Get a job programming video codecs. Then you get to feel superior and inferior at the same time. Also eternally frustrated by doing things that help everyone and no one, and that you can never finish. It’s the best of all worlds.
For real. I made the life mistake of getting a PhD but managed to turn it into an asset by doing fairly straightforward finance programming shit that scares people.
doing fairly straightforward finance programming shit that scares people.
The reason it's straightforward to you and scary to others is because you have a PhD. Even if it's not in finance, you gained abilities in reading documents, extracting useful information, integrating knowledge, teaching yourself skills, building tools, and generating reports. To most people, those are difficult things.
People absolutely can. It's just a lot easier when you have guidance from an expert advisor, multiple peers to help you out, and an established pathway to focus several years of your life on doing so.
To be clear, my PhD “advisor” was a hindrance to my education, work, life, and career. I succeeded despite my ”advisor” and broke all contact upon my defense.
1/3 of my entering cohort left without degrees. Not atypical.
Im an actuarie, so I can't say that I have problem finding job, but I prefer programming and every task I'm assigned I spend all the time necessary to do it in python.