Moral of the story
Gotta get rich fast. :\
I had a conversation w/ one of my friends over the summer... about old age/retirement/savings, etc. He was of the opinion that you couldn't be so easily replaced... contrary to my parents' belief --> better be safe than sorry and save save save, because you knows when you can get laid off... especially as you age. Most people's mental acuity decreases with age after some kind of threshold (maybe 55?)... It's... almost unavoidable? Unless you were gifted w/ an incredible brain/body so that you could be just as sharp at age 90 as you are at age 25. But... unlikely... no matter how much you hope for that. Why was I in such a hurry to make it big? I'm not even at a quarter of a century yet...
Anyways, you make substantially more money in the tech industry than you do in other industries, but more so than in other areas... you'll likely be forced into early retirement. Even if you wanted to keep learning, it's just SO HARD to keep pace with the younger generation once you hid a certain age... That plus constant stress takes a toll. Frankly, I think this is worse for CS than EE, because, especially in the Internet age, unless you have some extremely deep insights on machine learning or the likes, your skills as a Javascript coder or whatnot = highly replaceable. By the time you hit maybe 50, how can you possibly keep up with those fresh out of college? Sure, you gain wisdom with age, but after a certain point, added wisdom does not account for decrease in sharpness... :\ Then you're out of luck and will be made to retire earlier than you'd like. And before then, you'll just feel the pain of feeling somewhat helpless at work... I'm not sure if people heading into CS careers realize this or not... It's one thing to retire early after you've made enough money to sustain yourself for forever = win at the startup game... but... if you don't have the foresight to see the longevity of your career... Well, I guess it's also somewhat hard because the "Internet age" is still relatively new, and the people who started it all (okay, I'm not talking about ARPANET or anything -- say beginning at the inception of Yahoo/Google) are still RELATIVELY YOUNG (40's at best), so there isn't a large enough sample size to affirm my beliefs... YET.
So yeah, big pay in tech, but your working lifespan is 20-30 years at best.... whereas in other areas, you might make less yearly, but it's less of an issue of having "sharp" young minds take over your spot...
Ramble ramble.
GOTTA MAKE MONEY WHILE YOU'RE YOUNG.
The other thing is... my parents always tried to feed the notion of "it's better having kids before you turn 30" into my mind. It's good b/c it's less of a risk just in terms of being young; also, you'll have a higher chance of seeing grand-kids LOL... and well... it affords some financial freedom to you if you're financially sound when you have kids and are able to graduate them off before you retire (or are forced into retirement)... Of course, as a girl, it sucks, because with the current state of the maternity leave system, it means you're really giving up a lot of potential for career advancement to do this...
Also, this PhD had better be worth it. I'm losing many years doing this :(
I had a conversation w/ one of my friends over the summer... about old age/retirement/savings, etc. He was of the opinion that you couldn't be so easily replaced... contrary to my parents' belief --> better be safe than sorry and save save save, because you knows when you can get laid off... especially as you age. Most people's mental acuity decreases with age after some kind of threshold (maybe 55?)... It's... almost unavoidable? Unless you were gifted w/ an incredible brain/body so that you could be just as sharp at age 90 as you are at age 25. But... unlikely... no matter how much you hope for that. Why was I in such a hurry to make it big? I'm not even at a quarter of a century yet...
Anyways, you make substantially more money in the tech industry than you do in other industries, but more so than in other areas... you'll likely be forced into early retirement. Even if you wanted to keep learning, it's just SO HARD to keep pace with the younger generation once you hid a certain age... That plus constant stress takes a toll. Frankly, I think this is worse for CS than EE, because, especially in the Internet age, unless you have some extremely deep insights on machine learning or the likes, your skills as a Javascript coder or whatnot = highly replaceable. By the time you hit maybe 50, how can you possibly keep up with those fresh out of college? Sure, you gain wisdom with age, but after a certain point, added wisdom does not account for decrease in sharpness... :\ Then you're out of luck and will be made to retire earlier than you'd like. And before then, you'll just feel the pain of feeling somewhat helpless at work... I'm not sure if people heading into CS careers realize this or not... It's one thing to retire early after you've made enough money to sustain yourself for forever = win at the startup game... but... if you don't have the foresight to see the longevity of your career... Well, I guess it's also somewhat hard because the "Internet age" is still relatively new, and the people who started it all (okay, I'm not talking about ARPANET or anything -- say beginning at the inception of Yahoo/Google) are still RELATIVELY YOUNG (40's at best), so there isn't a large enough sample size to affirm my beliefs... YET.
So yeah, big pay in tech, but your working lifespan is 20-30 years at best.... whereas in other areas, you might make less yearly, but it's less of an issue of having "sharp" young minds take over your spot...
Ramble ramble.
GOTTA MAKE MONEY WHILE YOU'RE YOUNG.
The other thing is... my parents always tried to feed the notion of "it's better having kids before you turn 30" into my mind. It's good b/c it's less of a risk just in terms of being young; also, you'll have a higher chance of seeing grand-kids LOL... and well... it affords some financial freedom to you if you're financially sound when you have kids and are able to graduate them off before you retire (or are forced into retirement)... Of course, as a girl, it sucks, because with the current state of the maternity leave system, it means you're really giving up a lot of potential for career advancement to do this...
Also, this PhD had better be worth it. I'm losing many years doing this :(