I'm working on my next column for Contract Pharma, and it reminded me of a conversation I had a few years ago with a former colleague. He and I had worked at the same drug company for a few years, then he went on to an MBA degree and a job on Wall Street.

How, I asked him, did the two of us spend all those years in school, and spend all the mental effort that we did every day in the course of our jobs, but end up working in fields that are so dominated by chance? Picking winners in the stock market is a lucrative business, as is picking winners in drug discovery, but doing it consistently in either profession is next to impossible. Why, I wondered didn't we have the sense to end up doing work whose rewards were more closely correlated with the effort that went into them?

I still don't have an answer for that one. But a part of it might be that I'd find a job like that a bit. . .well, boring. I like not knowing what's going to happen next, wondering if the next compound is going to be the one that finally works. The jobs where effort and results are most perfectly matched are done by machines, not people. And any job that can by done by a machine should be, as far as I'm concerned. I guess I'll stick with the sort of craziness that only a human can appreciate.