On Thu, 27 Mar 2008, Joe Landman wrote:
When I started looking at postdoc (eek ... that long ago?) positions, it was not uncommon to see theoretical physics PhDs earning ~16-19k/year US. No FICA exemptions. For a family of 4, this put you under the poverty line.
Um, but that was (I'm guessing) a fairly long time ago. Our grad students make that now. I think a minimum postdoc is more like $30K, and I don't think that is just at high end institutions like Duke. State institutions often have even deeper pockets. It is off topic so I manfully resisted, but I'm glad Jim or whoever asked this question as I don't think one could live in the US on a salary of $1500/month unless it were completely tax free. Post tax this is likely no more than $1100. Driving a car is likely to cost $200-300 a month, assuming that you already own one and don't have to make either payments or pay excessive taxes on it. An apartment is perhaps $600-1000/month unless you share it (far more in certain locales), and postdocs shouldn't "have" to share to survive. And then food, even for a single person, is almost certainly going to cost $10/day or more. Add it up and you're already spending your salary on room and board and transportation, leaving one nothing for clothes, fees and taxes, incidental expenses, car payments or repairs, entertainment (yes, even postdocs need vacations and entertainment). I made almost this as a miserably paid postdoc back in maybe 1983, and 25 years haven't been kind to the cost of living.
Somehow, I am not quite convinced that the science departments offering these grasped how the invisible hand of the market would decimate their supply of new PhD's for these positions. You can fight the market, or accept that there is a market and deal with it. The former is not a wise course of action (though it had been standard practice when I was looking at postdocs). The old Young Scientists Network had formed then to discuss some of the abuses of the market and attempts to manipulate the demand/supply curves to oversupply the market with talent, thus keeping the price of talent low. There is a cost to every decision, and flooding the market (then) has had longer term effects that are being observed today.
Honestly, I think it more likely that this posted salary is a typo of some sort. As I said, graduate students make that in the US, and they ARE paid "just enough" to cover room and board with the assumption that they are working 80 hours a week and don't need entertainment, that they'll supplement a bit with tutoring or TA or grading work, and that they still DO have parents or other resources they can tap to cover things like car repairs or emergency incidentals. I'm pretty sure postdocs make close to twice this much almost anywhere in the US. I'd predict negative responses to this offer. In fact, this discussion IS a negative response to the offer. It's all the more crazy given that anybody capable of running the cluster could work as a sysadmin for an absolute MINIMUM of $35-40K/year, and that as a glorified gofer working in University IT somewhere -- real sysadmins with even a year or two of experience and anything like skill certification would add $5-15K to that. Pretty much at LEAST twice as much, that is. The only possible exceptions I can think of would be a position at a tiny place out in the middle of the wilds in a community that is so small and depressed that the cost of living is half that in the US. But either way, the market being what it is, you get what you pay for. In this case, you pay for nothing, and nothing is what they're likely to get.
Back to your regularly scheduled cluster ...
I'm not sure this is truly irrelevant. Non-technical, sure, but the economics of clusters is a wholistic endeavor; one of the most often omitted factors in the discussion of cluster cost-benefit is the human cost of running it. At $18K canadian (which is currently within a percent or so exchange value with the USD) this is a low-water mark for the estimated cost of a human to run a cluster, actually CHEAPER than a graduate student who would have to make this plus (somewhere, even as a bookkeeping entry ) the cost of tuition. This is order of magnitude of $100/node/year for cluster sizes of 50-200 nodes for management, down there with the cost of power and a maintenance contract, an even better deal of the postdoc ever did any real "research" on the side. I'd be very interested in whether or not they fill the position at this price.
Joe (a free-market capitalist)
rgb (ditto, but remember Adam Smith's invisible hand WILL just "work") -- Robert G. Brown Phone(cell): 1-919-280-8443 Duke University Physics Dept, Box 90305 Durham, N.C. 27708-0305 Web: http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb Book of Lilith Website: http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Lilith/Lilith.php Lulu Bookstore: http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=877977 _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
