October 23rd, 2010, 3:44 pm
QuoteOriginally posted by: tavisorQuoteOriginally posted by: vlad32...have you considered computational biology/genetics or large-data set analytics for private companies or semi-government research, pay is very decent, obviously not finance, but given the years are pretty lean for the first two years in your career, I don't think the difference is that much, much better job security and much less 'master of the universe' types to deal with...more free time to work on your ideas...I know I should not be writing this reply on this forum, but here it goes: I opted for finance because it looked like this is where I could apply my skills. I wouldn't actually get out of academia if it wasn't for the moving every 3 years, and the uncertainty that maybe after 3 postdocs (which in theoretical particle physics is something very usual) it might still be difficult to get a permanent job. Even in academia in many cases it is more about who you know than what you know. I don't need outrageous amounts of money. I was reading another thread on this forum about the things/amounts that some consider necessary to be living the high life. Well, many of the things written there didn't sound like they were worth selling your extra time for.I am also contemplating other things besides this. I also put some applications with European Space Agency, but I just found out that unfortunately I have the wrong citizenship at this point.The uncertainty in finance is even higher - coding mistake/model blow up/aggro monkey trader blow up/other part of the firm blows up... just a few reasons you can lose your job uber quick, so nothing beats academia job security (but academia politics is a nasty one, I agree, you might as well run for Congress). So if you are not in for the money, it's really hard to justify taking on such tremendous amounts of risk/ pressure/ random master of the world types bs. They will own your extra time anyways so you might as well try to extract as much money for it as you can. It's the culture,even if you don't want it, it coerces you into this behavior. Oh, and did I mention working with most traders is like dealing with members of organized crimes syndicate, they are not that different after all ).I am not trying to discourage you, by all means, the best things is to try it yourself before you judge, I'm just describing the facts as seen in large firms throughout the industry.To me it sounds like you can get what you are looking for in places like Google, Yahoo, Apple or MS or other companies that deal with large data. Work life balance is much better and the salaries supprisingly good for non-finance. If you manage to get into a reasonable startup with some equity, you might even end up with a decent chunk of money one day. who knows.I am sure you can apply your skills quite profitably in places other than finance, equally well.
Last edited by
vlad32 on October 22nd, 2010, 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.