First day for the rest of your life. Choosing where to start that first day

Digitising the advice I repeat so I can automate myself. (This post is meant for students probably in college and lost about what to choose).

This article mostly covers the options for employment/ jobs. To my knowledge there is also the option of new trend of lying flat. Or the other option of marrying up (absolutely no experience, from what I’ve heard genetic lottery and looks plays a big role in this and I sadly I did not luck out in this area)

And yes, this is written in humorous sarcasm, if anything feels overly real and it triggers your anger instead of humor, might be a good time to revisit your job :)

Research/ Academia

This is likely the employment most students are most familiar with. (Given the close geographic proximity and contextual proximity)

KPI for research tends to be the number of papers published. Usefulness of the paper is not important(ie practicality for real world application). Citation of the paper is.

If you enjoy writing jargon that no one else can understand this is a perfect fit. Most of the time you don’t really need to deal with others, especially more technical disciplines like engineering/ science (most research is likely you and a computer for simulation)

For academia, you need proof that you have brains and patience by sucking up to a professor to sign off on your post graduate degree. Get permanent head damage (PhDs), post doc and then hope someone up the chain gets a fatal medical condition so tenure opens up. This used to be very stable and relatively lucrative, however with an increase of PhDs and advance of medical science, less tenured faculty pass away and the music never seems to end for the long game of musical chairs.

Corporations

A lot of the big organizations have a management trainee program to replace jaded employees and churn out new jaded employees. The old cogs are grounded down so much that they just become mere discs of what they used to be and just spin in circles without really producing work (sound like middle management routers?)

A lot of employee refresh is to replace the worn out cogs of old with new cogs with fresh teeth and slowly wear that out as well.

If you enjoy being in blackhole meetings of buzzwords and a feeling of self…