Downtown Redwood City, California, is rotated at a 45° angle to its surrounding streets. Though I've been there dozens of times (worked nearby for 10 years), I still never quite feel like I know where I'm going.
> I don't understand this fascination with central offices.
It's not about you, it's about them. What they control, what they own, what they have.
They are in love with the feeling of dominance in a room full of people. They love to see the minions that they command. Its about being able to visualize and understand the domain that they control.
I wouldn't want to work in a company with strong "us" and "them" culture. If I don't feel everybody is working towards the same goals and is receiving a fair piece of the pie I would go somewhere else.
Running your own company for a while really helps see both sides of the equation.
I don't even understand how somebody can seriously think that there is no "us" vs "them" divide in a company. This culture is everywhere, just some places are better at hiding it.
The importance of cross pollinating you postdoc and grad degree is to prove the worth of your degree. If you can be accepted at multiple places it is a good indicator that you know your stuff and your institutions are putting out good candidates.
I have met plenty of PhDs shouldn't have been awarded them. Often because they were good at filling out paperwork and being liked by the right people.
I don't really see how that makes sense unless your PhD research was a dead end. With a topic that isn't a dead end, continuing on as a postdoc at the same place would indicate that you were doing well enough with your topic and it had enough value that the lab considered it to be worth keeping you on.
In my field there's such a shortage of talent that people practically fight to convince upcoming PhD grads to continue on as postdocs. The PhDs are already mostly trained, have shown their worth during their PhDs, and already are familiar with the facility.
Plus, so much research these days involves collaboration between institutions that focusing specifically on differing your postdoc and grad as a sign of the "worth" of your degree seems a bit ridiculous. I don't think I've had a single research task that didn't involve working with people from another institution.
It's related to synchrotron light sources. Since there are already very few such facilities, there is not a lot of available talent to pull from. Especially with people starting to age out and retire faster than new people can be trained (or so I was told, I have no hard numbers).
The facility I'm at is very interested in bringing me on as a postdoc for a project which would be a much larger version of my thesis work implemented at several large facilities (certain key aspects of which my advisor does not have a background in and is expecting to rely on me for), so it feels a bit weird to find out that it'd be a mark against me despite the obvious value.
I'd expect the bigger mark against me to be skipping out on the next significant step in my specific field of research to start from scratch in something different just for the sake of being different.
Fascinating, I'd never heard of synchrotron light sources before and had to pull myself out of a rabbit hole to write this. Thanks for taking the time to write a nuanced response.
I wonder if particle and laser physicists tend to be excepted from this trend, since these depend on specialized equipment.
Would you be working with different faculty, besides your advisor? Would your postdoc research feel like a distinct research project, or would it feel like malingering continuation of PhD research?
I think the preference for moving institutions is to avoid seeming "stuck." Some PhD students malinger on postdoc work at their home institution, making it seem like they don't know how to finish a project or know when it's time to scope/start a new project.
So, it might prove beneficial to ensure your projects do not fit the stuck/malingering narrative.
I think this bias is unfair, because there are plenty of reasons someone might want to stay in one place: house, family, etc. But like any bias, you can meet it head-on by controlling the narrative instead of letting the biased narrative play out.
> The importance of cross pollinating you postdoc and grad degree is to prove the worth of your degree
Regardless of the intent, it's a fairly arbitrary way to weed out candidates without actually evaluating their strength, and the actual outcome is hurting women or people from a lower socioeconomic background. The schools you went to should be a lot less important than your publications.
How do you expect to weed out candidates without hurting low-SES? Everything disproportionately hurts low-SES. Especially conventional metrics relating to their strength as a candidate!
There is no reason for this to hurt single, childless women disproportionately. We should not be coddling women for their choices in homelife. Nobody is forcing them to start families.
It really isn’t that hard to get a PhD…well you put in the hard work, you’ll get the degree. You don’t need to be a genius, and the training/experience you get from a PhD program is useful.
