Your Advice Requested

[entelein]

OK, so my dear friend Andy has a dilemma, and he thought it might be a good idea to bring the dilemma to you. Perhaps you've got some insight, some glimmer of truth, some bit of advice for the poor guy. He's wringing his hands, I tell you! He's worn pathways in the carpet from pacing back and forth each day. His nails are bitten to the quick, there's a few more grey hairs sprouting on his poor worried head.

Ignoring the fact that I am prone to hyperbole, here's the sitch:

Andy's got a decent job working as a programmer. He's been there a few years, does a great job with it. At his last review he was given glowing marks and a very nice raise, which I think he immediately spent all on video games (well, OK, maybe just a little bit of it). Job's going well, he's doing well, excellent. And then the next project comes along, and it's difficult. Things don't go so well, and suddenly he's called on the carpet for it. Despite assurances that he's got to do a few things better, ask more questions, work a bit more diligently, Andy suddenly feels as though his job is in danger. And it really is, you see, because things had been going so well, and now suddenly weren't. He feels a loss of trust, he's not sure he likes it so much there any more, and something becomes a little clearer to him: he's not really enjoying the programming biz all that much, even though he's pretty gosh darn good at it, and it pays well.

In the flurry of panic following his meeting with his boss, Andy considers his options. He could quit, subverting his company's attempts to sack him for this anomalously bad project - but then what would he do? He could look for another job, of course, but his doubts about really enjoying programming work makes this option seem daunting. Another idea occurs to him: he could work towards getting a PhD, continuing work in artificial intelligence, something he had been studying previous to his working for his current company.

E-mails were exchanged with an old professor, who seemed pleased to hear from him again, and offered to consider his placement for the coming season - he had spots available in the program. In addition, he invited Andy over to the university for a tour, for a better sense of what he'd be getting into.

He just got back yesterday from his short trip, and he sounded pretty damn relaxed and at ease when I talked to him on the phone. Memories of being at that school previously were good memories, and it was nice to meet with his old professor and discuss the program he'd be entering into. (I think it also helped that there seemed to be a plethora of pretty girls on the train back home. I think he might agree that it made his day a little brighter.)

But there's this dilemma, see. Would he want to give up the relative stability and good pay of a job for a new life in the direction he'd undertaken in university previously? Would he want to go to university and earn significantly less with an assistantship, studying something he's not entirely sure he can use in the afterlife, as Dr. Andy?

Here's his pros and cons, as he sees them now:

Staying at his current job

+ He'd get to stay in his current home. No moving, no having to sell or sublet.

+ Good pay, fairly stable job situation (he's been kicking ass and taking names on the current project)

- Long hours - he wouldn't get to go out as much as he'd like to, and the guy's a film buff, people. Seeing movies is one of his favorite things to do. He also likes to do role-playing and see friends more frequently than he does now.

- Programming is not a serious passion of his, in his words: "it's not especially exciting."

Pursuing the PhD

- Finding a place to live there, which would necessitate selling/subletting

- Earning significantly less through assistantships than at current job

- He might not be any good at research, which you sort of need if you're going to complete all the requirements for a PhD

+ He'd have the student lifestyle again, infinitely more social and exciting, really.

+ It would be a change for him - three years of work *not* regulated by profit.

That seems to be enough information to at least start with. What might you do? Do you have further questions for Andy? A similar story or experience that might help him make the decision? He's got another week or so before he needs to make an early decision, but he finds himself really torn at times. The risks, the investment, the security - these all seem to be factors that weigh pretty heavily against each other and leave him with a personal stalemate. The university would love to have him begin in October, which leaves a rushed one month notice to his current job. He could conceivably start any time during the year, but if he waits a year, the professor he's worked with might have moved on to another university by then, and the positions that are open now may not be several months from now. It feels like a now-or-forever-hold-your-peace situation, but given that it'd be so rushed for now, how wise would it be for him to throw himself into a doctorate at this point?

What's going to clinch it for him? Suggestions?

Comments

[gupfee.livejournal.com]

Film, schmilm, we're talking SCIENCE here. Having spent many years at the MIT AI Lab (albeit in an administrative capacity) I know the potential for work in the field. The big questions about AI are just beginning to be answered; this is no arena for a lazy artiste/dilletant filled with ennui. You can't really compare the two decisions (at least in the generalized way you've tried to show here.)

