Ask HN: Non-programming, 'thinking' jobs?

[doc]

Inspired by this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1351877 I realized that I, too, enjoy thinking more than actual programming, and programming is just a means to materialize my thoughts.

I'm trying to find a job that requires thinking but doesn't tie me to a computer (but nothing on advertisement, though)

Any ideas?

[nostrademons]

These jobs exist. Corporate executives are obvious ones. Finance, particularly hedge funds and venture capital. Management consulting. Politicians. Tenured professors. Creative solitary professions like writers, comedians, and composers.

The problem is that almost everyone would rather think than do, so you've got a massive supply & demand imbalance. Everybody wants to be the one deciding what should be done; very few people want to be the ones actually doing it.

In practice, most professions deal with this by instituting barriers to entry. In rigid hierarchical organizations like the corporate world, this is done through a "pay your dues" culture. The people who become corporate executives get there through performing well at grunt work on an individual contributor level - well enough to attract the attention of an outgoing senior executive. The most likely path to becoming a venture capitalist is to found a successful startup yourself. Anyone can start a hedge fund, but convincing people to give you money usually requires a solid track record as an analyst or trader at an established firm. Associates at management consulting firms do things like count products on store shelves and make PowerPoint presentations before they get to call the strategy shots themselves.

In more fluid professions like novelists, the barrier to entry is simply that you have to be so good that they can't ignore you. There are millions of aspiring writers that want to get published; only a few thousand manage to do so, and only a few dozen become bestsellers. If you want to be one of them, you need to be willing to practice and revise enough that your work is better than all the other folks.

[j_baker]

> The problem is that almost everyone would rather think than do.

I'd disagree. I think that the majority of people would rather work with something more concrete (doing) than abstract(thinking).

[nostrademons]

You really think so? I think a lot of people become habituated to doing because that's what they need to do to put food on the table. And most of the time, they won't find anyone willing to listen to their thoughts anyway, so why bother spouting off?

But if you really listen to people, I've found that most can think pretty deeply about grand and overarching subjects. And it's people from all walks of life - auto mechanics, high school dropouts, civil servants, retirees, in addition to the engineers and executives and authors you'd expect. Look at how many people had opinions on the bailout, for example, or how many think they could do a better job than Ben Bernanke at steering the economy. Or look at the traffic to forums like Reddit, where people are invited to leave their comments about all sorts of stories. Most of them are wrong, but that's still an awful lot of thinking going on about pretty abstract subjects.

[eavc]

So I'm in the middle of working with a psychologist right now who is counseling me about my career.

I'm in the same boat as the OP, and like you, I figured that everyone would rather just think, so I kind of discounted that as an option.

What he told me is that while a lot of people like to spout off opinions, few people are as passionately curious and have the capacity for sustained and analytical thought.

I'm not bragging, but my point is that for some people, thinking type work really is their skill. The jobs available can be harder to find.

I'm in the process of considering a return to school for a PhD in psychology, for example, and it's going to really throw a wrench in my life because I'm already 26 and married.

[nostrademons]

The Ph.D is itself a long process of "doing", where you're apprenticed to an experienced researcher and do his grunt work while you prove yourself capable of original research. Writing a dissertation is work, and it goes along with a lot of unglamorous work (like a research/teaching fellowship).

I never disputed that it's possible to make a living as a "thinker", only that it's realistic to do so without first proving your worth as a "doer". The people who end up in those thinking positions are the ones who manage to slog through the doing.

[xtho]

A "thinking job" usually doesn't mean commenting on this or that without knowing what they're talking about (well, there are people who do that but those are in the top 0.1% of the population). Most "thinking jobs" require you to conduct tedious research, getting engaged in discussions, being flamed in front of an audience etc. And most "thinking jobs" limit your expertise to one tiny bit of reality which means that you spend the rest of your life with thinking about inane details hardly anybody really cares about. (Again there are exceptions because once you get famous you can easily pass as expert for everything.)

[j_baker]

I don't doubt that you hear a lot of people with opinions on these subjects, but I don't think that's a very good indicator of what people want to do. How many of them do you see really trying to get Ben Bernanke's job?

[nostrademons]

How many of the folks that you see posting here about how they'd rather do thinking-type professions are actively trying to get Ben Bernanke's job? ;-)

My point is that if you took out all the barriers to entry, walked up to someone, and said, "Hey, we want you to control the economy. Seriously. No, there are no strings attached. We want you for the job," I bet most of them would take it. The reason you don't see people actively trying for this job is because there are lots of hurdles in the way. After all, we want the people who do the thinking jobs to have proven themselves first, so we know that they're not just spouting off nonsense.

