patrick.net

Rin says

Kevin, I've lived in the northeast corridor for my entire life, Boston to DC, minus NYC. I've never seen a non-management STEM, in biopharma, in defense, in telecom, in chemicals with a base of $200K.

Maybe you're incompetent. My company has offices in all three cities you've mentioned, and people in those cities operate in the same pay bands that I do.

I would not consider half of the companies on your list to be STEM, in that science / engineering isn't really what they "do". Some of them used to (DuPont and Unilever).

Engineers and scientists at IBM, Raytheon, Lockheed, etc. all absolutely are able to get salaries comparable to mine with comparable experience levels. My company does pay a bit above average for the industry, but we're talking 10-20%.

And while it may be true that high profile firms recruit people from MIT, that doesn't really matter to most ordinary people who don't go to MIT. The fact of the matter is that across *all* science and engineering professions, unemployment has remained consistently well below average, and salaries are significantly higher than other career options with equivalent education and experience.

Career potential would be close to last in the reasons for women to choose some field besides STEM. I maintain that *culture* is reason #1, and everything else is utterly insignificant. I don't know why Dan keeps bringing up sexual discrimination / harassement (as I said, it's real, but not the driving factor. I think he's just a sexist anyway based on other threads he's posted).

Kevin says

Maybe you're incompetent. My company has offices in all three cities you've mentioned, and people in those cities operate in the same pay bands that I do.

I would not consider half of the companies on your list to be STEM, in that science / engineering isn't really what they "do". Some of them used to (DuPont and Unilever).

Engineers and scientists at IBM, Raytheon, Lockheed, etc. all absolutely are able to get salaries comparable to mine with comparable experience levels. My company does pay a bit above average for the industry, but we're talking 10-20%.

Ok Kevin, it seems like we're now in the ad hominem, the "I'm smarter than you category". I was offered a senior position at IBM Global consulting and even my potential manager there was not earning $200K (sans bonus). His boss, however, was earning in that band and he was a regional manager. Realize, in the end, someone has to pay that 'fixed' overhead and $200K is a high 'fixed' operating cost.

In terms of money, I've already earned $500K against $2M dealbook share in two months for a private investment project. This was split among my 3 crew members so I know a thing or two about generating some alpha for my clients. All and all, I see where the money is. And yes, in time, this will grow into a multi-million dollar joint venture, which is why I don't want to take an ordinary job in finance but be more of an entrepreneur.

This is partly why I don't care for STEM careers; finance is where the real money is at and when you're established as a prop trader, the only income ceiling is your will to make it happen.

Kevin says

The fact of the matter is that across *all* science and engineering professions, unemployment has remained consistently well below average, and salaries are significantly higher than other career options with equivalent education and experience.

What's missing is the attrition rate in science and engineering whereas pharmacy, nursing, and medicine have low attrition rates. When a former big wig, like Dow Chemical, decides to close an R&D center, what are those engineers suppose to do? Many are from the ages of 45 to 55 and are specialized to Dow's particular way of doing process engineering? They can't just pack up, move to Houston, and work for BP. BP would rather hire someone, in his early 30s, who's always been in the petrochemical circuit, since graduation. Thus, there's a good deal of typecasting of roles and where folks can move laterally among engineering fields. If you don't believe this, you may want to talk to a few folks working at Home Depot, it may surprise you how many educated older folks work there. On the other hand, in my new area of finance, once you're an alpha generator, provided that you still have *it*, or perhaps more accurately, if your unit still has *it*, you can earn money for as long as you want.

And let's say that for some reason ... I fail in the long run, well, there's always that telephone support job where traders don't want their calls re-routed to another continent. My hope is to be retired, long before I have to do telephone support for irate clients.

Kevin says

Career potential would be close to last in the reasons for women to choose some field besides STEM. I maintain that *culture* is reason #1, and everything else is utterly insignificant.

In all honesty, since I've had intimate relations with several STEM women, I don't believe it's culture per se but a type of combined weighing system where on one hand, MC/Finance seems attractive (executive suites, wearing nice suits, etc), and two, the culture of STEM work seemingly downtrodden, Dilbert-like, and not upwardly mobile. As for the overall culture, American/western society, I'm not as concerned about it because all and all, the key component here is that everyone has some sort of choice in terms of one's education and plausible destiny.

Rin says

Ok Kevin, it seems like we're now in the ad hominem, the "I'm smarter than you category".

He's a know it all, if he don't know it, then it ain't worth knowing.
We can only dream to achieve such blissful cluelessness.

CaptainShuddup says

Rin says

Ok Kevin, it seems like we're now in the ad hominem, the "I'm smarter than you category".

He's a know it all, if he don't know it, then it ain't worth knowing.
We can only dream to achieve such blissful cluelessness.

Well, in all honesty, there are blowhards in all professions and walks of life.

When I'm making $1M/yr or more, in trading, I can come back here and brag about how awesome I am. Here's the problem ... I've grown up a bit and have realized that blowhards don't have much to offer to others. When I hit the 7 figure zone, I'm keeping my earnings to myself. And unlike Kevin, I'll never accuse anyone of being incompetent or a poor person.

The reason why I've posted so much on this topic matter is that for some reason, life experiences has shown me that STEM work is not preferred by women, even women with math, physical or biological sciences background. At the same time, when particularly elitist posts ridiculously high salaries like $200K+ base, they can't juxtapose that against those, who were laid off from the supercollidor project which axed more than 4K physicists. What are those PhD postdocs now suppose to do? Google/Facebook hires less than 2% of applicants; it's actually easier to get into a medical school like Hopkins, Harvard, or Columbia.

The girl problem is that girls don't want to be in STEM. High Schools, Jr. High Schools, Elementary Schools, Countless Kids Programs, Colleges and Companies bend over backward to encourage girls in the arts and sciences. They seem to do fine - until they get to College, when they stop taking science classes - yet they are never personally more in control of their own curriculum than at College.

If you notice, the feminists most worried about the problem have Women's Studies, English, and other Liberal Arts degrees and little to no science background. Even the "Skepchick" is a marketing major, the Armenian-American girl who bitches about women in video games also does not have a STEM degree either.

Here's the dirty truth. Men fall in love with objects and concepts in a way that women don't. Ever hear a woman say about a boat or a new pimped out desktop, "Ain't (s)he a beauty?!" and wax poetical about it.

Seldom happens. But every guy has done this about something, be it a car or whatever, at least once in his life.

The majority of my science classmates in college were female. The majority of graduates were also female. I don't know how many continued to work in science, but anecdotally there were two I know who did not. I think one did. I didn't, and my current profession is an ALL boys club. I've never even heard of a female crane mechanic. And the ratio of females to male mechanics of other sorts needs a zero after the decimal point. We all get paid very well on the waterfront, so it's not that the remuneration is lacking. It's that women do not like getting their hands greasy, or using blow torches, grinders, welding, hydraulic work, or rigging. They might be more into electrical work, but I also think that most would avoid a job where a nasty shock is a daily hazard. I get hit with 120v maybe 20 times a year, all by mischance, but it's no big deal and I hardly note it. I got nailed by 480 volts last week. That really hurt, but I took a minute and then got back to work.
I doubt a girl would be coming back to work at all after that.
Dangerous and dirty work is no bueno for any money if you are a woman.