Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by Analog24 » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 8:54 PM UTC

Halladie7 wrote: post #222

make3 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wouldn't you have made more at the end?

No. Because I'd have gone to private industry anyway. Starting research and engineering salaries are roughly equivalent. Their respective progressions are about the same too. You'd only make more money if you founded a company and it was successful. You don't make fuck you money as employee #5000.

At some of the larger tech companies the salaries for scientists/researchers is usually higher than for engineers specifically because of the extra educational requirements. Where I work there are actually on two separate pay scales to account for this. I can't say this is true everywhere but there are definitely cases where you could have made more had you stayed in industry (emphasis on "could", it's not guaranteed).

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

#252

Post by ptero » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 9:07 PM UTC

munin wrote: post #233

ptero wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't get students without grants. That is definitely not true for many non-experimental science departments. Many students are TAs and as such care not a bit about grants. When I was getting my PhD I had to teach 4.5 hours/week (often structured as 6 and 3 at alternating semesters), which gave me my stipend and free tuition (and was a useful skill to polish). Maybe I spent another 4-5 hours preparing for class…

That's a very light TA load. It's far more normal to have a 20-30 hour a week commitment to your TA responsibilities (multiple lectures, grading a few hundred assignments every few weeks, etc) so it's a lot harder to fit research around that.

Are you serious? Can you share the school and department? This is an honest question -- I always thought 4-5 lecture or classroom hours was normal. That's what I had and that's what my friends had. Most of us never even used graders assigned as grading duties were light and it would often be more trouble to explain how you wanted it graded anyhow.

I have never heard of a 20 hour TA load. Again, just wondering.

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

#253

Post by jxramos » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 9:12 PM UTC

I feel for the students facing this reality, but I think this comment in the article can lead to dead-ends.

"""Our survey, for example, shows that one-third of respondents do not have useful conversations about careers with their PhD supervisors."""

I remember speaking once with a few professors about what their work was like in industry. I was caught off guard when I was told they never worked in industry and had their whole careers in academia. Silly assumption on my part of course, but it was jarring nonetheless to be told so much point blank. It really put into perspective for me the angle at which advice was coming from.

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

#254

Post by hpcjoe » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 9:49 PM UTC

aswanson wrote: post #129

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…

Was your original plan to become a professor? If so, why did you change course?

When I entered grad school it was. Then the Soviet Union died, and the market, already awash in a large number of Ph.D.s in physics suddenly transformed into something that I could not effectively compete in.

To some degree, you are measured, as a student/postdoc, by the number of highly rated papers in good journals that you produce, as well as citations, invitations to speak, etc. All of this factors into how high in the stack you will rise.

When I was looking at applying for tenure track positions, I was hampered to a degree, by being in a group that didn't publish often (and of course, as a student, I couldn't push my advisor to publish more ... she had tenure already). So I had a couple of good papers, but nothing compared to these senior folks from FSU, with 20+ years experience, many Phys. Rev. Letters, and other top journals. And hey, to make it even more fun, they were willing to work for less than the newly minted Ph.D.s.

I don't blame them. Would have done the same thing in their shoes. We are better off for them having come here and advanced physics.

But to the younger me, thinking ... damn ... this ain't fair ... it wasn't so obvious at the time.

I made a conscious decision to go into industry, knowing full well that it ended my hopes of landing a job as a prof. I've had a few side research associate prof gigs to teach HPC programming or work in a CS group (not bad for an ex-physics guy), and for the most part, they were fulfilling.

This is a hard choice to make though. All grad students and post docs need to know what awaits them in the world. Don't, as in never, believe anyone ever telling you about shortages. Assume that they have an agenda.

I was part of a cohort to whom the NSF exhorted the looming shortage of scientists for staffing physics positions (mid 80s). I was both naive enough to believe them, and foolish enough not to do my own research.

I would have gone in a different direction, had I known what I learned later. One more pragmatic. Likely Math or CS.

