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Don't Become a Scientist.

wuphys.wustl.edu

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Re: Don't Become a Scientist.

#61

Post by yummyfajitas »

aswanson wrote: post #55

Are the prospects this bad in math as well?

Yes. In my year, we had 12 people entering at Rutgers.

2 graduated in 5 years, and got good postdocs after 1 year (one went to UIUC, I'm at Courant). We are the only ones who have a real shot at research oriented tenure track.

1 dropped out in the first year, 2 more have or are dropping out with a masters (1 after 4.5 years, 1 after 6).

3 more will graduate after 6 years, IF they can find a job (50% odds). One guy has a wife, and hopes he can find a job in the NYC area (he's looking at a 4+4 teaching load). I know other people who have such jobs: none like them.

1 more is potentially a long termer (he hopes to graduate in 7 years).

The only major difference is that you will probably not be a technician (as described by this guy), you will do your own research from the beginning. You can also survive without grants, though it will hurt your career.

Re: Don't Become a Scientist.

#62

Post by npk »

michael_nielsen wrote: post #57

A dissenting view It's true that, as the article and many commenters have said,there are lots of bad places, and bad cultures within academia. So what? There's also some great groups and great cultures within academia. If you want to go the academic path, the thing to do is to make sure you end up in such a place. So far as I can see the way to achieve this is: (1) Do a lot of research before you join a group. Just b…

I'd like to second Michael's point. My research is genuinely exciting. It's enthralling for little kids, grandparents, and everything in between. More importantly, I find my research fascinating.

The career path is challenging. Salary/hours worked sucks. Multiple moves are required for the two postdocs and a permanent job. There are serious politics.

The question is ultimately personal. Is academia worth it?

Re: Don't Become a Scientist.

#63

Post by amichail »

npk wrote: post #62
michael_nielsen wrote: post #57

A dissenting view It's true that, as the article and many commenters have said,there are lots of bad places, and bad cultures within academia. So what? There's also some great groups and great cultures within academia. If you want to go the academic path, the thing to do is to make sure you end up in such a place. So far as I can see the way to achieve this is: (1) Do a lot of research before you join a group. Just b…

I'd like to second Michael's point. My research is genuinely exciting. It's enthralling for little kids, grandparents, and everything in between. More importantly, I find my research fascinating. The career path is challenging. Salary/hours worked sucks. Multiple moves are required for the two postdocs and a permanent job. There are serious politics. The question is ultimately personal. Is academia worth it?

If you are an independent thinker and don't care much about what your peers think, then I don't think academia is a good choice.

I think it's no coincidence that startup founders tend to be more of the rebellious types.

Re: Don't Become a Scientist.

#64

Post by lg »

timr wrote: post #14

Although I agree with nearly everything he says in this essay, it's worth pointing out that he has written several other pieces that would make most normal people question his grip on sanity. At the very least, this guy is eccentric. Also, the numbers he cited are from 1999, and are getting a bit dated. NIH post-doc stipends are now roughly $40k/year (including in the most expensive cities, like San Francisco); grad-…

By the way, this isn't true for chemists. My roommate's a chem major and has interned all over the place; the scientists he works with apparently had little trouble finding jobs (here in NJ, anyway). Of course, their research centers on perfume or toothpaste...

Re: Don't Become a Scientist.

#65

Post by nostrademons »

ivankirigin wrote: post #42
timr wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who are broke from grad school. :-/

Most PhDs in technical fields get paid tuition and a stipend.

On the order of $15-20K/year. It's hard to save money when you've got a poverty-level stipend.

Re: Don't Become a Scientist.

#66

Post by nostrademons »

anewaccountname wrote: post #7
electric wrote: post #5

"I became a scientist in order to have the freedom to work on problems which interest me." I thought a more reasonable path to this would be to join a startup or three, get rich and then spend the rest of your life getting a PhD, working on interesting problems, etc. No? ;)

Since one out of ten fail, that wouldn't be the best strategy.

Assuming you meant "9 out of 10 fail", and that the average failure takes a year, including recovery time at a real job to replenish your finances and find a new idea...

That means you've had 6 chances just by the time your colleagues have finished grad school. 0.9^6 = 0.53, so you have a 47% chance of being a multi-millionaire by the time your academic friends are even entering the rat race. Compare that to the article's "If you're 95th-percentile lucky you might get a post-doc position, then you have a 50-50 chance of getting a tenure track position." Your odds are about 10 times better with the tech startup.

Then consider that at a minimum, you should expect 2 years of postdoc and another 6 years before getting tenure. That's now 14 years of training before you can actually work on what you want. 14 startup attempts with a 90% failure rate gives you a roughly 80% chance of success. The startup path is starting to look mighty good...

Re: Don't Become a Scientist.

