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Comment by georgeburdell | Hacker News Reader

For me, the biggest drawback was doing all of the life things later. I graduated at 27, which is on the earlier end, then met my partner a year later, got married 2 years after that, bought a house 2 years after that, and then 2 years after that finally felt settled enough to have our first child (second was born 3 years later). Money was usually gating each step.

We’re going to be pushing 70 before our children have children, if they take the same path.

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First kid at ~33 doesn’t strike me as particularly unusual for reasonably well off professionals where I live, but maybe I’m biased by how my parents went through life and you yours.

35 is considered geriatric pregnancy

Technically yes, but in major western cities these days the professional class tend to start having children in their 30s. I know plenty of people here that had their first child in their late 30 or even at 40 (both women and men) - probably more than the amount of people i know who had their first child in their 20s!

Here geriatric doesn't refer to the average age of first birth, it refers to issues that the mother and child will experience during gestation and delivery. Isuues such as :

    High blood pressure and preeclampsia

    Gestational diabetes

    Miscarriage or stillbirth

    Labor problems that require you to have a C-section

    Premature birth

    Low birthweight

    Chromosome disorders like Down syndrome

The fact that it is more popular to have children over the age of 35 doesn't change the medical realities of it. Anecdotal, but I know more couples with fertility issues than couples who have successfully had a healthy child.

I'm not saying it's a good idea medically, just that "having first child at 33" is hardly out of the ordinary, it's pretty much normal and expected these days. I wouldn't really expect someone with only a B.Sc. to have children earlier than that either.

Buying a house at 31 is not only "not-late" it's even pretty early these days!

getting phd at 27 is suuuper early. Granted, friends might start to work at 23 or 25-ish but we're talking about a doctoral degree, which makes a visible difference on job hunting in the field of computer science I'm in.

I don’t know if jobs ‘in the field of computer science’ are the same as jobs as a programmer but I think there exist plenty of very good programming jobs for which a phd doesn’t particularly matter, at least where I live. The people I know who got phds finished around 26/27 so I think it depends on the country/system.

No it isn't. For instance, in the US one starts a BS at 17-18, finishes at 21-22. Median CS PhD is in the 5-6 year range (this site, based on actual data, says 5.7: https://gradschool.duke.edu/about/statistics/computer-scienc...). So if you go straight to the PhD program (common) that puts the median finisher at 27-28.

Assume there are countries, where the usual path looks a little different. The US is not a standard for all things. In some regions you usually don't start studying at a university or institution of higher education before 18-19, a bachelor usually takes 3-4 years, leaving you at 21-23. For starting in a doctorate program, you require a master's degree (in some places this has to be in some related discipline), which again takes 1-2 years (depending on how many credits you got during the bachelor's), usually leaving you at around 23-24 before starting a PhD - at the earliest. A doctorate are 3 years minimum, more likely being around 5 years, so we're at 26-29, and this is with very little time in between to actually do anything else. Additionally, a doctorate may not enable you to get a job that pays well, but possibly do quite the opposite by leaving you on a public service salary for years, and even excluding you from certain jobs outside of academia that could be used to amortize the economical drawbacks.

One way to look at it is that with increasing life expectanties, 70 will be the new 60 (or even 50). The probability that you'll see your kids have kids is going to get higher and higher. Also, it may be better that you had kids later because they'll grow up in a more financially comfortable situation with more aged and experienced parents.

Think of age as a fine wine, not milk :)

If something drastically changes with climate change then maybe you are right, if not then life expectancy will fall.

In the US, life expectancy isn't really increasing.

It's been fairly flat for the last 10 years or so. [1][2]

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?location...

[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Li...

Unless we do something to reverse dna damage I don’t think that median quality life expectancy can be extended.

The variance in quality of life after your 60s is crazy high. There are many super healthy 60yo, there are also 60yo who are completely devastated from health problems.

And sure maybe you can drag it on for another 5-10 years if you have let’s say Alzheimer’s, but what is the point ?

A lot of longevity interventions (e.g. dietary antioxidants, sunscreen, reducing alcochol consumption) do slow DNA damage.

Getting people to take preventative measures is tough, but it's probably easier than reversing damage after it's done.

The timeline you described is the new normal. I'd say you're even slightly ahead.

Normal for the kind of people who get postgraduate degrees, a small minority of the population.

