Is research scientist in a STEM field (mostly math and physics) the comfiest job?

I feel like you seriously misjudge just how competitive science is.

I don't think I do. What makes you say that?

No way working as a mathematician for the NSA is the comfiest job. 300K starting! Assuming you're not a retard and can get hired lmao

Nice trips but seriously, where is your fucking funding coming from?
>Inb4 "THERE IS A FIRM, WELL-ESTABLISHED DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE PUBLIC SPHERE AND THE PRIVATE SPHERE!"

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Having wife that is doing her PhD at one of Europe's best research institutes in our field, while me myself also preparing for a career in science.
Have you ever done research?

>not becoming a dermatologist and raking in 6 figures working 3 or 4 days a week with minimal math

I met the right people at a small company that wants to extract as much money as they can from a much bigger company.
Meet people and let them know you are the best programmer in the universe(lie lie lie until you have people to back it up)

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Could you elaborate on the aspects of research you think are highly competitive? Do you mean going as far as a PhD/postdoc in the first place, or are you referring to the scientific community being a dog-eat-dog world?
I know the administrative and political aspects of research are prone to lots of bullshit (getting subsidized, doing enough postdoc rounds to get tenure etc) but it's still preferable to stopping at the MS level and go on to work for in industry.

pretty much all of this is wrong
>don't have to deal with corporate normalfag bullshit
this part is sort of nice, but there's plenty of bullshit. academic labs (and by extension your salary) are funded by grants, which means that if you're not already rich and famous, you as a professor are spending the majority of your time trying to convince funding agencies that your work is important. this usually fails. and I hope you weren't excited about pursuing your own ideas, because funders have strong opinions about what's important, and your passion probably isn't it
>your colleagues will mostly be old people and just as autistic as you
neither of these things are true. academia is set up as a pyramid scheme, where each professor trains many more phds than there future professor spots. a typical lab has one professor (who might be old, but might not be), and 6-10 graduate students and post-docs, who are typically between 22 and 35. on top of this you often have undergraduate assistants who are trying to pad their medical school resumes. a typical lab is actually a pretty youthful environment
also, science as a field is actually highly social. the way you communicate your work is by writing journal articles, giving talks, and attending conferences. if you fail at social interactions you're not gonna do very well
>have no real deadlines or stakes, you just have to produce something insightful every once in a while
remember how I said your salary depends on winning grants? if you can't beg effectively enough to be given the money to fund yourself, your employees, and your students, your lab will shut down, you and everyone who depends on you will lose their jobs, and in the best case your students will have to restart their phds, but they'll probably just drop out

>get to live where you want
this is not even a little bit true. you go where the jobs are, and there aren't that many of them. I've routinely watched married academic couples move to opposite sides of the US, or even to different countries, for 5 years or more because their career choices prevent them from living even remotely close to one another
let me hit you with this one, user:
>A 2015 study at the University of California Berkeley found that 47% of graduate students suffer from depression, following a previous 2005 study that showed 10% had contemplated suicide. A 2003 Australian study found that that the rate of mental illness in academic staff was three to four times higher than in the general population, according to a New Scientist article. The same article notes that the percentage of academics with mental illness in the United Kingdom has been estimated at 53%."
>qz.com/547641/theres-an-awful-cost-to-getting-a-phd-that-no-one-talks-about/
academia is soul-destroying. you should not choose it unless you are insanely passionate about some niche topic in a way that you can't satisfy anywhere else. my friends with real jobs work fewer hours, make up to five times as much money as I do, take more vacations, and live happier lives
t. actual scientist

>highly competitive
Just the fact that to be considered good scientist, you have to be better than other scientists, and that is hard to do in an area where you're competing against people with higher IQ and more drive than you would meet in other types of jobs.
When you are working the usual white-collar job, you might be competing with people that went to university and are maybe interested in what they do. When you are building a career in science, you are competing with people that went to some of the best universities and are in love with their topic of interest. To give an example, my wife is surrounded by people that have done their studies at Ivy League/Oxbridge, have had study visits in many different countries and have worked with leaders in their field. Still, that is just the people in her institute. When you're a scientist, your competition isn't people from your building/department/company. They are all other scientists researching the same things that you are, all around the world.
> it's still preferable to stopping at the MS level and go on to work for in industry
I fully agree with you on this one, just know that it requires a lot more work than succeeding in industry.

>funded by grants
I understand how inconvenient that would be at a typical university, but what of national labs or places like MPG, CERN, whatever?
Also, pure (and even some applied) math research doesn't seem to be affected by this problem.
>a typical lab is actually a pretty youthful environment
Doesn't it depend? I have limited exposure but from what I've seen a lot of the people working in physics labs are middle-aged.
>your lab will shut down
How often does this happen in public universities and research institutions?
>you go where the jobs are
But you can choose to do your PhD wherever you want, and after that you'll most likely move somewhere else for your postdoc. At least that's what I was advised to do by my professors.
>academia is soul-destroying
Do you know many people who do their PhD and then immediately fuck off to the private sector, just out of curiosity?
What's your field?

