done by quants & black-box traders (not much diff unless you want to pick nits) can most charitably be described as speculation; and some observers prefer the less fashionable term "market manipulation". Thus our scientists are being diverted from work with high social value (basic & applied research) to work with very low or negative social value. Best of all, this diversion is paid for by President Bushbama's trillion dollar bailout of the speculation industry.

This, gentlemen, is a perfect example of why the Chinese are kicking our sorry American asses at damn near every field of endeavor.

Re:traders & quants

[Sir_Sri]

well that and all the chinese scientists we train in the west go home now. And depending on where you are, that can easily be 30-40% of your grad student body.

Where I am we're about 80-85% foreign (out of about 120 grad students in comp sci). Of those, about half are from the PRC, but some are from the ROC too, and I cannot, as a casual observer, tell the difference. Nor do most of the students from the PRC talk to me, since there are enough of them they cluster together.

Re:traders & quants

[afidel]

Yeah, our CEO does a lunch and learn with our department a couple times a year and back in early 2009 one of his biggest rants was about how many of the brightest people went into finance instead of science and engineering. His favorite statistic was that for every civil engineer we graduated one hundred and something jobs were created but for every finance major we graduated we lost one thousand jobs. He did his very best to keep people on during the recession and while we had to severely trim a few departments (we won't be developing new properties for the foreseeable future so the development department was all but eliminated) our overall headcount today is only down about 10% from what it was before the recession.

Re:traders & quants

[Alex Belits]

They wouldn't go "home" if they had... wait for it... ... JOBS IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH here.

Re:traders & quants

[Sir_Sri]

sure they would. They're paid by the chinese government to come here and be trained, and are obliged to go home. Unlike the persians (we have a lot of those specifically where I am), indians and arabs, who are, in general, trying to get the hell away from wherever they were. The chinese guys go home, or else. Not all of them of course. But if they got tens of thousands of dollars from the government to come here there are certain strings attached. For a foreigner to get a masters they need to have about 50K canadian before we even let them in (that's for 2 years). PhD (4 years) can oddly be less, because if we guarantee them funding and scholarships and so on so they can more or less survive the Phd with maybe 10 or 20k CDN in the bank. If we can't guarantee them funding, and I don't have time in /. post to justify explaining one particular schools archaic rules on who qualifies for various sources of funding, they'd need about 200k cash in the bank, before they get here.

Besides, why would the chinese guys want to stay here anymore? We can fill our scientist ranks with perfect english speakers from other places, and there are good opportunities back home, they pay a lot less in china, but more than enough to live comfortably. As I say, the ones that are here have their own little expat community, they aren't even trying to become part of society here. They're paying for an education, we give it to them, collect our money and they go home. Seems like a good business deal.

We run foreign student education as a for profit exchange business. That's not a bad thing. That doesn't mean there are enough science jobs here either, but we could easily send half of our students back to their home countries and not hurt ourselves. Imagine if GM exported 50% of all the cars they made to China and India, people would be thrilled. Education isn't much different, except that there isn't a market for a chunk of the graduates we do keep.

Re:traders & quants

[michael_cain]

Well, lots of them would— that's the deal they cut in order to get their tuition paid.

On the other hand, you're "that close" to bringing up the real point. China puts its engineering graduates to work doing engineering; there's apparently no shortage of projects for them to work on. The US has done away with an enormous number of engineering jobs. As we used to say in my field, whenever another merger/acquisition was announced, "synergy" is the buzzword that means "We'll be able to fire half the engineering staff." And then everyone is shocked— SHOCKED! I say— that fewer students will do the difficult engineering degree programs.

The classic example is petroleum geology. The oil companies stopped hiring petroleum geologists in the 1980s. Today, a large fraction of their petroleum geology staff is about to retire. And the oil companies have suddenly realized that because they didn't hire PG graduates, no one studies PG in college any more, so there aren't any new grads to hire to replace the retirees.

Re:traders & quants

[jmcvetta]

High frequency trading is not done on a speculation basis, it is done on the basis of exploiting the market microstructure.

blah blah, market manipulation, blah blah

Watch liquidity and credit going down and see where all the other companies you value so much go... down the drain.

HFT somewhat increases average liquidity in the market; but also hugely increases volatility of said liquidity. When the market freaks out, all that robo-churn "liquidity" dries up in a millisecond.

This is because academia has become a sweatshop.

[drummania]

When "grad student" == "cheap labor", you know this is going to happen. Nowadays even academia can outsource. Just look at the overseas campuses built by MIT, Harvard, etc. The system is just fundamentally wrong. Professors today are no longer independent scholars but are largely driven by grants, and have students as slaves to work on these projects. Universities (==corporations) have incentive to expand the STEM program because that will equal to more grants, meaning more $$$. With that amount of STEM grads being churned out each year, you are pretty sure the job market will not look great.

Well, crap.

[heypete]

Now you tell me!

I got my bachelor's in physics in 2010. I've been doing IT work to fill the gaps until I go to graduate school. Fortunately, I got into the schools that I was looking for (any Slashdotters in Switzerland that want to get a beer sometime in the next few years? I'll be in Bern.), so I'm a bit excited. Moving from the US to Switzerland will be a refreshing change, and will allow my wife and I to fulfill our our love of travel (in our copious free time, naturally).

I suspect that science in Europe will be about as bitter as science in the US, but it'll be a different kind of bitter!

Re:Well, crap.

[EricWright]

I suspect that science in Europe will be about as bitter as science in the US, but it'll be a different kind of bitter!

I'm guessing it will be more of a hoppy bitter than a bilious bitter ;-)

Re:Well, crap.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I suspect that science in Europe will be about as bitter as science in the US, but it'll be a different kind of bitter!

I'm guessing it will be more of a hoppy bitter than a bilious bitter ;-)

Nah, The European scientists console themselves saying, "at anytime I can emigrate to USA at double or triple the salary."

Re:Well, crap.

[drsmithy]

I hope you're ready for a serious culture shock ! Having lived in both, Switzerland is a very, very different place to America.

Re:Well, crap.

[heypete]

Good. We're looking forward to it. Even in a worst-case scenario, it's still a learning experience. I suspect that being in a mainly academic environment, I'll be a bit more insulated, but we'd still like to learn all we can.

That said, anything in particular I should be aware of, watch out for, or know ahead of time? We've been doing massive amounts of research on the country, culture, and so on, but we can always use more information.

Re:Well, crap.

[jixani]

I suspect that science in Europe will be about as bitter as science in the US, but it'll be a different kind of bitter!

I'm guessing it will be more of a hoppy bitter than a bilious bitter ;-)

Nah, The European scientists console themselves saying, "at anytime I can emigrate to USA at double or triple the salary."

actually, it's pretty much the other way round. A year ago when I applied to grad school, stipend offers from Stanford were at around 31k, Berkeley 28.5k, Switzerland (Bern) 50k ...

Re:Well, crap.

[drsmithy]

If you haven't already, go out and buy the book "Living and Working in Switzerland" and read it thoroughly. It is the single best resource I ever found.

There is an excellent expat forum at www.englishforum.ch. I haven't posted much since we left, but it was extremely helpful while we were there.

You probably won't need a car - public transport is fast, frequent, co-ordinated, comprehensive and (assuming you make good use of it) cheap. There's a system of short-term (by the hour) vehicle rentals called Mobility (www.mobility.ch) that we took advantage of the rare times a car was necessary. They tend to have vehicle depots at bigger train stations. On the upside Switzerland has some of the cheapest petrol in Europe.

You will find nearly everything horrifyingly expensive compared to the US, but particularly food. If you are a heavy red meat eater then you're in trouble. Get used to doing your grocery shopping every day or two on the way home from work, rather than the weekly (-ish) shop you're probably used to here (this also helps remove the need for a car). You will also probably be somewhat limited by the size of your refrigerator, which will probably be 2/3 to 1/2 the size of the one you have now. Most foods have very little, if any, preservatives in them and will not keep as well as you are used to (eg: don't expect a bag of carrots to last more than a few days without starting to go moldy and limp). Large shopping centres/malls are fairly uncommon, but small grocery stores belonging to the two major chains (Coop and Migros) are a dime a dozen (but be aware that they will not always carry the same brands/items, nor will they have similar layouts).

Buy clothes before you leave, especially if you're at all on the larger side of average (I'm assuming you're not having a container full of furniture, etc, shipped over). I'm 6'2 and 250lb+ and ended up having to buy a lot of my clothes when we were visiting friends in England.

Do not tip when you eat out, get a taxi, etc, except maybe to round up to the nearest CHF (or nearest 5 if it's a particularly large bill). Even someone working in McDonalds is making enough to live on (which is why a Big Mac meal will cost you over $10).

You can drink in public and the drinking age for beer is 16 (wine/liquor is 18). Do not be alarmed (/outraged) when you see groups of high school students jumping onto a tram with a six-pack of beer heading for a night out.

Finding somewhere to live will probably be challenging, and the process will be *vastly* simpler if you can get someone in the University's HR department to help you (or, at the very least, a local). Expect to sign a lease for at least 12 months, if not 2-3 years. Be aware when you move out that you will "need" to have the place professionally cleaned - take some solace in the fact the tenants before did as well. You are entitled to one paid day off per year to move house. When you arrive in the country and subsequently move house you need to (de-)register with the local authorities at the Gemeindehaus(es).

Private health insurance is mandatory, but you have full choice of provider and they *must* accept you for basic cover. Your employer will probably have a "recommended" provider for expats. There is a website at www.comparis.ch that can help you compare providers. While you are in Switzerland you will need to pay into the unemployment insurance fund and compulsory retirement fund (similar to a 401k). If you are planning to stay a while (many years), investigate the "second pillar" and "third pillar" aspects of retirement funding, as they can be very tax advantageous (though taxes are relatively low). You can get some of this money refunded when you (permanently) leave the country.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Good luck !

Re:Well, crap.

[heypete]

Good to know. All of that information seems to match what our research has indicated. Many thanks.

We've been looking to eat healthier and eat out less, so having a pricing structure that would encourage this is a good thing, even if it does sting the wallet a bit.

Due to the hideous cost of shipping goods internationally, we're looking at living a monk-like lifestyle, at least before, during, and shortly after the move. We're not moving any furniture (there's an IKEA just outside of Bern with reasonable prices, and nearly all of our furniture is IKEA stuff already), and we pretty much only need to move clothes and computers. We'll also be coming back to the US for Christmas and whatnot (we're originally moving out in August), so we can retrieve other not-needed-immediately stuff. As we're recently married (one year in June), we've got a fair bit of electric wedding presents (small appliances and the like) which won't run on 240V power, so our parents have offered to store them for us for the time being, so we don't need to worry about transporting them.

I'm particularly grateful for the internet: several expat mailing lists have been most useful in regards to getting details on living, housing, and so on. Now even Slashdot is being useful. This is fantastic.

Re:Well, crap.

[heypete]

Might be difficult to find you, as you posted AC. :)

Wrong

[WindBourne]

You are better off with a Science or engineering bachelor combined with an MBA OR an MBA AND an advanced science/engineering degree. With that approach, you are far more likely to capitalize on new ideas than is either a pure business toady, or a pure science geek

Re:Wrong

[Nerdfest]

Sure, but not everyone is interested in "capitalization", nor should they be required to be. It's nice to have people focused just on the science. Sometimes the science is valuable immediately (in a monetary sense) and sometimes it's not (or is not *yet*). That doesn't seem to sit well with the current MBA goal of "maximizing profits", with them generally leaving out the "short term" part of that statement. There's such a thing as "enough money" and there's more to business than the next quarter.

Why when finance pays so much better?

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to school in math and computer science at one of the top schools in the nation. I didn't even graduate, but I secured a career in the finance industry after years wandering the artificial intelligent landscape. I work in high-frequency trading and am exceptionally good at what I do. Inflation-adjusted, probably made $150,000 on my best year back wandering the desert. Last year I pulled in $480,000 for programming in salary and bonus. This year I expect to rejoin the ranks of the $500,000+ club after a couple years out of it.

I produce liquidity and link markets for efficiency -- the guy who just wants to dump his 10 year bonds and doesn't care about an extra penny or two sells into me and I efficiently fan out that order into the cash bond market, the futures market, ETF, currencies, foreign bonds, and on and on in less than a millisecond. He gets certainty of trade and doesn't need connectivity to all these market centers and I get a small slice. It is a win for both of us with very low risk.

Now, why would I ever go into a field dominated by people who constantly whine and complain about everybody else not recognizing them, make nothing, and get paid less than that? I get paid directly based on my contributions, not some random number I think I deserve because I do some pure-sciency thing. Sorry, but give me the finance job every single time.