[xtho]

> Everybody wants to be the one deciding what should be done; very few people want to be the ones actually doing it.

I'm going to tell that a colleague of mine who wants to quit his current job because everything he does is talking and negotiating (i.e. deciding or rather preparing decisions) without ever getting anything done.

[theprodigy]

CIA and the pentagon love thinkers and people with very analytical minds. The pentagon's job is to dream up the future of the world and war and prepare for it.

So as an analyst or grand strategist you would be tasked with studying how such and such technology will change global politcal and economic rule sets, etc and what america needs to do to take advantage of it or prepare for it. You can also be a person that researches the latest and greatest technology.

These military agencies were the people who developed the initial need for technological innovations like the internet and the database.

Also, you would go out talk to all these opinion leaders and participate in various think tanks with super smart people and create research that can influence the entire history of the world if compelling enough.

It is a lot of fun if you really want to contribute to the world and make a difference.

[puredemo]

Most think tanks are very politically charged. Members aren't supposed to do original research, rather they are tasked with penning opinions that align with and justify predetermined political positions.

Secondly, your post overall just doesn't ring true to me. If the pentagon is really this keen on hiring the best and the brightest, wouldn't we have made great strides towards, say, ending our dependence on foreign oil?

There are too many examples like the above for me to believe that the pentagon is at all effective in preparing for the future. If they were, the financial meltdown wouldn't have happened, we wouldn't continue to subsidize corn like we do, we would be moving towards massive subsidies for sustainable farming, the Ogallala Aquifer wouldn't be getting empty, and so on.

[starkfist]

The DoD/Pentagon has nothing to do with farming subsidies or the subprime crisis or inventing new energy sources.

[jarek]

In other words, they figure out how to invade countries, not why.

[puredemo]

Point still stands. Most wars are related to resources, in one way or another. We tend to squander our resources.

The DoD may not have direct control but they do have some influence, even if only indirect.

[graugrau]

What is the working environment like at the CIA and Pentagon? I've always imagined that government work is about as far from a startup atmosphere as you can get.

[zavulon]

Start your own business.

Every day I have to do a lot of intense thinking... Every week, long term strategy and planning. Pretty much every business email that I write or phone call that I make requires a lot of thinking and analyzing. Especially since there's always an understand that if I fuck up, it's usually directly money out of my pocket.

It's not for everybody, but if you're looking for a job that makes you think, that's the one.

[eavc]

Running a business is much, much, much more about doing than it is about thinking.

[lsc]

yes, but if you prefer managing others to doing yourself, you can make that choice. Of course, that's more 'selecting the right people' than 'thinking'

Still, the point is that running a business is much more about 'making sure things get done' than it is about 'doing things' - now, quite often, the only way to reach the former is through the latter, but when things are going well, your primary job is thinking of the next move.

[mkramlich]

The nice thing about it though is that you have to think and do. If you just think, or just do, you're hosed.

[JarekS]

Product management. You must think a lot, programming experience is a huge plus, but this kind of work does not tie you to a computer - you should be out more and talk to prospects/customers.

[Zev]

Art. Probably not a job, but for a very nice hobby, try it out. Draw or paint something. Find an old camera (film-based) and take some pictures. Then develop the pictures yourself in a darkroom.

Sounds like a a bunch of simple tasks, right? Not really. As an example, some things that go into a drawing:

What kind of paper do you want to draw on? Are you going to make your own paper or buy some premade? What materials do you want the paper to be made of? What are you going to draw with? Pencils? If so, what classification? Colors? Ink the drawing in afterwards? What inks are you going to use, if so? How are you going to put the ink on the page? Not to mention "what are you going to draw?"

And thats scratching the surface. And there's just as much to consider for every other type of art.

[brc]

One of my neighbours is an artist. She makes a tidy living selling artwork depicting the local landscapes.

While you would think that there is a lot of sitting around dreaming and sketching, in reality the galleries are telling her what types of thing are selling, and she is creating 'product' to sell into that demand. Her studio is full of paintings that look very similar to each other, and there is precious little room for experimentation, because the galleries aren't super keen on giving wallspace to untried formulas.

In this way it's not terribly different from a lot of jobs. Sure, it's much better than most, but I would be careful about thinking life as an artist is truly an escape from the rigors of the real world.

Sadly for a lot of artists, their big breakthrough becomes the rod for their back, because all anyone ever wants is more of the same. This is why Ian Fleming ended up disliking the Bond books, even though they made him very rich. Same goes for endless bands, artists, sculptors etc.

[Zev]

In this way it's not terribly different from a lot of jobs. Sure, it's much better than most, but I would be careful about thinking life as an artist is truly an escape from the rigors of the real world.

