The Joel on Software Discussion Group

Adjusted for IQ and working hours, jobs in science are the lowest paid in the United States.

http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

I mean this article by Phillip Greenspan as a follow up to the thread "Are programmers overpaid?".

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.313933.52

Maybe that's it?

I'm in science. I don't expect to be paid much. But I expect to have the fun of my life at work.

That's what's it all about. You can afford to pay scientists little because we're IN LOVE with what we are doing.

(Actually my friend says he found a solution: he'll be working 2 days a week as a  business consultant and the rest as a physicist -- I wonder if it will work out for him, but he's really smart).

Did anyone stop to consider the fact that science/math types have low social skills, want a job that requires little true social interaction, which just happen to be lower paying jobs?

It's interesting though...

I see a lot of comments along the lines of "people who know stuff and do stuff tend to have poor social skills."  Often there is an implication that they should settle for less and just cross their fingers and hope for self-satisfaction in their choice of career.

Then "we" run to foreign countries to find the same sorts of people, never make much demand for social skills, and "we" are quite happy.

The thing is though, those folks will come to (country X) to do this work, but it isn't about "self satisfaction" at all.  Some get paid really decent wages, others settle for less.  The goal is the same though, to get ahead financially and where pssible send cash home to help out the family.

Conclusion?

This is pure exploitation.  And the "we" is Capital (and those self-deluded into roles as Capitalists) at the expense of Labor.

Nothing really new to see here except the loss of Labor solidarity in Western economies.

> Did anyone stop to consider the fact that science/math
> types have low social skills, want a job that requires
> little true social interaction, which just happen to be
> lower paying jobs?

Err, what? Yes, there are some scientists with low social skills, but I've met a whole lot more people in software development than science who fall into that category!

Woman:    I didn't know we 'ad a king!  I thought we were an autonomous collective.
Man:    (mad)  You're fooling yourself!  We're living in a dictatorship!  A self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
Woman:    There you go, bringing class into it again...
Man:    That's what it's all about!  If only people would--

Pure research has never paid well. This used to not be such a big deal. The problem has become serious over the past 20 years due to a dramatic increase in the cost of living.

20 years ago it was possible to live a somewhat average middle class life in Boston on a researcher's salary. Now even a small home 45 minutes away costs $600,000. You can't even rent a 2 bedroom apartment in Boston for less than $2400/m. 

If you are only being paid $35,000 a year (often less) the decision to be a research scientist also means you are deciding that you can't have a family, unless you want to be really, really poor and struggling. And that's if you even get a job.

Obviously there are cheaper places to live, but most places where researchers want to work are located in very expensive locales. This is a very usa-centric viewpoint and the situation may be different in other countries.

Absolutely correct about living costs and research, although few research scientists with permanent appointments will be paid as little as 35,000.

PostDocs and one year adjuncts may be paid that little, however.

Personally I would no longer recommend a career in programming to anyone who isn't likely to be in the elite who will have zero problems finding work.

The only alternative might be someone who would be good going into the financial industry, either as a pure programmer or as a programmer plus analyst. They could expect to make as much in bonuses and high pay as most people in starts, without the risk. That is, if they are good, they are highly likely to make an extra 1,000,000 in their first 10 years or so, unlike the risk of startups.

As to money and research, the famed mathematician G. H. Hardy was a professor at Cambridge, and left for Oxford mostly as a politcal protest during the First World War. He returned later, and one of the main reasons was that at Cambridge a professor could keep his "rooms", his residence suite, even after he retired, unlike at Oxford. The pay was that low.

In the same vein, J. R. R. Tolkein said that had it not been for his Middle Earth books, he would have had a destitute old age.

Compared to that most college faculty now have it pretty good.

"Did anyone stop to consider the fact that science/math types have low social skills, want a job that requires little true social interaction, which just happen to be lower paying jobs?"

This is a myth. Very few scientists now work alone. Most collaborate with someone who often lives somewhere else, so they *must* have social interaction skills. I've seen my professor several times discussing mathematical details on an international phone call with his friend.

