Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 77 posts

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#21

Post by zer00eyz »

COGlory wrote: post #15

I made $16,800 a year while getting my PhD. Sometimes that required me to teach, when we had funding, it was just research. Grueling hours, abusive PI, for 6 years of my life. I helped bring in over 4 million dollars in grants to my university. After about two years, I was highly skilled and founded a new core facility that I kept running for the next 4 years while finishing my PhD. When I graduated, I had someone of…

And with a BS in CS or Math what would you have made going to work for a FAANG?

How do universities have all these endowments and not pay more?

>> $16,800

This is like 5 weeks of work at minimum wage... You would have been better off with a side hustle at macdonalds.

>> We need better PhD student and postdoc wages.

Living wages would be a start, then better.

EDIT: I fat fingered the 2... that was supposed to be 25... Do note that I live in CA so macdonalds is 20 bucks an hour now here.

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#22

Post by ta988 »

alephnerd wrote: post #19
COGlory wrote: post #15

I made $16,800 a year while getting my PhD. Sometimes that required me to teach, when we had funding, it was just research. Grueling hours, abusive PI, for 6 years of my life. I helped bring in over 4 million dollars in grants to my university. After about two years, I was highly skilled and founded a new core facility that I kept running for the next 4 years while finishing my PhD. When I graduated, I had someone of…

> We don't need H1Bs. We need better PhD student and postdoc wages. You need both. Your PhD classmates from abroad (most likely Russia, China, Korea, and India) would have gotten an H1B after they graduated from the PhD program, and their (edit: post-) postdoc employment would have been on an H1B. I'm assuming this was the late 1990s or early 2000s based on the numbers provided One of my friends who did their PhD and…

Untrue the vast majority of foreign postdocs are on J1

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#23

Post by betaby »

alephnerd wrote: post #12
betaby wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

..and having a lot of them didn't improve the situation.

There was a shortage of them already. The shortage only got worse

Shortage should lead to a better pay and(or) a higher vacancy. However those are not the case.

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#24

Post by PheonixPharts »

betaby wrote: post #4

In the replication crisis era it's a good thing I suppose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

I'm not sure why this is being down voted.

The classic argument in favor of taking a (potentially major) pay cut to work in academia as opposed to industry was always that academia is an environment for true learning and doing proper research uncorrupted by profit-seeking motives of corporations. Essentially, you make the classic trade-off between income and integrity.

In recent years we've seen that there's not a whole lot of integrity in academic research. Most of it is politics, grant hunting and working to inflate someone's ego; integrity of the actual science being done be damned.

At least with the current state of industrial research your results have to pan out enough to convince the market. Maybe LLMs are a overhyped, but they at least work enough to impress the people using them. Meta might never create the metaverse Zuckerberg dreams of, but at least people doing research on the hardware will hold in their hand lighter, higher performing, and truly state of the art VR headsets.

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#25

Post by alephnerd »

ta988 wrote: post #22
alephnerd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't need H1Bs. We need better PhD student and postdoc wages. You need both. Your PhD classmates from abroad (most likely Russia, China, Korea, and India) would have gotten an H1B after they graduated from the PhD program, and their (edit: post-) postdoc employment would have been on an H1B. I'm assuming this was the late 1990s or early 2000s based on the numbers provided One of my friends who did their PhD and…

Untrue the vast majority of foreign postdocs are on J1

And until the late 2000s, if those postdocs wanted a private sector job in the US they needed an employer to sponsor their H1-B.

Also, the J-1 didn't become the primary route for postdocs until the early 2000s

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#26

Post by lecunn »

zer00eyz wrote: post #21
COGlory wrote: post #15

I made $16,800 a year while getting my PhD. Sometimes that required me to teach, when we had funding, it was just research. Grueling hours, abusive PI, for 6 years of my life. I helped bring in over 4 million dollars in grants to my university. After about two years, I was highly skilled and founded a new core facility that I kept running for the next 4 years while finishing my PhD. When I graduated, I had someone of…

And with a BS in CS or Math what would you have made going to work for a FAANG? How do universities have all these endowments and not pay more? >> $16,800 This is like 5 weeks of work at minimum wage... You would have been better off with a side hustle at macdonalds. >> We need better PhD student and postdoc wages. Living wages would be a start, then better. EDIT: I fat fingered the 2... that was supposed to be 25...…

5 weeks of work at minimum wage is nowhere near $16,800...

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#27

Post by MattGaiser »

betaby wrote: post #23
alephnerd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a shortage of them already. The shortage only got worse

Shortage should lead to a better pay and(or) a higher vacancy. However those are not the case.

Isn’t the vacancy rate quite high?

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#28

Post by cshimmin »

zer00eyz wrote: post #21
COGlory wrote: post #15

I made $16,800 a year while getting my PhD. Sometimes that required me to teach, when we had funding, it was just research. Grueling hours, abusive PI, for 6 years of my life. I helped bring in over 4 million dollars in grants to my university. After about two years, I was highly skilled and founded a new core facility that I kept running for the next 4 years while finishing my PhD. When I graduated, I had someone of…

And with a BS in CS or Math what would you have made going to work for a FAANG? How do universities have all these endowments and not pay more? >> $16,800 This is like 5 weeks of work at minimum wage... You would have been better off with a side hustle at macdonalds. >> We need better PhD student and postdoc wages. Living wages would be a start, then better. EDIT: I fat fingered the 2... that was supposed to be 25...…

For postdocs (and often grad students), the universities aren't paying the wages, it's the research grants. In some cases, those are capped by the funding agencies. NIH in particular has rigid payscale guidelines for postdocs in the bio sciences, for example. You can find the list here [1]. A first-year postdoc makes $56k, and after seven (!) years they can make $68.5k.

Also, a general rule of thumb is that postdocs and grad students cost the same! That's because whoever is paying the grad student (either a research grant or a department teaching stipend), also has to pay their "tuition", which basically doubles the cost.

[1] https://www.niaid.nih.gov/grants-contracts/salary-cap-stipen...

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#29

Post by wlesieutre »

zer00eyz wrote: post #21
COGlory wrote: post #15

I made $16,800 a year while getting my PhD. Sometimes that required me to teach, when we had funding, it was just research. Grueling hours, abusive PI, for 6 years of my life. I helped bring in over 4 million dollars in grants to my university. After about two years, I was highly skilled and founded a new core facility that I kept running for the next 4 years while finishing my PhD. When I graduated, I had someone of…

And with a BS in CS or Math what would you have made going to work for a FAANG? How do universities have all these endowments and not pay more? >> $16,800 This is like 5 weeks of work at minimum wage... You would have been better off with a side hustle at macdonalds. >> We need better PhD student and postdoc wages. Living wages would be a start, then better. EDIT: I fat fingered the 2... that was supposed to be 25...…

To make $16,800 in 5 weeks at 40 hours a week you'd need to be paid $84/hour

Re: Fewer U.S. scientists are pursuing postdoc positions, new data show

#30

Post by silverquiet »

lecunn wrote: post #26
zer00eyz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And with a BS in CS or Math what would you have made going to work for a FAANG? How do universities have all these endowments and not pay more? >> $16,800 This is like 5 weeks of work at minimum wage... You would have been better off with a side hustle at macdonalds. >> We need better PhD student and postdoc wages. Living wages would be a start, then better. EDIT: I fat fingered the 2... that was supposed to be 25...…

5 weeks of work at minimum wage is nowhere near $16,800...

"I mean, it's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? 10 dollars?"

Some people live in a bubble.

Post reply on HN