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Boredom worries

6 pointskoof4 comments

I hadn’t ever really considered grad school.

And yet, the thought occurred to me recently: “Once building things is truly trivial, and it becomes just a matter of manpower and money, will it still be fun?” It sounds like management. It sounds like something I wouldn’t like.

What would I do then? Could I just work my way into interesting situations? What’s the best way to prepare for a technically interesting career?

I talked to a professor today about these fears, and he told me straight up the only way to avoid this was to go to grad school (specifically, becoming a PhD), or start/join a startup.

I’m not convinced of anything, but it got me thinking.

My GPA is only slightly better than decent and I’m not really friends with any professors. I don’t go to a top school, and it doesn’t look like I would ever get into one. I was assuming that I could just take a job somewhere where they had a good track for individual contributors, and I would just work my way into any situation that seemed fun.

Data mining and machine learning interest me in that they seem to be right at the cusp of statistics and computer science, two subjects I’ve enjoyed classes in, and there seems to be enough demand in industry for it. I’ve never done it though. Most job postings indicate that at least a masters is needed to do data mining stuff, so there’s that, but I don’t see exactly why a masters specifically would be necessary. It’s just another year of school right? Is this some sort of hint that employers actually only want PhDs or could I do it with just undergrad?

Failing that, I have no clue what I would want to specialize in. I’m sure anything would be fun considering that a field can only exist if people are interested in it and there’s significant depth to the subject, so I’m not really biased towards or against anything.

And yet, I don’t want to feel trapped in grad school. I’ve heard the horror stories about grad school that fueled my disinterest in it, but now I’m not so sure, especially in a technical field. And of course, there’s the Scott Thompson “drop out now!” crowd.

Let me clarify my intentions: I’m definitely not worried about getting software engineering jobs. I’m past that. Just after that, what is there?

What keeps work interesting for people long term?

> Once building things is truly trivial, and it becomes just a matter of manpower and money, will it still be fun?

I've been building things literally for 30 years and I can still have amazing experiences and excitement with new projects. The reality is if you "stay current" keep up with changes in tech learn new things all the time you can continue to be challenged all the time.

The first project I wrote was in BASIC on a Model 100 and now I write systems that process 4 BILLION transactions a day at 45,000 trx/second in 10ms..

There will always be challenges the real challenge is continuous learning and putting yourself in situations where you can be challenged.

And by the way management isn't as horrible as it sounds, when you have a lot of experience sharing that with a young smart passionate team of developers is very rewarding. Even more rewarding is building that team and solving really big problems together.

Life is a journey not a destination. Don't worry about where it ends, it begins today and that's the important part!

It depends on your circumstances:

1. If you have money, consider going for a year to some cheap/sunny place and do exactly nothing. Take notes of that nothing. I've spent 9months doing that(although I stayed at home) and it was one of the most productive periods, in terms of self-discovery/reading/ideas. The downside can be absence of social connections but if you are the type you can love it. Another one that it somewhat involves your comfort zone, so you will learn a lot but a motivating team can be more effective(and harder/luckier to find).

2. PhD or any job is not a life-long decision. Go there, see it and if you don't like it move on. I've started a PhD at the moment and for me it's good as the scholarship is okay and I literally do whatever I want..

3. Getting into a phd can be much easier than what you think, you just have to write a myriad applications(~20) chances you can get something you like. Once you are in its usually pretty much up to you how you spend your time etc..

Cheers, M

So you like building castles. You start small. One little itty bitty castle. So small that you can only fit one knight in it.

But then you build another. One with a rather shallow moat. But hey, its your best creation so far.

By the tenth castle you've built you realise something. You have gotten old. Yowsers! You were having so much fun to even notice.

Yet you don't stop. The next castle is waiting. Plus this one will have four towers and a fifty horse stable.

Point is: Go build castles and stop worrying about not enjoying it. Life is too short to worry.

> Once building things is truly trivial, and it becomes just a matter of manpower and money, will it still be fun?

Of course. It's trivial to write words on a page or share a message to thousands of people instantly, yet here I am. Building anything is an expression of creativity before it is a matter of willpower.

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