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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

#111

Post by ptero »

chriskanan wrote: post #39
disinterred wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you become a tenured professor, the amount of work you do is far less than the vast majority of other jobs with a similar salary. The only real commitments are the classes you have to teach and if you minimize the amount of teaching you do, you'll barely be working at all. I knew a history professor that would come into the university for his 1 or 2 classes per week and then would go home for the rest of the day…

I'm going to disagree with this for science and engineering. All of my tenured colleagues work very hard. You have to if you want to keep running a lab, which is the main reason why people choose to become professors. If you stop working hard, you will stop getting funding and PhD students. The department will make you teach more and can make your life difficult if you are being a drag on the department, even if they…

Things are different for those doing theoretical science where the main instruments are pen and paper. External funding is often not required at all. This might not please the department, but the tenured professor would be just fine.

When I did my PhD I worked in Math and CS (plus had friends in Physics with similar observations): many professors on the theoretical side had no need for and were not interested in getting grants. They would get some minor travel money for conference expenses and pay themselves over summer so they would not have to teach then, but even if they got nothing they would be just fine on a base salary. And I am talking about reasonably well known full professors, not some young researcher at the end of a rope (career-wise).

Things are different when you have experimental labs to run. That is when you need external funding and have to do all that is involved in getting it (proposals unlimited, etc.)

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

#112

Post by anjc »

wil421 wrote: post #108
disinterred wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you become a tenured professor, the amount of work you do is far less than the vast majority of other jobs with a similar salary. The only real commitments are the classes you have to teach and if you minimize the amount of teaching you do, you'll barely be working at all. I knew a history professor that would come into the university for his 1 or 2 classes per week and then would go home for the rest of the day…

My programming 101 teacher was exactly like this except instead of going home he would go to his lab. He was extremely disorganized and would spend the first 30-45 minutes of class making sure his java programs were working for the lecture. A student finally asked him why he doesn’t come prepared to class. His response was he teaches he easiest class the can and only the minimum amount of classes he needs to. He want…

> He wanted to work on his research and get grants not teach.

Working on research that's worthy of grants is extremely taxing, and is the part that makes universities function. Teaching undergrads is a chore.

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

#113

Post by mathperson »

Qworg wrote: post #104
ptero wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think work hours and salary have a bimodal distribution, driven by tenured / non-tenured status. My experience is in theoretical math/physics -- I got my PhD but decided not to stay in academia; there are pros and cons to both options. IME most tenured professors have to work significantly less than others for the same salary (those who work more mostly do it because they like working with grad students, not becaus…

Also, many tenured professors double dip into industry as well, leveraging their guaranteed position for minimized exposure if the startup goes poorly.

Depends on field.

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

#114

Post by anjc »

disinterred wrote: post #29
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…

When you become a tenured professor, the amount of work you do is far less than the vast majority of other jobs with a similar salary. The only real commitments are the classes you have to teach and if you minimize the amount of teaching you do, you'll barely be working at all. I knew a history professor that would come into the university for his 1 or 2 classes per week and then would go home for the rest of the day…

Teaching is a distraction to the real work that goes on in universities. Just because you don't see professors teaching, doesn't mean that they aren't working extremely hard, on very important and stressful tasks (i.e. tasks that are fundamental to the university being a viable organisation)

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

#115

Post by IanCal »

Cyph0n wrote: post #89
SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

It shows who did the most work in an unambiguous way. If you have never collaborated on a paper, you'll probably think this is not important, but in reality it is. Interestingly, some fields where alphabetical order is used have started adding a note that explicitly shows who did how much work.

I think the problem is that it's really not that unambiguous. There are general rules to the order but it's not explicit, and being second author doesn't explain in any kind of detail what was done.

I'm quite a fan of explicitly tagging authors for what they did. That way you avoid deciding whether the person who did the stats did "more work" than the person who did the code, etc.

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

#116

Post by IanCal »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #97
jorvi wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't see how ordering purely on name is extremely unfair to those whose first letter of name is one of the last in the alphabet..?

I have such a name -- doesn't particularly bother me. I understand how people can feel that way though, but my question is -- why is that feeling anything but obsessing over a vanity metric, and actually a useful mechanism for author evaluation?

It's important in the way papers are referenced.

https://library.leeds.ac.uk/skills-citations-harvard#activat...

> If a source has three or more authors, the name of the first author should be given, followed by the phrase "et al".

It might be good if this wasn't the case, but since it is, it's a realistic concern for authors.

Beyond that, really the reason will be that this is what people the people who decide your funding see.

Perhaps a useful example would be like saying if you have more than a few people in your team, anyone referring to your project must say "Alan's team" because Alan's name is the first in the list, even if they're a junior or part time. This is what your bosses see come promotion time, all that great work like Alan's team (2016) and who can forget the amazing piece of work Alan's team (2015).

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

#117

Post by rahimnathwani »

hyperbovine wrote: post #94
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…

> ... you work 80 hours per week and make less than ... I've read so many comments like yours, on HN and elsewhere, and invariably the argument hinges on some variation of the above sentiment. I've come to believe I just have fundamentally different values than the vast majority of people who work in industry. To answer your (friends') question, because the work is more interesting and I make plenty of money as it st…

I met an amateur comedian recently who mentioned he's almost done with his PhD, but will never make back the lost earnings from the time he's invested. Whilst he talked, part of me was thinking 'man, if only your PhD were in machine learning'. I didn't say it out loud, though.

It turned out he's about to complete a PhD in machine learning, but doesn't want to work in Silicon Valley, or for a big company, or in finance (he lives in a financial capital).

Different people have different motivations, but I find it hard to imagine myself choosing the same constraints were I in the same situation.

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

#118

Post by whipoodle »

hyperbovine wrote: post #94
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…

> ... you work 80 hours per week and make less than ... I've read so many comments like yours, on HN and elsewhere, and invariably the argument hinges on some variation of the above sentiment. I've come to believe I just have fundamentally different values than the vast majority of people who work in industry. To answer your (friends') question, because the work is more interesting and I make plenty of money as it st…

Probably so! To me, anyone working those kind of hours for any institution other than an enterprise they own is almost surely being exploited. It would help things along if the person were passionate about it, to be sure.

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

#119

Post by wil421 »

anjc wrote: post #112
wil421 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My programming 101 teacher was exactly like this except instead of going home he would go to his lab. He was extremely disorganized and would spend the first 30-45 minutes of class making sure his java programs were working for the lecture. A student finally asked him why he doesn’t come prepared to class. His response was he teaches he easiest class the can and only the minimum amount of classes he needs to. He want…

> He wanted to work on his research and get grants not teach. Working on research that's worthy of grants is extremely taxing, and is the part that makes universities function. Teaching undergrads is a chore.

I understand but the students are the ones struggling due to an absent teacher. I’m greatful he wants to do research but jaded due to the fact he doesnt care about the class or students.

My education was subpar due to his lack of effort.

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

#120

Post by pc86 »

mattkrause wrote: post #23
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.

Someone posts this glib comment every time academic careers are discussed. It's true, and yet harder than you'd think. Suppose you know that only 1 in 10 PhDs in your field end up in a tenure track job. A decent fraction of your classmates are interested in industry--or never want to see the inside of a lab again. Maybe this reduces the competition down to one in six or seven. You're in a pretty good program, definit…

I enjoy providing mentorship and helping out younger developers, but I certainly don't have any responsibility to do so.
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