I got my biomedical engineering PhD, and was a neurology professor at a top children's hospital doing brain/epilepsy research for a few years. Literally my dream job for most of my life. I left it two years ago due to many of the reasons listed, and got a job going quant/algorithmic trading at a prop firm. I have never been happier, it is a hell of of a lot less stressful, I may actually pay off my student loans before I retire, we just bought a house, and obviously don't regret it for a second. Most of my old friends at my old job are jealous; they have psych or bio backgrounds, and have more or less hit their ceilings in terms of where that skill set can take them. For engineers who know how to code (I was a core contributer to www.bci2000.org for a decade+), math is math, and it doesn't matter if it is doing real time processing of brain signals or market data.
Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories
11–20 of 186 posts
Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories
#12I would say "stay as far away from academic research as you possibly can" is the best advice someone can get these days. It is an awful, stressful waste of the prime of your life. From what I saw in biomed only 1/10,000 or so will end up with the time, skills, and appropriately ambitious project to allow a decent job to get done. The rest will be forced to produce BS (literally, most of it is just misinformation at t…
I strongly disagree. A PhD in the sciences or engineering is a degree in how to do research and it prepares people for careers in research or for careers that require communicating research. If a person is only satisfied with being a professor at a R1 university, then don't do a PhD, but there are a ton of other jobs that require or greatly benefit from having one, e.g, teaching universities, NASA, government labs, many research oriented groups in companies (FAIR, Google Research, biomedical companies, etc.), science policy advising, etc.
One needs to have clear expectations going into the PhD about what they are trying to do and they need to have clear communication with their advisor.
The vast majority of PhDs in science and engineering do very well and find jobs, but most don't get professorships at research focused institutions. Having realistic expectations is key, but a career in research is great.
A PhD is stressful and takes 5-6 years, but it can be a great experience with the correct expectations and a solid plan. The main problem is that most PhD students don't seem to think about those things nearly enough and have unreasonable expectations.
Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories
#13None of my research friends that have gone to industry regret it... Some of my friends that have gone on to academic jobs regret the decision.
Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories
#14None of my research friends that have gone to industry regret it... Some of my friends that have gone on to academic jobs regret the decision.
Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories
#15I would say "stay as far away from academic research as you possibly can" is the best advice someone can get these days. It is an awful, stressful waste of the prime of your life. From what I saw in biomed only 1/10,000 or so will end up with the time, skills, and appropriately ambitious project to allow a decent job to get done. The rest will be forced to produce BS (literally, most of it is just misinformation at t…
>I would say "stay as far away from academic research as you possibly can" is the best advice someone can get these days. It is an awful, stressful waste of the prime of your life. On the other hand, spending some years pursuing a PhD can be a great time to build skills and introspect in life. I grew a lot in that time in a way I don't think I would have with a job. Of course, if you have a very stressful advisor, it…
Doing something like a PhD is a great place to find other people who might be interested in co-founding a startup!
NB That's what I did after ~5 years in academic research at a UK university and never really regretted not finishing by PhD as I had no intention of going back into research.
Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories
#16[deleted]
Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories
#17"if you pay a man a salary for doing research, he and you will want to have something to point to at the end of the year to show that the money has not been wasted. In promising work of the highest class, however, results do not come in this regular fashion, in fact years may pass without any tangible result being obtained, and the position of the paid worker would be very embarrassing and he would naturally take to…
I think that was what tenure was supposed to be for.
Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories
#18I would say "stay as far away from academic research as you possibly can" is the best advice someone can get these days. It is an awful, stressful waste of the prime of your life. From what I saw in biomed only 1/10,000 or so will end up with the time, skills, and appropriately ambitious project to allow a decent job to get done. The rest will be forced to produce BS (literally, most of it is just misinformation at t…
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Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories
#19I feel for these scientists. I understand what they went through- I went through it myself during the run-up of biomedical training in the mid-to-late 90's. After being a PI at a national lab for a few years, trying to get funded against more experienced scientists (some of whom copied my ideas!) I decided to move to industry.
Now I have a job with a well-defined 20% time dedicated to research with effectively no limits on what I can do. I don't need to ask for funding- the resources I need are just expenses I charge against my company's effectively infinite budget. If I want to write a paper, I do- and those papers get cited far more highly than my previous papers, because my employer's name is gold.
My salary is high enough that I maintain a lab in my garage and self-fund most of my experiments.
This path doesn't work for everybody (the number of positions in industry that allow this freedom is limited) but in my experience it allowed me far more time to be a productive researcher than if I had tried to be a professor at a tier-1 university or a researcher at a national lab.
Interestingly, my PhD training (in biomed) turned out to be ideal for being a data scientist, and my personal interests that I pursued during my training turned out to be ideal for working at my firm. In some sense, PhD programs produce the best programmers and researchers in industry, along with teaching a fair amount of how to deal with politics, which is critical in both academia and industry.
Re: Young, talented and fed-up: scientists tell their stories
#20I would say "stay as far away from academic research as you possibly can" is the best advice someone can get these days. It is an awful, stressful waste of the prime of your life. From what I saw in biomed only 1/10,000 or so will end up with the time, skills, and appropriately ambitious project to allow a decent job to get done. The rest will be forced to produce BS (literally, most of it is just misinformation at t…
I strongly disagree. A PhD in the sciences or engineering is a degree in how to do research and it prepares people for careers in research or for careers that require communicating research. If a person is only satisfied with being a professor at a R1 university, then don't do a PhD, but there are a ton of other jobs that require or greatly benefit from having one, e.g, teaching universities, NASA, government labs, m…
>A PhD is stressful and takes 5-6 years, but it can be a great experience with the correct expectations and a solid plan. The main problem is that most PhD students don't seem to think about those things nearly enough and have unreasonable expectations.
Honestly, I think the main problem is mostly that PhD students are, on the one hand, full-grown adults supporting themselves, and yet are, on the other hand, paid McDonalds wages to do the most intensive intellectual work our society has for Goldman Sachs hours.