I stand by my opinion. Andy is better off pursuing his Ph.D. than languishing in a job that may or may not provide satisfaction for him. It's not a question of "turning his back on the institutions of society". It's choosing a discipline that is only going to get more important as the 21st century progresses. There's an incredible need in this society for highly trained, technical people--AI as a field gives us that AND a vision for the future. Andy has a chance to not just embrace the institutions of society, but to create new ones.

[(Anonymous)]

And I stand by mine. While it might be a noble enough goal on the surface to want to create new institutions of science or thought or art or whatever, the fact is that the carefully constructed and (for the most part) logical and sustainable and necessary infrastructure that has ALREADY been created by preceding generations in our society is beginning to crumble across the board, because there are not enough people willing to put in the necessary time and effort to maintain them. Thus, we get everything from corrupt and apathetic corporations afflicted with their own sense of bloat, to highways and buildings and integrated information systems and other once-mighty feats of civil engineering which are beginning to disintegrate under the strain of too much overuse and not enough interest in regular quality maintenance and improvement.

We are, grossly speaking, an over-educated, over-analyzed, self-absorbed, and thus, largely complacent, society. The endless search for and overwhelming thirst for the pursuit of abstract knowledge without any attempt to put that knowledge to concrete use has created an unsustainable surplus of professional students, academes, and researchers who are so far out on the cutting edge of their hermetically-sealed little fields of knowledge that they are no longer relatable to society as a whole. I'm not saying that Andy (or anyone else) runs the risk of becoming one of these sorts, I'm just saying that in the aggregate, we need far less of these people out there. Economically, we no longer have the resources as a society to support them. And as far as PERSONAL satisfaction goes, I have yet to meet a devoted academe at some advanced stage of education who wasn't either: (a) even MORE bitter and dissatisfied about his or her life than he/she was before schooling resumed, and thus proceeds to take it out on every one of their fellow professionals via a series of vituperative, nasty scorched-earth attacks barely concealed as "peer review" or "critique", or (b) tenured, and thus past the point-of burnout and well along the path to laziness and a failure to continue to intellectually challenge themselves.

I've gone WAY afield here from the original convo, I know it. But as broken as society is, I think academia is broken even MORE seriously, with the phalanxes of largely useless Ph.D's being the primary problem, and it is making no efforts to fix either itself, or any other societal problem which it was allegedly created to address.

[gupfee.livejournal.com]

http://www.ai.mit.edu/research/spinoffs/spinoffs.shtml

That's just from one lab at one American university. I'm sure CMU, Berkeley, and many other places have similar lists.

AI puts food on the table in this household. Ain't nothing abstract about that paycheck.

One of these days, I'll have hubby explain to you how AI is fixing the crumbling infrastructure that is our airport system.

Sorry, but usually your arguments are well-thought-out and defendable. But I know more about this particular topic than you do, and I'm afraid you're just plain wrong here.

Go pick on the liberal arts PhDs and their endless dissertations on Jane Austen. The AI people are doing just fine by society, thanks.

[entelein.livejournal.com]

Um, ouch?

Being in the liberal arts does not make one a slacker, or value-less in this society. I mean, relevance is relevance, but perception is reality as well, and it's starting to really chap my hide that just because theatre or literature or the 'arts' in general don't appear to be immediately solving a problem, that they have no validity in this world.

I mean, if we wanted to deconstruct relevance and selfishness, I am sure I could point you to many problem-solvers, movers, and shakers who beat their wives or snort coke or who do not use their turn signals when driving.

There's give and take in every life, and it seems pretty petty/short-sighted to assess relevance or value based on a profession or on a course of study. Whatever happened to looking at the whole?

If I truly believed that I had no (or diminished, or significantly less) relevance in the real world because I am involved in (and actually make part of my living as a direct result of) the liberal arts, I never would have met so many of the people that I know now, I would not have been as well-equipped to deal with coaching high school students in the arts, I would've never gotten up the guts to do Lockjaw. In other words, I would not have been able to improve the quality of life for other people as much as I have. I don't have mathematical/engineering/medical talents, I have talents in areas that improve communications between people, findings connections in human behaviors and weaving them together to make art.

Love begets love, you know? And sometimes I really just don't feel the love for my chosen pursuits. It's very very frustrating.

Endless dissertations on Jane Austen? It's nice to see how the liberal arts can be condensed so neatly and accurately. :P