Over 5,000 Ph.D. graduates work as janitors – Why?
whenyouputitthatway.com
whenyouputitthatway.com
What are the disciplines of the PhD graduates? Were any of them earned online or at an unaccredited university? These are important pieces of the puzzle.
There are 2 - 3 million people with doctorates in the US. I don't think it's unreasonable to have a small percentage of that number in a low-paying job because of whatever reasons they have (mental illness, committed crime, not good in field, did something unethical in field.
With a few exceptions, if you have a PhD and the desire and ability to work, it's not difficult to find a job.
Yeah, I wasn't sure if I had mis-read that statement. It makes absolutely no sense. Financially, many electricians make more than I do (software engineer working in research).
Money aside, I'm pretty sure I could find electrical work stimulating and fulfilling. The same is most certainly not true of low level customer service.
Nice one :)
"What country has the most doctors?"
There are tons of well-paying jobs in the Midwest for talented people. Salaries are lower than a standard San Francisco job, but the quality of life is so much higher here it makes up for it. The multi-million dollar homes of Oakland and San Francisco can be yours here on a single person's salary working about 40 hours a week. (Admittedly winters here are worse, but if you do have to drive somewhere, wow you had to pay $5 or $9 for the whole day of parking in a garage 50ft from your door.) http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2014/03/it-manager-full-st...
The format is basically the same every show, somebody wants to move someplace, in 30 minutes they give a brief description of what they're looking for and their budget to a real estate agent. The agent then shows them 3 homes in the area. They pick one of the homes and then finally you see how they've moved in and decorated the place 2 or 3 months later. Along the way you get to see a little bit of the area they're looking in.
The other shows have similar, but slightly different formats or spins on the basic concept. But House Hunters has the show format down to a concise science.
There are episodes where my jaw absolutely drops to the floor seeing how much house and property they can get for their money. For what my garage costs I've seen people get 2 floor 2500 sq ft homes with a detached garage structure and half an acre.
Of course other places are equally depressing and have pretty much destroyed life-long dreams to move to a nicer climate for retirement. However, House Hunters International has shown me some new candidates that look like they'd work very well on a retirement income.
As for leaving SF/Boston/NYC, I moved to Baltimore, which is not the Midwest and actually not that cheap. The two-body problem is a big part of why the "star cities" are so attractive. I like Baltimore-- it's way better than its reputation, although that ain't saying much-- but when I next search for a job, I'll probably find more outside of Baltimore than inside. Also, there's that two-body issue. This move has been good for my career but so-so for my wife's, because there aren't many good companies here. We shouldn't have to choose between one career or the other and, in the long run, we won't. The costs of housing in San Francisco and New York are fucking criminal (literally, if you look into the NIMBY issues) but knowing that both you and your spouse will be able to find high-quality jobs for 10+ years is the draw. I'd rather live in Minneapolis than San Francisco, but I'm pretty sure we could live in San Francisco, career-wise, for at least a decade. Are there going to be VP-level-but-mostly-coding machine learning positions in Minneapolis in 2024? Not a clear call. And cross-country moves are stressful and just get harder with age.
Of course, San Francisco and New York spit you out if you don't become, at least in pay grade, Director-level by child-raising age. To be honest, I don't think we'll move to either of those cities when we next relocate, because even though we'll be able to afford it the expensiveness is horrible for the culture. We ranked cities independently and Seattle topped both of our lists; it's affordable (if not exactly cheap) and beautiful and neither of us has a problem with 50-degree cloudy days. (In MN that was called "Early May".)
Besides the weather, two body problems are one reason why the mid-west is unappealing, but also your earnings generally scale with living expenses, meaning you have more disposable income to spend on things whose price is fixed across the country.
Seattle is my first choice for when I finally move back to the states, but I grew up in the area. You have to be OK with 3 or 4 months of rain, however.
My understanding is that earnings scale by city, but not as steeply as living expenses, for most people in the software world. You might make 10-20% less in a largeish city in the midwest than you would in Seattle or the Bay Area, but your house costs 60-80% less and most other things cost 10-20% less.
Thought of a different way: for 10-20% less than a low-end 600 square foot condo in Mountain View, you can buy a 4000 square foot house on half an acre in Denver. Sure, there's a lot more to consider -- weather, proximity to family, the specific job offers and costs you're likely to incur. But your money goes a lot farther than you might realize in flyover country.
People in richer cities travel more internationally, they do and buy things that many Midwesterners would never even dream of doing. A Mercedes is similar in cost in New York as it is in Cleveland. The wages are lower because the living standards are lower, it's not just about living expenses.
The data suggests the divide is not nearly that large for the majority of software engineers. More like $80-90k in flyover country vs $100k in Seattle or $110k in SF -- and a lot of those gains are wiped out by higher taxes. Having $20k less net income and $20k less net housing expenses each year works out about even, and you can still buy the same number of Mercedes or international trips.
Sure, if you're one of those rare few at the top of the food chain who could be making $200k in St Louis or $500k in the bay area, it's hard to justify living in St Louis. But there are plenty of people in software who justify living in the middle of the country because the "lower" salary is quite competitive for them (as always, do the math for yourself) and they like the lifestyle/weather/whatever.
For reference, I lived in Seattle for 10 years and Denver for 20, and I've always been around software engineers (including my wife and my father.) I know the standard of living the majority of software engineers have in both places. I also keep up with software engineers (family, former coworkers, and school friends) in other areas like NY, Chicago, Baltimore, and the bay area. My software engineer friends in "rich" cities didn't do or buy anything particularly different or more exotic than my software engineer friends in Denver.
