Don't Become a Scientist (1999)

Re:Don't Become a Scientist (1999) by marcosdumay on Sunday May 18, 2014 @02:53PM (#7763914)

It's a completely different situation. Programming leads to some serious concentrated rewards, while science leads only to dispersed rewards. As a result, there are plenty of people wanting to invest in programming, but mostly governments want to touch sciences.

That of course does not mean that the job market for programmers will always be good, only that when it stops being, it will be for very different reasons.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Don't Become a Scientist (1999) by eshvk on Sunday May 18, 2014 @03:27PM (#7764042)

> Programming leads to some serious concentrated rewards, while science leads only to dispersed rewards.

Can you explain what you mean by this?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Don't Become a Scientist (1999) by UK-AL on Sunday May 18, 2014 @03:35PM (#7764078)

He means science is a public good, everybody wins when a scientist discovers some knowledge/cure/whatever.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Don't Become a Scientist (1999) by nagrom on Sunday May 18, 2014 @05:12PM (#7764452)

But the scientist generally wins less than a programmer who has a moderately good year making a website to help people find other people who would like to walk their dog.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Don't Become a Scientist (1999) by marcosdumay on Sunday May 18, 2014 @11:05PM (#7765501)

It's almost impossible to sell a public good. A career that focus on them will inevitably get less monetary rewards than one that focus on excludable ones.

A scientist gets less money than a programmer because despite creating much more total wealth on average[1], nobody needs to pay to get a share of the results, thus nobody has much of an incentive to pay.

As a related concept, life ain't fair.

[1] Does he really? I'm going with the common opinion, but I'd love to see data on that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Don't Become a Scientist (1999) by UK-AL on Sunday May 18, 2014 @02:54PM (#7763919)

I'm guessing massive oversupply will be the reason, as it is here.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Don't Become a Scientist (1999) by gcp on Sunday May 18, 2014 @03:25PM (#7764035)

Demand for faculty positions is pretty stable. Demand for programmers much less so.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Don't Become a Scientist (1999) by hatbert on Sunday May 18, 2014 @04:24PM (#7764280)

> Demand for faculty positions is pretty stable.

Well, that's certainly one way of putting it. You could also say, "Academia has the potential to absorb about 10% of PhDs produced annually." That's fine for CS, where most people want to go into industry anyway and industry understands the product. Not so much for, say, physics, where more PhDs would rather stay in academia and you have to explain very quickly why someone should hire a PhD physicist before they slam the door in your face.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Don't Become a Scientist (1999) by 001sky on Sunday May 18, 2014 @03:46PM (#7764123)

There is a huge imbalance in new phd/new tenure-job openings. also, the proportion of faculty jobs with tenure is shrinking. both of these are massive 'caveats' to the use of 'stable'.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Don't Become a Scientist (1999) by gcp on Monday May 19, 2014 @02:32AM (#7765995)

I actually meant that the demand for programmers matches and evolves with the supply, and has certainly room to grow for a while, whereas academia has been completely mismatched for years.

[ Parent | on HN ]