Comment by ventana
2 days ago
It's interesting that this piece stands well enough if you replace mathematics with probably any other intellectual profession, including software development or pretty much anything else.
And, I lie to anyone who asks me why I’m a mathematician.
It is much easier to claim “I love learning the laws of life,”
while literally handwaving, than it is for me to flashback to
the twenty or so pivotal moments that lead to me walking out
of Gainesville with a PhD in Arithmetic Geometry.
Since “normal” people mostly don't understand what the software development job is about, handwaving in response to regular questions: “what do you do at work?”, “what do you like about your job?” – is pretty normal. I think that most of us have some prepared answers ready to use.
Mathematics is the thing you try to understand, don’t,
get frustrated about, and then do.
Just like the software development. I truly believe that the only people who can survive a software job are those who can tolerate the constant feeling of frustration caused by things not working or breaking for random reasons, and persevere in this environment to do the things you need to do.
> And, I lie to anyone who asks me why I’m a mathematician.
I prefer to say "I liked a girl" (because it's the truth)
My go-to is “It’s the only thing I was good at in school, I was hopeless at everything else,” which is only a slight exaggeration.
A PhD in Arithmetic Geometry and a publication in a top tier journal is hardly mediocre in and of itself, as far the author is concerned. The equivalent for a software engineer is probably a leading AI engineer, with a strong publication count. I think a lot of people who are not mediocre are unaware of what mediocrity actually is. Yeah if you're only in the top .1% and comparing yourself to the literal best in the world, you will feel mediocre in that sense . A mid mathematician maybe publication in worse journals, teaching community college.
> A PhD in Arithmetic Geometry and a publication in a top tier journal is hardly mediocre in and of itself, as far the author is concerned.
It kinda is (sadly) because unlike engineering there aren't thousands of postdoc jobs in arithmetic geometry.
And ofc in a year because of AI all math PhDs will be mediocre by definition.
As a professional mathematician, if you’re not advancing your subfield of research consistently you are mediocre.
If you say so.
Saying most tenured faculty at research 1 institutions are mediocre seems to be stretching the definition, though.
1 reply →
It's still impressive, but it's not enough.
> “what do you like about your job?”
For software development, normal people will just assume it's money and probably not even ask...
They would not even be wrong.
Yeah seems like most programmers just do it for the money. I imagine only like 20% of us do it just because we enjoy it.
11 replies →
For mathematicians in the US, it's because their parents like money.