F.O.

Depends what you value

[macwhizkid]

I work as a research associate at a name brand school. I've seen this article cited a few times, usually by discouraged graduate students.

For me, I guess it all comes down to what you want out of life. Greenspun's argument basically comes down to the fact that science/tech is at risk of being outsourced, and people should instead be real-estate agents, doctors, and lawyers. Well, news flash, lawyers are being replaced with software, many doctors want a career switch, and real-estate agents, well, I'm not even going to go there. I just find it too insulting to compare somebody who's chosen to advance humanity's exploration of the world we live in with somebody who wants to make a quick buck by match-making sellers and buyers. Hell, if anything, the last decade should have taught us that the internet is rapidly doing away with middlemen. Go ask your local bookstore/pawnshop/consumer electronics store how business has been recently.

Most people find it easier to follow in the footsteps of others (teachers at school, professional parents, etc) rather than ask the hard questions: "What am I good at?" "Will somebody pay me to do it?" "Can I be the best at what I do?"

Work is work, and nobody said work is entirely fun. If you have a job you truly enjoy every minute of every day, congratulations. Most people go their whole life without finding it. But, there is a big difference between a job with some enjoyable aspects and rewards vs. a job you truly despise.

Re:Depends what you value

[meta-monkey]

I just find it too insulting to compare somebody who's chosen to advance humanity's exploration of the world we live in with somebody who wants to make a quick buck by match-making sellers and buyers.

All the greatest minds in computer science are working for Google and FaceBook, trying to come up with better ways to push ads at people.

And thus is capitalism foiled

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Not that engineers, developers and IT folk aren't relatively well compensated, but it doesn't compare with what a lawyer or a manager can pull down. Those in power (executive management, lawyers, politicians), have the power to control their own salaries. Those in engineering, not so much. Inevitably, this leads to the dysfunctional parasitism that has infected the current economy of the USA.

It's all about the money honey.

Re:And thus is capitalism foiled

[imric]

Yup. The problem is the same for all types of government.

It's just that here, it's a goal - Here in the good ol' USofA, not only do we admire the rich, we have been convinced that to be poor is to be inferior. To follow your dreams instead of money is stupid, and following money instead of your dreams is the sacrifice you need to make in order to be a worthwhile person.

And Ahhh! Those who dream of money, pursue money for it's own sake and crush those with less money so they can stand on the bodies and so be higher than all else? Why THOSE are our gods. Why else would sabotaging a baseline of support for widows and orphans, seniors and unemployed, the disabled and the sick - all the while granting far more PERSONAL wealth and power to the elite few - be considered populism?

But that's OK. Why would you want to be a scientist here anyway, when political dogma trumps expert opinion - every single damned time? When there is NO respect, NO money, NO recognition (except maybe over other poor damned scientific souls in academia) save as a 'geek' a 'nerd' or some other kind of damaged goods?

Maybe we're asking the wrong question

[tomthepom]

Perhaps the right question is how have we got into a situation where what has become an essentially parasitical financial industry can simply siphon off the best minds in academia. Instead of being used in creating, building, discovering, teaching, that talent is wasted on efforts to find ever more elaborate ways of playing games with other people's money.

Oh, but the funding, the funding!

[Mindcontrolled]

Thought we scientist were all part of a global conspiracy making up shit for the mythical FUNDING, so we can wallow in the cash? Did I miss a memo there?

Is that why you lot are always complaining about

[jaypaulw]

Is that why you lot are always complaining about mobile phone tariffs?

Maybe it's the scientists that are the problem?

[00_NOP]

I have a science degree and 25 years later I am now doing a masters in Comp Sci and rediscovering my love of maths and science. But I have never worked in science. When I graduated from university I could have gone to make weapons (legitimate career but for me? no thanks) and do something else, so I did something else. But there is plenty of evidence to suggest that scientists are, in general, more likely to be poorly socialised males. Certainly when I was at university the first time the "computer hackers" were all people I'd rather stay well away from. Some had personal hygiene issues, but mostly they were boorish and boring. Sorry, but that's the way it is. Maybe a lot of people just want no part of that culture?

For the Average Student

[Usually Unlucky]

STEM is a wonderful field if you manage to end up in the top 10% of your class, get into a good graduate school, and eventually manage 10% there too.

But for folks like me, an underachiever and average student, who ended up with an undergrad GPA of 3.5 and a Grad GPA of 3.6(so far), and only cared about airplanes and rockets throughout school, STEM has been a slap in the face.

With a degree in physics I envisioned coming out of school and being bombarded with job offers. In the entire summer of 2010 I had three interviews out of nearly 100 jobs applied for, didn't get a single position. Meanwhile I worked for 30k a year as a technician for a company which makes medical equipment where my job duties regularly included changing light bulbs and sweeping.

I only came back to grad school because I want to avoid reality for a couple more years, not because I think it will land me a better job.

Last thing I need is more competition. STAY AWAY FROM MY JOBS

Re:For the Average Student

[turkeyfish]

In my career, I did manage to get into the top few percent in my field, but many times came close to falling into the situation you describe. Its not uncommon. We need to move the entire responsibility for job creation out of the hands of corporations where CEO prove they are incapable of doing a credible job. Like generals they are always fighting the last war, the kinds of jobs society needs now are not those that will make a lot of money for a few, but that will begin to address the social, political and environmental challenges that are overtaking humanities inability to address them, because everyone is too slavishly serving away at sending the fruits of their labors up the corporate ladder for others to spend lavishly on themselves.

Unionize

[smoothnorman]

The solution to a problem of this sort is historically obvious: unionize. There have been attempts in the past, but money and self-interest neatly rendered it pathetic. If scientists could ever manage to organize, (they love meetings, why can't that ability be leveraged in a more profitable fashion?), particularly if they could emulated some of the far superior efforts made by the engineers, then you'd see dramatic change. Of course, the prospects are not good, and someone will point out that globalization will kill any such effort, but the tools (internet) are now available...

Re:Unionize

[Skorpion]

This is one thing I can't understand as a person with 15 years of experience in the IT industry (various roles): why there aren't any programmers or sysadmins or general IT unions. Everyone thinks that he will outdo the unwashed average masses of the IT workers and hit it big in the next big start-up, or what?

Re:Unionize

[smoothnorman]

Here's your chance, (or someone's), to become the zuckerberg of on-line union organization. (godaddy will happily sell you: unionize.org) All it needs is some informational tutorials: "so you think you can establish a union?", organizational online/meeting software, and a schedule of registration fees. (and, unfortunately a savvy lawyer on retainer) ...go for it; i promise i'll be the first to read the tutorial.

Re:Unionize

[Nerdfest]

Many have seen unions protect the incompetent. People in science tend to believe in meritocracy, not unions. If I'm better than the person beside me, I should be paid more. Also ... scientists like meetings?

Re:Unionize

[Skorpion]

If this is so easy, why anyone didn't do that before?

Not my chance, I'm not based in US, and the last two companies I worked for spoiled the chance by making everyone in IT incorporate then signing them up as subcontractor and not a salaried employee. Illegal as a hell, but when it comes out, both sides are guilty,and as a incorporated subcontractor you are not subject of labor laws and you cannot join/start an union.

Re:Unionize

[RightwingNutjob]

No. The solution is to give up the hallowed Truth that the world ends outside the door of the Ivory Tower, and to go get a real job at a drug company, and aerospace firm, a Defense lab, or any other number of tech jobs in the Dreaded Private Sector. Trained scientists are rare. In theory, they can do math without a panic attack, can form deductions and hypotheses from observations, and ought to be reasonably skilled at communicating their thoughts to other people. Individuals with this combination of skills are in great demand, and not just on Wall Street. So if you're an underappreciated, underpaid scientist working long hours with no job security, consider giving Academia the same finger they give you, and GET A REAL JOB.

Re:Unionize

[Shihar]

Um, speaking as one of those engineers, no. I don't look at the steel industry or the auto industry with envy. I see a handful of people with seniority and nothing else who have survived it all and make a modest wage, and everyone else getting fucked. Maybe you can do the 'most senior is best senior' approach in unskilled labor, but it doesn't hack it in skilled labor, like engineering. The thought of the oldest engineer getting the most pay and being the last asshole you lay off makes me ill. I'll suffer outsourcing and rapid technological change long before I suffer the inane ponzi scheme that is unionization.

Unions suffer a serious organizational issue in that they don't reward skill and talent, they reward seniority and longevity. That might be fine with unskilled labor, but it doesn't work for skilled labor. Scientist and engineers are elitist, pure and simple. They think they are smarter than the next guy, and they are probably right. The day they submit to a hierarchy where the oldest fuck head gets the rule and the idiots are protected from being kicked out on their ass is the day hell freezes over. I would surrender my soul and go throw myself into the financial industry long before I submit to a union hierarchy.

crying for quality...

[xtracto]

Oh man, slashdot comments have become so low in quality. The majority of comments are mainly ramblings :(

Re:crying for quality...

[tbird81]

Actually, I found this to be a relatively interesting discussion. There's quite a few AC (Score:0) comments that mention their personal experiences. Some of these contain information that would be helpful for anyone comtemplating a sci career, and it's information you're not going to find in any textbook.

Now, going on about one's own experiences is often a rambling, but it's much better than the lame meme-fest usually seen here!

Of course, in Soviet Russia...

Counter-examples

[PopeRatzo]

The average scientist that I encounter expresses bitterness about (a) low pay, (b) not getting enough credit or references to his or her work, (c) not knowing where the next job is coming from, (d) not having enough money or job security to get married and/or have children,' writes Greenspun. 'Pursuing science as a career seems so irrational that one wonders why any young American would do it.'"

The average everybody expresses such bitterness, except maybe the average CEO or hedge fund manager.

My kid is studying bio-mathematics. My wife is a mathematician and the daughter of two biologists. "Getting married and/or having children" was not a problem for her or her mother and I doubt it will be a problem for my daughter. Now admittedly, my mother-in-law is from a country where science is both supported by the government and where scientists are treated with some respect (Socialism!). But my wife's career has been entirely in the US.

Maybe the issue here is how much money we're talking about. If you want to compare salaries with an investment banker at one of the big houses, then maybe a career in science doesn't look as hot, but if you want a nice career at the high end of what used to be called "middle-class" when we still had a middle-class, then Science is still pretty damn good.

But you've got to be smart and you've got to be patient and you've got to work the system so you don't have a mountain of debt when you graduate. In those ways, a career in Science is not so different from any career. The outrageous cost of higher education and the ridiculous student-load debt that graduates start out with are two of the ways that our "free market" system tries to make sure that regular people don't make it into the lucky-sperm club, but it certainly can be done.

To the extent that our future is probably going to be fucked for everyone, it's also going to be fucked for scientists, but I don't think it's fair to say it's more fucked for scientists than it is for anyone else. You can do worse.

Re:Counter-examples

[Maxo-Texas]

Don't confuse middle income and middle class.

The traditional meaning of middle class was not the middle income but a thin layer between the tiny upper class and the enormous upper class. Typically marked by an ability to set their own hours combined with high income.

I.e. Doctors, lawyers, etc.

So about $200k income up to $500k personal income.

So about the top 1%.

So 98% below them. 1 % above them.

Folks making $100k these days are really just upper lower class.

Re:Counter-examples

[jedidiah]

Middle class is about being in the middle of needing to work for your money and having your money work for you.

Most of the usual definitions of middle class that exist in cultural mythology are all about distracting various grades of the working class.

Usually a bigger house and a fancier car and a larger salary and a higher tax bracket just means you've got a bigger debt to work off.

Re:Counter-examples

[PopeRatzo]

Middle class is about being in the middle of needing to work for your money and having your money work for you.

Most of the usual definitions of middle class that exist in cultural mythology are all about distracting various grades of the working class.

Usually a bigger house and a fancier car and a larger salary and a higher tax bracket just means you've got a bigger debt to work off.

This is the most insightful comment I've read on the Internet in calendar year 2011.

Well done.

Re:Counter-examples

[Maxo-Texas]

Grrr. Tiny upper class and enormous LOWER class.

Measuring the wrong variables

[Unixnoteunuchs]

The variables that Greenspun uses in this analysis (compensation, status, job security) are orthogonal to the value to the scientist and to society of science as a pursuit. With exceptions, science has always fared rather poorly along these lines. If these are the variables that matter, science is always a stupid career choice. But, of course, these aren't the variables that matter. Other than historical figures, who remembers those who had successful careers in seventeenth century English finance? Who remembers Newton?