FWIW, my suggestion was specifically to have art as a hobby, not a job. This way, it doesn't need to make you any money. Just to provide an escape and/or a stress relief. And in this case, who cares what others think of your work? You do it because you want to.

[brc]

yes I guess I conveniently ignored your point, I guess I was just trying to add in my part about making a living as an artist.

Ultimately, I think, that any type of creative work needs validation by others, even if it's not of the payment type. I think few people are driven enough to create without at least some positive feedback from people whose opinion they respect.

[Shamiq]

1. Get a PhD.

2. Become a professor/researcher.

3. Grad students program for you.

[nostrademons]

You left out the part where in 1. (and 1.5: Postdoc for a professor/researcher), you're the one doing the programming for someone else. ;-)

[awongh]

I didn't read the previous thread as against programming per se- he mentions working in a cafe, which is a pretty good example of a job that requires rote repetitive tasks and very little thinking...

In my opinion the wonderful thing about programming is that it is the job with the lowest barrier of entry, to which your thinking, your thoughts, have the most direct and lasting effect on your employer's business.

As it's been pointed out on this thread already, the jobs in which you have the most effect and the most amount of thinking have very high barriers to entry, i.e., the corporate executive, or aren't well paid, e.g. the artist or writer, or don't have any real effect in the world, e.g., the romance language professor (humanities academic)... that is to say, there are trade-offs.

In general the thing that bothers me the most about non-programming thinking jobs, being a professor, thinking about policy, business strategy, or whatever seems to be the way you qualify or train yourself for the job- most of the time it means thinking or doing things that don't relate to your interest- business school, law school, MFA, whatever- but what do you do to become a better programmer? Program.

[_delirium]

Become a blogger? ;-) Of course, it's only a "job" if you become a pretty high-profile blogger.

The "doesn't tie me to a computer" part leaves me unclear whether you want a job that's still thinking about computers but just isn't actually on them all the time, or whether you want a change of careers to a thinking-centric occupation that may not involve computers at all.

If the latter, there's all the traditional areas like philosophy, but they tend to be hard to find jobs in. Law has thinking-centric jobs, especially if you're a researcher for a larger firm that has someone else doing the in-courtroom advocacy, or a clerk for a judge, or a judge yourself, or a legal analyst at a think-tank or in academia. But you'd need to get a JD.

Long-form analytical journalism is also thinking-centric, but it's hard to make a living at (there are a handful of coveted jobs doing it full-time, and then a larger number of freelancers writing such pieces and trying to shop them around).

[megablast]

Look at your University.

I was involved in Grid Computing research, which didn't involve any development, but meant I had to go around to different Universities and private companies, and help them understand the benefits of getting into Grid Computing. It was mainly dealing with Management and Administrators, getting them to understand the benefits of using all those spare computing cycles, they have on their desks and in their computing labs.

It was a great job, and I got to meet amazing people and see lots of different places. This way you get to use your knowledge of computers, but aren't stuck at your desk programming away.

[matwood]

I would think that any kind of analytics might fit your description. The problem is that you might end up tied to Excel.

Another one might be some sort of civil engineering or any job where you need to physically build something.

Also, any job that you have can require thinking if you want it to. Learn about the job and then think about you can do it better, faster, or cheaper.

[elblanco]

Go be an analyst or a researcher. There are national labs and other research places all over the U.S. and places like Battelle, Noblis, Mitre etc. are always looking for good people.

There are a surprising number of people in both roles. Lots of reading, critical thinking and writing. If you can operate a computer beyond that of a six year old you can go places.

[realitygrill]

places like Battelle, Noblis, Mitre etc

Can you give more examples? I've never heard of these places..

[elblanco]

Here's a starter list with links, the history of some of these places is pretty cool as well:

This is a good list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFRDC also look at the managing organizations.

Non/Not Profit Companies

Battelle Memorial Institute - https://www.battelle.org/ Noblis - http://www.noblis.org/ Mitre - http://www.mitre.org/ Aerospace Corporation - http://www.aero.org/ Rand Corporation - http://www.rand.org/ CNA - http://www.cna.org/

Some for-profit Government Contractors (I've tried to pick ones that don't make stuff like planes and tanks, they focus more on thinkery)

SAIC - http://www.saic.com Bechtel - http://www.bechtel.com Mantech - http://www.mantech.com CACI - http://www.caci.com TASC - http://www.tasc.com

there's actually a whole ton of smaller ones like Blackbird Technologies ( http://www.blackbirdtech.com/ ) that you can make a good home in also.

