Recommend Your Profession to the Young?

I know a pharmacist who also has an MBA. He -apparently rightly- thought it would give him a better resume (i.e. more marketable). He has just been made manager of a hospital pharmacy.

"As James Simons says, “I can teach a physics major finance, but I can’t teach a finance major physics.”


Would take a teacher to teach anyone.

Howie52

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I know a pharmacist who also has an MBA. He -apparently rightly- thought it would give him a better resume (i.e. more marketable). He has just been made manager of a hospital pharmacy.

Someone filling pill bottles at Walgreens already makes a fortune. I noticed yesterday that Walgreens is offering $75,000 signing bonuses for pharmacists. (Apparently too many of their stores have had to restrict pharmacy hours due to the lack of credentialed and licensed staff.)

You’d really need to evaluate whether the bump in pay for “Manager of hospital pharmacy” is worth the additional grief.

I declined more than one promotion during my career because the pay bump wasn’t worth the additional BS. (Of course, by that time I’d figured out that the road to wealth was through the low tax rates you could realize through personal investment portfolio management, rather than additional wage & salary income.)

intercst

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“Doctor is pretty safe. People will always need them, and they are very unlikely to be replaced by computers/machines. Nurses: same.”

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A lot of doctors I talk to these days HATE their profession - or the way the field
is managed and regulated.

Having retired after 25 years in the business (and some would say too young), being a doctor is NOT safe. Why? You have all these “physician extenders/pretenders” wanting more and more privileges to do what we do. They say they can do things cheaper (salary) and just as safely (flawed studies) and unfortunately politicians listen. The biggest outrage/funny story in my former state, pols wanted to severely restrict a physicians ability to prescribe narcotics. Document, document, document and you still might get a nasty visit/raid on your office. But on the other hand, PAs (physician assistants) and NPs (nurse practitioners) want that prescription ability, no problem. ??? I’m sorry, want to play doctor, go to medical school. Not that I’m bashing them, I know several that are really good and conscientious and I know several MDs that I wouldn’t let get within 100 miles of me.

Then you have insurance companies and government determining what “cookbook” fashion you have to treat your patients. One sad story was a woman that had a hip replacement denied for well over a year because she was only 45 and not 65. Forget the fact that she had multiple surgeries over the years from the auto accident that caused multiple compound fractures and her hip damage.

The last straw for me, and a condition I would not work under, companies buying up practices. Essentially you become an hourly wage earner. Have little to no input on how things run. But many new grads are looking at that because a bird in the hand to pay off debt verses making your own way and coming out ahead several years down the road.

I could give you plenty examples of physicians being their own worst enemies but that would be too long.

Ok, ranting off. I loved my profession while it was just me taking care of a patient. Unfortunately that was most frequently while on medical mission trips. I hated the bean counter and pencil pushers that got in the way.

JLC

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He works in a hospital pharmacy. He says Walgreen, CVS, or equivalent are more difficult. He likes the hospital. And apparently the pay bump was significant. But he has to wear a tie now, which he doesn’t like.

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1poorguy writes,

He works in a hospital pharmacy. He says Walgreen, CVS, or equivalent are more difficult. He likes the hospital. And apparently the pay bump was significant. But he has to wear a tie now, which he doesn’t like.

Also hospital pharmacies tend to be 24/7 operations, so if he’s the boss, he’s likely working 9 to 5.

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Renaissance Technologies famously avoids hiring MBAs and people with a finance background. They prefer to hire computer scientists, mathematicians, physicists, signal processing experts and statisticians.

As James Simons says, "I can teach a physics major finance, but I can’t teach a finance major physics.

Yeah, one of my old housemates from my Caltech days stopped being a Ph.D. astrophysicist and went to Renaissance in the '90s. I’m sure he went on to untold wealth.

-IGU-

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Would you recommend your profession to the young?

I was a computer programmer for most of my career. I would absolutely recommend it, but…

I don’t think it’s something for most people. If you don’t have a knack for thinking the right way, you’ll never be any good at it. If you’re no good at something, I don’t think you should do it.

Nowadays, programming is a good way to earn a lot of money fast and easy from anywhere. But only if you’re good at it. And it’s not as though you won’t have to work hard and put in long hours, but it will mostly be fun.

-IGU-

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I used to code FORTRAN. Was pretty decent at it. I never got the hang of C. Just didn’t make sense to me.

