Science is its own reward. You're pushing forward the frontier of human knowledge! You should share everything you learn for free with the world, and just be happy that you left the world a better place than you found it.
Money is such a lesser reward anyway compared to the adulation scientists get. After all, history will remember the guy who discovered the capacitive touchscreen, not the one that made billions putting it into a phone.
Ironically, this sabotages science very much. Research works best when you can focus on your work and are free from dealing with bullshit like worrying whether you'll have enough money for your rent or groceries of health bills.
I understand how the forces of the market lead to this, but it still rubs me wrong - jobs seem to be rewarded inversely to their social value. ER personell and doctors saving people work three shifts and live on minimum wage. Soldiers risking their lives can barely get by (especially after they actually took the risk and didn't die). All that while celebrities earn millions for being nothing more than celebrities.
And don't get me wrong - I don't mind that a talking head earns in a week more than most in a year. I only wish the society could reward properly the people who are working their butts off to make a positive difference.
More presently, a different friend completed his PhD in physics, couldn't find a job, and now is working in software.
I can understand that in a competitive market for jobs, monetary rewards will go down, but it's a shame that the joy of the work is being broken down as well.
1. Jack Kirby and IC
2. Bardeen, Shockley,and Brattain and semiconductors
3. Akasaki, Amano, and Nakamura and blue leds
4. Boyle and Smith for CCD arrays
5. Townes, Pokhorov, and Basov for lasers
6. Watson, Crick, and Wilkins for structure of DNA
It's besides the point that some of them weren't necessarily in academia.
You can find their names, their speeches, their books and papers in any library or in many places online. Whilst, who remembers CEOs of Intel (notable exceptions apart), or of the 10s of other important semiconductor IC companies, or of companies that made commercial 'laser' disc and cd drives, or biotech companies, etc.?
You're right. We should pity those poor CEOs of Intel who have nearly no recognition except for daily news articles and a single wikipedia page, leaving their wretched souls with merely their 8 figure annual salaries to comfort themselves.
Surely we can do something to get them what they really deserve? Won't someone please think of the Intel CEOs?
Sorry, but until I did further searching, you had me believing that a comic book artist was also responsible for the development of the integrated circuit!
Thanks for being able to have a healthy perspective and I hope you can convince more people to do the same.
Personlly, I was disgusted as well (and I'm a scientist).
Scientists discovered the elements, the atom, DNA, semiconductors, etc-- beyond money or fame, these were tangible huge advancements for mankind. To follow in those footsteps and stand on the shoulders of those giants is rewarding.
Just who the hell do you think we are?
[0] My social worker wife always reminds me that we are compensated well enough. Physics, at least, seems to pay better than e.g. biology (physics postdocs usually pay 50-60k nowadays while bio postdocs can be less than 40k).
You talk to many scientists (myself included) and they'll tell you they'd do the job for free because of how interesting it can be, provided that they were comfortable otherwise. This is well known by the suits, and so, wages trend in the direction of zero.
The problem appears when people aren't paid enough to fit their definition of comfortable. People in science are highly educated by default, and their definition of comfortable takes that into account. This is why people leave science and don't look back. They can be comfortable doing something else, and it only gets more appealing over time. In your 20s, slumming it is to be expected, but beyond that it starts to get awkward.
A postdocship worth 50-60k only happens after 5 years of school (making 18k-25k) working 12 hour days. Realistically for the social utility of science and the sheer effort and difficulty, science should pay 2-3x as much as it does-- but frankly, our society doesn't value science in the way that it did during the Cold War.