Re:Measuring the wrong variables

[sourcerror]

And that's why even back then science was the hobby of the aristrocrats.

Re:Measuring the wrong variables

[Unixnoteunuchs]

And that's why even back then science was the hobby of the aristrocrats.

Aristocrat or commoner, working as a scientist has never been a great way to make a living. But what matters?

Re:Measuring the wrong variables

[sourcerror]

An aristrocrat doesn't have to make a living. He has already has enough money.

Balkanization of Knowledge

[yesterdaystomorrow]

One big problem is that too many professors of science are narrow, impractical specialists. We have physicists who can't figure out how to make a circuit with a battery and a light bulb. We have computer scientists who can't actually write a program to do anything. They all invent their own jargon for their narrow specialties, so it's difficult for the student to discern the general principles behind the specialized knowledge (but those are what's important). How are such people going to train students to succeed outside of of the ivory tower?

The dubious value of an MIT degree

[snsh]

http://web.mit.edu/voodoo/www/degree.gif

No mod points, so I'll reply instead :)

[Wrexs0ul]

This is absolutely correct, to a point. If our total cost of manufacturing + delivery is less than outsourcing, products are built at home.

It only applies as long as we're the purchasing power however. Losing production for any length of time reduces our purchasing power because poor folk tend not to buy BMW's.

-Matt

Do what you love, and work for a small company

[Tony Isaac]

Scientists / engineers who love what they do are the ones who are the best at what they do. There are always jobs for those who are the best at what they do. You might have to move where the work is, but the jobs are there.

Too many college students choose science because they have been told that that is where the good jobs are. Those students often fail to stand out in the real world, and find themselves outsourced.

Another way to stand out is to work for smaller companies. The bigger the company, the less likely your skills will be noticed, and the more likely your job will be outsourced.

Re:Do what you love, and work for a small company

[Maxo-Texas]

Or they will do well and the scientists who care will piss off their manager by not playing ball and get fired for being difficult to work with.

you don't generally encounter carcinogens

[circletimessquare]

at a computer

but you do in the lab

This!

[Maxo-Texas]

This this this this this!

Exactly-- we are doing the easter island thing and prioritizing the wrong area of society for long term survival.

It gets even worse when you realize hedge fund managers don't even pay income tax. Get this-- they get to not take income, then BORROW against their deferred income and get the income tax free (now) against some unforeseen future day when they take it as income.

Relative income

[Animats]

In 1970, engineering and law paid about the same. The IEEE tracks this. Dentistry paid better. Real estate sales paid worse, on a par with auto sales.

What happened? Something few want to admit. Major parts of science are mined out. The return on investment from pure research has dropped since the 1970s. There was a long period when a small team might produce something like the tungsten-filament light bulb or the transistor. Now, it takes an army of researchers to get a minor improvement. That's why the big corporate research labs went into decline in the 1980s and are now mostly gone. Notice that high-energy physics hasn't produced much in the way of products in half a century. (Low-energy physics has produced substantial results, though.) Semiconductors have made huge progress, but huge resources were required to accomplish that. A modern wafer fab costs billions. The payoff for cleverness has declined, and salaries have declined accordingly.

(Biology is still making real progress, and has plenty of work ahead. Outside bio, though, things are slow.)

Re:Relative income

[rocker_wannabe]

I would agree with you, except for the biology part. Not because there hasn't been some startling developments in the area of biology but because it takes a longer time to see the blowback from the discoveries in biology than in other fields. All you have to do is read a book like "Why Things Bite Back" by Edward Tenner to see that "the more things change, the more they stay the same".

Re:Relative income

[Mab_Mass]

Biology is still making real progress, and has plenty of work ahead.

As someone working in biotech, I can very heartily second this sentiment. There are a lot of well-paying, satisfying careers in the biological sciences, especially if you also have programming/computer skills.

Also, from my perspective, I predict that the next century will see a biotech boom that is the analog of the computer boom in the last century and that advances in biotech will have some dramatic (and possibly terrifying) impacts on day to day life. The reason is that we are really only just now starting to have the technology available to even read the basic instructions of life (ie, DNA) in a cost-effective way. Combine that with improvements to DNA synthesis (ie, Venter's recent work), and there will be changes.

Re:Relative income

[Chowderbags]

10 Science is slow, reduce funding for science!
20 We've got no money, our progress is slow!
30 goto 10

Why? I'll tell you why.

[slick7]

When train wrecks like Lindsey Lohan and Charlie Sheen are the role models of today, what would you expect?
When sports figures make more than teachers. When dealing drugs earns you more than McDonalds.
When joining the military will get you killed. severely fucked up or hated by half the world. May all that is, help you if your own people hate you (like they did during the Viet Nam war).
When career criminal politicians tell you to change the system from within, while they make millions screwing the voters. When businesses consider people nothing more than expendable containers.
When the death statistics for marijuana come from law enforcement shootings while Big Pharma pushes their drugs that come with warnings that your asshole might fall out, your brain will rot or that there may be a slight case of death at cost prohibitive prices.
When greed over-rules common (most uncommon thing on the planet) sense.
I could rant all day, but who would care.
I consider thisto be what role models should be.
I leave this final message to all the status quo keepers.

Long training with high risks

[ganv]

Life as a scientist is great for the small number of scientists who find stable positions directing research efforts. You have respect, independence, room for a large amount of creative thinking, and a comfortable enough salary. The problem is that it is a long road that ends in a crap shoot to get one of these positions. Too many people find themselves at age 32 having completed two post-docs in a field that cooled off while they were in 10 years of training and now they have to change fields to get a permanent position.

Re:Long training with high risks

[DerekLyons]

Life as a scientist is great for the small number of scientists who find stable positions directing research efforts. You have respect, independence, room for a large amount of creative thinking, and a comfortable enough salary. The problem is that it is a long road that ends in a crap shoot to get one of these positions.

That's true of pretty much every career field. The real question is why we insist on believing engineering and the sciences should somehow be different.

well

[buddyglass]

If software development counts, then my reasons are as follows:

• 1. Can wear shorts, t-shirt and sandals to work at almost all times.
• 2. Don't have to work crazy financial sector hours.
• 3. Never paid on a commission basis.

Bleh... more slashdot career flamebait

[Yold]

I was hoping to see some intelligent discussion of the pros/cons of choosing careers in science, but of course this is Slashdot, and all career discussions must degenerate into bashing mangers, finance, and boo-hooing the dangers of outsourcing. So let me inject some positive and rational comments into this mess.

The financial industry is full of climbers, and it sucks to work with those people. Smart people get jammed into confining roles with no ability to solve problems or exercise creativity. I know some really smart people who have left finance to return to academia, leaving behind $500K+ salaries. Almost everyone I know who works in finance/accounting hates their job or boss.

There are plenty of jobs outside of management that pay livable wages. Live within your means, and find a spouse who makes a decent living too. Americans are so damn greedy they don't understand that driving an economy car and living in a normal house doesn't mean that you are poor.

Finally, outsourcing. HAHAHAHAHA. Having seen it in action, I think it's hilarious that people feel threatened by it. Sorry folks, American and European universities still churn out the best qualified engineers in the world. The people willing to work for $5 /hr aren't nearly as competent, and you have the global economy to thank for that. Would someone please offer some evidence of a outsourcing success story?

My friends who work in science (PhD candidates, receiving full-tuition and stipends) get drunk on Tuesday nights. They travel to conferences in San Francisco and Prague. They set their own hours and work on stuff that means the world to them. There is some guidance in their research but they call the shots and decide what to research. That is pretty damn cool. One of my friends has parents who are professors and they sure do alright.

If you want to work in science, or engineering, don't listen to the Slashdot haters. There is plenty of opportunity left in this world, just work hard and get your stuff done; you can make a living doing something that you enjoy.

Re:Bleh... more slashdot career flamebait

[the eric conspiracy]

Outsourcing is a threat because senior managers are under financial pressure and think engineers are a fungible commodity. They don't learn the truth until they wreck or nearly wreck their company going down that road.

If you want to see the results of outsourcing on a massive scale, Google 'Dreamliner delay'.

Re:Bleh... more slashdot career flamebait

[Quiet_Desperation]

Americans are so damn greedy they don't understand that driving an economy car and living in a normal house doesn't mean that you are poor.

People have a warped view of things thanks to TV, I think. Saw some cop show last year where they went to a detective's home, and she lived in some palatial apartment with a view that would impress Richard Branson.

I'm doing really well in engineering. I have my little house in a quiet neighborhood. Just bought me one of those new big MINIs. I can flex my time, and have leisure time to do what I want. But to a lot of people, because I don't live by myself in a 4000 sq ft house and have two $100K+ cars, I'm a big loser.

Re:Bleh... more slashdot career flamebait

[sydneyfong]

Outsourcing is a threat because senior managers are under financial pressure and think engineers are a fungible commodity. They don't learn the truth until they wreck or nearly wreck their company going down that road.

That is a real concern, if working for idiots is the only option. Then the whole IT industry would have already collapsed.

From what I see though, competent people still have plenty of choices of sensible employers.

I hate to sound arrogant, but really wanted to get this off my mind. Sorry if I offended you or anybody.

Re:Bleh... more slashdot career flamebait

[lurker5]

This is what is totally astounding to me. I have an engineering degree from a Midwestern US university and am able to afford my own townhouse, provide for my stay-at-home wife who is taking care of our 1 year old daughter, have a car (that mostly sits in the driveway), able to buy the highest end organic food, have a ton of free time, enjoy music, cinema, theater and have enough money left over for a hobby or two and save for retirement. Generally an intellectually and emotionally satisfying life. All of this despite having a 5-digit family income. What do I see around me? People who make twice as much money or more and own far more junk, who constantly complain about costs and taxes. Where does this come from? Americans need to wake up and realize they already own far more than an average person in this world. It's time to stop complaining and start living.

Re:Bleh... more slashdot career flamebait

[sandytaru]

Taxes are what you complain about when you have a house, enough food, good health insurance, the nicest car, the biggest TV, and a six figure income. It's the only thing you have left to complain about, actually....

Re:Bleh... more slashdot career flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

Would someone please offer some evidence of a outsourcing success story?

You only hear of outsourcing failures more than outsourcing successes, because no-one goes out telling the world if things work out. Think about this: how much work do you think is getting outsourced (billions of dollars worth every year), and how many failures do you hear of? I have seen more outsourcing successes than failures, and only one outright disaster, but that was because the companies on both sides were experienced.

Outsourcing has to be done right: for instance, the companies who do outsourcing correctly have in-depth telephone interviews with the people they will be outsourcing to, which can get as technical as any Google or Microsoft interview. If you know the economics of the country you are outsourcing to, you can make sure you pay enough to get the best talent they have, which is just as good as the best talent in the West but still quite a bit cheaper, thanks to the global economy. Otherwise, you will literally get what you pay for.

My friends who work in science (PhD candidates, receiving full-tuition and stipends) get drunk on Tuesday nights.

Oh yeah, I was a grad student too, and it's awesome while it lasts. The party ends when you graduate. Sure, they'll do pretty well as professors... if they ever get the job. Unless you've tried applying for a tenure track position, you have no idea how few openings there are and how competitive it all is. And that's just to get the job; getting tenure is a whole different rat race entirely. Jobs as "scientists" at reputable organizations are just as hard to get. Typically, they'll end up doing more of the same as a post-doc - or multiple post-docs - until they find that elusive permanent position, or give up and change fields.

If you want to work in science, or engineering, don't listen to the Slashdot haters. There is plenty of opportunity left in this world, just work hard and get your stuff done; you can make a living doing something that you enjoy.

Engineering? Sure. Science? Not so much... depending on your field. I know too many struggling science PhDs to agree with that.

Re:Bleh... more slashdot career flamebait

[RockoTDF]

I'm sure your friends who get drunk on Tuesday nights will have enough publications to get a decent post doc when they are done. I'm currently a grad student, and I know people like that. As much as I'd love to party with them, I don't envy them, even when I am in the lab on Tuesday nights. Your friends are also lucky to work on projects that they care about, rather than being forced to work on grant projects that they aren't that interested in, or to have faculty call them asking them why they aren't in the lab at 9 on a Saturday morning. Note that neither of these are a huge problem in my case (only one lame project compared to a few cool ones) and I don't work for a PI that demands that I work weekends (although I do anyway).

