With Both Hands

Sign in Subscribe

Career

Nice Guys Earn Less

So says CNN. The Magistra sent me this today. Apparently she's trying to tell me something. I'm not really surprised at the results. The article focuses on social interactions, but I think the real effect likely comes not from being a jerk per se, but the

The Big Lie about the life of the Mind

One of the most frequent questions asked in the Physics Forums career section is: "should I pursue a PhD in [insert subject here]". Example. The usual answer that comes out of the assembled geek experts is: "only if you have great passion around [subject] and will never

Another Salary Report

From Georgetown's Center on Education and the Workforce comes another salary report by undergraduate major. No serious surprises here, but I do like their methodology. The CEW breaks down earnings by both occupation and field of study, since in many cases a major in college is not vocational.

An American Professor Weighs in on the Academic Process

Via John D Cook, Matt Welsh explains why he left Harvard for Google: There is one simple reason that I'm leaving academia: I simply love work I'm doing at Google. I get to hack all day, working on problems that are orders of magnitude larger and

The Management Myth

I had read this sometime during the last 5 years, but John D Cook linked to it this weekend, so I got reacquainted: The Management Myth. Matthew Stewart worked as a management consultant for seven years, but his education was in nineteenth century German philosophy. Stewart only caught up on

Academic Ponzi Scheme

Here is another take on the pyramid scheme that is higher education today, this time from England. Why I am not a Professor Teaching was not the only criterion of assessment. Research was another and, from the point of view of getting promotion, more important. Teaching being increasingly dreadful, research

PhD Glut

This is sort of thing is usually discussed scoffingly over at the PhysicsForums, but there is a massive over-supply of PhDs. When even Nature is publishing articles on the subject, something has to give. There have been some attempts to reform the Ponzi scheme nature of grad school in the