Early in my career, was at GE in
scientific/engineering software. The unit
shrank, and I got laid off.

While still on my accrued vacation, sent
some resumes and in two weeks went on
seven interviews and got five offers.
Took the best offer, again in
scientific/engineering software, with a
nice raise and the next year another nice
raise. Soon I was making in annual salary
six times what a new, high end Camaro
cost.

My wife was in her Ph.D. program in
essentially mathematical sociology, and
my career was getting much better.

I went for a Ph.D., and got it in some
applied math, stochastic optimal control
with some algorithms, software, etc.

My wife also got her Ph.D.

That was the good news.

After my Ph.D., my career was totally
shot. I was nearly unemployable at
anything except academics which I did
not want -- I wanted make money, support
my wife and myself, buy a house, have and
support kids, etc. The academics paid
less than I was making before my Ph.D.

Also my marriage was ruined: The stress
of her Ph.D. work threw my wife
(Valedictorian, PBK, Summa Cum Laude,
Woodrow Wilson) into a clinical
depression. She never recovered, and her
body was found floating in a lake near her
family farm where she was visiting trying
to recover.

Finally I ended up at the IBM Watson lab
in artificial intelligence. I invented
some algorithms, wrote software, worked
with high end customers, published some
papers, and then IBM lost $16 billion in
three years, went from 405,000 employees
down to 209,000, and the Watson lab went
from 4500 down to 1500 with 500 of those
temporary, and I was out of work. The guy
who walked me out the door was immediately
demoted out of management. The guy two
levels up, with a corner office, 55
people, a budget, a secretary, was
reorganized to have one more level of
management between himself and the CEO,
given a six month performance plan, and
then demoted out of management.

Actually at IBM, due to the costs of
commuting, housing, etc., I lost money.
IBM never paid me enough to live and
commute, certainly not nearly enough to
buy a house and support a family. I saved
money even in graduate school; at IBM I
lost.

Out of IBM, I was absolutely, totally,
permanently unemployable for, as far as I
could tell, anything at all, anything,
at least anything that would pay enough to
live and commute to work. I sent 1000
resume copies and got back silence or
nothing. Period. I'm a native born US
citizen and have held security clearances
as high as Secret. I've never been
arrested or charged with crime except for
minor traffic violations. I've never been
in court. Never used illegal drugs or
made illegal use of legal drugs. Never
been intoxicated. Am in good health. I
have proven high aptitude, interest, and
accomplishments in STEM fields. I've
written a lot of significant software.
Yet, I was treated like I had a felony
conviction.

But I could still do applied math and
write software. I was good at several
programming languages, TCP/IP, lots of
applications, etc. And I'd had enough
experience in business to see how it
worked.

So, I thought of a problem that maybe
nearly every Internet user would like to
have solved, derived some math for the
first good solution, drew out an
architecture, fast, reliable, and
scalable, for the software and server farm
to present the solution to users via a Web
site, and started writing the software, on
Windows in .NET, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, etc.
with Visual Basic .NET.

As of last Friday, I got all the planned
software running.

So, I have a few, small revisions, and
then will load some initial data, give a
critical review, do alpha and beta tests,
load some more initial data, plug together
a server, get Windows Server and SQL
Server from the Microsoft BizSpark
program, go live, get publicity, run ads,
and hopefully get users and revenue.

Advice: ASAP do not be an employee.
Instead, start, own, and run a business.

Technology can be a big advantage, but for
technical topics, except for just a hobby,
say, mathematical physics, learn what you
need when you need it for your business
and otherwise strongly minimize the effort
you expend on learning, say, C, C++, Java,
JavaScript, Jquery, .NET, Web
frameworks, C#, Python, Ruby, etc.

For the business, get some barriers to
entry.

One of the very best approaches to
business is just something with a strong
geographical barrier to entry. So, if
work hard and smart, actually can do okay,
say, support family, get kids through
college, have a good retirement, by doing
well running a few fast food restaurants,
a few gas and convenience stores, having
lots of crews mowing grass, running a big
truck, little truck business, say, in
auto parts, plumbing supplies, electrical
supplies, other industrial supplies,
running a good, local building materials
company, being a manufacturer's
representative, running several pizza
shops, a popular Italian red sauce, family
restaurant, an auto repair shop, etc.

With such a business, when the kids are
old enough, can also get the wife and kids
involved, which can solve lots of serious
problems and be just terrific for the
family. The business education and career
start the kids get helping in the family
business easily can be much better than
any Harvard or Stanford MBA.

A simple and not wrong way to look at STEM
field Ph.D. degrees is as a US Federal
Government supported labor supply for
highly speculative, leading edge parts of
US national security and not so much for
anything else. Indeed, when my career was
doing well, mostly I was around DC working
on US DoD projects.

Mostly the US commercial world just
deeply, profoundly, bitterly hates and
despises the high end STEM work done
mostly for US national security.

Only for a short time just before I went
for a Ph.D. did I have money enough to buy
a house, but then I didn't. Since then
I've never had money enough to buy a house
and, thus, haven't. And, after our Ph.D.
degrees, my wife and I were never in a
position to have kids, so I never had any.

I owe my brother's widow a major chunk of
change.

If my startup works, then I'll be able to
pay back my brother's widow plus a lot,
buy a house, etc.

Mostly I recommend, stay the heck out of
technology.

With some high irony, there's a movie
Stand and Deliver about teaching
calculus to high school students in a
poor, Hispanic area of Los Angeles. The
idea is that calculus can be their ticket
out of poverty.

Some of the evidence the teacher gives for
the value of calculus is to tour some Los
Angeles area aero-space firms -- right, US
DoD again.

At one point, a girl in the calculus class
is torn between working hard on calculus
or working in the successful, family
Mexican restaurant of her parents.

So, the calculus teacher goes to the
restaurant, talks to the owners and
parents of the girl, and claims that
calculus will help their daughter.

I know calculus, advanced calculus,
mathematical analysis well beyond, and
many important applications. I've studied
calculus, taught it, applied it, and
published original research in it. I know
calculus.

On the claim of the calculus teacher, that
is, calculus compared with the restaurant,
I call BS. Total upchuckable, delusional,
wacko BS.

For that girl, on average, working in the
successful, family Mexican restaurant run
by her parents and, thus, learning the
family business, was by far, a wide
margin, much, much better for her
education, career, and life than
anything reasonable from calculus.

The girl's parents were fully correct.
The calculus teacher was nuts.

In particular, the US Federal Government
doesn't grant H1B visas for workers in
successful, family Mexican restaurants in
Los Angeles but does strongly fund US
college education in STEM fields.

In a STEM field, are essentially working
in a market run by the US DoD and funded
by the US Congress mostly only for US
national security. So, it's very much not
a free market. Indeed, for a while the
US NSF had economists analyzing how many
immigrants the US should fund in STEM
field graduate programs to keep down the
labor cost to the US DoD. It's a
managed market, a rigged game.

For a career, you are better off running a
family restaurant or any of a long list of
other ordinary business opportunities.

But, if you are in technology, then maybe
you can do a project, sell it off for a
nice bundle, enough for you and your
family to be fixed for life -- if so,
then go for it.