#67

Post by mechanical_fish »

michael_nielsen wrote: post #57

A dissenting view It's true that, as the article and many commenters have said,there are lots of bad places, and bad cultures within academia. So what? There's also some great groups and great cultures within academia. If you want to go the academic path, the thing to do is to make sure you end up in such a place. So far as I can see the way to achieve this is: (1) Do a lot of research before you join a group. Just b…

If the article at the top of the thread is atypical of a tenured professor, this post is absolutely typical. I've heard this speech a million times. If you ever need to hear it again, ask any professor to give it to you and they'll happily oblige.

Undoubtedly, most tenured professors are having an "absolute blast". Why shouldn't they be? They are the end product of a rigorous system of selection for their particular set of personality traits. If you're not the kind of person who adores being a researcher to the exclusion of all other thoughts -- if you are not either a truly diehard optimist, or the most stubborn person you'll ever know -- you won't make it to where this guy is.

The career advice here is good, solid advice, as far as it goes. But the parody of this would be fun to write, and might contain equal amounts of truth. ("(2) Iterate until you find a group that looks excellent, or until you discover that all the excellent groups have a waiting list, at which point you need to either quit grad school, apply for a personal fellowship and win it, or work for whoever has the grant money to pay you.")

No time for extensive parody today, though -- besides, the guy at Piled Higher and Deeper has covered that ground better than I ever could -- so I'll leave you with this caveat: Very, very few of the people you interview with in a research group will ever tell you that your academic career is a waste of time and that you should just leave, even if it's true. They've got a very strong incentive to recruit you, so that you can apply your inexpensive intelligence and energy to their projects. They've got an incentive to be careful what they say to you, because if word gets back to their colleagues that they are discouraging prospective students it might derail their careers. They also have an even bigger incentive to keep fooling themselves.

And, you know, academic scientists really don't like pain. They're not drill sergeants. Taking starry-eyed optimists, most of whom remind you of yourself, and kicking them in the chest is not a lot of fun. It's for their own good, but it feels like euthanizing puppies. It's just so much easier to encourage them to follow the same path that you did, and to let time and nature and bureaucracy take care of teaching them the harsh realities of life.

Re: Don't Become a Scientist.

#68

Post by michael_nielsen »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #67
michael_nielsen wrote: post #57

A dissenting view It's true that, as the article and many commenters have said,there are lots of bad places, and bad cultures within academia. So what? There's also some great groups and great cultures within academia. If you want to go the academic path, the thing to do is to make sure you end up in such a place. So far as I can see the way to achieve this is: (1) Do a lot of research before you join a group. Just b…

If the article at the top of the thread is atypical of a tenured professor, this post is absolutely typical. I've heard this speech a million times. If you ever need to hear it again, ask any professor to give it to you and they'll happily oblige. Undoubtedly, most tenured professors are having an "absolute blast". Why shouldn't they be? They are the end product of a rigorous system of selection for their particular…

"Very, very few of the people you interview with in a research group will ever tell you that your academic career is a waste of time and that you should just leave, even if it's true."

It's true that they'll rarely say this explicitly. Ultimately, it's the potential grad student's responsibility to dig and find out what kind of a culture a research group has. This is a difficult thing to do, requiring considerable self-confidence and tenacity. Still, in my opinion, if someone is not willing to do this, then they really should consider some path other than academia.

"(2) Iterate until you find a group that looks excellent, or until you discover that all the excellent groups have a waiting list, at which point you need to either quit grad school, apply for a personal fellowship and win it, or work for whoever has the grant money to pay you."

You seem to be implicitly assuming that the world owes you a position in a good group. It doesn't. If you can't find one, then you shouldn't work for whoever has grant money to pay you. You should go and do something else - like start a company.

Re: Don't Become a Scientist.

#69

Post by yters »

amichail wrote: post #63
npk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to second Michael's point. My research is genuinely exciting. It's enthralling for little kids, grandparents, and everything in between. More importantly, I find my research fascinating. The career path is challenging. Salary/hours worked sucks. Multiple moves are required for the two postdocs and a permanent job. There are serious politics. The question is ultimately personal. Is academia worth it?

If you are an independent thinker and don't care much about what your peers think, then I don't think academia is a good choice. I think it's no coincidence that startup founders tend to be more of the rebellious types.

Unless a person needs specialized equipment or materials, why go into academia for research in the first place? It's easy enough to become financially free so you can spend all your time researching. The internet is there if you need to collaborate.

Re: Don't Become a Scientist.

#70

Post by timr »

ced wrote: post #54
timr wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There are people I know who have endured years of continuing depression because they were unable to become tenured professors. But there are also people I know who are depressed because they aren't bestselling novelists, professional musicians, lottery winners, or Bill Gates." Granted, but science is totally unlike music, writing or gambling, in that that the best-case payoff is still quite meager. Wanting to become…

> but a professorship depends only on intelligence Myeah, but personal relationships and contacts play a big role. Along with where you live. Einstein was kept out of academia before his big year, right? How close were we from losing him altogether?

My writing wasn't totally clear. That sentence would be better if it read "a professorship ostensibly depends only on intelligence."
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