[patio11]

This is isomorphic to "Would you leave a well-paid job to start a career as a ballet dancer?" To which my answer depends: a) am I already rich? and b) do I really, really want to become a ballet dancer? If I am not already rich and I do not want to be a ballet dancer like I want to breathe, that would be a really poor decision.

Most particularly, if I like watching ballet and would be happy to see more of ballet in the world but I have a foggy idea of what ballet dancing professionally looks like outside of public performances, I would think that I'm probably overly romanticizing the ballet dancing option and, at the very minimum, speak to three practicing ballet dancers to get their opinion on the career prior to investigating it further. I would make special effort not to speak to ballet dancers who achieve the level of success which allows them to attempt to hire me to join their dance company. Those might be comparatively few in number but disproportionately happy with the career path, since after all they get to have beautiful young people prancing about all day on their whim and don't need to pay anyone anything to make it happen.

[zura]

Agree, although at some places being a ballet dancer is a formal requirement - e.g. I was thinking to get a PhD some years ago only to be able to work in places like Microsoft Research, but eventually decided that it was not worth it... Also, there were no REMOTE PhD positions :)

[seanmcdirmid]

Not everyone at MSR have phd's, some of our best people don't.

[zura]

I see you're based in Beijing. I even remember it was explicitly mentioned on MSR jobs page that PhD was not required for Asian sites (India and probably China).

[seanmcdirmid]

Also in Redmond. Many are RSDEs, but there are also some researchers (principals even).