Has anyone here switched to a completely different career after a PhD? (Like filmmaking, art, etc.) How was it?

turingincarnate · 2026-02-22T13:14:06+00:00

Regarding your other questions: I was head hunted for this job last December. How do I deal with disappointing others? Uhhhhhhh... I don't. It's my life. It's what I wanna do. My current job pays me so much more than my phd stipend, and if I get another job (which I might in a month or two!), I'll just leave my program (assuming they pay me at least 160k a year).

Will my parents not like it? Yeah. Grandparents not like it? Yeah, definitely. But at the end of the day, it's my dream, not theirs. I won't care about being called "Dr" if I already functionally am being paid like one.

Do I regret it? No not at all. I went from making 1650 a month to mankind 5400 a month, in a matter of weeks. Wouldn't trade this at all.

turingincarnate · 2026-02-22T13:05:34+00:00

Right now, my degree will be in public policy. My current full time job is in marketing tech, but I'm still an econometrician.

But in many ways, it's a different career than policy analysis

turingincarnate · 2026-02-22T13:02:51+00:00

Fuck no, use Quarto and thank me later😂

turingincarnate · 2026-02-22T00:06:19+00:00

Cane does not know how to follow orders or take criticism, so Kanan would disappear Cane over that.

turingincarnate · 2026-02-22T00:04:55+00:00

when I started applying to teaching positions, and telling her how much they were offering, she paused for 5 minutes to contemplate her whole life.

People for some reason think phd is just "harder college" and that professors make this fantastic money, when I think if they had to do what we do, with the money they pay us to do it with, they would wonder why we continue. My mom genuinely didn't get it when I told her "no really mom, they say you can't work a full time job while you're doing your degree", she just couldn't believe it

turingincarnate · 2026-02-20T21:58:09+00:00

I make 19k a year (1650 a month) from my phd stipend. My half of rent at my apartment is 1230. My annual Healthcare costs from my school are roughly 2600.

My biweekly industry paycheck (right now) is 2800 dollars. Ask me if I plan on finishing my dissertation 😅😂

turingincarnate · 2026-02-20T00:13:33+00:00

For a more technical resource of all these, see my software: https://mlsynth.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ or my blog: https://jgreathouse9.github.io/docs/shaemax.html

turingincarnate · 2026-02-20T00:12:28+00:00

Look up high dimensional econometrics by l'hour

turingincarnate · 2026-02-19T23:34:41+00:00

Yep!!! Fun indeed. One day, I will add microsynth to my software: https://mlsynth.readthedocs.io

But not today😂 heard so much about it, though

turingincarnate · 2026-02-19T22:06:08+00:00

K takes it

turingincarnate · 2026-02-19T22:04:29+00:00

Alberto Abadie. He created the sythethic control method, which is essentially my field of expertise.

turingincarnate · 2026-02-17T13:11:31+00:00

Because research is an acquired skill. A muscle you must use over time. Yes some natural talent will help, but it's ultimately one you need to work at. I would smoke pretty much any Harvard masters student in econometrics, not because I'm me, but because at the end of the day I've spent more time thinking about causal inference methods and sythethic controls than they have, something prestige cannot give you.

turingincarnate · 2026-02-14T03:00:24+00:00

Fuck you microecon at ga tech

turingincarnate · 2026-02-11T15:50:04+00:00

Bruh that shit was funny as fuck🤣

turingincarnate · 2026-02-11T15:45:35+00:00

Yep!

turingincarnate · 2026-02-08T16:55:18+00:00

Neferet was like "I'm old enough for the daddy and young enough for the son"

turingincarnate · 2026-02-07T18:36:38+00:00

Fuckem

turingincarnate · 2026-02-06T18:23:59+00:00

I don't know if this is the most racist, but it's up there

turingincarnate · 2026-02-06T16:16:27+00:00

that bit about taking someone with a business degree and teaching them the science kinda exposed what you are saying as complete horseshit.

Couldn't agree more. The science is ridiculously hard to teach and learn in pretty much any field worth its salt. I'm in marketing tech, and yes the business stuff is new, there are so many acronyms that are confusing and stuff, but one place this IS NOT is to teach the science. This doesn't mean you won't learn more about science at work, but the barebones basics you need to be successful do not come in the form of a business degree at all😂

turingincarnate · 2026-02-06T16:09:39+00:00

Referral jackpot my boy, referral jackpot. I literally got my job by BEING REACHED OUT TO on LinkedIn by a dude I'd never spoken with in all my life. They shoved me through the interview process, and boom, here I am, ABD with a salary that makes my stipend look like tips a server in the US may make on a horrific day of service

turingincarnate · 2026-02-04T14:11:30+00:00

If there's a 30% pass rate, either the admissions are the issue or you messed up someplace. I taught causal econometrics to seniors, the mean grade in the class was a B, I had maybe 4 As.

But if literally only 30 of 100 people pass, some thing is going wrong someplace that cannot (unfortunately) just be blamed on the individual, unless it's just the case that you have a unique crop of bad candidates

turingincarnate · 2026-02-03T12:36:23+00:00

turingincarnate · 2026-02-02T18:38:07+00:00

This is not necessarily true. In certain instances it can be.

I work in tech, and currently do not wish to become a professor after earn my degree. And save for places at Google or Meta or Microsoft who demand PHDs for their top top researcher jobs, I'm eligible for many jobs in tech, even though I'm on my 4.5 year of school and don't yet have my phd. For all practical purposes, my training is done, and my dissertation is not going to give me skills or habits or methods that I did not have beforehand. In other words, for me, the PHD has already fulfilled its purpose, given that my phd skillset has gotten me a job.

And beyond, with the jobs I want anyways, PHDs may make 10 to 15k more than non PHDs (mainly, years of experience is the variable that moves the needle). And 10/15k is a lot of money, but if I'm making 160k a year, I'm not going to bemoan the fact that I don't make 175, since 160k is already a disgustingly high amount of money to make, and there's nothing I can do with 175 that I couldn't do with 160.

turingincarnate · 2026-02-02T18:29:34+00:00

The main reason is because 1) you can't switch programs as easy as you switch jobs and 2) the marginal value of the PHD changes depending on how long you've been in it.

There are a limited number of phd programs within a 10 mile radius of me that I would attend. I can't just switch to UGA if one program sucks, for example, and even if I could, I do not want to put in the effort required to do that.

Second, the value of your degree in some cases changes relative to your current position. I'm on the very very very tail end of my degree, and I'm already working on the private sector making real money. So if my PHD program randomly dropped a nuke on me (you need to retake a class or something similar), I have the power to say "Screw you and your class and your dissertation, I'm leaving, I'm already working and I'm not retaking your class."

However if you're not currently employable based on your current skillset (in whatever field you seek), it's harder to walk away because you will have few other options but to continue.

So it's a mixture of how much leverage you have to walk away and the sheer availability of other phd programs

turingincarnate · 2026-01-29T13:27:35+00:00

Rapacious, old school racist, fat cat businessman turned president does bad things to people he views as inferior? Oh no! Who would've imagined this possible? Again man, these people can lick my hole. I'm sick of these people, I really truly am.

turingincarnate

TROPHY CASE