My recommendation to younger versions of me, my wife (also an ex-physicist, now a math/physics teacher in a local high school) would be to look carefully at how the world is moving toward some things and away from others. Estimate where we will be in N years when you finish up, and try see if something you think you would like to do aligns with something people are willing to pay for. Make sure you are flexible enough to change, and you can adapt as needed. Learn how to learn, learn how to think, learn how to move beyond your comfort zones. Learn how to communicate, how to sell (not necessarily things, but ideas). Learn what value is.

Then when you get to be an older fart, responding, slightly wistfully, to posts on HN, you can pass along your own experiences, thereby, hopefully, helping someone to optimize their own journey.

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

#255

Post by hpcjoe » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 9:54 PM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #234

ptero wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, for the first 2 years. I suspect 3-6 years of postdoc plus 3-5 years at tenure track before getting tenure was a significant burden. And all that is not a guarantee of success. Maybe I was also tired at being inside academia and wanted to see what life outside was. I am not sure, but I do know that at some time I knew I did not want to stay in academia. And when I understood this the first thought was "wh…

> EDIT: On some thought the mentality "if you did not stay in academia you are a loser" probably delayed the above realization. It was very prevalent. I see that as a common feeling among some of my friends slaving away on their PhDs. Its hard to not feel this way if all your friends, social circle, basically your entire world, is built around the school/program you are attending (which isn't that unusual since you'r…

Yeah, I heard the "loser" bit. Somewhat comforted by the end of my third year in industry, in that my compensation was 2.5x what new profs was making. The postdocs I looked at included a number for which the salary for 60+ hours of real work/week would have been (well) below the poverty level for my family.

This was a bridge too far, coupled with the 1000+ applicants per position. Made it hard to make a case to continue in that field.

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

#256

Post by chiefalchemist » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 10:20 PM UTC

Science like everything else is driven by money and "success." Mind you, the Scientific Method is a wonderful ideal. However, it is implemented by humans. Humans that more often than not have been struggling. Humans under stress do irrational things.

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

#257

Post by s0rce » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 10:39 PM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #34

mattkrause wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>but more senior scientists also have a responsibility to provide mentorship and frank assesments. And they won't do it because they are a) biased due to survivorship bias, and b) they are disincentivized to do so as that would scare away their cheap labor.

I believe that b) is the key issue here. They need the cheap labor so it needs to appear that the PhD will get you somewhere. In the end only industry is benefiting from being able to hire highly trained people without have to pay anything to train them.

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

#258

Post by s0rce » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 10:40 PM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #84

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.

> > 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. The problem rather is if you really are scientifically better than your peers - so from an "objective" perspective you should be really good enough to obtain such a position. But then you realize how much of a political game (it is much…

Exactly, I quit after a Science and Nature paper, just didn't want to do a 2nd postdoc and prioritize a tenure-track job over everything else in life.

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

#259

Post by s0rce » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 10:42 PM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #142

VLM wrote: post #125

The "STEM shortage" phrase means pay is too high for the very few STEM jobs; it means a shortage of income equality, not a shortage of warm bodies. There are obviously far too many warm bodies in STEM fields. There is also a peculiar birth-death problem in academia where over the lifetime career of a professor, that prof should birth exactly one new qualified student to replace that prof. Otherwise we're dealing with…

Why would we design a system where only eventual professors have PhDs?

Maybe not 100% but what fraction of PhDs are professors, maybe 3-5% at most, what about fraction of MDs working as medical doctors, I'm guessing its much much higher (with higher wages) since they limit enrollment in school and residencies (they don't rely on cheap grad student/post-doc labor).

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

#260

Post by s0rce » Thu, Oct 26, 2017, 10:50 PM UTC

tome wrote: post #33

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…

> The key time for scoring a good number of first author papers in the very best journals is late 20s and early 30s in their post-doc positions. I think it's really a black mark on the system that it should be OK for researchers to still not have a permanent position in their early 30s ten years after completing their undergraduate degree.

But understandable considering the incentives. Grad students and postdocs cost so little but accomplish so much, the whole system relies on them. Just need to keep selling them the promise of opportunity. Unless something changes I can't see this getting better anytime soon. The cult aspect of many top PIs strongly condemning people leaving or considering non-academic positions also doesn't help.