Are you really sure you're familiar with housing in those two cities? I am, intimately so, and the difference is huge. It's absolutely crazily different. St. Louis is dirt cheap compared to San Francisco. SF housing is most certainly well more than twice as expensive.
Also, I think your salary gap isn't necessarily representative of the norm. $75k is closer to starting salary in many medium-COL cities, and $150k is definitely not the starting salary for the vast majority of developers in San Francisco. Most start at something like $100k, which is actually borderline worse than $75k in certain cheaper areas (especially those without state income taxes, like Texas).
All that said, I agree that one should probably take $150k in SF over $75k in St. Louis. I just disagree with the nuances of your post, based on experience.
This raises an interesting question: what is intelligence? A cursory Google search shows there's no solid consensus in academia. Having said that, there was a symposium years ago (1921) in which thirteen leading psychologists proposed definitions. [0] Here are a few of them:
1. the tendency to take and maintain a direction
2. judgment, otherwise called good sense, practical sense, initiative
3. adjustment or adaptation to the environment. . .
4. global capacity to act purposefully, think rationally, and deal effectively. . .
5. the ability to plan and structure behavior. . .
6. the ability to solve genuine problems or difficulties. . .
While Ph.D. students have an impressive amount of specialized knowledge, they don't seem to meet all of these criteria for intelligence. Some Ph.D. students are spending hundreds of thousands on degrees without having a clear career plan, then struggling to lead successful, productive lives once they graduate.
This seems opposite in some ways to the qualities of practical sense, judgement and planning ability that characterize intelligence.
[1] This isn't necessarily true of the smartest individuals, and you could imagine a distribution where the 120-130 IQ people stick around to get PhDs, but the SB people are 115-160 IQ, and they leave to go into other fields. Probably true of English, Political Science, etc. -- the smartest people of those undergrad programs probably go into law or finance rather than remaining as grad students and professors within the field itself.
Getting an advanced degree is about test taking, writing papers, and research.
They are not necessarily correlated. This is akin to wondering why excelling at juggling doesn't make you more money in a programming job. Juggling just doesn't add more value to that particular job.
For the PhD, it's all research, research, research. For that same reason, some people try to take classes that are reportedly less work or where active research work can count toward a class project because otherwise, it takes too much away from research time.
It's a very different experience for me than undergraduate because of the low regard for class work (though doing poorly will invite mockery).
http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/fourth-quadra...
I think a lot of the guys that go into super science aren't really looking for huge pay checks anyway. They love the science and the challenge, and they don't want to be burdened with all the BS that comes with dealing with "regular people" because we will get in their way.
It ain't greener on the other side of the fence. Most software engineers work on pointless shit (and complain about idiotic or short-sighted management) as well.
The problem isn't that these product executives and bikeshedding non-techs have low IQs. (We viciously lambast them as "retards" and "morons", but it ain't true. If they were physically limited we'd be dickheads for judging them. It's the willful stupidity that's the sin.) They're more than smart enough. The problem is that they (and half or more of all developers, to tell the truth) are willingly intellectually half-assed. Once they get power it's an excuse not to think. They do become genuinely stupid (in the low IQ sense) over time but that atrophy takes decades.
In other words, it's not that "regular" people are the idiots who make our lives hell. It's something to do with power structures and the anti-intellectualism those seem to breed, even when filled with smart people.
I spend 4 hours shoveling snow in near sub-zero temperatures and oops I missed a spot by the side of the dumpster... who cares? Do customers go by the dumpster? No. Is it affecting the garbage being picked up? No. Then why the hell do they have to write a 10 sentence angry note to me for the next time I work? They are so unbelievably insane.
But I am more resolved than ever. I will stay at that job until I make the equivalent amount of money selling software. When I finally quit there it will probably be one of the best days of my life.
Now take into account that:
1) For profit universities like University of Phoenix also issue PhDs. Most employers don't take them seriously, but USBLS measures them just the same.
2) We're in the midst of the worst job market in generations, and it may quickly become the worst job market since industrialization.
Given these circumstances, having 5,000 people, or about 0.25% of the PhD-holding labor force, working as janitors does not sound like a particularly significant datum for making broader assumptions about the value of the PhD.
The whole point of the PhD is (supposed to be) preparing you for academic work - it's a demonstration that you can do novel, creative, and independent research at a level of your peers. It's not just proof you completed the checklist like a BS. The problem is that many universities have turned it into that.
The flipside of all this is that it's pretty easy to tell in an interview who just "did the PhD thing" without any plan for what happens next. If you ask me, that's what's going on here. The people who were aimless to begin with are still aimless.
Source: I'm a recent PhD graduate, and work in an hybrid academic setting interacting with current MS/PhD students.
It also brings to mind the movie "Sabrina" with Audrey Hepburn, who father in the movie was a chauffeur so that he could spend his days reading books while between driving stints.
A lot of those hotel front desk staff and janitors simply wasted their money on college degrees and the so called Phds. They should have taken a bit more realistic education.
Are you in the same category as a well connected graduate from a top computer science program.
The lack of analysis and generalizations make this article meaningless. If your title is a question, give me a damn answer.
Second, while IQ and mental illness actually don't correlate, creativity (which is very helpful for getting a PhD in many fields) is correlated with mental health issues.
Do you have any sources for this? I would like to read the some of the studies.
There is a secret for overcoming this boredom: podcasts. Ticket-munching isn't actually that bad if you have a bunch of queued up podcasts and audiobooks that you can listen to. I recommend bloggingheads.tv, C-Span AfterWords, C-Span Q&A, and if you like sports, the B.S. Report. Though if you listen to podcasts, you must be quick to pause when your work actually requires all 145+ IQ points, otherwise quality will suffer.