Conferences in Prague and SF? How much of that do they have to pay for out of pocket? The silly thing about academia is how the money works. I once explained to my dad (a retired air force colonel) that if the military was ran like academia, each squadron (or regiment, or ship, etc) would have to write a grant to congress to get money to fly to the war zone, write the DoD to pay for the ammo, and then write the UN for some cash for food, ask the next commander in the chain of command to pay for the flights back, etc. And then they would still have to buy their guns with their own cash. Oh, and each guy or gal going through basic would be told on day one that they'd end up a four star general or admiral one day.

Re:Bleh... more slashdot career flamebait

[kikito]

"Would someone please offer some evidence of a outsourcing success story?"

I will comply.

I know of one consultancy company where managers got a bonus for each outsourced post on their team. Needless to say, the outsourcing went as high as possible. Like 2 on-shore people for each 8 off-shore. The work was with SAP.

The outsourced guys did a terrible job. One week before the deadline, nothing worked.

The manager's solution was telling the people on-shore that they would have to make up for the offshore problems by making "voluntary" overtime. So, in fact, they got the whole on-shore team working 20 hours a day for a week, weekend included.

The product shipped. It worked. Barely, but it worked.

It turns out that this was not the first time management had done this. They had found a way to estimate the cost of their projects so they could have 80% of their workers doing basically no-value-adding jobs, but costing very little, and 20% of their workforce doing all of it, with an overtime period near the end.

So, there. Management was happy. The client was happy. Success.

PS: After the production release, the product entered the support phase, on which a support team (80% off-shore) would take care of any minor incidences that might happen.

Re:Bleh... more slashdot career flamebait

[lahvak]

How big is your family? We have 3 kids, and live in 1200 square feet house currently, and it is perfectly fine. In most of the world, people live in much smaller spaces.

Re:Bleh... more slashdot career flamebait

[dbIII]

Idiots have a way of creeping in at any level and wrecking a good company. Look at HP for a huge example.
The biggest danger is a new leader that doesn't have a clue what the company does yet that wants to put their "stamp" on the company. If you do anything more complicated than telephone receptionist the chances are the new guy won't know what you do and you can end up on the hit list. Next morning your key doesn't work and all the senior staff decided not to come in that day to answer difficult questions from the people that had been laid off and were not even informed about it.

Re:Bleh... more slashdot career flamebait

[syousef]

I was hoping to see some intelligent discussion of the pros/cons of choosing careers in science, but of course this is Slashdot, and all career discussions must degenerate into bashing mangers, finance, and boo-hooing the dangers of outsourcing.

Some of these people have seen their parents - very good at what they do - forced into early retirement or financial hardship by outsourcing through the actions of managers and finance people. What did you expect? People not to speak out?

So let me inject some positive and rational comments into this mess.

The financial industry is full of climbers, and it sucks to work with those people. Smart people get jammed into confining roles with no ability to solve problems or exercise creativity. I know some really smart people who have left finance to return to academia, leaving behind $500K+ salaries.

FIrst, way to go with the positive and rational comments. The first thing you've done is bash the finance industry yourself.

Second, it's amazing what earning $500K+ for a few years does to open your options up. Also amazing how those salaries dry up during downturns. So intelligent people laving those jobs doesn't mean much.

Almost everyone I know who works in finance/accounting hates their job or boss.

There are plenty of jobs outside of management that pay livable wages.

You don't have to be a manager to be in finance. I've actively avoided management and graciously declined being groomed for such promotions. As for hating your boss that's got something to do with the bosses but a lot to do with attitude too. I know plenty of people who work in various industries who hate their bosses and plenty who like or tolerate them. For the most part that just goes with the territory when you manage. Middle managers aren't always able to make decisions that make them popular.

Live within your means, and find a spouse who makes a decent living too. Americans are so damn greedy they don't understand that driving an economy car and living in a normal house doesn't mean that you are poor.

You're an idiot. You don't choose your spouse solely on whether or not they make a decent living. If you raise a family chances are you or your spouse will need to take some time off. Living within your means is always the goal. But what if you or your family gets sick? The extra cash on silly luxuries isn't needed for happiness but if you can't treat your son for terminal cancer I challenge the humblest most down to earth person to be happy under those circumstances. By the way as you grow older you'll realise that while you can make decisions that improve your life, not everything is your fault or under your control, and extra cash stashed away for security is very important.

Finally, outsourcing. HAHAHAHAHA. Having seen it in action, I think it's hilarious that people feel threatened by it. Sorry folks, American and European universities still churn out the best qualified engineers in the world. The people willing to work for $5 /hr aren't nearly as competent, and you have the global economy to thank for that. Would someone please offer some evidence of a outsourcing success story?

Guess what? It doesn't need to be a success story for you to lose your job. The right managers just need to be convinced and then it's all over.

My friends who work in science (PhD candidates, receiving full-tuition and stipends) get drunk on Tuesday nights. They travel to conferences in San Francisco and Prague. They set their own hours and work on stuff that means the world to them. There is some guidance in their research but they call the shots and decide what to research. That is pretty damn cool. One of my friends has parents who are professors and they sure do alright.

If you want to work in science, or engineering, don't listen to the Slashdot hate

Re:Bleh... more slashdot career flamebait

[bradley13]

Finally, outsourcing. HAHAHAHAHA. Having seen it in action, I think it's hilarious that people feel threatened by it. Sorry folks, American and European universities still churn out the best qualified engineers in the world. The people willing to work for $5 /hr aren't nearly as competent, and you have the global economy to thank for that.

While there are exceptions to every rule, this is generally true. The difference seems to be cultural. Visit a college course in much of Asia, and watch as the students slavishly follow every word of the instructor, copy every step of a demo - no independence of thought, no independent problem solving. Visit many workplaces in Asia, and micromanagement takes on a whole new meaning.

However, exchange students visiting the USA and Europe take back Western ideas and ways of working. They may still be the exceptions, but there are some really good technical shops out there. Things are changing.

Re:Bleh... more slashdot career flamebait

[PastaLover]

There's no doubt that if you work really hard (I've got colleagues who pull 80 hour weeks routinely, which I consider excessive, YMMV), then you will definitely do well in science. If, on the other hand, you are like the majority of people and go for a more even work-life balance without all those sacrifices, chances are that at some point you will get stuck in a low paying postdoc, moving from project to project, never really sure that you have a job for more than the next year or so and a salary on which you can't really support a family.

This trade-off is there in every profession of course, but I find it's a lot more exaggerated in science and technology than elsewhere. That being said, there are of course lots of places where a good work/life balance is possible and where sensible career choices are available. I do think we shouldn't kid students towards believing that it's some sort of cakewalk though. It's grueling and sometimes thankless (like being labeled a parasite by the common tax payer, always fun).

Of course, a science or technology degree is usable in lots of industries, so you're not really limiting yourself that much by getting one. Compare this with people pursuing an english degree, where there are so many more candidates than positions at the postdoc level, and you wonder why anyone would still bother.

So what

[prefec2]

Ok. So I will most likely not get rich. Who cares? I don't. And by the way the article puts bachelors, masters and phds in the same pond. However, their career options are quite different. And honestly when the US is such a bad place to work in the sciences. Other countries are possibly better suited. So pack your bag and move.

Re:So what

[vlm]

Ok. So I will most likely not get rich. Who cares? I don't.

I work to live. You live to work. Someone else is in control of my life for 40 hours a week. In exchange I live, excellently, somewhat extravagantly, by my rules for 128 hours a week.

Sounds like you want to be very happy for 40 hours, and miserable for 128 hours.

I prefer being tolerable OK, really not all that bad, for 40 hours, and very happy for 128 hours. By any game theory analysis, I'm coming out ahead here.

Also "not caring about being rich" sounds heroic and adventurous when you're 19 and single. But when you're older, and have responsibilities, all of a sudden its not such a respectable plan anymore.

Re:So what

[prefec2]

There is a lot of space between poor and rich. And from my point of view, it is good enough when I can make a decent living. Right now I make 38 K EUR a year before taxes and stuff and 20 K EUR after taxes, state retirement funds and health care. That should be enough for me. And if I would be married with children, then I would have to pay less taxes and it would still be ok.

I personally work to live. Even though I am in the sciences and therefor my job (research) is also my passion. ;-)

Casualty of Globalization

[Tablizer]

Just like factory and repetitious office work, sci/tech is yet another casualty of globalization. The laws of math and physics are the same in Timbuktu, yet the wages are roughly 1/4 of what they are in the USA. Obviously this makes USA sci/tech workers too expensive from an economic perspective.

Instead, STEM students are flocking to fields where security issues override labor costs, such as finance and defense. It's often too risky to offshore finance and defense because it's harder to control such information in the third world where the incentives to cheat are higher to an individual and the local legal system is generally beyond the reach of a US organization.

Brains are becoming a cheap global commodity, but security is not.

Bioscience is a ponzi/pyramid scheme

[cinnamon colbert]

For academic science, this is how it works:
most science is funded by NIH/NSF/Howard Hughes. The grant (award of money) is to a principal investigator - typically a tenure track professor, or a group for a large grant.
Most of hte work is done by Grad Students (people with a BS working toward an MS or PHD) or by postdocs (people with a PhD, but in an explicitly temporary position). These people work long hours for relatively little pay; certainly at the top, in the prestigous labs, the GSs and PDs are people who could have gone to med school or bschool.
Not only are they ill paid, particularly in view of hte hours, but they are also indentured servants, so to speak: their careers are almost totally dependent on the letter of recommendatin from their advisor, or, if hteir advisor is a whack job, from another faculty person
The carrot, to compensate for the stick of penury, is supposedly that you progress to a professor ship of your own.
the problem is that each person costs, roughly 100-200K a year, and it is clearly an exponential growth situation: you start with N professors in year 0; each produces x graduates a year, who in turn become professors producing grad students...
the empirical evidence to support the assertion that this is a pyramid scheme is of two sorts: first, the job prospects have been gettting worse and worse since year zero (roughly, the start of hte war on cancer in the 60s) and every 20 years or so, as expected for an exponential growth, there is a "sudden crisis" when there is a great "shortage" of funding.
the last few crisis, the scientists have managed to pursuade congress to double the NIH budget; the predictable response is that all the universitys go out an build enormous new research buildings, and hire new slots (science faculty are a profit center)

Re:Bioscience is a ponzi/pyramid scheme

[sandytaru]

However, only half of the students ever complete their PhD programs. Half will drop out. So while the crisis of required positions still exists, its only about half as dire as your explanation predicts.

Re:Bioscience is a ponzi/pyramid scheme

[RockoTDF]

There are still several times more PhDs graduating each year than their are jobs. It doesn't help that virtually all departments/fields/disciplines/programs are structured to produce future professors, either. The whole thing is sort of a ponzi scheme, and as a young grad student I'm a bit scared when Nature and the Chronicle of Higher Ed suddenly start posting numerous articles calling it such, or criticizing how it works. I don't call that cynicism, but honesty.

Grass is Always Greener

[AtlanticCarbon]

I'm always amazed how every profession thinks they have it the worst. The grass is always greener on the other side. If you look at Department of Labor statistics, science and engineering is a _comparatively_ good place to be. The problem is people want the economy to reward their intelligence and overall contributions to society. That's not how it works. It works on supply and demand. There's always going to be a huge demand for people that can sell things. Does that mean you should be in sales? If you do you're not really that into science to begin with.

Most "meaningful" jobs won't pay you tons and tons of money. Maybe that's because you're getting satisfaction out of your job unlike a corporate lawyer who looks over SEC reports for 12 hours a day. I imagine this is built into the wages. As others have said, do what you enjoy.

Re:Grass is Always Greener

[entropy123]

Simple fact that "supply and demand" leads to lower wages? I think there is a large supply of folks able and willing to be the Goldman CEO...why isn't his salary rock bottom like a postdocs?

Re:Grass is Always Greener

[RockoTDF]

You don't know what a postdoc is, or how the tenure track system works, do you?

I blame colleges

[Dallas Caley]

A lot of people think it would be nice if everyone everywhere could get a degree and be a professional but its just not practical. Not everyone can be a doctor or a programmer or we won't have anyone left to work retail or pave the roads. Colleges want to get everybody to go to college. why is that? well duh they make money that's why. Why should we encourage women and minorities to go to college any more that we encourage anyone else? My thought is if these people have no motivation on their own to go to college and work in the sciences then chances are even if someone pushes them to do it they will never be that good at their career. Especially in the sciences you really have to have a passion for it, or you are not going anywhere. And who says science is what we need more of anyway? everyone thinks that if we just had enough scientists we could solve all the worlds problems, if you ask me what we really need is good customer service people. we need people with social skills so they can actually understand someone else's viewpoint. It's things like this that will prevent wars not science.