I'm not even mentioning social skills needed to accurately and convincingly talk about a year's work during a 15 or 30 minutes presentation.

Most physicists I know are easygoing types who are comfortable to interact with. I really don't know where this myth of "savage scientist" comes from. Probably Hollywood movies.

"Obviously there are cheaper places to live, but most places where researchers want to work are located in very expensive locales. This is a very usa-centric viewpoint and the situation may be different in other countries."

Yes, this is US-centric.

"Compared to that most college faculty now have it pretty good."

Einstein said: "Science is wonderful unless you want to make a living of it".

Banach, a Polish genius mathematician, did not even had a university job in the 30's, he supported himself by teaching in high school. Compared to that, we do have a pretty good situation.

"You can afford to pay scientists little because we're IN LOVE with what we are doing."

Likewise, the best basketball players are the lowest paid. You can afford to hire the lowest paid basketball players and have an all-star championship team because those who are willing to work for the least pay are the most highly qualified and sought after. It's just simple economics.

A real scientist wouldn't be measuring $ per IQ. That's not a meaningful unit.

No one has mentioned that academics have awesome bennies.

"Likewise, the best basketball players are the lowest paid. You can afford to hire the lowest paid basketball players and have an all-star championship team because those who are willing to work for the least pay are the most highly qualified and sought after. It's just simple economics."

I assume you are being sarcastic here, but in fact it does work this way in some fields. A science professor with tenure at a major university will usually do OK financially. Probably not as well as a medical specialist, or a successful tax lawyer, and almost certainly not as well as a famous pro athlete, movie star, or CEO, but they can probably afford a reasonable house and send their children to college (though it will help if their spouse works).

They will compare themselves to what other scientists are making, but except when they are feeling particularly bitter and morose, they usually won't worry about what other careers pay. That's because there can be tremendous non-fungible benefits to these positions. Once you get tenure you are almost guaranteed a salary until you retire, and you can pursue any project you fancy. For some people the prospect of that freedom is worth every penny of their foregone earnings. In addition, while your salary may not be spectacular by current US standards, you may control a multi-million dollar budget for toys^h^h^h^h equipment and personnel, all devoted to solving the problems that interest you. There is also the joy of advancing knowledge, the chance for fame, the regard of one's peers, and the generally high esteem the public holds scientists in (scientists regularly come out on top of the polls of respected vocations).

You may not find these benefits attractive, but as Greenspun points out in his essay, the competition for these positions is so intense that very smart people will work long hours at low wages for a decade or more to put themselves in the running for one of them. And if you think that's crazy, talk to someone working on a Ph.D. in the humanities sometime.

Art,

of course top scientists earn more than mediocre ones like me.

How do you lure a top NBA player? By increasing his contract so that he can buy himself another Porshe.

How do you lure a Nobel prize winner in physics? By salary, yes, but also by giving him a lot of money to spend on the equipment and -- you may be surprised -- to be given away to other people, like postdocs and PhD students. That, and the fact that most educational institutions do not have such freedom with salaries that NBA teams do, explains a lot.

You can go a long way, catering to top scientist's ego... many of them have quite large ones.

Another thing is that scientists -- at least theoreticians who don't have to oversee experiments -- have extremely flexible work hours. Unless there is a seminar or a class to teach, I can decide on a day-to-day basis whether I go to work or work at home. I can take holiday I almost every moment of the year, if I don't TA a class. Compared to this, even Joel's employees are ordinary worker bees ;-)

This is a dirty little secret of science in America.  Yes, I know many scientists who love their jobs, but at least part of the reason they got into science is not only solve new problems and challenge themselves intellectually, but they also assumed that their intellect would be rewarded (financially).  And most of the time, that's just not true relatively speaking.  The space physics PhD from MIT is a prime example.

