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Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

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Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#61

Post by danieltillett »

fergie wrote: post #54

Its a bit unfair for professional football to be portrayed as an unreasonable aspiration pursued by naive working class kids. In actual fact the UK currently has around 4000 professional footballers, many of whom will play for a couple of years before moving on, and some of whom will play for a couple of decades. The UK currently has 14,000 professors the vast majority of whom will fight tooth and claw to hang on to…

Very interesting observation. I should do the equivalent comparison for Australia.

Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#62

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

raister wrote: post #51
chriskanan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other areas of computer science, first author counts for a lot. It indicates a person did the majority of the implementation work, probably wrote the first draft of the paper, etc. Typically the last author is the PI that came up with the idea, mentored the first author, and funded the work. The contributions of those in the middle are less well defined. In CS theory (and math), they go by alphabetical author orde…

This is changing, thankfully. First authors should be the ones leading the paper, according to contributions. Some journals are asking for the actual contributions performed by each author, which I think is very good. Alphabetical order should be banned, period.

You state your opinion, but don't justify it -- could you share why you think it is important we list first author by contribution? What does this accomplish?

Obviously not everyone agrees (or you wouldn't have felt the need to post), so why not share why you think you're right, so we can discuss the issue?

Edit:

Well, we've proven that people feel very strongly about this, but I'm no closer to understanding why people care so much about it. (ie, what they think it accomplishes.)

C'est la Internet, I suppose.

Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#63

Post by hycaria »

gravelc wrote: post #25

I always tell students in my field (molecular biology) to at the very least learn to code at a reasonable level and pick up some data science skills. Something transferable. At any given time in my department, there'd be five times the amount of post-grad students to full-time staff. Maybe more. It has to be obvious that there likely isn't a job at any level at the end of it. Not just high-flying jobs on the path to…

They simply decided what they valued more between later academic career and current family life (as you can have kids later). That's their choice, there's nothing to be saddened about.

Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#64

Post by rohit2412 »

neebz wrote: post #47

They can always move to Pakistan. Phds from abroad is one of the most well-paid positions here thanks to the recent influx of numerous private business-minded universities opening up in every city.

Interesting. Its different in India, where it's not the salary but the prestige that drives people to become professors. Even the research opportunities are limited, and industry pays much more.

Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#65

Post by hycaria »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4
kensai wrote: post #3

The hard truth. I wonder if a new scheme of collaborative research (to share costs) out of academia can possibly pop out. But this is hardly possible given the high costs of equipment and consumables, especially in the natural and technical sciences. Bygone are the days (in the 18th-19th century) when a single brilliant scientist could singe-handedly revolutionize his field in his home lab (the "garage" of the day).

> Bygone are the days (in the 18th-19th century) when a single brilliant scientist could singe-handedly revolutionize his field in his home lab (the "garage" of the day) Source? (Genuinely curious.)

I've heard of a contemporary mathematician who had small contributions and did it as a hobby. The recent article about insect population decrease was possible thanks to data collected by hobbyists too iirc (but ended up written by scholars I guess). I don't know if there are many other examples.

Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#66

Post by farseer »

hobofan wrote: post #2

> Permanent jobs in academia are scarce, and someone needs to let PhD students know. If you are studying on a PhD level and have not figured that out already, that's kinda on you.

You are bound to get down voted for this comment, however I do agree with you. I am one of those people who managed to realize by a good stroke of luck that perusing a Phd in my field would severely limit my earning potential. It was all the Phd grad students always talking about their money problems in the college cafeteria that gave them away.

Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#67

Post by jtauber1 »

zucchini_head wrote: post #38
yannis7 wrote: post #22

Academia nowadays is a high-tech bureaucracy; you are forced to churn out documents (papers) that need to cite other documents, and you're evaluated based on your position in the inter-document citation network. Then you have to write other documents (grant proposals) to grab money to write more documents (papers) by gaming the inner mechanics of some comittee. If partner-track investment bankers are overworked, depr…

This is essentially exactly why I have not chosen to do a PhD, but go into industry. The bureaucracy is intense in academia and you can in some places spend far too long brown-nosing upper-positions to get anywhere at all. Some of the horror stories I've heard from older people who have done a PhD are awful. For example, apparently, it's quite often that there will be a collection of people gossiping when a particula…

Not a big fan of academia either, but I don't see how this is any different than upper management/leaderahip positions in industry.

Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#69

Post by arethuza »

fergie wrote: post #54

Its a bit unfair for professional football to be portrayed as an unreasonable aspiration pursued by naive working class kids. In actual fact the UK currently has around 4000 professional footballers, many of whom will play for a couple of years before moving on, and some of whom will play for a couple of decades. The UK currently has 14,000 professors the vast majority of whom will fight tooth and claw to hang on to…

Is that the UK or US definition of "Professor" though? I've noticed some UK universities have started using additional titles of Assistant/Associate Professor as well as Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader.

Re: Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects

#70

Post by jdpigeon »

ageofwant wrote: post #43
chriskanan wrote: post #6

The longer students stay in a PhD program, the less likely they want to be professors. Typically many first year students say this, but the numbers quickly drop off in later years. When I was a PhD student, I gave a few talks and blogged about this issue. I would present all these statistics in my talks about what they needed to do to be competitive, and people just absolutely hated me for it. One person said she wan…

'Professor' is a job description, you usually need a PhD to apply for the job, but it's not always a hard requirement. There are many more people with PhD's than Professor jobs. In my experience its the politically astute that get the job, its much less of a meritocracy than one would assume.

Absolutely my experience as well. The grad students I've seen make it to professorship positions are all the ones who:

1. Sacrifice all social life outside science.

2. Play the schmoozing and reputation management game very well (Twitter is taking off for this).

3. Mercilessly squeeze every last drop of productivity out of the undergrads assigned to them.

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