Re:I blame colleges

[sandytaru]

That's a little unfair to women and minorities, at least a significant portion of whom are more intelligent than some of the white males who manage to clog up the corporate ladder.

Re:I blame colleges

[Dallas Caley]

ah ok..

All I said was we should treat everybody the same regardless of race or gender, I don't see how this is unfair. I think the real argument here comes down to an old standard, Nature vs Nurture

If you believe it is all nurture that determines a persons life then yes, we should encourage everyone to be whatever it is that society needs most at the time. I don't buy this argument though, I think some people (at least partially by nature) just don't make good (fill in the blank career choice here). Great example, I'm 5 foot 4, I would make a horrible basketball player, you can encourage me all you want, and I might even try to go for that career but I would still make a horrible basketball player.

Lets face it, Men and Women are different. Its pretty obvious that there are certain careers that men excel at by nature and others that women excel at by nature. By all means break the mold if that is what you want to do, there are always exceptions to the rule. I think the same is true of races or any other defining factor of humanity. To deny that certain groups of people tend to act in similar ways (White males included) is simply foolish.

...now if you'll excuse me i believe its time for me to go exert my imperialistic nature on some unsuspecting culture.

Re:Engineering

[dtmos]

...the skill-to-pay ratio for engineering is so high that you must be really dedicated to stay with it.

FTFY.

The problem isn't the profitability of Science...

[eepok]

We're not lacking science-trained professionals nor academics. And the problem isn't that the science-trained are going into other fields. The problem is that politicians are trying to re-purpose education to be a means of fixing the economy... which it's not.

Students and education are not factory systems into which you can blindly invest capital with a rational expectation of getting more money out the other end. It may happen, but it's not of a very high nor reliable return. And if it doesn't turn out to be particularly profitable (additional investment into STEM), will all that invested support be taken away?

STEM investment is not a silver bullet to economic woes. There is no silver bullet. STEM investment is the result of the following logic: "Something must be done. This is something. It must be done."

Over-investment in STEM comes at the cost of the humanities, arts, and physical education all of which are necessary for a healthy society. Get your heads out of your collective asses and listen to actual educators. Fund each portion of academia as necessary to prepare students for a wide variety of career and life choices. Variety and preparation, not homogeneity and mandates, will advance our civilization.

Market

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a case where market forces do not produce the optimal result. That's not a "failure" of markets, just an issue of the appropriateness of the tool. Markets select the most efficient financial outcome in a given market, that's all. Not the best moral solution, not the best emotional solution, not the happiest solution ... just the most fiscally efficient. If your goal is to maintain the United States' lead in science, technology, and engineering despite the economics of it, then you have to interfere with market forces. It's just that simple. The Federal government could do something radical like heavily subsidize college tuition for these careers for people who remain in the United States after graduation, they could offer reductions in Federal taxes to people in these fields, low interest loans on housing, etc.

Re:The problem isn't the profitability of Science.

[vlm]

Students and education are not factory systems into which you can blindly invest capital with a rational expectation of getting more money out the other end. It may happen, but it's not of a very high nor reliable return.

You need to look into the federally guaranteed student loan system. You can't discharge those loans in bankruptcy, and if by some miracle you lose anyway, the govt will make you whole. Also the rates the students pay are pretty high, at least compared to something like T-bills.

Yes the students lives are ruined as they're turned into debt serfs, but the destruction of the middle class has always been the purpose of govt, right?

Ever wonder why an education bubble is brewing? Why tuition goes up 15% per year, every year, for decades?

A Career in Science is Infinitely Rewarding

[WebSorcerer]

I earned a Ph.D in Chemistry in 1966. My thesis involved a new (at that time) scientific instrument, a mass spectrometer. After I graduated, I got a job with the Dow Chemical Company in the Chemical Physics Research Lab running their new high resolution mass spectrometer. I had never seen one before. It was the start of a magical career for me.

I am a living pioneer (almost 73 years old). I have done things no-one had done before. I have received the recognition of my peers in the form of publications, invitations to speak at scientific meetings in the US and Europe, and served on a committee for the Government of Canada (invited by the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Health and Welfare) to assess the impact of dioxins in that country. I was the only US citizen on the committee.

All this was in the area of the detection and quantification of Dioxins in the environment, animals (including humans), and in chemical processes. I have developed methods (with others) to measure organic compounds at levels never before achieved at the time (water: 1-5 parts per quadrillion; human and bovine milk: 10 parts per billion; human fat: 20 parts per billion;...).

The intangible rewards have been infinitely gratifying and satisfying. The monetary compensation was enough to live comfortably (but not extravagantly). My pension and Social Security benefits allow me to enjoy my 'golden years' and still leave a legacy to my children.

Re:A Career in Science is Infinitely Rewarding

[kuzb]

Too bad your experience isn't representative of the sciences as a whole. Most scientists continue to do it because they love it, not because it is actually beneficial for them to have a career in science.

here't the real problem...

[Thud457]

Guess what, America? If someone else is willing to do your job for a quarter of what you are, well, they are going to get the job and you aren't going to. That's what you get for pricing yourselves out of the market. There's nothing wrong with that - it's simple economics. Either you compete with the world's best, or you suffer the loss of those industries and all that they bring to your economy.

Strangely, for some reason, this doesn't seem to apply to finance or management...

Speaking as a male physicist

[DetriusXii]

I finished optimistically in my Masters in physics in 2005. I was going to take a few months off before starting my PhD to look for jobs and accept one because I was undecided about doing a PhD. I discovered that no employer was really looking for a physics education and I returned to the PhD program bitter. Being a graduate student eventually ends and ultimately, that education needs to be translated into sustainable work. Otherwise, it's just lost income opportunities by consuming time to get an education. Being able to start a family matters and being able to settle down and buy a house matters. And the people saying that science education is so valuable and so important to do aren't making those sacrifices themselves. They're the ones with their own house and vehicle and starting their family life. I ended up retraining as an accountant but I then realized I was incredibly bored after six months, so I took computer science instead and I discovered I liked it a lot more. And the material is interesting to read even outside of class. And I get job interviews too. I still think it's a challenging market as a programmer in Saskatchewan, but there's still more demand for it than in physics or engineering. Other friends who stuck it out for the PhD are now discovering that things are going awry for them. They can't find jobs and they don't have the income they thought they would. There was an article http://harvardmagazine.com/2009/11/professionalization-in-academy basically explaining that jobs that are safe are jobs that can't be shipped over the wire. The trades and the health sector seem to fit that category. There just isn't a demand for science and I cringed when I heard that the Liberals have education tax credit plans for university students. it just seems to be flooding the market with more university majors without employer demand for the degree.

Re:Speaking as a male physicist

[Bill Dimm]

I ended up retraining as an accountant but I then realized I was incredibly bored after six months

That's where you made a wrong turn. People that leave physics to do "finance" aren't doing anything remotely like accounting. Most are doing derivative securities, which requires serious math, numerical methods, and logical thinking (and probably a PhD). If you're looking to go from physics to finance and don't have someone to point you in the right direction, you can wind up being very bored and in the wrong niche. Your starting point should be the book "Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives" by John C. Hull, or something comparable. That will give you an introduction to the simpler stuff.

Re:Speaking as a male physicist

[Fjandr]

There just isn't a demand for science and I cringed when I heard that the Liberals have education tax credit plans for university students. it just seems to be flooding the market with more university majors without employer demand for the degree.

This is the problem with universal higher education. I support having opportunities open, but not pushing people there who have no business in higher education. All it does is provide another HR checkbox when screening applications: "No degree? Tossed."

Then you're left with those who excel, and they get the interviews, assuming there are openings at all. Those are the people who would have gotten the interview anyway, so those who wouldn't otherwise have gone to college are no better off. In many regards, they are actually worse off, in that they spend years of time and money that the resulting education will never pay off. The argument "an education helps everyone" is a cop-out, and I usually have to walk away when it's trotted out in defense of universal higher education. Universal education hurts many, many people, but those who tout it will never, ever admit that. It doesn't fit their world-view, so they dismiss it out-of-hand.

As for your physics degree, that's a sucky situation. Last I heard, nearly 75% of physics graduates (at all levels) ultimately fail to find employment in their field, at least in the US.

Re:Speaking as a male physicist

[DetriusXii]

Relax :-). I ended up enjoying computer science thoroughly and I caught my second wind. I never got explore the wonders of programming languages beyond C when I was physicist, because physics programming is about getting the simulation out and no professor will be happy with their students learning esoteric programming languages. I like that I'm enlightened now about functional programming languages and that I can understand the DOM and RESTful interaction now.

I have several friends who quit after their Masters too and one ended up retraining as a financial mathematician and he has read the textbook you mentioned. Finance isn't high on my priority right now. I just don't care too much in investments and rates of returns right now. I could eventually, but I'm happy as a cell phone application developer right now.

What my Fluid Dynamics Prof told me years ago...

[Lord of the Fries]

"You A students, you'll be back soon teaching here with me.
You B students, you'll actually go on to be real engineers.
You C students, you'll go into management and tell the A and B students what to do."

The larger issue, that all of these comments circle around to me, is the continued decay of trust. I don't trust management. They don't trust me. What a surprise that at some point, I'd decide "if you can't beat them, might as well become one of them and get paid like one."

Re:Managers make that decision

[JockTroll]

Wait, did 10th grade call asking for the In Crowd back while sticking nails in the EYES of Nerds?

FTFY.

Real World Example

[Calsar]

This is a repost of mine from a previous conversation on this subject:
My wife got a Ph.D. in molecular biology. She did a postdoc and NIH and then started to look for job. She wanted to be a professor at a University. After talking to some of the recruiters at Universities we found out they were getting hundreds of resumes for each position. In addition, the research field is brutal. You constantly struggle for grant money and tenure is pretty much a thing of the past. Universities want you to come in with grants, they take half the money, then they boot you out if you lose your grants. It's a very stressful environment to be in. Another thing I ran into while doing research was that the number of teaching positions at Universities has gone up about 50% since 1960, however the number of Ph.D.s has gone up 500%. Of course there are commercial research positions as well, but at least in biotech there is a lot of turn over as companies come and go. She has friends that get laid off every couple years and spend six months to a year looking for a new job. There were also a lot of sales jobs where you go around and sell equipment to companies, which she didn't want to do. Do you really want to spend all that time in school to be a sales person? My wife eventually ended up with desk job with Genebank at NIH and no longer does research. Note that she was 31 by the time she got her first real job. That's a lot of time to put into education for not much reward. She is especially annoyed that she will never make as much money as I do in IT even though she has a doctorate degree and I have a master's in CS. We have encouraged our son not to go into science.

You're first guess is simply wrong

[Weezul]

Humans are clever beasties. Ain't no shortage of clever kids with STEM degrees.

There are likely more different personality types studying in STEM programs of course, perhaps reducing the proportion of Feynmans and Sagans for PBS specials, or replacing them with asses like Venter. We're still seeing top notch research from the young STEM PhDs graduating form top tier universities though.

There are also middle tier universities that graduate some weak PhDs because they've over admitting them for the cheap TA teaching. Yet, all those people move quickly into teaching at your weaker liberal arts collages however. Ergo, they weren't even counted for the statistics being discussed.

All that's peanuts compared with the simple observation that every good professor has more than one good graduate student, that's an exponential function my friend. All those researchers got jobs way back simply because university enrollments were actually growing vaguely exponentially, even back before the Cold War, G.I. bill, etc. All that's finished now. Even if we sent every kid to university, even if all those new students were too stupid to get PhDs, we'd still never create enough professorships for the researchers being produced now.

Academia simply must learn that most people who earn PhDs shouldn't try becoming professors. We're doing exactly that by sending so many STEM grads into finance, business, advertising, etc.

A purely self-serving speech

[OverTheGeicoE]

This isn't the first time an American politician has encouraged students to pursue science careers, even though it takes a vow of poverty to stay in that game and the most likely outcome is being unemployable in their chosen field. American politicians also encourage people to enlist in the military and die in Afghanistan. It's equally self-serving in both cases, and when things go wrong, who suffers? Not the politicians.

Politicians keep the cost of scientific labor low with their speeches and their generous visa allotments. That's what they really want, not what's best for Americans as individuals.

Re:Bogus

[Anonymous Coward]

You're overly optimistic (or more likely have never worked in science). I'll fix your post for you.

TLDR: Many of the observations made by Greenspun in his article are spot on.