Some of the smartest people I know (PhD scientists) don't make much more year than the manager at McDonald's and live on barely livable wages.  You may love your job, but this financial reality makes many at least somewhat bitter (I've met several like Philip described).  And the sad truth is that whatever project you're working on is often not dictated by what you "love to do", but by what your PI (Principal Investigator) finds interesting or what some grant is willing to fund this year.


That's why a lot of these guys end up on Wallstreet or working for one of the big consulting firms.

"You may love your job, but this financial reality makes many at least somewhat bitter"

I washed out of physics grad school in the early 80s and I've never understood the bitterness. It was always clear to me that landing a tenured position doing physics research was an ify proposistion. A lot of folks have observed that academia is a little bit like a multi-level marketing scheme: each professor generates 10-20 new Ph.D.s over a career, but only one is needed to replace him or her. I did read essays by cheerleaders proclaiming the impending shortage of trained scientists, but a few conversations with young scientists around the department told me how brutal the competition really was.

Most research ends up being completely irrelevant, some research end up changing the world, and it's almost impossible to tell which is which until 10 years after the fact. Supporting scientists is an extremely speculative investment, so I can understand why there are many more people who want to be scientists then there are jobs for scientists.

American universities have tended to move closer to the basketball salary structure, in that there is an elite of tenured professors whose salaries are pretty good and a large number of untenured assitants whose salaries are just above the breadline.

One of the main problems with being a researcher is that you are often tossed on to the scrap heap when you reach your early thirties, and may well have no marketable skills.

And to refer to the title of the thread shouldn't people with a high IQ be using it to work out where they will make most money for it unless, heaven forfend, making loads of money is not their prime goal.

Whoever came up with that equation should be the lowest paid scientist in the US. The whole essay starts on a false note. Summers wasn't fired.

I beleive Greenspun overstates the risk of job loss. Sure professors get denied tenure; they don't automatically end up flipping burgers after that. They sometimes get offers of tenure from other schools. It would have been nice if Greenspun quantified some of his arguemts instead of cherry-picking a few anecdotes.

His sly conclusion translates to: Women are actually wiser because they reject science over more renumerative careers. Men are stubborn and prideful. Is this a testable hypothesis?

The idea that scientists tend to have poor social skills is complete nonsense. They get along with each other pretty well, often bridging major language and cultural differences in the process. That said, the profession does have its fair share of assholes.

Equally nonsensical is the idea that the US is facing a shortage of scientists and engineers. If that were true their salaries would rise. QED. Usually you see this argument accompanied by screeching for more H1-B's, a nice euphemism for indentured servitude. If you're a programmer you're probably sharing a cubicle with an H1-B. Tell him you're sorry.

A sports star sells lots of tickets, an immediate and visible benefit to the guy writing his checks. When you need a lawyer or a doctor, you need one. You don't have a choice. You can always choose not to do that additional unit of science or engineering, or choose to do it later. That's why salaries can't compete.

Folks, "professor" != "scientist".  The former's the one with the risk/reward balance.  The latter's not a bad-paying way to go, actually.  However, winning the tenure lottery means you'll do quite well the rest of the way.  And many of those who don't win end up in commercial jobs similar to what they were doing in academia.

Greenspun seems to make two very good points here. Firstly he suggests that one of the reasons for the excess of males in science jobs is the fact that so many of them come from Third World countries, and in general it is the men there who will enter science or engineering careers, and more importantly, they who are much more likely to emigrate on their own.

His second point is that men are more likely than women to be single issue fanatics.Science may not be well paying and the hours may be lousy, but they are dammed if they're going to give up until they have solved the problem.

+1 to David

"His second point is that men are more likely than women to be single issue fanatics.Science may not be well paying and the hours may be lousy, but they are dammed if they're going to give up until they have solved the problem."

I talked about it with my wife, who's also into science. She says that she, and some other women in science that she knows, experience a brief panic when posed a new question or a problem. It's like "Oh my God, will I cope?". Men tend to be more self-trusting, not to say arrogant.

"Firstly he suggests that one of the reasons for the excess of males in science jobs is the fact that so many of them come from Third World countries,..."

