
High prestige, low satisfaction jobs - fogus
http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2010/11/22/why-you-may-not-like-your-job-even-though-everyone-envies-you/?refer=hn
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acconrad
I can't help but find this entire article flawed because he's basing his
analysis on a man who went from Harvard to Google...they're both incredibly
prestigious, so really the article is about going from a low satisfaction to a
high satisfaction job, which is kind of a no-brainer.

~~~
amichail
If he went to a software engineer position at Google, I would not say that's
as prestigious as a Harvard professor.

~~~
elblanco
Sorry to say, Harvard's reputation in CS circles is pretty abysmal.

I'm sure there are some fine folks there, but compared to the status of the
school....meh.

In hiring circles folks with CS degrees from Harvard are generally frowned
upon, "couldn't they have just gone to a better school for CS/Engineering at a
cheaper cost? Musta gone for the brand name recognition...we'll pass"

~~~
amichail
From <http://www.seas.harvard.edu/faculty-research/people>:

"Harvard ranked # 1 in Mechanical Engineering; # 1 in Biotechnology & Applied
Microbiology; # 5 in Mathematics; # 3 in AI, Robotics, and Auto Control
(Science Watch, most recent data)

Harvard ranked # 7 in Theoretical Computer Science

In terms of citation impact, Harvard ranked second nationally in the category
of Engineering and Computer Science in a 2002 analysis by ISI (for 1998-2002
data; most recent)"

~~~
elblanco
I can probably find rankings that put Harvard at wildly different rankings in
all of those categories too. The fact of the matter is, outside of Law and
Business (okay okay, Math too), Harvard does not exactly float to the top of
anybody's personal list as a source of any kind of great engineering. That's
okay, that's not what the school focuses on.

We actually had this exact discussion recently at a client site and
brainstormed top schools we could look to recruit from for C.S. and Mechanical
Engineering types and Harvard was not on _anybody's_ list for either of those.
Not top-10 and not in the discussion at all.

Most people are wildly surprised to find out that folks like Bill Gates and
Zuckerberg studied at Harvard, almost verbatim the response is "Harvard _has_
a C.S. department?" Most people assume Stanford or MIT.

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akkartik
"The juvenile sea squirt wanders through the sea searching for a suitable rock
or hunk of coral to cling to and make its home for life. For this task, it has
a rudimentary nervous system. When it finds its spot and takes root, it
doesn't need its brain anymore so it eats it!

It's rather like getting tenure."

<http://www.langston.com/Fun_People/1992/1992AAC.html>

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thetrumanshow
While we wait for his server to recover, there's this analysis:

<http://tjic.com/?p=18531>

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ronnier
Site is down, my little project got it though:

[http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://lemire.me/blog/archiv...](http://viewtext.org/article?url=http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2010/11/22/why-
you-may-not-like-your-job-even-though-everyone-envies-you/%3Frefer%3Dhn)

------
j_baker
"The abstract thinkers may not be so reliable after all! The millions of
college graduates who are underemployed in wealthy countries all around the
globe have unanswered questions. Weren’t these high-level abstract college
degrees supposed to pay for themselves?"

Actually, I would view Google's existence as proof that abstract, high-level
thinkers actually can do something. Did it not start out as a research project
by abstract, high-level thinkers?

I think the author has a point, but the populist, anti-intellectual bent
really distracts from that. The point as I see it is that prestige is a
benefit for certain jobs, just like money or vacation or insurance. These
things are good, but can they make up for a job that you don't see as
rewarding?

~~~
retube
Sure, abstract high level thinkers _can_ actually do something. But Google is
a one in a billion. The majority of abstract, high level thinkers are, and
always will be, underemployed: there's only room for a handful of Googles, but
there's plenty of room for those that don't make it.

~~~
j_baker
True, but it's a big one in a billion.

There are few Googles, but there are also few abstract thinkers. I don't
pretend to believe that the world would be better with more of them. But
everyone has their place. It's no better for you to say that abstract thinkers
are useless than it is for them to say you're a short-sighted idiot.