Science is a very difficult career path, that's true, but his 'successful' example scientist glossed over some significant hurdles. A successful scientist will labor long hours for relatively little money (20k/yr) to get their degree. If they're interested in continuing their career, they'll have to do a postdoc (35k/yr). With 300 applicants per spot it is highly unlikely to get hired as faculty but if they do get hired as faculty, they've got about a 50% chance of getting tenure, after which they'll likely be making ~70k/yr. Few successful folks either start or consult for companies, providing much needed supplemental funding for their labs since traditional funding through government grants is collapsing. If a successful person is interested in industry, getting a 60-70/yr job can happen after as little as 2-3 years of postdocing, but increasingly more like 5+.

It's true that we need to provide more financial incentive for science as a career, because if we don't we get financial crises instead of moon landings. However, it's not nearly as bad as this post makes it seem. It's actually worse because it doesn't factor in the high frequency of unemployment, the glut of scientists on the job market, the threat of outsourcing, the omnipresence of bankruptcy and corporate mergers, and the hostility of the general populace towards science.

Dunno what planet you are on

[Quiet_Desperation]

I closing in on $200K, and I'm still doing pure engineering. Might retire by 50. Maybe 55 just to sock away some more funds.

It only took filling in the "a miracle occurs here" box on a flow chart once every couple years or so. ;-)

Re:The problem isn't the profitability of Science.

[eepok]

Good point, but I'm not speaking to student loans. I'm talking about segmented educational investment... like supplying more money to hire teachers... but only STEM teachers. Supplying more grants for research in higher education... but only in the sciences.

And tuition in state schools has gone up as a function of reduced state funding. but tuition isn't even the big concern. It's the "cost of living" for which loans, grants, and scholarships are adjusted.

For example, around the University of California, Irvine, property prices (apartments) have always gone up and only went up quicker during the bubble. The Irvine Company (which owns the vast majority of land and apartments in Irvine) intentionally makes it difficult for students to rent cheaper apartments away from the campus. That forces demand to skyrocket at the communities nearest to the campus.

They change their price per sq. ft. to "meet market demand" and the students end up paying over $2000 per 2 bedroom. That cost of living is calculated by the university and factored in to the amounts of funding that needs to be provided by grants, loans, and scholarships. Thus, the housing company is indirectly sucking on the federal and state teet by price-gouging the students. That's why the total cost of attendance has gone up from $14k/year in 2000 to over $30k for 2011.

Ahh, but you've missed the whole point.

[Weezul]

All the stock brokers are now being pulled from MIT & co.'s STEM programs. Aren't you glad knowing the guys making all that money loved science & designing things in High School?

Google & others are making significant progress towards populating marketing with the same crowd too. There is also a lively field of academic business research desperately trying to ensure that STEM majors are more qualified than undergrad business majors.

Sales may take slightly longer though. Sorry, people still love a good bullshit artist.

Re:Ahh, but you've missed the whole point.

[SydShamino]

My company uses engineers exclusively for field sales. They claim it's easier to sell when the people selling the products have a similar background to the people buying the products. In my opinion, there's hope that it at least makes the sales guy look less stupid compared to the many non-technical sales folks that have tried to foist things upon me.

Re:Managers make that decision

[MikeDaSpike]

If they did why didn't he encode a message relaying all our important documentation in advancements in technology so we could be 20 years ahead in technological terms? They have modems in the 90s, i'm sure they could understand it...

Re:What the fuck, Obama. You're an idiot.

[jedidiah]

Apparently, there aren't enough women in high executive positions. Although there seem to be a lot more women starting their own businesses.

So it seems like a good deal of the female talent decided to skip the corporate nonsense and make their own way.

In the end, it's really not as bad as it looks but someone could sure spin it that way.

Someone might be too smart to be a sucker.

Re:Female perspective - yes it is a poor career.

[radtea]

However, if I was finishing high school and going to University for the first time now I would be doing medicine not physics. There are more jobs with more security, it's better paid with better working conditions and higher socio-economic status, and just as interesting.

I'm a male who was in more-or-less your position fifteen years ago. I was a post-doc at a top-tier school in Canada and had done time at top-tier schools in the US. There were expected to be one or maybe two tenure-track positions opening up in my field over the next few years, and half of my closest friends were better qualified for them than I was. I was good, but not the best, and with so few jobs schools could afford to select the best. I had two small kids and was struggling financially.

The dot-com boom meant that anyone with a little C++ experience could get a job, and while I was primarily an experimentalist I had done enough computing to qualify. It was an enormously difficult transition, but retrospectively one of the best things I've ever done.

The advantages of a PhD in physics are many. I have run my own business doing scientific and software consulting. I have worked on a variety of intellectually challenging projects while an employee of various companies, both contract and full-time. Because my graduate school and post-doctoral experience included a lot of electronics and low-level programming, I find myself well-positioned to ride the current wave in embedded systems development. Along the way I've found opportunities to be involved in genetics research due to my experience in pattern recognition algorithms from data analysis in particle physics... and so on.

The thing I recommend to people who are thinking of doing PhDs in physics is to learn as much about business as you can. The odds are probably better that you will wind up running your own business than working as a tenured professor at a first-rank school. You have to learn to think like a businessperson (a consultant friend commented recently, "When someone asks me if something is possible, I don't say yes or no, I ask how much money is available to do it.")

There are enormous rewards to managing your own career, but like anything else you need to take a few years to learn the ropes. I worked for other people for four years before striking out on my own (during the tail end of the dot-com melt-down, as it happened... my last two employment positions were terminated by the failure of the company.)

Sit down and ask yourself what skills you have, and what further skills you need to maximize the economic value of those skills. Make yourself a plan for gaining those extra skills, which might be everything from accounting to selling. Look for volunteer opportunities that will let you practice those skills with a low cost of failure. Plan for the long haul. Remember that no one is ever going to look out for you as carefully as you look out for yourself.

You're at the start of the road now, and there are plenty of forks yet to take, if you choose. There are lots of opportunities for physicists in medicine, for example. With a PhD in physics you can, with time and effort, go to some remarkable places, and make a good living along the way, and even have a lot of time for your kids (I did, running my consulting company as a "lifestyle" business that let me have the time with them when they were in their tweens and teens.)

The costs of tech education

[GodfatherofSoul]

Tech degrees have a high opportunity cost and a relatively lower resulting salary compared to something like a management degree that can propel you upwards quickly in Corporate America. Tech degrees take a lot more work in school for studying, schools are more expensive since the best programs are at the more expensive universities, and equipment costs are higher be that engineering fees or mandatory hardware you need to purchase on your own. Add to that the additional time it takes to study wipes out time you would have to work a job that could pay your way. I was shown a graduation plan by my adviser that implied that there simply wasn't enough time in the week to work and study (he also told me that *no one* had graduated from the engineering department otherwise).

So, now you need a well-off benefactor to sponsor you during school who can pay your bills for 4 years. Good luck if you can't get the loans to cover your education and expenses. Good luck paying them off when you do graduation and you can be sure as hell you won't be taking that fun job paying 10-20% less for personal satisfaction.

Article author could learn "research"

[Dahamma]

Took me 30 seconds to find these stats:

Top Employment Sectors for MIT Graduates
          Undergrads Masters
Aerospace/defense 8% 6%
Biological science 8% 3%
Computer technologies 13% 17%
Consulting 18% 21%
Energy/utilities 6% 4%
Finance 16% 12%
Other engineering 11% 17%

So, 16% of MIT grads go into finance. Oh no, they might as well abandon their BS program and shut down the engineering school!

I can tell you for a fact (from our abysmal hiring percentage due to both unqualified applicants and multiple offers) that the tech industry (especially in the Bay Area) is hiring like mad right now, and there is a huge shortage of qualified engineers. I have not heard the same from friends in many other industries. Honestly, "outsourcing" is only a concern if you are mediocre at your job in the first place - those at the top of their field (like many MIT grads) have little to worry about.

The PhD problem

[Baby Duck]

Ars Technica has a highly-related article

Most PhD students in the sciences (unlike those in other fields of education, such as medicine or law school) are fully funded through research assistantships, teaching opportunities, and fellowships. With so many graduates these days taking jobs they are overqualified for, some educators and economists believe this money is simply being wasted.

Passion for science outweighs the pay

[klchoward]

People with a true passion for a science don't get into it for the money...they study science because they love it. Any one else is kidding themselves. On the other hand though...I am a scientist (meteorologist) working for a contractor for the US govt and I make a decent wage (enough to pay my insane school loans), work very flexible hours, and am hands on with the science every day...even when it doesn't always seem like it. If I didn't love my job I wouldn't have it...I would do something easy, like everyone else.

No flamebait

[tsa]

This post is not a flamebait but the truth. Not only in America but also in most of Europe you have to be crazy to become a scientist. I know 'cause I am one. The changes of making a career beyond the job of Post-Doc are tiny, which means getting a fixed position at a university is out of the question. Our government wants the Netherlands to be in the top five of the best research conducted in the world, and in order to reach that goal has thought it wise to has rip at least 300 M€ from the science budget. All universities now have to lose personnel. This means not only do you never know where your next job comes from, but there is also a small chance that you get fired during a research project. If I were a student now I would really think twice before starting a scientific career.

Re:What the fuck, Obama. You're an idiot.

[GodfatherofSoul]

Spoken like an upper-middle class white guy. Quick anecdote. I had a cool roommate from college who claimed to be paying her own way through school. She didn't pay her own rent, bills, for school supplies, car payment or insurance, and worked about 10 hours a week at her sorority. As far as I knew, "paying her way" meant just cutting a check for tuition. And, who knows where that money came from. But, in her mind she had the same opportunities as everyone else "paying their way through school."

Re:Managers make that decision

[iinlane]

You should always include reference to original
http://xkcd.com/875/

Speaking as a (different) male physicist

[tool462]

My backstory is almost identical to yours. Got my Masters in Physics in 2004, and was also unsure about completing a PhD. I was able to find work in electrical engineering, but I credit my luck to getting an engineering internship during my undergrad, since this was the company that hired me full time afterward. My company and likely many others would see "physics degree, no experience" and pass as you experienced. But because I had had the internship, they knew me well and knew my abilities, so the exact credentials were less important. There was another physicist in our group who has since retired, but my boss has made the comment many times that after working with both of us, he's likely to prefer going after a physics grad if a resume comes his way. In fact, we did recently hire an engineer whose undergrad was physics (masters in EE though).

We tend to approach problems differently than those with a traditional engineering backgrounds, and have a few other skills in our toolset that aren't a big part of the standard engineering curriculum but fairly common in physics. Particularly in numerical and statistical analysis.

Re:'Pursuing science as a career seems so irration

[turkeyfish]

Good for you. You value your mind more than others who so easily sell themselves for money.

You Should Be

[turkeyfish]

You seem to express a death wish for humanity.

Without good science, how are we going to determine whether it makes any sense putting all these "system architecs, computer architects, and entrepreneurs" to work doing anything: 1) worth doing, or 2) that won't destroy the planet in the process?

Re:I'm a scientist

[DCFusor]

Yeah, if you actually suck and are depending on paper qualifications to land a good paying sinecure job. If you've actually got the "stuff" you can skip right out of school before graduation and become a millionaire. I did. I retired at age 53, a millionaire a few times over, because I had the stuff, learned what I missed in school on my own, and was productive as heck for my employers, until I hung out my own shingle in the '80s and REALLY started making money because companies were sick of guys with a ton of papers demanding good salaries but who couldn't produce like I could.

And that's what's wrong with science and a few other fields these days. No piece of crap collection of paper qualifications actually gives you "the right stuff". You have it, or you don't. You can get it if you weren't born with it, but you have to earn it. Sitting in school being whupped on and treated like crap for years just proves to most people you have no ability to take risks, and define your own path, much less able to innovate and get things done.

Ask a CEO of a major outfit if you don't believe me, I know a good number of them, they'll say the same.

Or as we said -- an engineer is a guy who solves multiple problems a week, and writes a report about them all weekly. A PhD takes 7 years to solve one problem and write one report. Who would you hire? And the old argument that at lest PhD's solve hard, unique problems is now an utter joke, just go read some dissertations about things -- and if you know history, a heck of a lot of them are about things known 30 years ago, and are either a minor refinement (at best) or the result of re-doing forgotten history.

So, yeah, if you want to be a wage slave, be a scientist, or be better paid at some other related thing, like engineering. If you want to take chances and have them pay, start your own business -- which is much harder than either, which is why it pays better when you succeed.

Shitty job bingo

[mofolotopo]

I get (a), (c), and (d).

Putting Things in Proper Perspective

[turkeyfish]

Its not so much a corporate god as it is good old fashioned corporate greed. Too many think exist as useful societal institutions only to make money. If they only just make money, then they are worse than useless.