I wasn't implying that you have to be at the forefront of innovation in your field, mind you. Sure, to be considered above-average in STEM, you have to be a genuinely gifted individual, but there are relatively "average" people who still contribute in a tangible way to academia without being geniuses.
I fully understand that as a research scientist, you're constantly confronted to people who are more intelligent, more driven, and vastly more talented, but that's how things are when you pursue something to a high level.
Some people feel like shit when they realize how painfully average they are compared to the best people, others are invigorated by that environment, but it appears to me that what counts is the motivation to become an expert in your chosen field and to contribute to it.
>it requires a lot more work than succeeding in industry.
I've been told that the hard part isn't getting the PhD (which is pretty much granted as long as you don't drop out), but what comes after, i.e. actual competition starts during postdoc. Is that accurate?

>I've been told that the hard part isn't getting the PhD (which is pretty much granted as long as you don't drop out), but what comes after, i.e. actual competition starts during postdoc. Is that accurate?
Not him, but yeah.
It's easy enough to get a PhD if you're somewhat intelligent and willing to work hard, but it's securing funding after that where the bullshit starts.

I assume that's what the other user is referring to when he says it's more competitive than you seem to appreciate. You might think you don't need to deal with corporate normalfag bullshit but applying for grants is so much worse regardless of whether you're trying to get public or private funding.

And there is a ridiculous amount of political bullshit within labs and their bureaucracy too.

I was a research assistant during undergrad. Was mega comfy. Pretty much had nothing to do in the beginning so I focused on learning a programming language that I was going to need to use and became pretty gud.

What's the process typically like? Say my grad school focus is particle physics, how do departments that deal with highly theoretical subjects manage to secure grants?
You make funding sound like an absolutely hellish ordeal. What makes it even more tedious than corporate bureaucracy?

> don't have to deal with corporate normalfag bullshit
Actually you have. Money for your research has to come from somewhere, and you need to deal with these sponsors. There is also a limited number of grants, tenures, lab equipment and other similar stuff. Much less then there are PhD holders.

> but what of national labs or places like MPG, CERN, whatever?
Again, PhD holders and students are dime a dozen. These places receive tons of applications. Research field is an extremely competitive one, and you competition is not Pajeet who can barely speak English, but the brightest minds of the whole planet.

>These places receive tons of applications
So, those who don't make it are forced to work in a different field than what they did during their thesis?

>I wasn't implying that you have to be at the forefront of innovation in your field, mind you
I know you weren't, but if you want to pursue a specific topic, you need to be really good at what you do, because your competition sure will be. If you are up for anything that you are able to do, then it's simpler to get a foothold. But then again, who goes into academia to do just whatever?
> competition starts during postdoc
That's when the competition begins, but the PhD is a preparation for it. If you do your PhD just to have it done, you aren't going to be fit to fight for the limited postdoc positions. With PhD, what you put in is what you get.

> what the other user is referring to
Spot on.

And this as well. Think corporate workplace politics are bad? Think again.

Yeah, if not working a job they are overqualified to do. The only exceptions are people who've graduated from, say, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Oxbridge, Sorbonne or any other top uni.

Yeah, that's true.
I wouldn't say I'm as passionate and borderline obsessed with science as the best people you're referring to, but what motivates me to work towards a PhD and scientific research is the opportunity to understand interesting problems, and become qualified to work on them in an environment where everyone is bright, driven and highly competent. It's about personal achievement and wanting to pursue knowledge of my field to the highest level possible, I guess.
>The only exceptions are people who've graduated from, say, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Oxbridge, Sorbonne or any other top uni.
Wouldn't those get the postdoc positions most of the time? Where do they go if they don't? The age of "I fucked off from academia with my PhD and I instantly got hired in Wall Street" are over.

>starting postdoc next week
>couldn't be happier
I know in the end it's a meme. I know that if I stay in academia I'll be doomed to moving around every couple of years. I know that it's stressful as fuck, and I know that that I could probably get a better job. But goddamn if it hasn't been my dream to do this ever since I was a little kid reading popular science books about physics.

I don't even care if I fall through the cracks and end up changing my career after a year. I've made it. I've finally fucking made it.

That's nice. Good for you user.

>don't have to deal with corporate normalfag bullshit
Not as much as in a regular job, but there's still some amount of it. You need to interact with students as well.

>your colleagues will mostly be old people and just as autistic as you
They won't be mostly old, but sure they'll be autistic enough

>have no real deadlines or stakes, you just have to produce something insightful every once in a while
That's false, you have to publish enough articles to keep going.

>get to live where you want depending on your specialization, i.e. you can move to japan to live out your weeb fantasies or just go to a comfy small college town in the northeastern US or Europe
False too, at least in France.

In what fucking universe is high level math comfy?

>at least in France.
Is research (as a community) in Europe and the US very different?

My only collegue in the lab is a petty bourg chick with little princess that annoys me beyond belief. I wouldn't call it comfy

I don't think so, but what I meant was that every public lab/uni is in at least a middle-sized city, every private lab is in a large city or in the parisian region which is the worst fucking place in the continent. So you can't really live in a cozy little village in the middle of nowhere if you want to work as a scientist

Well, France has the LSM which if I'm not mistaken is located near bumfuck nowhere, but yeah you're right, research mostly takes place in larger cities. Some cities are nice, though.

The LSM is 1700 meters underground, and one of a kind. I must admit I didn't really have it in mind when I made my post

>Some cities are nice, though.

Fewer and fewer

>Fewer and fewer
I guess. Most of the time it comes down to whether or not you're able to afford living in the nicer parts of the city you're in.
Are you a postdoc?

It is an endless hunt for funding.

I've been wondering though, why do pure math departments need any substantial amount of funding?