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schumitsch
"In effect, a job doing research in Computer Science is more prestigious than
an industry job building real system"

That's actually no longer true. Hence why a Prof leaves to take a job at
Google

~~~
Tamerlin
It is still true. Google is an exception, it's certainly not the rule.

~~~
_delirium
And I think it's partly because they _do_ do a lot of research, so they get
some of the research prestige. With the number of full-time researchers and
publication output they have, the research side of Google would rank as one of
the larger institutes if it were standalone. See e.g.:
<http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html>

I think the same is true prestige-wise of other research-heavy companies. Bell
Labs was prestigious; being at Microsoft Research is prestigious; etc.

~~~
Locke1689
I don't see why doing privately funded research would be any less prestigious.
Microsoft Research is arguably the most important operating system research
group in existence, like Bell Labs before them. Honestly I would expect these
kinds of misconceptions from the general public, but do most people in our
field not understand the state of computer science research today?

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kwantam
It seems that some or all of this post is based on a seriously flawed notion
of what lends prestige to a job. For example,

    
    
         > The electrician who comes and wires your house has a less
         > prestigious job than the electrical engineer who manages vague 
         > projects within a large organization.
    

So, in other words, the electrical engineer's job is more prestigious
because... it's less useful? Ignoring completely the assumption that "vague
projects within a large organization" are less useful than an electrician's
work, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that the barrier to entry
is far higher for an electrical engineer than for an electrician, or that the
former nominally pushes the forefront of new technology while the latter,
while certainly performing a useful task, does little more than repetitively
apply procedures dictated by various building codes?

I guess a doctor is only more prestigious than an EMT because the former is
probably a better golfer than the latter on account of his/her massive excess
of free time?

I'll admit that I haven't read The Theory of the Leisure Class; perhaps
someone who has can confirm/disconfirm the OP's interpretation of same?

It seems to me that, for example, a possibly better interpretation has to do
with the public's level of understanding of one's job: the EE's "mysterious
projects" are more prestigious because they somehow seem magical. Of course,
this isn't really consistent with the example of the scientist who works in a
lab (seems pretty mysterious to me!) versus the one who writes grant proposals
all day (ugh), so I think I still don't get it.

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cma
>These core values were explored by Veblen in his unconventional book The
Theory of the Leisure Class.

Funny he should mention this; Veblen wrote another book after this, The Theory
of Business Enterprise. In it Veblen gives a strong critique of the
advertising industry (at least the part of it that is zero sum).

A large part of Google is advertising. A lot of that advertising is _not_ zero
sum--I believe it provides a lot of value--but over time they have moved more
and more heavily into the zero-sum space (e.g. the purchase of DoubleClick,
the general character of youtube ads). By that I mean things like brand-
building ads that just associate an emotion or status/prestige with a product
or company.

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alnayyir
Plumbers make more than software developers?

I know some blue collars, plumbers included that are doing _really_ well in
the grand scheme of things, but I don't know any that make more than I do, and
I'm 20 years younger than them.

~~~
capstone
Plumbers' riches is an urban myth. When I started out in web development, my
billing rate was $325/hour, which a journalist could easily calculate into a
$600,000+ year job. In reality, I made around $70k. I suspect the plumbers
meme is based on similarly ill-informed calculations. The reality is more
humble: $20/hour for hired hands, lots of expenses and unbilled downtime for
independents, etc. The average for highest-earning states (NY/CA) is around
$60k.

~~~
nir
> _When I started out in web development, my billing rate was $325/hour,_

???

When was that? What technology? That's easily the highest rate I've ever heard
of.

~~~
capstone
I was working for Arthur Andersen and later KPMG in New York. The technology
stack was varied (Vignette/TCL is one odd example) and largely irrelevant to
my rate, as was my value as a programmer (I wasn't very good back then). $325
was one of my more sedate rates actually, they've billed me out as high as
$400.

People tend to think the crazy numbers were a byproduct of the internet bubble
but the biggest factor was due diligence: certain big clients had to choose a
Big 5 firm for their projects based on requirements such as, minimum number of
employees, minimum years in business, minimum assets, etc. The whole racket
was absurd, if you ask me.