You are right though, this is very much at the heart of our problems. Its the general "trickle up theory of economics" promoted by those at the top, whose PR teams are busy selling the virtues of "trick down theory of economics". Things will only change when those who are being peed on, become so pissed off that they will demand laws that force other kinds of valuations on corporate entities. If one only values things in terms of dollars, the lowest common denominator of collective values, then one will greatly undervalue the most important and valuable things that can never be purchased with money.

The problem is that we are all in the Darwinian predicament. We all tend to perceive value as it relates only to our personal bottom line, rather than thinking creatively and wisely enough to assure that everyone's bottom line is raised. The sad reality is that a science based economy is probably something that won't be gasped in time. As a consequence of the sheer magnitude of billions and billions of humans impacting the ecosystems that sustain humanity will overwhelm it, well before such a realization and conceptual awakening can come in time to save us. My guess is that humanity probably has less than a few hundred years. Then we turn things back over to the cockroaches and bacteria, which have long demonstrated superior survival skills.

The "Real Science Gap" made a similar point

[dwheeler]

The Real Science Gap basically makes the same point - the jobs are horrible for scientists, so lots of smart people avoid the field.

Education pays

[SoftwareArtist]

No matter what happens with the economy, no matter what trends develop with off-shoring, no matter what happens in the financial services industry, there is one thing you can be sure of: people with a good education will be better positioned than those without. And a good education in a STEM field offers more possibilities than almost any other. You can mourn the engineering grads going to work in finance, but keep in mind: they have access to those jobs because of their engineering degrees. All else being equal, a person with a strong technical background will almost always have more opportunities than a person with a non-technical background.

Make yourself irreplaceable

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Office Space shows even managers must fear other, higher level managers.

The only way to be irreplaceable is to create necessity out of that which only you can provide but provide it in a way in which you are protected from liability.

Many administrators think that taking passwords will make them irreplaceable. But rather, it just makes them liable to wind up in jail. While programmers can breed security through complexity of their home grown software, they often find it too hard on their own jobs. But I know one programmer who has written so much custom code, that replacing him would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of work. His job will never be outsourced.

As an administrator, I can be replaced overnight. But that is also why I rarely automate anything, and for a few critical jobs, I rely on my own work by hand. It may cost me a few hours of reading /, per week. But should I leave, the systems will slowly degrade. While not making it impossible to replace me, it raises the cost of replacing me.

Yes, I could automate myself right out of a job. I'm paid for my knowledge. Automation is hard coding my knowledge, and that doesn't pay royalty fees. This is why I like highly customizable systems. It will rely on me being present for the system to continue running as needed.

If you don't want replaced by a robot or cheap labor, don't make your job so easy that it could be done by them.

Re:Make yourself irreplaceable

[pnutjam]

I don't know why this is modded up... I have to assume it is a joke. I automate everything possible. To do things by hand limits your growth much more then it limits the ability of your managers to outsource you. There will always be a place for the competent workers.

Yes, but then

[turkeyfish]

Yes, but then you will run smack into the "prestige" industry lobby.

After all how could anyone possibly survive without Gucci shoes, a BMW, and an iPhone?

It doesn't have to be this way.

[scorp1us]

There are two ways to have a job. Be the boss, or be the worker. Inventors are just engineers that are their own bosses. These people take a huge risk (no regular pay check) but get huge rewards (cuts of thousands or millions). These people amass patents, and the like. They negotiate their rates. They are the true engineering cowboys.

Contrast that to your typical engineer in a low-risk situation. Steady wages, but no patent portfolio (the company owns those). Clearly, we all expect to be a cowboy with some big discovery, but we fall into the comfortable wage job.

Think about every famous engineer. They did it on their own. Or close to. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs & Co., Tesla, Bell, Edison... They came first, their companies came later.

The endgame: Human extinction

[turkeyfish]

"Market fundamentalism has its roots in liberalism, and was reactionary against the totalitarian socialism of Austria [wikipedia.org]. Neo-liberalism is not without merit. But by taking the market as the source of morals, we have neglected what really drives value in society. "

BS. Austria was only for a brief period of time the center of the world. Most of "these problems" can be traced to biological processes that appeared well before the advent of humans.

While I agree that climate change will shape the future of politics, the notion that there will be any place to "stand on the sidelines" is a gross overindulgence in wishful thinking.

Re:The endgame: Human extinction

[microbox]

Dude, market fundamentalism is based on neoliberalism as explicated by Hayek, who in turn formulated his theories based on his experiences in fascist Austria before WWII. Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were fervent advocates of Hayek's vision of a free market, and the rest is, as they say, history.

A better understanding of human nature (by economists) would drive a new model of economics, but currently the way things stand, any talk of something different to neoliberal economics is "socialism". Note that Hayek believed that interference in the free market was totalitarianism, and that is how the discourse proceeds today. We can forgive Hayek for missing the irony of his words -- his world was in the grip of fascism -- but today, the free market /is/ the new totalitarianism.

The "sidelines" is just a place to stand, in hope that you do not get hit by the rabid saliva of some yapping dog.

Re:What the fuck, Obama. You're an idiot.

[imric]

Yup. The home-economics sciences are wide open for females! There's no educational bias against 'em going into STEM, no-sir-ee-bob. You can tell by the equal representation they have in all fields involving STEM!

Re:Bogus

[turkeyfish]

Gee I became a professor and I maxed out at 42K for 100 hr plus weeks. Clearly, I was in the wrong field.

Re:Female perspective - yes it is a poor career.

[cashman73]

Well, there's the best of both worlds -- you could always get into Biophysics. A lot of computational simulations of proteins and nucleic acids are based on it, and there's the potential to get into the fairly new, much talked about, and hopefully lucrative field of bioenergy,. . .

No Respect

[TofuDog]

Most of us who went into science didn't do it for the money. The Scientific Method has enabled virtually all technological innovation since the Enlightenment. What could be more honorable than work in a realm where smart people collaborate and have their ideas tested through competition and peer review? Unfortunately, Science, and its annoying reliance on concepts like "rationality," "fact," and "uncertainty" make an easy target for ideologues in recent years. For an interesting (and depressing) perspective on why people maintain beliefs contrary to scientific evidence, see Chris Mooney's recent article: The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney?page=1

See also Disciplined Minds

[Paul Fernhout]

http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/
"Upon publication of Disciplined Minds, the American Institute of Physics fired author Jeff Schmidt. He had been on the editorial staff of Physics Today magazine for 19 years. ...
    Who are you going to be? That is the question.
    In this riveting book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school, where professionals are trained. He shows that professional work is inherently political, and that professionals are hired to subordinate their own vision and maintain strict âoeideological discipline.â
    The hidden root of much career dissatisfaction, argues Schmidt, is the professionalâ(TM)s lack of control over the political component of his or her creative work. Many professionals set out to make a contribution to society and add meaning to their lives. Yet our system of professional education and employment abusively inculcates an acceptance of politically subordinate roles in which professionals typically do not make a significant difference, undermining the creative potential of individuals, organizations and even democracy.
    Schmidt details the battle one must fight to be an independent thinker and to pursue oneâ(TM)s own social vision in todayâ(TM)s corporate society. He shows how an honest reassessment of what it really means to be a professional employee can be remarkably liberating. After reading this brutally frank book, no one who works for a living will ever think the same way about his or her job."

Also by a physicist:
    http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html

More links collected by me:
    http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
    http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-October/005379.html
  http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005584.html
    http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/006005.html

IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end

[Paul Fernhout]

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/imf-bombshell-age-of-america-about-to-end-2011-04-25?pagenumber=2
    "Commentary: China's economy will surpass the U.S. in 2016 [based on PPP] ...
    This is the result of decades during which China has successfully pursued economic policies aimed at national expansion and power, while the U.S. has embraced either free trade or, for want of a better term, economic appeasement.
    "There are two systems in collision," said Ralph Gomory, research professor at NYU's Stern business school. "They have a state-guided form of capitalism, and we have a much freer former of capitalism." What we have seen, he said, is "a massive shift in capability from the U.S. to China. What we have done is traded jobs for profit. The jobs have moved to China. The capability erodes in the U.S. and grows in China. That's very destructive. That is a big reason why the U.S. is becoming more and more polarized between a small, very rich class and an eroding middle class. The people who get the profits are very different from the people who lost the wages."
    The next chapter of the story is just beginning. ..."

See also:
    http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
    http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinncomrev24.html
    http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Economic_Transformation

What tinkerers related to science and technology can do though?
    http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php
    http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/

Re:The problem isn't the profitability of Science.

[Fjandr]

Students and education are not factory systems into which you can blindly invest capital with a rational expectation of getting more money out the other end. It may happen, but it's not of a very high nor reliable return.

You should look into the for-profit university industry then. They most certainly treat students and education as a factory. They can invest money and get a return because of Federal financial aid. Their students consume a majority of all Federal aid given, because almost all of them need it to afford the tuition (as there are rarely scholarships or grants available for commercial schools, or those who qualify wouldn't consider choosing such a school).

It does happen, it is reliable, and it is profitable. Since Federal students loans are not dischargeable, the Feds have no problem freely doling the money out. Since for-profit education farms enroll far more students than any other educational segment, and the vast majority of those students finance via Federal student loans, they are safe institutions to invest in because the return is guaranteed by the Feds. The risk is entirely with the student. There's a reason why there's been an explosion in this market segment.

Pot, is that you?

[DanDD]

If you derive your paycheck from one of these evil corporations then your moral development is no better. Unless you are a devotee of Diogenes of Sinope (or a similar guy that purportedly walked on water), then I suspect you are doing the whole pot, kettle thing.

no jobs

[CosaNostra Pizza Inc]

I have a BS in electrical engineering. I was a mixed signal board-level designer for years but after a lay-off and the job market dried up, i went back to school for a masters in computer science. There's still the looming threat of outsourcing but there are still plenty of jobs for application and server-level programmers. Plus, I enjoy programming and still working on the technical side of things. I would never enjoy management...In the past I looked into MBA programs. Managing people just seems like a baby-sitting job and managing money involves little creation or problem-solving abilities.

I get tired of all the tests.

[nastro]

What with the falling in acid, putting up the blue portal again when I meant to shoot the orange one, the robot that is trying to kill me...it just gets old. Science is bad for my health. I don't even _like_ cake.

Re:Finance.

[trout007]

Handling money isn't that great. Work for a bank where you get to create money out of thin air and lend it out with interest. That is where the real bucks are.

keep the pay low

[t2t10]

It keeps the riff-raff out.

It Isn't Just STEM

[rally2xs]

It is the USA itself that is toxic to workers. If anything can be outsourced, it will be, and anything that can be outsourced is a bad career choice. You're better off as "Restauranteur" rather than "Scientist" because people have to eat, and they are here.

The culprit in all this is corporate income taxes. We have the 2nd highest in the world (or by far the highest if the Bush Tax Cuts go away) and a cost of living that drives a demand for high wages too, making manufacturing here a bad idea.

Now, the reason that the furriners can come into the USA and do well is because they don't have the burden of paying for retiree pensions. The Detroit manufacturers have a huge pool of retirees that they have to provide beneifits for. That makes the labor cost Detroit about $78 an hour. Foreign mfgrs labor rates are around $45, while Detroit pays its workers $30 / hr and the foreigners $28.

The taxes? Well, the income tax bite on stuff manufactured here, in the USA, is about 22% of its selling price, and includes everything from the added costs of employing people due to their individual income tax and medicare/SS, to the "matching" medicare/SS and corporate income taxes. If corporate income taxes are recovered, the price of goods manufactured here could fall about 11%. Would that be competititve? Sure. But, as long as people think that taxing corporations is somehow "instead" of taxing them, without realizing that they pay it anyway in higher prices of goods, lower wages to themselves, lower dividend disbursements of the companies which affects their retirement savings, and finally the creation of all those unemployed people when jobs flee the high taxes, then there will still likely be misery and want in the USA.

So how long does it take the big 3 to build a car? About 30 - 33 man-hours. At $78 / hr, that's about $2500 for labor costs. And those taxes? Still 22% of the price, which for a $30,000 car, would be $6,600, which we could lower by about half if the income taxes went away. What sells better, a $25,000 Jeep Liberty, or a $22,250 Jeep Liberty? Yeah, that's right...

All we have to do is kill the income taxes dead... all of them... and we can have prosperity. There are other ways to tax that don't involve making our corporations uncompetitive.

Re:The problem isn't the profitability of Science.

[roman_mir]

Ever wonder why an education bubble is brewing? Why tuition goes up 15% per year, every year, for decades?

