My friend is close friends with someone who went to MIT and has a Phd in physics. He was offered a government job for 50k - which he turned down, and ended up with a job at a magazine making 80K. And this is in one of the highest cost of living cities in the US - where median income is around 70K.
The 50k offer seems pretty low - actually astonishingly low. The 80K seems somewhat reasonable - but I think there should be better financial rewards for people who have those kinds of credentials. How can you realistically motivate people to be interested in STEM fields if this is all you get?
As with so many things, it depends on your frame of reference.
There are certain types of government jobs where it’s pretty much a given that they pay less than private companies. On the flip side, the government job very well may have better benefits. (For example, a government job is just about the only way anymore to get a pension.)
There are better financial rewards. Seems like he’s taking a job outside of his field, so the pay doesn’t reflect his education. A physics Phd from MIT should be a golden ticket, but he has to stay in the field he studied. If he went to an aerospace company I’m sure he’d get a better offer.
Not enough information. If this is his first job and he hasn’t otherwise distinguished himself in the field than for a particular job it may be a typical entry salary. Frankly it does sound low for someone with a doctorate but if the degree isn’t part of the job requirements it may not even be considered.
It doesn’t seem that out of line to me but check websites like salary.com or glassdoor.com to get a ballpark figure of salary ranges. It depends a lot on experience and location. A person like him can see big salary increases as he gets a few years of experience. Entry level salaries are generally low.
This cite lists starting salaries for folks with Ph.Ds. The closest I’m seeing is someone with a research scientist, whose starting salary would be between $53,000 and $120,000. I’d expect someone taking a job at a magazine to get less than that; given the mean of that range is about $87,000, it doesn’t seem especially low, let alone ridiculously low.
A physics PhD and $5 will get you a large cappucino in any Starbucks. With a math PhD it might cost a few cents more.
Seriously, the job prospects for PhDs has never been worse, at least not in the last 60 years. Not only is there a surfeit of them, but universities are now doing much of their teaching using adjuncts and other part-timers. The ones who go into stock trading and other jobs in the financial industries can do very well, but the rest can forget it.
So why is this literal friend-of-a-friend supposedly taking a job in a dying industry (magazine/journalism) rather than something in his field of study? Is this someone who just received the PhD or has he been out of school for a long time? And where did he receive the PhD? You said that he went to MIT but didn’t necessarily say that the PhD was from there.
Jobs pay what they pay. If a magazine has 80k to pay a writer, they aren’t going to suddenly find an extra 20k just because that writer has a PhD.
Government jobs are on a schedule, so the pay structure is pretty clear. With advanced degress, it’s not uncommon to start low and rise fairly quickly. But a 50k government job-- at least federal job-- is almost certainly one that can be filled by someone with lower credentials.
Sounds like your friend either is looking in the wrong places, or the market for physics PhDs isn’t great.
The great STEM shortage is a lie, or at least a massive exageration. More conspiracy mindedpeople believe it’s pushed by the tech industry to glut the market and push down salaries. Some STEM fields are high demand. Others are really low demand. Many only have thriving markets in specific cities. And often one needs very specific credentials to really reap the rewards. Having a BS in biology isn’t really much better in most parts of the country than having a BA in Classics. My favorite factoid is that the average film major makes more than the average bio major-- a fact that is played out in my own household!
You are considering the base salary as the only compensation and that’s not nearly the whole story.
Typically gov’t salaries will also include a COLA adjustment for the area you are in. In some places it can be a significant amount approaching 25% of base salary. That’d take a 50K base and make it 62500.
Then, you then have to add in gov’t tuition programs where they will re-pay your student loans (10K a year up to 60k), so now we’re at 72,500 per annum (if your friend has any debt from MIT).
They will also pay directly for new classes or additional degrees in relevant fields, like technical project management. Also, add in other bonuses for working overseas or in hazardous duty locations. Finally, depending on his specialty, he may be eligible for certain hiring bonuses or being hired at a rate closer to the market for his skill set.
I’m not saying gov’t salaries aren’t typically less than the commercial equivalent, they almost always are, especially at the base. It’s just that the actual compensation package is usually quite a bit different than the advertised base.
Even if it is his first “job” I think that he should get more than a 50K starting salary with his credentials in the greater DC metropolitan area - it’s not like he’s applying to jobs in Kansas.
For all of you asking, the story I have been told is that he went to MIT undergrad and Berkley for the Phd. He took the higher paying job which is working for a magazine - which he finds pretty dull due to the fact he has to read so many crap studies that aren’t even close to being fit for publishing in a serious science journal (according to him anyway). As far as I know, I think the low paying government job did need someone with his particular credentials - but I am not sure about that. He graduated 2 or 3 years ago.
These are all good points. I was not sure when I was told the story if what she was saying was completely accurate, the salary sounded very low - even for gov’t. I just took her at her word - we’re not close enough friends where I would bother to pose a lot of probing questions in a casual conversation. So, I’m not really sure if her story is ridiculous, or if the reality of government starting salaries for highly qualified applicants is.
There are plenty of folks here making less. The salary is based on what they can pay to get what they need. His credentials are irrelevant beyond what is needed to get the job.
GS-9 in DC starts in the low 50s. IIRC jobs that require a PhD generally start around GS-11. GS-12 if it’s a research position.
On the government job, if it requires a graduate degree, then he’s not including the locality pay, which is a really key piece of information. The lowest federal jobs that require an advanced degree are GS-9s, but it sounds to me like he was offered a GS-11. That would mean his actual salary would be about 64k. The other critical piece of information is what his career ladder maxes out in. If it’s an 11-12-13, he could expect some pretty hefty raises very quickly.
Anyway, just stating the base pay is disingenous-- that’s not an amount he would ever take home.
As for the rest, nobody gives money because you deserve it for just being a smart guy. People give money because you provide them something they need. And the number of organizations that really need physicists is pretty small.
What are his former classmates doing? Is he an outlier among them? I would suggest that he looks up people with similar qualifications on LinkedIn, and get an idea of what career paths are available to him. MOre importantly, he needs to find out what people did before they found the jobs with the big bucks. He clearly didn’t get the big bucks right out of school, and that points to him missing something that those jobs need. ANd he’s not going to get that working at a magazine reading crappy papers all day. If he really wants to move up, he needs to find a job that grows him professionally, even if it pays a little less.
That is part of what makes this kind ridiculous to me. With all the hubbub about needing STEM people and how important education is, how many doors going to the right school opens up one might infer that there would be greater demand for someone with such credentials.
A lot of people are making less - and probably the vast majority deserve to make less considering they probably have not spent several years and tens of thousands of dollars studying something deemed to be very important and useful.
Seriously? I’ve made some bad life choices then. (For what it’s worth, I’m currently a second-year postdoc researcher, in a biological science, and I make 45k, which I think is fairly standard for postdocs fresh out of grad school. Though I have expectations of making more down the road).
I think this has to be the case. I’ve seen the table before, but I don’t remember off the top of my head exactly how it all broke down - but the story I was told didn’t seem quite right.