Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
What's the value of a sinecure?
I'm not entirely happy with my job (mostly the location, and there's no way it could ever go full remote rather than hybrid), so I've been pursuing leads elsewhere, but it's... safe. Doesn't pay as much as I'd like, but it's a solid salary, and it's safe. Even if every single prediction about AI takes off, even if the US government has a partial crashout, even if I become more of a drooling imbecile than I already am, even if there's a Great Depression style jobs crash... it's safe.
How much importance should I (primary breadwinner, no kids) be placing on that, and staying where I am, vs. finding something more lucrative/with remote potential?
Extremely valuable. Doubly so with uncertainty about AI and the US government. You are in a position of "fuck you". Do not throw it away.
Whatever kind of risk you want to take, take it on the side.
Surely not, or if so with one very significant exception.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
In any career, remember that you're being paid in two ways: the first being through your wages & benefits, the second being through knowledge and experience you learn on the job. If you're early on in your career, in a field where the ceilings are high, the latter is a lot more important than the former.
Sinecures are for people at the tail end of their career. There's not much use for new specialized knowledge because they won't have many years left to use it. And so they spend their time mentoring younger colleagues or providing strategic guidance - things that are easy because they've had the practice earlier on.
If you find yourself in a position where you think your salary is a lot higher than your skillset, then consider yourself lucky... but just like everything else you should one day expect regression to the mean.
Keep on hustlin'
More options
Context Copy link
Please, for the love of God, give some details on that industry and job description.
Ha. One of these days, I might do a full-on effortpost ("Office Space: Confidential Edition! All the jokes you've heard about government contracting are at worst imprecise and at most significant understatements"), especially if I leave, but TL;DR: we're the only lab in the country that performs a high-priority task for the government (and, in some ways, has a deadman's switch: things will not be great if we vanish, although they'll be far less bad than your average MoP would assume). We're not federal employees, and so not subject to cuts there, but are a permanent fixture, and the only reason people get fired or let go are for violations of actual policy like "flushing a cell phone down the toilet instead of reporting it to security, and then lying about it when given a chance to come clean", or "falsifying time cards". As I said, we're a top priority, so even if the government cuts back everywhere else, we'll at worst be in a hiring/salary freeze. And its combination of "classified information systems", "work that if done wrong causes major disaster potential" and "deliberate tradition and founding of being more focused on details, safety, and human responsibility than NASA even before NASA existed" makes it impossible for us to be replaced with AI on any reasonable timeframe, based on what I've seen of internal rollouts and hinderances. I think last time a formal submission with any amount of GPT content went up the chain, the response from on-high was... rather scathing, even by their standards.
As for what I do, I'm a bog-standard technical project manager, but everyone there is about as immune to the future as I am.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link