"What are you going to school for?"

I got a Ph.D. in engineering; the program was in essentially the mathematics of operations research. So, the emphasis was on optimization and stochastic processes. The work was fully careful mathematically, especially in measure theory. My dissertation research was on stochastic optimal control (yup, with careful attention even to 'measurable selection').

"PhDs open up a lot of jobs that you wouldn't be able to get in with only a Masters, but they don't typically pay that much more (most my background is with Physicists)"

Eventually I concluded that for a 'job', a Ph.D. was from nearly useless down to less good than a serious felony conviction. The main reason is that for a "job", the people hiring are still almost entirely stuck in the 'job hierarchy' model of 120 years ago on the factory floor where the supervisor was supposed to be older and know more than the subordinate, and the subordinate was supposed to be there mostly to apply labor to the ideas of the supervisor. So, since there are nearly no supervisors with Ph.D. degrees, the situation is as I described.

I was misled: My early career was around DC on mostly military problems. There a technical Ph.D. would have helped a lot. During that work, at times I wanted to know more about optimization and stochastic processes, so I selected such a Ph.D. program.

But then I drifted away from such DC-DoD work. Dumb move.

I never had even for a milli, micro, nano second any desire for an academic job.

But in the US now, technical "jobs" are essentially a joke. So, major US employers have often been nailed due to lack of ability to change. So, 'globalization' nailed GE and Detroit, both of which at one time tried to do highly technical work. IBM and AT&T were nailed by changes in microelectronics. Of these four, in my career at times I interviewed at all of them and worked for two of them -- NOT a good situation.

Broadly, the chances that a person can, in their 20s, get a technical 'job' in a company and then hold that job until retirement are next to zilch.

So, somewhere between the 20s and retirement, the technical person will be out of work. Then they can send a few thousand resume copies, get help from all their friends, etc. and still be out of work.

They will discover the crucial importance of geographical barrier to entry and conclude that an electrician's license is a MUCH better foundation for a good career than a Ph.D. in electrical engineering. The Ph.D. of 35 who gets fired from a technical job in some big company can conclude that, literally, in his neighborhood, while he still had his house, the guy cutting grass who started 15 years earlier and now with, maybe 10 employees actually has a much better career. E.g., the grass guy has customers from the broad economy of people who have grass; the grass will keep growing; grass mowing just cannot be 'outsourced' and has a terrific geographic barrier to entry; do well in a radius of 50 miles and can do well. Just mowing grass. Shrubbery, etc.? Maybe still better. Landscape architecture? Maybe still better. Also own a nursery and be 'vertically integrated'? Maybe still better.

I mowed grass, etc. as a teenager and had more happy customers than I could serve. I actually had an opportunity, basically better than a Ph.D., but didn't know enough about the economy to see it. I was also good at repairing cars, e.g., clutches, radiators. That was another good opportunity I didn't appreciate.

Net, in the US, a technical 'job' is a fool's errand, and anyone needs something MUCH better.

Broadly there are good examples of what to do on Main Street in each village, town, and city all across the US.

So, net, one of the main, good career directions is just to be a sole proprietor. So, can be an electrician, plumber, landscape architect or run a driveway paving company, a roofing company, a dry cleaning service, a few pizza carryout places, etc. Just look on Main Street.

Basically trying to have a career from a 'job' just sucks and is usually less good than just being a Main Street sole proprietor. Being a successful Main Street sole proprietor is not always easy, it's just that the odds are that it's a much better direction than being a technical 'employee'.

Note: The employee just can essentially never have a better job than the one provided by their supervisor. Unless the supervisor is doing fantastically well, the employee is on a long walk on a short pier. E.g., look at a TV biography (go to Clicker and follow biographies) of Carnegie: Early on he was an assistant to a big shot in the Pennsylvania Railroad when rails were likely having better growth than the Internet now. So, he had a good start. He accumulated some cash, made an investment in a competitor of the Pullman railroad sleeping car company, did well enough to buy a long yacht, and then just kept making investments, especially in steel. He finally sold the steel to Morgan who took it public and cleaned up big time. The key was for a while he had a really GOOD 'job', but these are rare.

Assuming want to be a sole proprietor, besides a geographical barrier to entry, so common on Main Street, with a Ph.D. and some targeted research can also get an advantage and a technological (intellectual property, 'secret sauce') barrier to entry. So, do that. So, such applied math research "Isn't just for peer-reviewed journals anymore.".

So, start a Web 2.0 company, derive some applied math, use it as the crucial, core, intellectual property 'secret sauce' to give results a few hundred million people will like a lot and can't get elsewhere, use info on the users to do ad targeting, and get revenue.

Notice the Canadian romantic matchmaking Web 2.0 company Plenty of Fish: One guy, two old Dell servers, ads just via Google, and $10 million a year in revenue. Nice sole proprietorship, maybe worth $1 billion. Nice pay for writing a little routine software.

An advantage is, while some pizza guy is tossing these flexible disks in the air one at a time, a Web 2.0 guy can have some $500 servers sitting there pumping out dozens of Web pages and ads per second.

Uh,

3600 * 24 * 365 = 31,536,000

A few dozen ads per second from each of a dozen or so servers, with a little targeting, and multiply it out.

If the Web site is really popular, then get a nice house, car, yacht, and IRA brokerage account in a big hurry. Else, use the same Web site and software 'skills' to do another Web 2.0 site.

Here the Ph.D. can be crucial, a huge advantage.

But, net, in the US now, a technical 'job' is a really dumb career direction. Instead, it is just CRUCIAL to OWN the enterprise that are going to count on to keep paying the bills for several decades.

Employers: You're screwed; no one with any good sense will work for you without one heck of a salary, golden parachute, or founder's stock.

Technical guy: Learn programming, data base, system and network management and administration, Web site development, etc. and go for it.

From all I can see, for likely all the rest of this century, the opportunity is from (1) processors with many cores for less than $200 per processor, (2) optical fibers for 1 Gbps or so to/from each IP address, (3) from (1) and (2), wide, deep, rapidly flowing oceans of data, (4) software to process that data and deliver valuable results, and (5) some original math to make the processing more powerful. So, it's 'automation', third millennium style.

Automate what? As much as possible of all the work there is to be done. Why? Because we already know what people want in the famous one word answer, "More". So, use (1)-(5) to deliver more for less cost -- that's called 'productivity' and the key to economic progress.