Alternate career paths

http://astrobites.com/2011/09/08/careers-in-astronomy-what-am-i-doing-with-my-life/

I'm impressed by the brevity of this article. It concisely lists a few articles of reasonable alternatives to unfortunate situations, or times when you may ask "What's the point?"

The article is prefaced with an apology to those who have their lives and futures in astro planned out, noting that grad students are often "plagued by a series of 'what ifs'." The writer, a Maria Drout, asks a question I fear will happen and might one day stop everything in its tracks: "What if, horror of horrors, I get four years into a PhD and realize that research just isn't for me?" Yep. 

Here's a summary of alternate career paths (alternate referencing all those not ending in grad school and tenured professorship at a university):

1. Research. Instead of working with a university, you can work at federally funded agency, or with a large collaboration research group.
2. Observatory Staff Scientist! This sounds like fun. You maintain instruments, while doing your own research and helping others with their research! And spending your life at an observatory. I have a few links regarding this. For instance, Keck is hiring technicians right now. :) although those are more relevant to engineers and people with lots of experience with instruments.
3. Small liberal arts teaching :) or high school
4. Science writer - for editors for Fermilab, freelance book and magazine article writing, developing physics courses, etc. This is apparently very flexible.
5. CfA press officer :) or NASA or any science institute
6. or outreach and education positions (available at most labs and universities) which might include observatory support and running planetariums and museums and teaching.
7. Industry: R&D positions pay well and give you a lot of autonomy. This particularly interested me. You expect stress and bosses and loss of autonomy, but apparently, after finally finding a job, he works in a cubicle in 'relative obscurity' - but that's a minor obstacle. He had developed  a long-range research plan for jets that he could initiate, develop and control only industry.
   He writes, "There is no adviser poking his head in for frequent updates; there is no grant committee that needs a written progress update. in fact there is no grant committee at all. If I want to do something, I do it. Succeed or fail, I own it. And failure isn't necessarily bad: if half of your projects don't end in complete failure, you're probably not pushing the boundaries enough."
   He goes on to say that there's a lot of waste expected in buying equipment, and no one will pester you about it. :( Spending money is encouraged. Impressively, "Time is worth more than money. If we need something, we buy it. In industry, you will never want for the tools you need to do your job."
   There's a difference in the way hierarchy is approached. You have bosses, sure, but they let you do your work with little supervision - treat you "like an adult...[it's] oddly liberating" because you are the expert on your subject matter, and in that regard you are in charge.
   There's no tenure - everyone is competent and hardworking. His coworkers are, "quite smart but slow to show it off; nobody cares how smart you are if you can't play well with others, and a brilliant person who nobody can stand to work with will soon be out of a job."
   And you get sleep. :) You smile, but never have job security.
   However, he says, "With a physics PhD and a good resume, in Silicon Valley, your starting salary as a minimum should begin with a "1". (knock off 20% for astronomy - sorry!) Wall Street will pay several times that, even now. Close to half a million is not unheard of. What ever you do, do NOT settle for something like $70k, because I guarantee you that jobs that pay that level won't challenge you and won't offer upward mobility. This is not academia."
   But this seems less astronomy/astrophysics based and more applicable to engineering. So it is a little tempting to me, but at the same time I've always idealized academia...
8. Business manager - managing program development for telescopes or intelligent, law enforcement, and energy.
9. A comment on the bottom of the page mentioned jobs in the federal government in fields related to science policy. Civil societies (Red Cross, Habitat for humanity, World Bank, IMP), for profits, and the Bureau of Human rights in the state department. "I met two people there that had PhDs in astronomy and three in physics. You may not do astronomy, but with your training in scientific thinking, yuo can really find that your expertise is desperately needed. many scientists got their positions via fellowships, especially the AAAS fellows and APS/AAS fellows. you can find work at State in nuclear weapons control, cyber security, international relations involving large scientific collaborations....There are jobs in the White House too." This was from nicolas Suntzeff, the Mitchell Prof. of Astro at Texas A&M.

Yep. There is it. This pretty much told me that there are jobs outside of academia after grad school, actually! :) This is good. As appealing academia is, there simply are not enough jobs for professorships for all the physics and astro grads, and (on a more personal note) I don't think I'd cut it as a professor anyways :) 

This is good. There are lots of alternative career arcts in industry, national labs, observatories (<3) and engineering and government and teaching. A lot seem to be more managerial positions, in which research is not referenced. That's not too alright with me right now.

P.S. part two of the last part of our project: Daniel, Eric, and Nathan are in this group!