- government money is in it, and like with all other things, that have gov't money in them, prices go up in education as well, while quality goes down, as the market is no longer competitive and is manipulated by the government instead.

But of course

[kikito]

"You study engineering for preparing to be a creative financial accountant. Or whatever they are called now"

"The guys that bought us to this crisis?"

"Yes"

"Then they are called financial assholes".

Ding, we have a winner!

[Weezul]

I know many fine Chinese researchers working in the U.S. but China itself is publishing a river of sewage.

Ain't even that the "dregs" return home but more academic politics inside China. If China wanted, they could greatly improve the situation by considering eigenfactor, instead of simply publication counting. Yet, I doubt they'll do so. That'd require (a) acknowledging that their current publications suck and (b) penalizing all the professors who've either played the Chinese game, including the crappy ones who got their jobs through family connections.

Re:Finance.

[layer3switch]

> you get to create money out of thin air and lend it out with interest. That is where the real bucks are.

Now I declared my new major - The Tapestry of Magic!

Re:The problem isn't the profitability of Science.

[je ne sais quoi]

I disagree with you on one point: the real drain is not necessarily STEM OR the humanities, arts, etc., they're both losing out to business. The financial services industry now generates more profit than manufacturing. This is an industry that doesn't make anything tangible or create new ideas, it only pushes money around, supposedly more efficiently. Given that a lot businesses are run by MBAs now that don't have any deep connection with the company they are running, it is any wonder that we have things like "financial instruments" that consist of collateralized debt obligations on a series of collateralized debt obligations? (i.e., a CDO-squared is the common term). Given the financial crisis, most of these guys aren't particularly smart either. Those guys at wall street are pulling down seven, or even eight figures a year and you expect people to major in either art history or chemistry? If one knew any better, why would anyone pick a career in science or art? (Incidentally, it's tempting to say that when people who people who don't actually create anything are making much more money that people who do, it means your society is in deep trouble.)

And yes... I am a scientist. Greespun's portrayal is a little exaggerated, but there's a grain of truth in it. I personally am good enough to make a career of it, but no grad student under me has decided to pick academics as a career path after watching what I had to go through during going for tenure (something I ultimately also recognized and got a different position, one where I'm still in the hot seat, but less politics). I've also watched many, far too many of some who are my friends, go through life jumping from post-doc to post-doc because they can't even get a tenure-track position. It's depressing, or it would be, but I'm too busy trying to not fall off the merry-go-round to be overly concerned with what's happening to others.

Why study STEM just to train ur H1B replacement?

[walterbyrd]

Smart Americans would have to be stupid to study for a STEM career. That stuff is being offshored/inshored to death. Foreign workers are cheaper, that's all there is to it. Who wants to compete with 3rd world wages? US STEM jobs today, are going the way of US manufacturing jobs in the 1980s.

The US technology edge will go away. It's the only scenario that makes sense.

Speaking as a someone with a PhD...

[entropy123]

I've moved on from science. In my mind I pursued science as a means to provide society options to advance. What I didn't realize is that most of the country wanted to buy condos in Florida at amazingly inflated prices. I wanted to research methods to produce clean fuels. I wound up in an underfunded computational lab. I stayed with it because I thought it would all pan out. Turns out I would have been much better off in an experimental lab somewhere, probably MIT. The reason for all these computational labs is that computers are cheap and grad students are cheap, experiments are expensive. Science didn't work out for me so, compared to my peers, I got lucky and found a pretty good job in a stable company.

When it comes to education I've come to believe that less really is more. I hope that my country puts every penny it can into educating children from birth to 12th grade. I advise my friend's children to only go into science if your professors literally are begging you to go, give you a ton of money and a scholarship to the very best school in the field. Even in that case think very carefully about your assumptions. Even in that case I pray for their sake that they don't take the offer.

I don't think much of science as a means to resolve social problems. I think that society needs to face its problems and solve them directly. Society only looks to science for solutions when it KNOWS it is really desperate. If this country finds itself in a dumb war I think the politicians, the rich people, and the CEOs are going to find a research/engineering job of the kind that have been outsourced for the past 10 years or so for me really quickly. I still hope that doesn't happen because a lot of people like me, including my son, might die in such a war. I think a great deal more of finding a good job, better yet starting a company, somewhere. Buying the smallest, least expensive, and most comfortable house possible. Try to get a nice backyard or, better yet, a fair amount of land. Raise a nice family. Living within my means. Saving for an early retirement. Avoiding office politics. Getting involved in local politics because I think those really count. Don't try to win anything in local politics, try to get issues resolved in a neighborly, sensible way. Trying to live at peace with my neighbors.

what about engineering?

[soldack]

According to this article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/11/top-jobs-for-grads-nace-2_n_847505.html engineering jobs are doing quite well. This http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2008/tc20081113_488542.htm seems to suggest it might even be sexy!

It seems the first article in the main post talks about STEM but doesn't provide any real evidence but may be talking about an article noting the brain drain of the finance world and that the percentage of MIT grads going into finance increased. It was not the majority. This isn't a bad thing. I am a software engineer with a BS in computer science and an MS in computer engineering. I worked on financial software, device drivers, internet advertising software, remote control car embedded software, and wireless meshing software. STEM can take you into all sorts of industries. I don't know why this is a bad thing and I don't think that was what the President was saying.

The author says, "First, American culture has always realized this 'stuff' is important." I find that hard to believe. When I was in school, there were almost no computer science majors. My graduation had 3 CS majors walk with me with over 10,000 students enrolled at the university. Other STEM majors did a bit better but the reality is that our society looks down on STEM folks. It is considered weird and odd. Hollywood uses this stereotype often because the public believes it. We are geeks, nerds, dorks, etc. STEM really does need better PR since keeping the world running doesn't seem to matter much anymore.

The second article attacks pure science jobs. Most folks that major in STEM probably do not go on to pure research jobs. Why is this a bad thing? Many folks become engineers and use the research to create other things. They compare school teachers to scientists even though many are both. Many "pure" researches are college professors. "The women I know who are university professors, by and large, are unmarried and childless. By the time they get tenure, they are on the verge of infertility. " My wife is a university professor and we have two kids thank you. I know several other professional female mathematicians who married and had kids. It seems they these folks get married at the same rate as most other folks and have kids at about the same rate too. Also, the author ignores that the PhD can go into public school teaching and will be paid extra for having the degree. They can leave college and go into the private sector. Some do both. My wife programmed for a while and then came back to teaching because she liked teaching a lot more.

"men tend to lack perspective and are unable to step back and ask the question 'is this peer group worth impressing?' " That is an incredibly sexist statement. Does the author have any proof that women do not do the same? As far as I can tell the sentence should be changed to "people sometimes lack perspective..."

"When Albert goes to graduate school to get his PhD, his choice will have the same logical foundation as John Hinckley's attempt to impress Jodie Foster by shooting Ronald Reagan. " The author compares getting a PhD to being a stalker. This is why STEM needs better PR! Americans see most PhDs as potential stalkers who are just trying to impress the other potential stalkers. Maybe someone gets a PhD because they are actually really interested in the field and really want to study it for its own sake. Maybe someone cares about something other than money. Maybe there is more to life satisfaction than just making more money. Do you want a job that pays 20% more that you will hate or a job that you will love? Perhaps the PhD candidate is actually smarter enough to do what he/she loves.

"What about women? Don't they want to impress their peers? Yes, but they are more discriminating about choosin

Which is the more American car?

[perpenso]

Two cars I've seen recently:
(1) An American brand name with 60% US components and assembled in Canada.
(2) A German brand name with 40% US components and assembled in the US.

Which is the more American car? Its an easy call if you go by brand name but if you go by American jobs then its a much more difficult questions.

Re:Which is the more American car?

[Opportunist]

An American car is a car that feeds Americans by providing jobs in America. That's an American car. Screw company, name or commercial.

Like George Carlin once came on stage waving a Chinese flag. The routine went a bit like "I wanted to wave a US flag, but I couldn't find one that wasn't made in China. But then I found this one which is made in the USA".

What You Need To Understand

[SluttyButt]

What President Obama and other cahoots of these so-called leaders do are merely drumming the rhetoric for their own survival.

They have epitomized the meaning of success and in any society we can't have too many success of this kind -- where people do not do actual work (productive); they just talk their way through everything, never having to sweat through the real stuff.

So what do they need to do to cement their position? Work the ground people, the people that make things work, the people that make society gels together, the people that help advance society, the very people who will toil sweat and tears so that the cream of society can maintain their lifestyles. As I speak now we are all being worked by those whose very word spoken by the minute has real financial value compared to yours, and we are the bearer of the debt.

They need the numbers, the diploma holders, to tinker with machines and crunch out daily tasks so everything gets moving. President Obama is not saying it but he wants to build up a certain mass of low paid but skilled workers as a society enabler, which he hopes will work itself out of the toiling and troubles.

Leaders everywhere are the same; they extend their stay, they extend their reach to you (poor skilled workers) and made promises that are delivered in trickles spread over decades which by that time you are a spent force, they would have achieved their goals of milking you dry of your productive short life here on earth. Then who's next? Your children, your children's children, or those who don't this escape this economic slavery and misery, perpetrated by leaders who merely speaks to enjoy the gains and benefits that come from you.

Have you spent a moment in your day to think about hard cold facts?

To counter outsourcing

[jawahar]

I think US should have an exclusive 'security' agreements with China/India govt so that Americans can move there to work/live.

Most US Scientists are Not American

[SimonJG]

At least that is certainly true in the University / National Lab sectors. Just count them. And then count the Germans, British, Chinese, Indians ... The US has always imported its scientific talent. True, the Americans who do choose to become scientists often excel - but most US science graduates go into the more profitable fields of business, medicine or industry.

Some perspective needed: science jobs not so lousy

[HuguesT]

The more aggressive text by Greenspun was written in 2006, and by someone who is not by an academic. Although he makes some good points, there are several elements in his narrative I don't agree with, foremost his description of a "successful" scientist. An even moderately successful scientist gets his/her Phd at 26, does 1-2 years of Postdoc and has tenure or a permanent position in some lab or institution before age 30. Not in physic, not at MIT or Harvard, for sure, but at some perfectly reasonable research university in some engineering-related field, like robotics or materials science. Then this scientist does earn a relatively meager base salary compared with other professionals, but typically goes on to earn millions in various grants, employs many people, gets to choose his/her own work content and his/her workload, and can supplement his/her salary with any amount of consulting. If this person has any teaching gifts, they can go on to make a huge difference in a lot of young people in terms of careers and prospects. If they have any research gift, the sky is literally the limit. They don't necessarily aspire to retire by age 45 and go on to do a second career because their first career is just about perfect. They can choose to do what they want, to travel as much as they want, and they get paid for that. If they are truly stellar scholars, MIT or Harvard might make them a tenured offer at some point, if not, who cares.

So academics is still a great career, and it's great for women too, just be smart where and with whom you do your PhD and subsequent formative years, find good coauthors, and foremost don't chase tenure at supposedly top universities where they just pressure people because they can. If you feel this is too hard in the States, go to Europe or Australia. Academics do work hard, especially the successful ones, but this is because it is so much fun.

I'm sure other careers can be fun too, in finance, medicine or as various professionals, however I see a lot of people around me complain about their work content and the way they are treated. Academics as above, not so much.

I think Greenspun has a limited viewpoint because he mostly knows MIT, and while this is a great place to visit, you wouldn't want to live there.

This is why

[ZirconCode]

This is why Glados was invented, to force science to be done.

Re:Unidirectional mobility

[synthespian]

A trained scientist/engineer can usually make the move into business/management later in life.

This is if you're an engineer, a field in which you can play all bases involving manufacturing a product or delivering a service. Think now of a geophysicist, or a marine biologist. There might be money to be made in those fields as an entrepreneur, but they will demand going down the unbeaten path. That being the case, it's a much harder sell going to your bank manager for credit.

Besides, as as you say, the sort of mathematics involved in putting the average business model on a spreadsheet is - let's be frank - a child's play compared to real rawhide math, such as the kind a physicist needs. Also, the kind of investment and supply chain is very well developed in the engineering field. But imagine what that would be like if your field was deep water marine biology...!

Zombies

[DarthVain]

The real challenge for the future is going to be the coming Zombie Apocalypse.

With Brains becoming a cheap global commodity, one can only expect a massive increase in the Zombie population.

Take a research position in India

[zakaryah]

As a PhD student in the best funded field of science in the US, I have to ask about the supposed spectre of outsourcing. If developing countries are better funding these fields, why not pursue a faculty position in one of these countries?