[Gllug] VACANCY: Site Reliability Engineering

[Lesley Binks]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 08:53:53AM -0500, Balbir Thomas wrote:
> Apologies my palm rested on the synaptic touch pad and accidently
> clicked submit. I
> meant to reply to peters post.
> 
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 8:34 AM, Peter Corlett <abuse at cabal.org.uk> wrote:
> > My attitude to salaries is to ask myself why I should spend ten years
> > and endless unpaid evenings gaining mastery in IT skills when I can
> > get much the same sort of money driving Tube trains with just five
> > months on-the-job training?
> 
> Peter, I think there is a fallacy in here. Over their ENTIRE career the net
> earnings of a skilled professional is not the same as that of a semi-skilled
> professional. Something like the difference in time complexity and
> execution time :-). Also for the so motivated, the challenge and joy of
> technically oriented jobs is an additional benefit. For some that may
> be the primary motivator for other it may be secondary to more material
> conditions. For me personally it used to be the primary motivator earlier
> in life but as I have grown older and ..... :-)
> 
> > There has been research into this, although I don't have a cite to
> > hand. Assuming you've not gone to the University of Bums-on-Seats and
> > got a third-class degree in Tealeaf Reading, a degree will increase
> > your lifetime earning potential, but a PhD will reduce it again.
> 
> I dare say this is another urban myth. Though I will be interested in that
> data (if it is in a peer reviewed journal).
> 
Actually - it is not an urban myth - the reserach is a bit old now but I
saw similar stats about 20 years ago.

There are places where a PhD is useful - primarily in research positions
within large companies or in some sciences but the qualification itself
certainly does not guarantee higher salary.  

The maxim that is held is that one is 'too academic' for a commercial or
business environment and the lack of commercial experience implies a
drop in salary against a graduate who has been working in the field and
has the commercial experience.

A PhD can be likened to studying more and more about less and less until
one knows an awful lot about nothing i.e. in many areas the highly
specialized knowledge developed in postgraduate research is not useful
outside the aims of getting the PhD.

The network it might provide in terms of gaining further
employment/research opportunities is another matter. However, I have in
the past had long chats with successful PhD candidates now working on
support desks and other such environments sometimes because of lack of
opportunity in their field of study and disadvantages in networking
either throughh their institutions reputation or their supervisor's
reputation.

You are making some HUGE assumptions that a successful graduate will be
successful in their PhD and will successfully find appropriate 
opportunities on completion and successful defense of their thesis.

If this linear progression occurs then a reasonably successful life
can  be obtained but not everyone gets the opportunity to follow that
path.  


Regards

Lesley.
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