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As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

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Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#191

Post by BeetleB »

pacbard wrote: post #123
quantum_magpie wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ones in control of money and the ones in charge of running their lab and hiring postdocs are not the same people. If you can't hire a postdoc for shitty salary, then that shitty salary can be repurposed for something else. The former won't ever budge for the latter until the whole system collapses. And even then, I dread that they will just leave it in ruins.

I don't think that is accurate. Most post-doc are funded through soft money (i.e., grant money or other non-earmarked department money) to a principal investigator. The PI wrote the grant and budgeted for post docs. Meaning that they set the salary for the postdoc in advance at the time that they wrote the grant (most grant applications I was part of required approval from the University's finance office before submi…

> The PI wrote the grant and budgeted for post docs. Meaning that they set the salary for the postdoc in advance at the time that they wrote the grant (most grant applications I was part of required approval from the University's finance office before submission). They can increase the postdoc salary if they want.

This is often not true and the article addresses it: A PI needs the university's approval to increase salary, regardless of how much their funding is. It's usually set by the department. If a postdoc wanted more, they needed to apply for independent funding (e.g. a fellowship). These would have their own stipends defined, and the university could not take it away. Often, they're not even tied to a PI or even the university - if the postdoc decides to change institutions in the middle, he takes the money with him to the new institution.

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#192

Post by coldpie »

ghaff wrote: post #128
the_only_law wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but outside a borderline prodigy or no lifing to get the knowlegde and experience or a lucky recruitment at some university event, I doubt the industry was letting fresh new grads work on something like the USB spec.

There may have been junior people on the teams at the various companies like Intel that developed and implemented the spec. No, those junior people probably weren't really developing the spec. (The person at Intel who is most credited for the spec with his team was already pretty senior and later became an Intel Fellow.) I also sort of doubt a university group in Utah was a major contributor--although I could be wron…

I admit I might've got the details wrong. The gist of the anecdote is the best response he had to me wanting to do impactful work was, "some people who didn't even go to this school were a part of something you've heard of ten years ago," which I didn't find terribly compelling.

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#193

Post by CobrastanJorji »

plaguepilled wrote: post #121
jjoonathan wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There's a shortage of Lamborghinis!" "Oh? At which price point?" "At the $4000 price point! It's a travesty!"

That is a perverse misreading of the original comment. Calling a livable wage and fair working conditions a Lamborghini is not applicable.

In this metaphor, the postdoc is the Lamborghini, the speaker is the employer bemoaning the difficulty of acquiring a postdoc/Lamborghini for an unreasonable price point, and the $4000 is the unreasonable price point.

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#195

Post by jawilson2 »

enriquto wrote: post #124
slurpmaker wrote: post #42

Make it make sense. Offer Postdocs an actual career path not based on broken tenure and disposable adjunct professor roles, with hundreds if not thousands of applicants. Why would someone, with any field of study, be a "scum of the earth" post doc for 1/5th the salary and double the hours required as a junior python developer role? Moreso, post doc'ing for the wrong professor can ruin your career, why risk that eithe…

> a "scum of the earth" post doc for 1/5th the salary and double the hours required as a junior python developer role Where do you get these numbers from? This is not at all like that in Europe. A postdoc gets (say, in France) 30k per year, doing a calm, interesting job and paid travel to a couple of conferences per year, with almost total freedom to choose their daily schedule. This is not a high salary, but it is c…

When I was a postdoc 10 years ago in the US I brought home about $2200/month. My health insurance deductible was $5000/year. I paid $1800/month in student loans. My family had to move into my parent's basement, and every credit card was maxed, every bank account overdrawn, major food anxiety, etc.

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#196

Post by apohn »

oefrha wrote: post #187
vecter wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My friend who is a professor at a university aiming for tenure put it succinctly: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law

The stakes are in fact very high for the academics themselves. There’s night and day difference between getting tenure, and not.

As whymauri has illustrated, there's a ton of pettiness that goes on between tenured professors and outside of anything to do with the tenure process. It's nothing but people with big egos being a small fish in a small pond and then stomping around like toddlers to make sure everybody knows they are there.

I still have memories of wanting to tell some of my tenured professors that they needed to grow up and find bigger things to cry about. I was in my 20s, they were all 40+.

At least IME, the younger non-tenured professors were less likely to engage in this pettiness because they had, as you have pointed out, a lot more to lose.

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#197

Post by oefrha »

apohn wrote: post #196
oefrha wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stakes are in fact very high for the academics themselves. There’s night and day difference between getting tenure, and not.

As whymauri has illustrated, there's a ton of pettiness that goes on between tenured professors and outside of anything to do with the tenure process. It's nothing but people with big egos being a small fish in a small pond and then stomping around like toddlers to make sure everybody knows they are there. I still have memories of wanting to tell some of my tenured professors that they needed to grow up and find bigg…

I mean the perceived viciousness mostly stems from power imbalance (when it’s between tenured and untenured) and having a lot to lose. Two tenured assholes clashing is at best unpleasant.

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#198

Post by pfortuny »

vecter wrote: post #183
apohn wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the pay isn't good, the culture and work should be. In academia, that's almost never true When I think back to my thought process when I was applying for academic and research jobs after my PhD, there's one thing I remember that always keeps me from ever second guessing my decision to move to the private sector. At least in my field, so many people in academia and research had big egos and were a-holes. Some of t…

My friend who is a professor at a university aiming for tenure put it succinctly: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low." [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law

No: the will to power is greatest because you have (supposedly) power over the creme of the creme.

As silly as that but Nietzsche had it right: the will to power is one of the primordial forces.

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#199

Post by epvgwwqe »

I did a postdoc at a top 5 institution and found it to be an ideal transition point into the startup world. I was pretty sure a few months into it that I would leave academia, and spent as much time as possible beefing up my coding skills and doing a startup on the side/finding a cofounder. I even hedged my bets and applied for tenure track jobs in the meantime. This may not work for everyone but it was definitely better than doing a full time industry job during those years which would have made any substantial entrepreneurial activities much harder to do on the side, and not nearly as good for networking.

Re: As professors struggle to recruit postdocs, calls for change in academia

#200

Post by pfortuny »

enriquto wrote: post #124
slurpmaker wrote: post #42

Make it make sense. Offer Postdocs an actual career path not based on broken tenure and disposable adjunct professor roles, with hundreds if not thousands of applicants. Why would someone, with any field of study, be a "scum of the earth" post doc for 1/5th the salary and double the hours required as a junior python developer role? Moreso, post doc'ing for the wrong professor can ruin your career, why risk that eithe…

> a "scum of the earth" post doc for 1/5th the salary and double the hours required as a junior python developer role Where do you get these numbers from? This is not at all like that in Europe. A postdoc gets (say, in France) 30k per year, doing a calm, interesting job and paid travel to a couple of conferences per year, with almost total freedom to choose their daily schedule. This is not a high salary, but it is c…

Yep, for exactly two or three years tops.
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