When I became a failure analysis engineer, I learned 8-bit microcontroller assembly, and it made sense again. We have a C compiler, but I never used it. C didn’t make sense. Assembly did.

1poorguy

If you don’t have a knack for thinking the right way, you’ll never be any good as a [computer programmer].

Totally agree. I always said that to be a good programmer you have to be weird in a particular way.

programming is a good way to earn a lot of money fast and easy from anywhere. But only if you’re good at it. And it’s not as though you won’t have to work hard and put in long hours, but it will mostly be fun.

We used to have a joke. After looking at our private workstations, private printer, computer lab, etc. we’d say “All this…and they pay us, too!!!”

I used to code FORTRAN. Was pretty decent at it. I never got the hang of C. Just didn’t make sense to me.

FORTRAN and COBOL were okay for applications but you needed to be good with machine and assembly languages for the really fun stuff. I had access to the complete source for BSD Unix but never developed real proficiency in the C language beyond modifying Unix to support additional devices.

I may have spent too many years writing machine language code for mass storage subsystems and communications devices and assembly language interrupt service routines, device drivers/handlers to have the proper mindset for the C language.

For most of my career, I was the tool-smith mentioned in The Mythical Man-Month*. The problem with the role is that you have to work a lot harder to ensure that the software satisfies the specification and produces consistent, predictable, and reproducible results.*

When I became a failure analysis engineer, I learned 8-bit microcontroller assembly, and it made sense again. We have a C compiler, but I never used it. C didn’t make sense. Assembly did.

It’s all going to be quantum computing in the future, and only a select and fortunate few will understand anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing

intercst

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Howie52 writes,

"As James Simons says, “I can teach a physics major finance, but I can’t teach a finance major physics.”

************************************************************************

Would take a teacher to teach anyone.

Well, James Simons is a former MIT math professor.

I came across this youtube video several years ago from a young content creator who was trying to put together a video interview series on the greatest minds in mathematics. The fact that he got James Simons to sit down for an hour and talk is a rare gift. If you tried to hire James Simons to do something for you, his time would be worth at least $1 million/hour.

James Simons (full length interview) - Numberphile
https://youtu.be/QNznD9hMEh0

intercst

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I guess I am among the 75% of teachers who would not recommend their profession to the young. Way too much political interference, high stakes testing, and kids/parents who just don’t care.

It’s so sad.

Isewquilts2

Depends at what level you teach. I wouldn’t mind community college. The people there want to be there. I would be fully qualified to teach physics or math at a CC.

Little kids I could not handle. I could perhaps be an AP teacher in high school. Maybe.

We place so little value on education these days. I worked with people in Thailand, and a teacher is held in very high esteem there.

Like you said: sad. And this country will be paying the price for the lack of serious academics in the form of millions of useless people. They quite literally won’t be able to do anything of value. That will be a problem.

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"Well, James Simons is a former MIT math professor.

I came across this youtube video several years ago from a young content creator who was trying to put together a video interview series on the greatest minds in mathematics. The fact that he got James Simons to sit down for an hour and talk is a rare gift. If you tried to hire James Simons to do something for you, his time would be worth at least $1 million/hour.

James Simons (full length interview) - Numberphile
https://youtu.be/QNznD9hMEh0

intercst "


The link freezes up when I try to access the thing.

My point is that people with great backgrounds in subjects are frequently not
able to teach others. Teachers require both knowledge of a subject plus an
appreciation of how other people approach the unknown. This combination is
truly rare in technical subjects.

Howie52

1 Like

Software engineer (25 years writing C code) 10 years Oracle DBA/IT managed file transfer systems.

I liked it more in the beginning. After awhile it got monotonous and occasionally really stressful when something breaks and nobody knows how to fix it. But I’m pulling in a 6 figure income wearing pajamas at home. So…if I get too bored I take a break and do a crossword puzzle.

I also own and manage 2 income properties. Only rarely stressful. My tenants are almost always long term and stay for years because I’m not greedy and a reliable tenant is better to me than squeezing out every penny. I think I get blessed to God a lot by one tenant so good karma. I bump up rent when someone moves. 3/6 years tenants right now. In 20 years I’ve had one I asked to leave for non payment and everyone else moved for a job or to buy their own house. Every one. I actually like being a landlord.

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