Why give advice?

So recently in a few conversations (revolving around the tech recruiting service I am starting), I get asked the question “Why are you bothering to give me advice?”.

It is something I have done regularly for almost a decade – but for many years it was not publicized. So from blog posts I get emails from academics/grad students maybe once a month on stats questions. And more recently with going to the private sector, I get emails once a month from first/second degree connections about my experience with that. (These are actually more often mid-career academics than newly minted PhDs.)

So I have just made it more public that I give that type of advice. On this blog I started an irregular ask me anything. I will often just turn these into their own blog posts, see for example my advice on learning stats/machine learning. And for the tech recruiting I have been having phone calls with individuals recently and forwarding potential opportunities, see my recent post on different tech positions and salary ranges.

It is hard for me to articulate why I do this that is not cheesy or hubristic (if that is even a word). Individuals who have gotten criminal justice (CJ) PhDs in the last 15 years, we likely have very similar shared experiences. One thing that has struck me – and I feel this even more strongly now than I did when I was an academic – is that individuals who I know that have a CJ Phd are really smart. I have not met a single CJ PhD who I was like “how did this person get a PhD?”.

This simultaneously makes me sad/angry/frustrated when I see very talented individuals go through essentially the same struggles I did in academia. But for the grace of God there I go. On the flipside I have gotten some very bad advice in my career – not intentionally malicious but often from senior people in my life who did not know better given their lack of contemporary knowledge. (I wonder if that is inevitable when we get older – always critically examine advice, even from me!)

Some people I know do “life-coaching”, or simply charge per meeting. To be clear I don’t have any plans on doing that. It just doesn’t make sense for me to do that (the hubris thing – I think my advice is worth that, but I am not interested in squeezing people for a few dollars). If I am too busy to have a 30 minute phone call or send an email with quick stat advice I will just say so.

Life isn’t zero sum – if you do well that does not mean I do bad – quite the opposite for the majority of scenarios. I want to see my colleagues and friends be in positions that better appreciate (and compensate) their skills.