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Comment by djoshea | Hacker News Reader

Certainly a depressing perspective, but as a Stanford PhD student (neuro), my thoughts have always been that pursuing science was a decision to work on the problems that interested me at the _expense_ of not receiving good financial compensation. The particular things I'm interested in studying happen to exist primarily within academia (and non-university academic institutions like Allen Brain and Janelia), because the neuroscience work being done in industry (today) is far more primitive (e.g. EEG). This may change in the near future, and I'll reconsider my options then, but for now, I'm under no delusion that my salary (~30k) is anywhere near what it could be for an EE/CS in industry. That being said, if the amount of bullshit and politics becomes so burdensome that it kills the attractiveness of the science, then I'd leave.

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I think you might find this article relevant. I think that liking your work shouldn't be in exchange for fair compensation and work conditions.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/...

Read the article, but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with it. Of course I don't think that scientists "should" make less money as they're doing something they love, but since when are salaries determined by how much someone "deserves" to make? My working conditions are excellent; I'm at Stanford in a well-funded lab. And I decided and continue to believe that this is research that I'd like to do despite the financial opportunity cost.

If I'm reading it correctly, this article seems to suggest that the advice that pursuing work that you find fulfilling is itself responsible for lowering wages, which may be true in as much as people are willing to accept lower wages if they enjoy the work despite having better options. But what would you propose as an alternative? Pursuing work that you find less fulfilling in exchange for more money? That's not a sacrifice I'm willing to make, and I've been privileged with enough opportunity and financial security to have a choice. Of course everyone has different objective functions they're seeking to optimize, so I see why others would make different choices, which is all good by me.

If you truly have your expectations properly set, then my hat is off to you. The difficulty, I believe, comes as time goes on and problems such as a family, prompt student debt repayment and savings come into play. (That's why I love the metaphor from the article: grad school costs you your firstborn.)

To put it another way: do you think you are paid enough for the quality of work you do? And at what salary would you rather work on something less interesting? I always thought part of the problem was that salaries are mostly set--or that's what researchers think--and therefore they accept whatever the system assigns to them.

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