What job should I do?

Tom Paine

I am a Phd student who has just submitted my thesis, and I am not sure what to do with myself, so I would like some advice on interesting jobs/fields/career paths to consider. I would welcome suggestions of particular roles or companies, some generic guidance, or pointers to other resources. I have included what I think is all the relevant information to my job search below, but I will happily provide more details/clarification if needed.

Education: My undergrad was in Maths and Phd was in Computer Science (though it was more or less just pure maths). Throughout my studies I gravitated towards the abstract stuff rather than the practical (e.g. I have studied Statistics but haven't used R, and have studied Category Theory but not used Haskell), though I am of course willing to learn the the right practical skills for a job. My Phd thesis was on some topics in Finite Model Theory.
I enjoyed the content of my Phd but I was not at all suited for the working environment (hence I have no interest in continuing with academia right now). In particular I found it isolating, and I struggled with self-direction with long, open-ended goals. I would like to work somewhere in future where I work as part of a team, and am provided clear goals and deadlines.
My priority is to find a job I find interesting and engaging. As noted above, I did enjoy the Maths I studied. What I have found to be most engaging as a hobby has been trading card games and board games.
I have lots of experience teaching (private tutoring, teaching undergrads, and summer schools) which I enjoyed. I also did some esports casting.
I only speak English.
My ideal location is New York, but I could be persuaded to go pretty much anywhere for the right job. I am a UK citizen, so I'd need to work for somewhere which sponsored visas if it was outside the UK.

Thanks for any advice or suggestions.

Hi Tom,

Hmmm, really interesting points and background you have. It's cool that you enjoyed and gravitated towards the abstract stuff rather than the practical (I was quite the opposite for my B Sc. in Math).

I'm curious, why do you think that is? Do you enjoy covering new ground, the art of problem solving, etc.?

Another question I would ask yourself is how important is money to you? Do you have any financial goals? It sounds like you could have the skill set for a high-paying programming job. Maybe a type of math related job on the trading floor where you are forced to innovate different ways of modelling things, working tightly with a team?

Another random idea I'd throw out is the idea of a sinecure: think Einstein at the patent ~~post~~ office. Maybe you are content making a moderate sum of money doing something with concrete deadlines and tasks where you can easily check boxes, but also want to stimulate your brain with a good team that pushes each other in their own respect.

I work on a lot of personal projects outside of my job-job, and I have found Discord is a great way of making those connections.

I hope these prompts were helpful; happy to follow up for more ideation. :)

think Einstein at the post office

Einstein was at the patent office not the post office. The patent office is an intellectually stimulating environment.

1[anonymous]4y

Ahhh, my mistake! 😅 Both words sound similar to me for some reason haha. But now that I think about it, I bet one could get some good thinking done with a non-intellectually stimulating job. Perhaps a level of physical activeness helps (eg. bar bouncing, waiting tables, barista) What do you think?

2ChristianKl4y

While I could make up a theory of what work would be good, I don't have strong beliefs here. I just wanted to correct the factual error.

Financial goals aren't top of my priorities right now, though I am blithely assuming any job I find interesting to do will give me enough to get by. Working in trading/finance is definitely something on my radar.

Sinecure is something I had considered (though I hadn't heard the name for the concept before). Past experience tells me I don't really spend my time productively without some external guidance or pressure, but it is something I want to improve on. What sort of projects do you work on outside of your job?

This does not quite match your question, but I want to recommend taking a look at https://80000hours.org/ if you don't already know them.

Their focus is on providing resources for impactful altruistic careers, but they still have lots of nice general advice regarding job satisfaction and how to approach the topic of career choice. There also are examples where people describe their experiences with different career paths or the content of the paths themselves and lots more.

Depending how much you are interested in an altruistic focus for your career, you'll find a larger or smaller portion of their writing relevant, but there is a lot of good stuff in any case :)

Thank you I haven't seen this before; I'll check it out.

I just found the link for their summary on job-satisfaction in particular: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/job-satisfaction/

Thank you I haven't seen this before; I'll check it out.

I just found the link for their summary on job-satisfaction in particular: https://80000hours.org/career-guide/job-satisfaction/

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