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Comment by radarsat1 | Hacker News Reader

Am in my 30s doing a postdoc getting paid $50K. Can confirm. ;)

That said, I do enjoy doing research. It's frustrating working with researchers sometimes though. :P Sure, everyone push to master without testing, no problem! I'll just spend my afternoon making things compile again..

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Just create a new branch in git, call it 'production', and... literally throw piles of shit at people who push to that branch. Then they'll get the hint. /s

Lol.. just venting ;) But thanks, I take your point. And actually good idea regarding the production branch, I might just do that.

I don't know if it's the git way or not, but I learned with subversion, so I treat master as unstable and make a new maintenance branch for each release. So what I'm saying is: more than just one production branch. That way you can test the next release on its own branch without freezing trunk and without affecting the current production branch (suppose you want to roll back to the previous release?)

Just wondering but why are you still in a postdoc position? My previous field was Medicinal Chemistry and had I continued with my Ph.D, I would have gotten it by 26/27. Post docs are usually for 2 years in Med Chem I believe.

Well, you can look at age timeline:

Start school at 7;

Start university at 19;

Start PhD at 25 [4-year bachelors + 2-year masters] if you can do that immediately after masters, or 26;

Finish PhD at 28, or 29 (if it's a 3-year PhD, otherwise older);

Finish first post-doc at 31, second one at 33/34.

By mid-30s you are just starting your tenure-track (assuming you get some semi-permanent position at a university or research institute)

I'm currently doing a PhD [quantum chemistry] and this is basically my expectation for the future.

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