I trust the adults to handle some of this info like...adults. If this makes @Neal McCready 's life advice, great, but otherwise just looking for feedback and welcome any and all thoughts.
So I am at a bit of a crossroads in my career. I'm 32 and fixing to get married in a few weeks (!) We want to start having kids (2, ideally) right after honeymoon time later this summer. We live in Northern VA/DC area which is an absolute nightmare for reasonably affordable, safe real estate. Our household income will be ~ low 300k/year, but in this region that can feel like middle to lower class.
I make good money now and work fully remotely, which works for me. We travel a good bit and have some flexibility. But it's in an industry and company I am coming to feel increasingly antagonistic towards - basically they help optimize ads for pharma companies. I am all for capitalism, but find that DTC drug ads just make doctor's jobs harder. I see this in my dad's work (internal med doc) all the time.
Anyway, my boss acts like a child and no one uses their brain. He will berate me for not shitting on other teams in the company during meetings with those teams. The role has crept away from the original reasons they brought me on, which was a background and expertise in statistics and analytics, specifically in healthcare. Plus, frankly, I can actually have a conversation with people, unlike most data nerds.
But my problem is that as I stay here, I feel the muscles I trained in grad school and after start to atrophy - I am only getting good at the frankly stupid requests I get daily that are almost 100% automatable through ChatGPT. Then when I interview other places I am rusty and I start to feel trapped. I am considering going back to finish my PhD (have 1.5 year under my belt) and go into academia, but think alot about the 3-4 years of really crap pay with a young family and some of the people with their political intolerance in the department would still be there. Part of me views this all a great opportunity but then part also feels afraid to make the decision and just stay in a field long enough to become rare and valuable.
Thoughts? Advice?
So I am at a bit of a crossroads in my career. I'm 32 and fixing to get married in a few weeks (!) We want to start having kids (2, ideally) right after honeymoon time later this summer. We live in Northern VA/DC area which is an absolute nightmare for reasonably affordable, safe real estate. Our household income will be ~ low 300k/year, but in this region that can feel like middle to lower class.
I make good money now and work fully remotely, which works for me. We travel a good bit and have some flexibility. But it's in an industry and company I am coming to feel increasingly antagonistic towards - basically they help optimize ads for pharma companies. I am all for capitalism, but find that DTC drug ads just make doctor's jobs harder. I see this in my dad's work (internal med doc) all the time.
Anyway, my boss acts like a child and no one uses their brain. He will berate me for not shitting on other teams in the company during meetings with those teams. The role has crept away from the original reasons they brought me on, which was a background and expertise in statistics and analytics, specifically in healthcare. Plus, frankly, I can actually have a conversation with people, unlike most data nerds.
But my problem is that as I stay here, I feel the muscles I trained in grad school and after start to atrophy - I am only getting good at the frankly stupid requests I get daily that are almost 100% automatable through ChatGPT. Then when I interview other places I am rusty and I start to feel trapped. I am considering going back to finish my PhD (have 1.5 year under my belt) and go into academia, but think alot about the 3-4 years of really crap pay with a young family and some of the people with their political intolerance in the department would still be there. Part of me views this all a great opportunity but then part also feels afraid to make the decision and just stay in a field long enough to become rare and valuable.
Thoughts? Advice?
