[SunRescue] Leasing Employees

[bobk]

On Thu, 29 Mar 2001, User Bobkeys BSD Bob the old greybeard BSD freak wrote:

> > A lot of the people of this list seem to be sysadmins.  Personally, my
> > goal in life is to either be a scientist or a developer or some
> > combination of those two and possibly other fields.
> 
> Being a scientist has its ups and downs, too.   Years ago, science was
> for the sake of science.  Now is it often for the sake of chasing bucks
> (grants, etc.), has it has become a cutthroat bottom-line business.

I see this around here, the cut-throat nature of many of the younger
scientists/professors at Harvard/MIT/BU is unbelievable. I have no first
hand knowledge of it, but it sounds like the tenure track around here is a
game of 'Survivor'. Not much REAL science gets done, it's all 'political
science'.

Having had the desire, since a small child, to be a Mad Scientist, this
disheartened me a few years back. I dropped out of school, and started
working on my own stuff. Going was rough for a long time, but the Internet
bloomed and jobs started coming my way. Now I do R&D, most of the time
fun, and am paid reasonably well.

Still, it is directed research. Lately, I have been looking to scrape up
enough money and but a big old house / building somewhere not too scarey
and work on the big, old, mad & bad science stuff. Since my childhood, I
have acquired the mad scientist laugh, and crazy hair (not balding
yet). This desire to return to my own mad lab was brought about by my
analysis of life unhappiness....I had got off the track of what originally
had thrilled me. Now, repeat to myself at times, to keep on target:

"To become the adult I wanted to be when I was a child...."

So, now I sit, looking at the huge house & land that $145K will buy me in
Montpelier, Vermont, an opposed to the small, ugly studio condo that it
will buy me in Cambridge. (do you suppose they'd let me put up a single
ham radio antenna in that condo....HAHAHA). How many old suns can I fit in
2400 sq ft + barn?

> This is especially true in hard times, and if your field of science
> is on the fringes of the mainstream or one of the lesser fields of
> science.  I have had the good fortune to be a scientist for the
> past 25 years and some change, and, on the side, the departmental
> computer wierdo for some 20 years, and the departmental network/
> email/server/unix/pc wierdo for some 12 years and change.

I know a few people who have had the opportunity to do such stuff. A
friend of mine was hired as a biologist at a large, local research
hospital (MGH) years ago and is now thier technical guy, not in the sense
of a network monkey but in terms of ideas & technologies & stuff. What a
great job.


>  What
> I am seeing now, is that my field is drying up, with funding way
> down, and prospects not good.  Conversely, everyone needs a sysadmin
> here and there, even though it is grunt work, thankless work, and
> prone to make one overweight and underhaired topside.

The physical problems of the techies field are not unavoidable. Too many
of us think of our bodies as nothing more than containers for our brains.
If you think about the whole system, it's healthier.

> The odds are
> better there than in a lesser science field, and the pay is roughly
> equivalent, or better, too.

Plain salary does not equate to a better lifestyle. Getting paid a
moderate sum is a far better thing to do that getting paid a vast sum
doing something that you hate.

-Bob
Yankee, Ham, Hacker, Dilletante
MAD SCIENTIST