# Is this starting salary ridiculous? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 17, 2015, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-starting-salary-ridiculous/720238 "2015-05-17T14:22:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-starting-salary-ridiculous/720238/61 "2015-05-23T06:48:03Z")
> [@Enginerd](#): > > In general, the grad students who want to go into industry do it with an MS instead of with a PhD. Some of those folks go back to school on the company’s dime and end up as industry scientists with PhDs. Companies do fund academic research, but they then like to hire the same students who did the work. If he hasn’t had a connection to industry over the course of his grad work, it’s going to be difficult (not impossible) for him to break into it now - and an aversion to Texas is going to make it even harder. I don’t know about the oil industry, but we hire plenty of PhDs. They are very able to run subprojects on their own and have a lot of background and flexibility. In my field there is a lot less funding of academic work than their used to be. Instead you get people from industry co-authoring papers with people from academia as a way of getting access to grad students. We don’t do that, but we do do internships. I interpreted the OP as not being about post-docs, since post-docs are mostly called post-docs. 🙂 And if you are looking for that, you don’t look at magazine jobs. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [May 23, 2015, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-starting-salary-ridiculous/720238/62 "2015-05-23T10:10:57Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > Of course it’s true that most people can’t work two full-time jobs. But lots of people work one full-time job and one part-time job and still don’t work as much as associates at Skadden. For a while I taught at a university while also working (normal human) full-time, and it was a great middle-ground. > > Maybe you don’t value very highly your free time at early and mid-career. And that’s certainly a valid choice. But there are a substantial number of people who disagree with you. I’d rather get to participate in raising my kids than retire early or retire in the .01%–and many people agree. I suppose that’s why there are different companies with different levels of work/life balance. I’m finding in my field (consulting), there are a growing number of companies that are moving away from the big firm model of travelling consultants working 100 hour weeks. But they still typically want you to have the experience of having come from an Accenture or Deloitte. Given the option, of course I’d rather work less hours than more. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2015, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-starting-salary-ridiculous/720238/63 "2015-05-24T02:29:39Z")
I did the temp W-2 type consulting - my job ended when the contract ran out. Low on (absolute) security, great on flexibility. I viewed it as “I will trade these X hours to fund my life”. 'Cause “my life” had absolutely nothing with user requirements, logical design, or anything else I charged for doing. ---
**Author:** ![StarvingButStrong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/starvingbutstrong/32/335_2.png) [@StarvingButStrong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StarvingButStrong)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2015, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-starting-salary-ridiculous/720238/64 "2015-05-24T03:17:54Z")
What doesn’t seem to have been mentioned: it’s a _person_ who is being hired, not just a degree. Is this guy basically, for want of a better term, ‘normal’? In terms of getting along with others, fitting into a business, coping with life in general? Because no company really wants to saddle themselves with a future personnel problem. Or maybe they will – IF they can get him at a bargain price. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-this-starting-salary-ridiculous/720238.md?page=3)