It's fine to give career advice but the giver isn't going to pay the price if the advice turns out to be horribly wrong.

Was math really a good career choice at any point in time?

Math jobs are either in:

- teaching, which except for tertiary education, is poorly paid

- or a very limited, competitive and unstable pool of jobs in academia and maybe a handful of companies with large research departments

We're probably talking 50 000 people in math research worldwide and probably millions of underpaid regular math teachers at middle and high schools.

I am an ex-mathematician who went into industry, I would say apart from CompSci/ML and physics, it was one of the most sought-after PhDs you could have (across tech and finance) - when I was entering the job market 10 years ago at least. No regrets.

Yeah, but how many of those mathematicians still do math?

It's like engineers in post-Communist European countries, sure there were tons of graduates, but 80% of them were doing something else than the thing they graduated in.

That's not what you said though - you said it was a bad career choice. I'm saying it was a good one, even if you didn't end up directly doing a lot of high-level math.

> even if you didn't end up directly doing a lot of high-level math

But that's what everyone is lamenting the loss of, that AI is taking that specific job.

> That's not what you said though - you said it was a bad career choice.

Going through forced detours in life doesn't make it a "good choice".

The good choices are the ones where people finish their studies/apprenticeships and then immediately work in their direct field. For example a law student becoming a lawyer.

At most I'd consider that a "mediocre choice".

Life is just like that - you don't know what the future will bring, the best advice is find something you like, and work hard on it. Often, you will find that the money just doesn't come like you thought it would.

I went back to school for CompSci in the early 90's. Some of the math classes were almost the best part: number theory (loved it, but almost failed, lol); and statistics (terrified of failing and spent so much time studying that I almost failed compiler design). I thought sure I'd have a software career, but I hardly spent more than a few weeks at any job writing software; mostly a few scripts, and some statistical analysis. And that was about all there was over the next 25 years.

How did I survive? There were lots of companies that needed bookkeeping/clerical work, later IT support, then telecom, then quality assurance (never thought I'd work on a factory floor - surprise!). Money was enough, but sometimes just barely. It hasn't exactly left me with a comfortable retirement, but honestly, I wouldn't change hardly a thing.

What is good advice for someone just starting? Don't expect any career to make you really well off. Try to find something you like. It won't be fun all the time, but you will know it's right, when you find it. I've know lots of people who changed what they were doing after school; you might be surprised at what you find you like doing.