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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

#201

Post by tom_mellior »

crocowhile wrote: post #181
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…

Perhaps this is true in some countries. In the USA and Europe, the average professor works 61 hours a week and encounters very high levels of stress, linked to continuously having to obtain research funds.

> 61 hours a week

That's an oddly specific number that I wouldn't expect to agree exactly across the USA and "Europe". Do you have a source?

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

#202

Post by robotresearcher »

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…

There are lazy and burned out tenured profs. But they are a small minority. To get tenure at a good school, you have to be something of a work beast, and self-driven. That doesn't go away just because you get the tenure letter in your mailbox one day.

I know hundreds of tenured profs in science and engineering and there is a very strong work culture.

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

#203

Post by make3 »

Halladie7 wrote: post #107
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…

Grad school dropout here. I never wanted to be a professor. I have no interest in teaching. I just wanted to research. My degree would have been in CS/ML/NLP. When I realized that I would be out over half a million dollars in earnings over the time I was in grad school, I made the decision to leave. The fact that my advisor was a terrible researcher and a horrible person made it much easier.

wouldn't you have made more at the end?

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

#204

Post by emodendroket »

Robotbeat wrote: post #151
emodendroket wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, mu…

Well, a lot of people work on a farm who are not by any stretch of the imagination rich, and someone operating a large factory farm is probably not the image that comes to mind when you think "farmer," is what I meant to say.

As for the ethanol, it's a fuel, but without the subsidies and legal mandates would there be a good reason to use it? I'd always heard it's not really efficient and the environmental impact is negligible-to-negative, even though on the surface being renewable is good.

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

#205

Post by tertius »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #191
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…

>> Lastly, I want to add that a PhD is a degree in learning how to do research and in becoming one of the world's foremost experts on a particular topic. I think that also goes to answer the question about motivation despite long hours and low salaries. Knowledge is its own reward, I guess. Also, doing work that really satisfies you is a big privilege. Big big privilege. Not many people enjoy that, the world over.

> doing work that really satisfies you is a big privilege

This is also quite rare in Academia. Much of the work is still just as unenjoyable as a normal job.

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

#206

Post by tertius »

dagw wrote: post #132
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…

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. Some of the hardest working people I know are tenured professors. Managing international research projects is no walk in the park.

> Some of the hardest working people I know are tenured professors.

Some of the harder working people I know are post docs...

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

#208

Post by geebee »

Overall, this is overwhelmingly true, to the point that I feel slightly embarrassed to want to discuss edge cases. But here we go. We already know that prospects for humanities and social science PhDs are extremely grim[1]. However, economics might not be so bad[2].

Prospects for science are better, but we need to distinguish between fields. Computer Science PhDs encounter a completely different market from Biology PhDs. In a field like Biology, there is probably great variance even between sub fields.

There was one more great link I wanted to share, but I can't remember were it is or find it. It ranked graduate degrees by degree and university (i.e., MBA from Stanford, JD from Harvard, etc). You don't see any PhD or MS degrees on there until around spot #30, which was a PhD from MIT. Unfortunately, that's not granular enough - a "PhD" from MIT makes about as much sense as a "Masters" that includes the MBA degree. You can figure that since it's MIT, the PhD degrees lean toward the technical, but I'd really need to see PhD in CS to make the comparison. If this data were available, I'd guess that some PhDs from elite universities are actually very well paid on the level of elite JD or MBA programs. Even then, PhDs have vastly higher attrition rates and longer and less certain completion times[3]

[1] "Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go" http://www.chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-in-the/4484...

[2] "If you get a PhD, make it an economics PhD" http://theweek.com/articles/452770/phd-make-economics-phd

[3] Attrition rates often shock people who don't know. The attrition rate at an elite law, medical, or business school is typically well below one percent. At elite PhD programs, they can reach or exceed 50%. It's not an exaggeration to say that attrition rates at elite PhD programs can be 100 times higher than a 2 year MBA or 3 year JD program at the same university.

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

#209

Post by daemonk »

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…

Because not all work in academia is interesting. I don't know about your field but academic research is more about doing what your funding bodies want you to do or following the latest trend to get funding. Publishing can be a political game where institution and contacts matter more than merit. Advancement in your career can be the same. I don't want to make a blanket statement for everyone because I am sure there are varying experiences.

If academia is about interesting research, then I would gladly take your perspective. But sadly, from my experience (life sciences), to get anywhere, it is 3/4 bullshit work (admin, politics) and 1/4 interesting work.

I imagine I can find a job in industry that's 1/4 interesting work and get paid a lot more for it.

So it's not about "values". Let's not religion-fy academia and infuse it with a semblance of "virtue" associated with doing research. Scientists shouldn't be monks for science.

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

#210

Post by ramy_d »

make3 wrote: post #203
Halladie7 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grad school dropout here. I never wanted to be a professor. I have no interest in teaching. I just wanted to research. My degree would have been in CS/ML/NLP. When I realized that I would be out over half a million dollars in earnings over the time I was in grad school, I made the decision to leave. The fact that my advisor was a terrible researcher and a horrible person made it much easier.

wouldn't you have made more at the end?

500 thousand dollars is nothing to sneeze at. The thing about crushing debt is that ... it's absolutely crushing.
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