sci.research.careers

On Sep 23, 4:16 am, Straydog wrote:

> I think there might be a couple here on SRC that would be envious, too,
> and I won't mention any names.

Nah ! By the end of their lives, people came to what corresponds to
their nature. If they were given an opportunity to make the decisions
again, they would have done it the same way again. Just for an
example, I as a part of my employment at the govt lab, I did a project
at university. Here was the university postdoc of my age who had wife
and child, but his contract would run out by the end of the year, and
he would not know where the money come from. A couple of his postdoc
colleagues got permanent better-paying jobs in my govt lab. But he did
not want to make the same move, because he was critical of the low
level of science which was being done at our govt lab. By the end of
the day, everything is decided by one's deeply-seated preferences, and
not by the rational reasons.


> So, again,
> sometimes you have to look dumb, act dumb, and behave dumb to get the dumb
> job.

My job at govt lab is a _dumb_ job. In order to get it (also judging
by the recent hiring events), one has to be relatively productive (not
necessarily smart), but beyond of all, the person should have zero
ambition and no political initiative. All of the recently hired people
off the street look to me like meek sheep.

Perhaps, this is an explanation why the management is in no hurry to
recognize that I could do the higher-level jobs and bear a higher
responsibility, and carefully steers me away from the opportunities.


> But, if I knew what I know now, I would be eternally thankful for that
> boring, dull, dumb, well-paid, high job security, tollerable bullshit job.

Did you study thermodynamics ? There was a guy called Maxwell's demon.
He knows the velocity of each molecule of air in the container, and he
separates them by their velocities: the slow ones go the the right,
the fast ones go the left. Thus, we have energy produced out of
nothing. But wait ! -- the _information_ is the energy !

In other words, in order for you to know the advantages of the "boring
secure" job, you first had to experience the disadvantages of the
interesting but insecure stressful job.