Normal for the professional class in major global cities.

That sounds so exhausting. Was it all worth it? Would you do it the same way again?

I wouldn’t do a PhD. A PhD is really an elite training program (as in, it is required for people occupying elite jobs). However, most people don’t get elite jobs, such as professor, scientist, or designer/architect if in industry. When I graduated, like many PhDs, I took a job in data analysis and quality assurance that could be done by a BS graduate. And there I have have essentially remained because your first job tends to be your career without an immense effort to change.

As a result of my middling career path, I’ve become much more interested in family and hobbies, and I think to myself that I could have been doing those things several years sooner if not for the PhD

Thank you for explaining all this!

Do you have a mortgage on the house or is it actually yours?

Buying a house without a mortgage is something available to a privileged few. Even if the option is available, it’s arguably unwise until you have to prioritize cash flow in your retirement.

Are you aware of how privileged you are?

When discussing with someone, proper manners enlightens a discussant to avoid painting them into a proverbial corner, since such is a negative interaction.

From what I read, the person worked their tush off to get through a graduate program, then pushed for more money in a career.

What aspect of this do you find privileging? Working their tush off? Pushing for opportunities?

A small set of comments online tells one nothing about the background of a person, unless one actively looks for dog whistles and shibboleths.

It appeared they rant about how "doing all the things in life later" was the biggest drawback and continues to contradict the point by providing a timeline that places them at 33yo with all of the listed life goals achieved, starting with a graduation (I assume by the context, with a PhD, at 27). Some of such life goals are not even achievable for some. It sounds like a simple attempt to humble-brag.

Assuming that they worked their tush off or pushed for opportunities also sounds coming from some privileged background, as it seems to assume that hard work and proper initiative would be sufficient in achieving such things, while for some people the first guard is already getting the necessary elementary education, while being in a stable and safe environment.

Paradoxically it is privileged to think that people who didn't get sufficient, necessary elementary education yet did bust their tushes to succeed in academia don't exist in sufficient quantity to be seen on a high traffic internet board.

Rather than looking at your neighbor's privilege, it's better to introspect on our own and how we can use to for others.

> Rather than looking at your neighbor's privilege, it's better to introspect on our own and how we can use to for others.

Then why don't you tell that to the other guy who openly complained about a PhD time-shifting their life plans???

Because I don't view that as privilege. I view that as goals accomplished, which _may_ have been influenced by privilege.

Do you have anything specific to add to the conversation? Immediately starting off taking away things is a not so good start.

Unless the law grants him special permissions that others dont have, he is not privileged.

I called out the prior comment already, but this also needs to be called out. There are more channels for privilege than special permission in the law. Social mores, law, and luck in birth are the three channels from which privilege can elevate someone's starting point over someone else. I think limiting the source of privilege to only legal permissions misses the discussion, either disingenuously or naively.

Not only privileged (in terms of outcome and socioeconomic status of a post-PhD career and family), but also rather ideological. The person you asked the question to casually equates "life things" with family, house, career. It's surprisingly a conservative worldview, and IMO a PhD should expand a person's thinking more deeply than to accept ideology that way. To me this says a modern PhD education is too careerist and subverts the purpose of it, and some professors have pointed this out as well.

It’s arguably an artifact of an increasingly competitive society. The base “cost” of existing keeps rising, its simply becoming impractical to not be career focused. While I’m sure it benefits professors to have an idealistic employe who will work for peanuts… it’s not sustainable.

While a grad student is expected to be paid - they would need a 1 hour commute to afford the housing options around my rural alma matter.

That cynicism is the basis of every form of conservative argument, of the form: "It is not practical/sustainable/expedient/pragmatic/realistic...(insert any other uncritical value judgment)... and the problem is because of hypercompetitive capitalism out there, not the agency of particular individuals (some who succeed and many who shall fail under said system that is source of unsustainability) who are speaking and acting right here." It is a clever, cynical argument that reinforces status-quo thinking about the social order, and is therefore a conservative response.

Hmm I wouldn’t associate this with a conservative argument. The argument provides a claim that we are building an unsustainable system which is not producing the outcomes that we want.

Encouraging competition and unrestrained capitalism is typically considered a defacto conservative argument in the US. However the lines are blurry in different decades and in different countries.

