I'm sick of it all. I spent a year working on short term contract. My contract is almost up, and due to the economic crash, there is no money to renew it. So, it's either go job hunting (again), or leave.
If I had taken that biotech job that was offered to me a few years ago, I'd feel better about this. The starting salary was over 100k/yr. All I had to do was deal with a corporate environment (I equate this to a Middle School culture where the main goal is to survive a sissy fight in the school yard). Just live like I was still in college on 10,000/yr and save the rest. Work and save and invest for a few years, then I would have nearly had enough to quit.
but instead, I went to work in academia.
Academia. Low wages and long hours are a sick badge of honor. It is an atmosphere of constant depression and pessimism about the future. Now, Washington has been effectively cutting science funding since 2000/2001. Things have steadily gotten worse.
That is my main reason for sticking to Engineering.
Sales guys, stock brokers, marketing people... Those positions are not rewarding, and you have to leave your soul at the door. Science, Engineering, Construction, Mechanics are the jobs for me. Always will be. I couldn't live with myself knowing that my livelyhood came on the back of others, earned by shiesting a percentage out of something I didn't build because I shuffled some paperwork and talked on the phone. Those people live empty soulless lives. They cheat on their partners. And they drive like assholes on the freeway.
Another way of describing it: Sales guys, stock brokers, marketing people, managers, accountants, and a lot of other people are professional liars. They operate in an environment where people are constantly lying to them, and they in turn are constantly lying to others. When you're lying at least 40 hours a week, then lying to your friends, family, spouse, or children becomes a lot easier.
Engineers, scientists, etc by contrast are in an environment where attempts at lying will likely be caught very very quickly.
It isn't just that the science grads aren't good enough, its that the science itself it harder than it's ever been before. All the low hanging fruit that could be figured out by an individual or small team as already been done.
"It was a game, a very interesting game one could play. Whenever one solved of the little problems, one could write a paper about it. It was very easy in those days for any second-rate physicist to do first-rate work. There has not been such a glorious time since. It is very difficult now for a first-rate physicist to do second-rate work." -- P.A.M Dirac, DIRECTIONS IN PHYSICS, 1978, P. 7