Labs (don't let their Manhattan Project backgrounds fool you, they do tons and tons of R&D outside of nukes, great places with lots of smart people)

Lawrence Livermore - http://www.llnl.gov/ Pacific Northwest - http://www.pnl.gov/ Los Alamos - http://www.lanl.gov/ Brookhaven National Laboratory - http://www.bnl.gov/ National Renewable Energy Laboratory - http://www.nrel.gov/ Sandia National Laboratories - http://www.sandia.gov etc.

I've worked at some of these places in my career. If you want to be surrounded by smart people all the time, pick the labs. Note: if you don't have a PhD you will be made to feel inferior to everybody else you work with, it just comes with the territory. The Non/Not-Profits can be friendlier places to work. Go for an analyst job or something similar. Most of those are also full of really smart folks, and making $$$ isn't the most important thing in the world for them. Many labs are managed by these non-profits. I listed the Contractors because it's easier to get analyst type positions with them, but I've found the general caliber of the people there (in terms of pure "smartness") to be lower. It can be tough to go from a Lab like environment, where your next cube co-worker speaks three languages fluently, can fly six kinds of aircraft, holds two PhDs and built a small-scale particle accelerator in his garage to relax to a contractor where your next cube co-worker debates, heatedly, between diet-coke and diet-pepsi, and how to score that cute waitress in the happy hour bar without his wife noticing.

[graugrau]

Could you give some examples of the kinds of analyst/research work people without PhDs do at these places? What kind of "formal background" do you need to get them to even consider you for one of the more thinky analyst/researcher positions?

I've looked before at some of the places you mentioned, but it seemed extremely difficult to get someone to even talk to you about the interesting analyst/research positions if you didn't have a PhD.

My background: For the longest time, I thought I would go to grad school and become a professor in pure math. I love doing research and don't care about money...but I hated the whole bureaucracy and lack of real freedom (until you're a tenured professor) of it all. I really miss having a research environment, though, so like the OP I've been wondering for a while how to get back into this.

[elblanco]

Sure, I know that this project http://starlight.pnl.gov/ was a decade long R&D project with a staff of zero PhDs. The NVAC ( http://nvac.pnl.gov/ ) place is peopled by lots of non-PhD hacker types doing cool things. Many of the better hacker types I've run across are also not from traditional CS backgrounds which is interesting, lots of trained physicists and mathematicians.

The non-profit types have loads of people who are not-PhDs who do clever think-tank style work for the government. Lots of report writing mostly, but if you can get latched onto some IRAD type project and do internal R&D work, you can see some really cool stuff -- I'm pretty sure I've seen the first ever real-time fusion of geospatial data from six different imagery platforms in a 3d environment. But even the report writing can be interesting, things like open-source studies of countries, industries, facilities, etc. But they can also be a back door into the lab work if you work for one of the managing organizations (like Battelle). Look into them closely as they also tend to have fairly large internal R&D departments. It's possible to make a career working on IRAD projects and responding to SBIR grants. Both are pure research.

Other places do things like geospatial systems research, text mining, information visualization, network security research (which for lab purposes usually requires lots of high level systems understanding or solid math, not as much low level hacking as you might expect, lots of the work is in predictive theories and social network analysis), pattern detection, image analysis, image change detection -- lots of good places for applied math, acoustic triangulation, emergency response modeling and simulation, etc. Think DARPA style research, which the labs do lots of work for.

If you are into hardware, there's also plenty of that, communication systems, weapons testing (like naval guns), hardware encryption systems, phased array radars, biochem detection systems, rapid prototyping, radiation detectors etc.

Most of these don't require PhD backgrounds, and if you hit all the ones you are interested in, you might find something that sticks.

Honestly, given your background, you'd probably find a better home at the labs than the companies. But the hiring cycle is abysmally slow, don't take a non-response as evidence of a lack of desire to hire. 6-12 month wait times on call backs are not uncommon. Often followed by 5-20 years of happy employment.

I personally found both the lab and non-profit environments a bit too rarefied for my tastes. But I do miss being surrounded by brilliant people every day. Also, keep in mind that some of these are enormous organizations, Google-sized by way of comparison, their campuses can be measured in square-miles, not acres and they often have tens of thousands of employees. If you don't live in the States (or aren't a citizen), there are probably equivalent organizations in your home country. Often there is lots of cross-pollination as well, I worked on projects with the Brits, the Italians, Singapore and the Aussies.

[mkramlich]

You had me at "how to score that cute waitress..."

[carbocation]

Medicine. Health policy. Policy, in general. All allow you to do what you ask (to greater or lesser degrees). Of course, there is a lot of training required to get into the 'thinking' jobs in medicine.

[pascalchristian]

Not exactly a job per se, but just go and spent your time in vegas. It took serious thinking to beat the house in roulette, poker, blackjack, or baccarat.

[Mathnerd314]

Research mathematician - since math is pure thought.