[sf-perl] McS worth it?

Quinn Weaver quinn at fairpath.com
Wed Jul 23 08:53:21 PDT 2008


On Jul 22, 2008, at 5:31 PM, Joe Brenner wrote:

>
> Daniel Lo <woof at danlo.com> wrote:
>
>> My goals?  Hard to say, the top goal right now is finding the right
>> "woman" before I'm over the hill, kids and the rest of that.
>
> Um... then forget about a CS degree.

Good point.  Being in grad school is pretty antithetical to having a  
life.  At least, this is true of Ph.D. programs; I'm not sure about McS.

And of course doing anything that's fun but not lucrative can make it  
harder to raise kids... depending.  Do you want to own a house in the  
Bay Area?  Do you need to send them to private college and/or  
secondary schools?  How many kids are we talking about?  These are big  
lifestyle decisions, with lots of financial ramifications.  You might  
actually want to sit down and talk to a financial advisor, or at least  
run some rough numbers yourself.

PS:  I was going to write a long post dissuading you from going back  
to school, but I see that your goal is not just to be a great  
programmer and make money.  Your goal is to do cutting-edge research.   
In that case, my advice doesn't really apply.

> It's always hard to say what's going to be Big.  It's easy to know
> what's being hyped, but these aren't the same things.

Yeah.  Better to find an interesting problem and work on it.  Besides,  
does a salaried job in what's Big really pay much more than a job in  
what's Obscure?  In other words, is being a big fish in a small pond  
good enough for you?

Just some thoughts; I definitely don't have all the answers.  Good  
luck on your quest!

__
Quinn Weaver
Full-stack web consultant
http://fairpath.com/
510-520-5217 (mobile)



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