Career 1: A key decision point in my career (v1.0)

There is a theory in investing called sunk cost fallacy. 

Human nature is to fall prey to the “sunk cost fallacy” which means that a person continues a path because of what they have invested. 

Let’s say that you were actually half-way through your Ph.D., and you discovered that you hated it. The logical choice is to cease your investment. Many people fail to use logic and reason and “invest the next dollar” because they already invested so much. 

Along with efficient market hypothesis, sunk-cost fallacy is a worthy topic for my investing blogs if i get into behavioral finance. My next few blogs are on investing. 

Here is a classic case where I avoided the sunk cost fallacy at the very start of my career. 

When I was doing my masters, I was a teaching assistant for one year that paid all expenses. I wasn't too excited with that line of work. A Professor offered me a 1-year research assistantship for the second year which paid my expenses. Since at that time I was still pondering a career in academics, I accepted. 

My research subject was discrete queueing networks. This is high mathematics and is very relevant in communications systems. I toiled on that project and thought I had solved it. I approached a professor with expertise in the field and had his PHD student review it and he poked it full of holes. I had a choice of either fixing it and making it work or find a new research topic. By then I had concluded I neither liked teaching nor academic research and I was better suited for industry., I graduated with my masters and did not convert to a PHD program. The PhD student went on to become an eminent researcher in discrete queueing networks and I found papers yesterday from him on that in 1979 and 1980. But I no longer understand the subject so can't read it. 

My professor apparently worked on my future wife and gave her the guidance that I was halfway to a PHD which was not really true in my view. At that time I would have done almost anything she wanted (I became more assertive only later). But I stuck to my guns I went on to a successful career in Silicon Valley. Industry is dog eat dog competition. The pace of tech evolution is very rapid, and you adapt or die. Stress levels can be high. But I handled all that instead of a more cloistered academic life. I made the right choice for me. 

I updated my life partner yesterday on what really transpired after hearing her once again claim incorrectly that I was halfway to a PhD. 

My professor was cheerful, kind and a wise mentor, but he had a vested interest on keeping me on research under him. Besides I did not confide to him my thinking. I posted a fond remembrance on his obituary web page. He was there at a critical moment in my life when my career launched. He gave me the opportunity to try research which helped me decide what I really wanted to do.