My theory is US universities have run out of suckers willing to go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt to obtain a Ph.D, and are now heavily promoting their programs overseas to make up for the shortfall.

Going into debt to get a PhD, what's that all about. Must be very different in the US than the UK. Here, you could theoretically privately fund a PhD, but I know nobody who's done (or doing) this. Funding comes from funding bodies, who are funded in tern by the government. Some PhDs also have commercial backing.

MBJ: most suckers from overseas don't pay for their PhD's themselves.

No one pays for a PhD in the US either, unless you're talking about fields that really have a glut of PhDs e.g. History, and even then it's not common.

David wrote:

"Equally nonsensical is the idea that the US is facing a shortage of scientists and engineers."

The US probably doesn't, but the EU set itself a goal of having 700,000 researchers by 2007 and will probably fall short of it (don't ask me why this number).

In my opinion, world does not need a lot of PhD's. The world needs a lot of school kids learning science.

Falling short of an arbitrary goal is not a shortage. Seeing wages spike because qualified candidates are fielding multiple offers would be evidence of a shortage. Call me when that happens. Instead we see more and more PhDs in low-paying and temporary postdocs because there is a shortage of permanent jobs.

It should be pointed out that not every science and engineering discipline faces the same level of distress. I think that in recent times EE's and bioscience people have done much better than ME's or pure math and physics people.

I'm all for raising math and science standards in primary and secondary education, but if you subsidize a bunch of kids along this track and don't do anything about the shortage of permanent jobs at the doctorate level--and what can government do about that besides massively expanding research funding--you are just making things worse. It's not Bush's job to make sure kids do their math homework.

Here's a radical thought. Let's focus on keeping the US the most attractive place in the world to deploy capital in high risk/high return science and engineering ventures, and not worry so much what nationality the engineers are, or how many show up. If you build it, they will come.

David,

Many many people got hammered brutally during the 1970s about the shortage of jobs.

During the 1960s there was a great increase in the number of college campuses, with consequent hiring.

That stopped rather suddenly around 1970 but people continued to go to grad school in huge numbers and found themselves unable to find academic employment. Ask any of the older generation of programmers sometime. I bet 1/2 are grad school dropouts, that is from non-CS programs.

I have noticed that technical people would rather try to prove how smart they are than get a larger paycheck. They have a napolean complex on their intelligence.

NamelessOldTimer, it's a perennial problem--if it is a problem. Many PhD grads today leave their field immediately after graduation.

Tom Vu, I hope you're just a weak troll and you don't really mean that. Care to provide an example?

I don't understand why some people need to find some pathological reason why people make academic or career choices that fail to maximize income. Playing the cello won't earn you much, unless you're Yo Yo Ma, but if you have the talent you might stick with it anyway, because it feels good to be really good at something. Or you might not, because feels better to be able to send the kids to college. Neither choice is the result of some intrinsic irrationality distributed by IQ, gender, or whatever.

I agree with Roman that we need lots of kids learning science, but not because we need more engineers. I'm just afraid of what will fill the void left by the absence of science.

David, that's what I had in mind too.

True. To make sure kids are not being led astray, ask them if they have found freedom in submission to Science’s laws. Ask them how has their life been filled by Science? The modern world is a community which knows it needs to be filled by the spirit of Science.

Who pays for the Ph.Ds then? The three people I know who have Ph.Ds in CS all paid out of their own pockets. All three finished with 6-figure debts. They were not sponsored by their employers. Hell, for the most part they never even worked.

Art, is that sarcasm? What's your point?

Art,

"If a Nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be...  If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed."

-- Thomas Jefferson

"Who pays for the Ph.Ds then? The three people I know who have Ph.Ds in CS all paid out of their own pockets. All three finished with 6-figure debts. They were not sponsored by their employers. Hell, for the most part they never even worked."

That seems very unusual. In the sciences most Ph.D. students are supported by TA appointments the first couple of years (somone has to grade all those CS 101 assginments), and after that they are usually supported by their advisors research grants.