Someone using their phd to brag about their superiority is dumb, the best researcher I know only has a masters (I have a phd and I’m not as good as he is). On the other hand, I don’t think their are many PhDs out there that don’t deserve their degree, just that there are misunderstandings about what the degree means.
All of Google search is dogshit these days. You can't search for anything these days without a crap ton of ads and pages of SEO optimized wrong answers.
Same! Except my wife quit her money-making job to take care of our kids full-time. I go to work, come home, and spend time with my family. Every Friday my employer deposits about $1,500 in my account, which represents an income stream of about $6,800/mo, not to mention paying for my health insurance and putting about $100 in my 401k. All I have to do is show up for about 40 hours Monday through Friday.
For a side hustle, we bought a home around 2015 for $125k. We've paid off about $70k of the 2.8% 15-year mortgage and property taxes at $1100/mo, it's now estimated to be worth about $330k. That represents an income stream equivalent to about $2200/mo due to that asset's value rising at about 15% per year. If it wasn't for the fact that I live here, I'd be divesting a lot of my investment in that obvious bubble ASAP. Similarly, my parents built my childhood home nearby in '96 for about $80k, their property is now worth about $750k, you do the math.
Congratulations on buying your house in 2015, it would be difficult to buy such a property at that price today without some large concessions on location or quality of the home.
However, I do agree with the sentiment of your post. It's a lot easier to live below your means as a way to grow income rather than to stretch yourself to try to make extra money externally. 40 hours at a well played, balanced job with low living expenses is truly a great path.
When I do the math, I do not consider my primary residence to be of any numerical value since I do not want to live anywhere else. And even if I did want to live somewhere else, I would have to account for the costs of acquiring a new similar residence, which in a similarly desirable area would have risen just the same in price.
And assuming I needed to live somewhere else, it would likely be because something undesirable has happened to the whole area, so the price at that point would be much lower than whatever it is at times before then.
You're probably right, on looking up the details it's actually $120 per weekly paycheck, matched by my employer, so it's not so bad as the estimated $100, especially if you assumed that was monthly, but that's still not on-track for my retirement target. I also haven't poured much into the Roth since my eldest was born. But kids are expensive...
(Also, I see I also need to use more of that ~4 weeks of vacation I've saved...)
I dont think so because they were able to live in the property while it gained value, so they didn't need to spend on other accommodations. Alternative living costs would factor in towards the decision to sell and what they can get with that value today, but im not seeing how it reduces the earnings.
You would need to subtract the YOY property taxes and maintenence costs (with inflation) to get actual net earnings, though
What is the point of unrealized gains if you can never realize them (spend them)?
One use case is being able to borrow more against the increased value, but I do not think that it is a good idea for 99% of people to use their primary residence as leverage.
I agree that it's the best bit of life. But how on earth you manage to find a crying baby that decides to wake you up in the middle of the night relaxing is beyond me :)
Its ok. They don't want to admit reality. I ahve 3 kids (one is a baby) and I love them to death but crying baby is never fun and certainly not relaxing and I am happy to admit that.
True true. And after they learn to walk you got about two weeks and the learn how to run and then you’re chasing them for 5 years. Mine are 13 and 10 and it’s pretty nice atm. The 10 year old still thinks I hang the moon and the 13 year old is just enough of a smart ass to make me laugh.
hahaha so true. I have a 9 year old, 8 year old and 5 months old (I know I know. Diaper days are back again). The 9 year old already talks like she is 13 and the 8 year usually follows her and well, the 5 month old. Baby doing baby things :)
For almost my entire marriage, my wife has either been at home with our kids or trying to get a teaching job in a saturated market. When she has worked, it was never a big contributor to our income.
She'll be joining the workforce full-time in the next 6-9 months in a new field. I'm psyched for a pretty significant boost to our overall income that we've never had before.
The system is great for directions and general movement of people.