Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Alternative careers for PhDs: air traffic controller

I'm not entirely serious, but today's NYT article about the training of air traffic controllers makes it sounds pretty appealing: lots of problem solving, interaction, good pay, job security (not enough of them) at least until artificial intelligence gets really good.

Their pay exactly parallels PhDs' pay: 19k per year during grad school, 30k per year during the next stage of training, and then up for real people, up to over 100k.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I stumbled across your blog today doing a search for "average postdoc salary" and ended up spending my afternoon reading your posts when I really should have been doing my research. I started my first postdoc in January this year and it's remarkable how closely your thoughts echo thoughts I've had, though you certainly express them more eloquently and freely than I can :). Thank you - it's a relief and comfort to know that I am not alone!

Anonymous said...

please update...it makes this fellow academic feel good to read your posts...

Anonymous said...

i also stumbled your blog upon searching "postdoc sucks". Though i'm merely an MD/PhD and have no intention of doing a postdoc. your blog posts are really interesting, particularly regarding dating and such :)

keep it up.