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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

#151

Post by Robotbeat »

emodendroket wrote: post #136
Robotbeat wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Baker/cook: you're making food for people, either to nourish them or give them joy. Farmer: you're making food for people. Construction worker: you're making buildings for people to live or work or play in. I think the problem is that many of our jobs are crappy, not that almost every human endeavor is equivalent to pushing paper around. Nurses, doctors, etc, are doing important work as well. The bad part is when it'…

Curiously none of the jobs you mentioned are well paid (well, I guess it depends on who you mean to include, since owning a farm or being Mario Batali probably isn't bad). But besides that I think we could do the same thing, really. A cynic could say a farmer just grows surplus corn to collect subsidies on ethanol.

Most farmers don't grow ethanol. And ethanol is a fuel, it isn't just paper, regardless of the subsidies.

As far as being well-paid: farmers are fairly well-paid. They have to work hard and use a LOT of what you might call automation (combine harvesters and the like).

But to your point: I sometimes am persuaded by the conjecture that we developed BS paper-pushing jobs for people since we've automated away farming, much of manufacturing, etc. Office Space comes to mind, too.

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

#152

Post by mattkrause »

ptero wrote: post #111
chriskanan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gett…

It's not just the lab supplies. I worked at an institute that reserved the right to cut salaries if an individual was not bringing in enough money.

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

#153

Post by KKKKkkkk1 »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #5

When deciding to do my PhD I did so under the assumption that I wouldn't work in academia afterward. I evaluated it like a any other job offer at the time and decided that the tax free pay, coupled with the freedom to run my project how I wanted and work on what I wanted (within reason) for a fixed period of time was a better offer than a grad scheme with BAE, Nissan, Seimens etc. Doing a PhD built a large array of s…

> the freedom to run my project how I wanted and work on what I wanted (within reason) for a fixed period of time was a better offer than a grad scheme with BAE, Nissan, Seimens etc.

Don't know where you're doing your PhD (based on your comment about tax-free pay, I gather you're not in the States). That's not how things work in most places. You enter grad school with a vague idea of what research you want to do, and in 9 out of 10 cases you'll be doing something entirely different. The research you'll be doing is whatever your advisor has funding for. It's not "your" project at all, it's your advisor's, and your job is to produce the deliverables that he promised as part of his grant proposal. Consequently, you have very little freedom about what you're doing and how you're doing it.

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

#154

Post by asafira »

Hey, so I'm a PhD student (in Physics) at Harvard that has been looking into these issues (as graduate council president in the department), and I really don't like the bickering that occurs between (roughly speaking) die-hard academia pursuers and the others that feel there is a lack in support for non-academic jobs. Here are by far the most compelling issues that I think need to be fixed that both sides should be able to agree on:

1) Professors really, really need to be open to talking to their students about what they want in their career and what's sort of career path they are considering. Not having this discussion is prevalent but honestly somewhat outrageous.

2) Internships really should become more widely accepted within greater academia (i.e., outside CS). There are a huge number of great arguments for them, including

a) Exposure. There are a huge number of PhD candidates that have actually never had a job, or even just have never been exposed to what their greatest-interest career is post graduate school.

b) Their length is a drop in the bucket compared to the total length of a PhD. (3 months vs 5.5 years average in my Dept)

c) professors worry their graduate students will become less interested in research after an internship. My thought: great! I am super happy that person found something that makes them happier.

The biggest argument against internships has always been something like 'professors can't just be super flexible with their students, they have their own constraints (grants, etc.)' I'm not proposing that professors go through crazy great lengths to make sure their student can get an internship. I simply think that should become an accepted part of the culture and be an ok thing to discuss with your adviser. Right now, students are literally scared at the reprocussions of even bringing it up.

Disclaimer: I interned at Waymo last summer.

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

#155

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#156

Post by dbmikus »

hycaria wrote: post #63
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.

The 20s to early 30s is the healthiest time to have a child, for both the child and the mother. Now, you can have children in your late thirties and beyond, but that can get more difficult depending on the specific health situation of the parents.

Also, there is a problem in parity for how having a child affects men vs women. It is easier for a man to become a parent and maintain a career than it is for the mother.

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

#157

Post by burnerOh2125 »

Yea, i went into a phd program in biomedical sciences, spent 2 1/2 years doing computational biology, studying math, computer science and machine learning, not to mention working on project, then left. It was at the point where the prospect of out competing 7/8 of my fellow phd students was not work it, when all of my skills, where transferable to industry, even without staying for the phd. Part of me wishes I did stay, and I'll probably go back for a masters at some point. who knows. Anyway, the system really is designed to get phd students to do the heavy lifting, at 30k a year, for 6 year stretches. Why would I do that, when I have dropped out, and tripled my salary?

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

#158

Post by tertius »

fhood wrote: post #140
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…

I happen to be extremely well acquainted with one tenured professor of biological oceanography, and one tenure track professor of physical oceanography, and I can't say I agree with your observation. My experience has been that tenure or not, the amount of work that these individuals have on their plate is essentially endless. Grants are extremely difficult to come by these days, although its getting better, and it i…

> Grants are extremely difficult to come by these days

Only because of competition. It's still vastly better in the U.S. than any other country.

Competition is good.

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

#159

Post by crispyambulance »

VLM wrote: post #122
michaelt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're pursuing pro football, don't you have to neglect your schooling to compete with the other players? If so, doesn't that close more doors than the academic route, where you can take your degree/masters/phd to industry any time you like?

There's always tradeoffs; serious academic pursuit means neglecting physical fitness and life goals (relationships and fun and such). Its easier to recover from time lost on the sportsball path than time lost on the academic path.

Everyone makes sacrifices. There are reasons why pro athletes retire in their 30's. Aside from deterioration of performance, injuries start to take their toll. On the other hand nothing stops an academic from staying reasonably fit-- not enough to win races, perhaps, but easily enough to not suffer from sedentary ailments.

Relationships are difficult for anyone that pursues extreme success, athlete or academic.

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

#160

Post by Analog24 »

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…

I wouldn't extrapolate too far from those horror stories you heard. My experience was nothing like what you describe. Plus there are many reasons to get a PhD other than going into academia and when you're a grad student you don't have to deal with any of the politics or the other "grimy" parts (at least not in the vast majority of cases).

There are many downsides to academia, the papermill mentality that has become pervasive being a big one, but this picture of a morally bankrupt subculture where people do whatever they can to get to the top is nothing like what I experienced.

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