this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
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That's all the STEMs now. The actual competent ones are on Wall Street.
Yep. why struggle doing research when you can make 500K a year writing stock trading algorithms.
i had a roommate who was a physics PhD. He quit after 4 years and went to work for a Wall St and his starting salary was 400K, this was 2009, after the crisis. had he completed his PhD he'd have been lucky to make 60K a year and then after decades of work he might have made close to 200K. I would guess today he's probably making well over a million a year.
...because research contributes to make a better society for everyone compared to scamming people with overhyped stocks?
But yes, in reality, the trend seems to be finance first, if you can get in.
only a tiny minority of researchers get to do that.
most research is lots of work with poor pay, often to the point where are per hour making less than working at a fast food job.
very few researchers are lucky enough to get rewarding work, and hardly anyone gets to do rewarding work that is well-paid.
and most well-paid research even in industry is working for corporations that are seeking to enrich themselves rather than better society. most pharma research goes towards high profit highly specialized drugs, for example, that will mostly only benefit the small slice of society that can afford them.