It's conservative because it excuses agency. It's given in the middle of my paragraph.

Perhaps this is a locale specific definition of conservative? I’m unfamiliar with a general or even common definition which aligns to this.

> It’s arguably an artifact of an increasingly competitive society. The base “cost” of existing keeps rising, it’s simply becoming impractical to not be career focused.

The cost of practically every manufactured good and of food have been dropping for decades if not centuries. Average living space per person has likewise been getting for decades. Healthspan likewise.

In what sense has it become impractical not to be career focused? The average salary for a public high school teacher in NJ is $69K and the top $129K[1] while the average salary for a full professor in the NJ public university system is under $100K and the top is $174K[2] for the overwhelmingly dominant 9 month contracts. If you just want to get paid and you’re capable of doing a PhD you can just do a Master’s instead, in a much, much easier field and then do another job to get paid more.

[1] https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Master-Teacher-Salary-...

[2] https://www.univstats.com/salary/average-professor-salary-at...

The median rent in New Jersey is 2500/month. Meaning our hypothetical teacher will drop 55% of their take-home on a median rental at entry level, and 32% of their salary when maxed out. Presuming that rent does not change relative to salary over the next 30 years - our teacher will be either struggle to afford housing or be rent burdened their entire lives. Most services and goods purchased locally have fees proportional to the local rental costs meaning that the remaining 2k per month buys fewer goods and services then you might expect depending on your local cost basis.

Meanwhile, the median rent in NJ rose 14% in 2022 and have risen 4.1% YTD. To make a meaningful dent in our teachers housing costs, our teacher will need to make a 20% raise every year to get ahead of housing.

A grad student can sometimes avoid housing exposure due to institutional housing, but once they are out of institutional housing - they’ll be exposed to these price dynamics.

My experience as a graduate student tends to disagree that the university housing will be morr affordable. They tend to be more expensive that the median off campus options.

The only thing I've gathered here is that progressives are exhaustively drab and annoying to deal with. They will examine things from the point of view that is precisely aligned with only theirs, calling other people's careers useless in a rather amusing turn of events, and then say, without even slightly being self reflective, that these people they are examining are backwards and narrow minded.

To me this says profoundly nothing that was not already known, but needed to be demonstrated in full view of as many participants as possible. To say the least, derailed, but does anyone know the purpose of this derailment? It can only be explained by a progressive in the most whimsical way possible.

> The only thing I've gathered here is that progressives are exhaustively drab and annoying to deal with.

Would you find it reasonable if someone judged whatever political ideology you identify with by the behavior of a few assholes? Trust me, I can find far worse examples of any ideology you can name than even the worst on display in this thread.

And the only thing I've gathered here is kneejerk reactionism against "progressives" consisting of failing to read at the university level which lets them engage in projection by accusing people of attacking other people, rather than focus intellectually on a reasoned discussion of biases and ideological worldviews, and the social structures that give rise to those ideologies.

> consisting of failing to read at the university level

I haven't felt a need to do that since my defense around 2 decades ago. I don't think I've needed to flex that muscle today either, you're welcome to prove me wrong, but I don't really trust your judgement going by your standards today, maybe you should bring along one of your peers instead.

Why not just be happy for them? Does bringing them down bring everyone else up or is that maybe just a second best you're willing to settle for out of spite?

I am truly happy for them, but I would like to see that this is placed in the appropriate context for this public forum. From an international viewpoint, this is the exception, not the norm. "Ranting" about a rather exceptional life path seems misplaced, without providing additional context.

Why would that need to be placed "in the appropriate context"? How does that help anyone who is worse off?

Because they are stating this story as something negative, some drawback. Perhaps it is, for them, but that's where the context and perspective should come in. To me it sounds like an incredible success story. Most people I know, me included, don't have any of those things, although some are well on their list of goals. Having achieved all of them at that young age is a privilege, maybe also due to privilege (I don't know), but certainly not a burden or drawback.

How about just let them enjoy their success and strive to achieve your own instead of policing it?

I actually don’t understand the idea of privilege. Things like having two loving parents, a stable household, and good health are seen as privileged. There’s an underlying assumption that people should feel bad for having nice things because some people don’t have them. But aren’t these just things we should be trying to provide for everyone? Privilege is the dividend of running a successful society, a reflection that we aren’t in a constant state of nature.

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