If you think the baseline chance of getting a job in your field* is 70%, you’re either extraordinarily talented or a fairly delusional. I don’t know you, but I know how I’d bet it. Long story short—the market is absurdly competitive and you probably shouldn’t get a PhD at all. If you do try for it, you should realize that excessive work doesn’t guarantee success but failing to work excessively basically guarantees failure.
P.S. I have an Ivy League STEM PhD and am working as an accountant in the public sector (in other words, the higher end of working class or lower middle class). I’m not the only STEM PhD in my bureau.
My point wasn’t really about making a statement about what the baseline likelihood is, just that baseline likelihood vs benefit of marginal work are two separate questions, and more generally that the question of self-deceit is one that applies to many different sub-problems (self-deceive here but not there).
But yeah, I don’t doubt that you’re right about what the true baseline is. And in general the market sounds quite inefficient. I myself am going through that now as a programmer with six years of experience struggling to find a job.
Fair enough. I’ve never understood how “self-deceit” was supposed to work, though. Self—delusion is simple enough—you believe something that isn’t true. That’s probably universal. But self-deceit seems to require you to believe something that you don’t believe, and I don’t understand why you expect yourself to fall for it.
If you think the baseline chance of getting a job in your field* is 70%, you’re either extraordinarily talented or a fairly delusional. I don’t know you, but I know how I’d bet it. Long story short—the market is absurdly competitive and you probably shouldn’t get a PhD at all. If you do try for it, you should realize that excessive work doesn’t guarantee success but failing to work excessively basically guarantees failure.
P.S. I have an Ivy League STEM PhD and am working as an accountant in the public sector (in other words, the higher end of working class or lower middle class). I’m not the only STEM PhD in my bureau.
*excluding adjunct positions paying sub-minimum wage.
My point wasn’t really about making a statement about what the baseline likelihood is, just that baseline likelihood vs benefit of marginal work are two separate questions, and more generally that the question of self-deceit is one that applies to many different sub-problems (self-deceive here but not there).
But yeah, I don’t doubt that you’re right about what the true baseline is. And in general the market sounds quite inefficient. I myself am going through that now as a programmer with six years of experience struggling to find a job.
Fair enough. I’ve never understood how “self-deceit” was supposed to work, though. Self—delusion is simple enough—you believe something that isn’t true. That’s probably universal. But self-deceit seems to require you to believe something that you don’t believe, and I don’t understand why you expect yourself to fall for it.