51–60 of 146 posts
This reminds of a colleague's joke: what do you call a physicist a few years after they get their degree? A data scientist! I only completed my undergrad in physics before shifting to tech, but I've seen many instances of people working in software/programming/data science roles after their undergrad/grad studies in physics.
It's a tough one. The problem we haven't solved as a society is what do we do with all these smart people? They need money so they go get a high paying job in finance or tech or consulting and then all that scientific training was kind of left aside right? So what was the point of the PhD? A job with meaning is hard to find, maybe we should encourage and support all these smart people to start a business/research ven…
Companies like Google or Morgan Stanley can hire those people and use those skills to generate something like 1 million dollars per year (look at how much money per employee those companies generate). We don't value academic work anywhere near that much.
My feeling at the time was that I was a good enough researcher that getting postdoc positions probably wouldn't be a problem, so I could stay in the field for another ~6--8 years if I wanted to. And if my research had gone well in those jobs there was a reasonable chance (say, 50-50) that I could get a tenure-track job somewhere. But I wasn't super comfortable with that risk along with having very little freedom as to where I would live. (Having a two-body problem didn't help either.) I also factored in the opportunity cost of staying, say, ~8 years in postdoc roles before switching to industry and figured that if there was a good chance that I was going to leave academia eventually, I should do it sooner rather than later. Part of this was motivated by some researchers I interacted with who were really smart, did great research, but just kept jumping from postdoc to postdoc and couldn't land anything permanent.
While I do miss the astro research, I have learned a lot from industry that I would never have even known existed had I stayed in astronomy. (This may be more a function of working at a startup than industry work in general.) I'm not sure what work OP is doing specifically, but the industry work I've been doing has been pretty fulfilling. It helps that I've mostly been working on applying ML to health technology. Industry is a big place! There is a lot of fulfilling work out there even if it can take time to find it.
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This perspective IMO is informed by a slow-burning (like, career-scale) FOMO where if you're not as successful as the person getting $200k+ offers from FAANG right out of university then you are behind and a failure. This is a persistent sentiment in CS and adjacent circles, I've noticed, and a serious hindrance to finding fulfillment in life and career. It's not a race, it's an Iron Man, and for the vast majority of…
Big tech comp numbers that get thrown around--and that are often inflated and have been at least partly driven by stock market gains--lead a lot of people to set them as the bar. And to feel that's what they need to achieve even if they don't especially like the work given that they can't imagine doing something that "only" pays $100K or $150K or whatever.
“Comparison is the thief of joy”
I saw research from a few years back that indicated happiness peaked a little over $100k in salary and actually tended downward above that. It’s been my experience that people who are solely focused on salary tend to do so because they don’t know what else to optimize their life around.
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Very interesting, could you tell me where that is? At least in the US, tenure is a really big thing. But there are plenty of people who are paid employees at the university and aren't teaching, and I'd also consider that academia.
And I'd love to work assisting cutting-edge research, but I also am not willing to cut my salary that severely. I wonder if there is a way to do this that doesn't presume near-grad-student rates.
The good thing is that public universities tend to post jobs with salary ranges, so you can get an idea of what labs are looking for what, at what pay rate. The pay tends to follow the expectation of having a somewhat less competitive and intensive work environment, more flexible hours, etc.
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Maybe this is true for your country, but not true here (there is even a limited number of years you are allowed to work in academia by law)
Very interesting, could you tell me where that is? At least in the US, tenure is a really big thing. But there are plenty of people who are paid employees at the university and aren't teaching, and I'd also consider that academia.
A huge number of postdoc fellowships[0] cut off at 12 months (NIH DP-1, various NSF postdocs) to 4-5 years (NIH K99, Simons Foundation BTI, Burroughs Wellcome Career/CASI Awards). You can, of course, hang on for longer by being paid from research grants. However, even that is tricky because the size of a "standard" modular NIH grant hasn't gone up in ages and even a modest salary ($60k + benefits) will now eat up a substantial chunk of it, so you'll spend a lot of time looking for money. Frustratingly, you often can't be the PI on grants either, so it devolves into ghost-writing. It also makes it hard to settle down if you are piecing together a string of 1-2 year contracts.
This is, IMO, stupid. It's not good for doing science and a few studies have shown that not good for training scientists either. A system that funded a few more staff scientists would likely produce more and better research and training.
[0] It's even worse, as many awards for tenure-track profs are ALSO gated on time-since-degree.
Maybe grass is always greener on the other side of the fence or maybe we should be focused on a more balanced approach to our careers.
"It seems too late to get back in." The author appears to be alive, and astrophysics still seems to exist. So, what exactly is the problem? I expect wrong answers only.
He left in 2013, most postdocs positions have a 5 year cutoff for eligibility. It's been 7 years since he got the degree so a lot of doors have already closed for postdoc opportunities. Professors will find reasons to not hire him such as being out of the game for too long and thus he's not caught up in the literature or whatever. He could try to go in as a data scientist. It is true though that usually that job goes…
I have no idea how that blatant age discrimination is legal but....
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He left in 2013, most postdocs positions have a 5 year cutoff for eligibility. It's been 7 years since he got the degree so a lot of doors have already closed for postdoc opportunities. Professors will find reasons to not hire him such as being out of the game for too long and thus he's not caught up in the literature or whatever. He could try to go in as a data scientist. It is true though that usually that job goes…
He becomes a student again and takes on a slightly different postdoc if he wants to go back to that level.
Hmm, which do I miss?
-- The once-per-year job cycle where if you don't find something you like, you have to wait another year to land your next soft money position?
-- The lack of perception of fairness or clear criteria for how the top fellowships are awarded?
-- The feeling that you're in an endless apprenticeship model like a pyramid scheme where only by the top people leaving do you get a chance to have some responsibility, better pay, freedom?
Hmm. Turns out I don't miss it so much.