Scientists Aging Faster Than Other Workers
nytimes.com
Scientists Aging Faster Than Other Workers
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Re: Scientists Aging Faster Than Other Workers
#2It's harder than ever for young researchers to get initial grants.
The pay is seriously lagging industry. In many cases, the resources at your disposal are substantially larger in industry as well.
Meanwhile, universities are increasingly run by administrators. Faculty have more service requirements and less autonomy than in the past. Overhead expenses are higher than ever, as well.
Furthermore! Tenured faculty are hard to fire, or even force into retirement. They draw large resources even after they retire in pensions and emeritus status. So open faculty positions are constantly hard to come by.
Last year I made a move to industry, from a research position at a well regarded program. I multiplied my salary by a nice integer, and I had multiple job offers from fortune 500 tech companies and a few of the HFT hedge funds that users are familiar with on this website. I wouldn't have had a shot at a faculty position at anything that I would have considered a tier-1 research organization.
Don't get me wrong, I loved my time in academia and I was very well treated, relatively speaking. But I was absolutely at a point of diminishing returns where I would have floundered around like so many of my incredibly talented and hard working friends who are still postdocs/non-permanent staff at these institutions.
Re: Scientists Aging Faster Than Other Workers
#3It's harder than ever for young researchers to get initial grants. The pay is seriously lagging industry. In many cases, the resources at your disposal are substantially larger in industry as well. Meanwhile, universities are increasingly run by administrators. Faculty have more service requirements and less autonomy than in the past. Overhead expenses are higher than ever, as well. Furthermore! Tenured faculty are h…
The more I think about it, the more I come to the realization that academia isn't really a great place to be. Thankfully I'm at the start of my PhD and don't have a MS (I can drop out with the MS), so I'm not exactly stuck for the long run.
The thing is, I'd really like the option to "retire" as a college professor after a decade or so in industry. Having a PhD in hand from early on in my career will make that much, much easier.
I still have a lot of thinking to do!
Re: Scientists Aging Faster Than Other Workers
#4Not surprising when you're past 40 before you even get tenure.
Re: Scientists Aging Faster Than Other Workers
#5It's harder than ever for young researchers to get initial grants. The pay is seriously lagging industry. In many cases, the resources at your disposal are substantially larger in industry as well. Meanwhile, universities are increasingly run by administrators. Faculty have more service requirements and less autonomy than in the past. Overhead expenses are higher than ever, as well. Furthermore! Tenured faculty are h…
The more I think about it, the more I come to the realization that academia isn't really a great place to be. Thankfully I'm at the start of my PhD and don't have a MS (I can drop out with the MS), so I'm not exactly stuck for the long run. The thing is, I'd really like the option to "retire" as a college professor after a decade or so in industry. Having a PhD in hand from early on in my career will make that much,…
Don't let me totally discourage you! Far from it, just be sure to have realistic expectations.
I absolutely loved my PhD work and I'm happy I did it. But I'm also happy I was careful to consider how this degree might help my employment down the line. Which it did. I've got an absolutely amazing research position that is well supported in the research arm of a BigCo now. I wouldn't expect that the pay is optimal versus other paths, but I'm well compensated, the work is stimulating and I'm highly autonomous.
And as you implied, to is absolutely possible to come back to Academia after spending time in industry.
Re: Scientists Aging Faster Than Other Workers
#6It's harder than ever for young researchers to get initial grants. The pay is seriously lagging industry. In many cases, the resources at your disposal are substantially larger in industry as well. Meanwhile, universities are increasingly run by administrators. Faculty have more service requirements and less autonomy than in the past. Overhead expenses are higher than ever, as well. Furthermore! Tenured faculty are h…
The more I think about it, the more I come to the realization that academia isn't really a great place to be. Thankfully I'm at the start of my PhD and don't have a MS (I can drop out with the MS), so I'm not exactly stuck for the long run. The thing is, I'd really like the option to "retire" as a college professor after a decade or so in industry. Having a PhD in hand from early on in my career will make that much,…
What's your field? In most hard science fields it's impossible to get a professorship if you take a break from academia. (Unless you were somewhere like Microsoft Research / IBM Research, which are basically parts of academia.)
Re: Scientists Aging Faster Than Other Workers
#7My dad's one of them. He retired a few years ago. The way he puts it, electrical engineering research isn't what it used to be, because all of the "big" discoveries in that field have been made. So aside from a fraction of the researchers it's largely a technician's job.
At the same time, he says that if he had applied to the same school he studied at and worked at for all of his life, there's no way he'd beat the competition these days.
And that's before factoring in the cost of college now. No wonder.
Re: Scientists Aging Faster Than Other Workers
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
The more I think about it, the more I come to the realization that academia isn't really a great place to be. Thankfully I'm at the start of my PhD and don't have a MS (I can drop out with the MS), so I'm not exactly stuck for the long run. The thing is, I'd really like the option to "retire" as a college professor after a decade or so in industry. Having a PhD in hand from early on in my career will make that much,…
Don't let me totally discourage you! Far from it, just be sure to have realistic expectations. I absolutely loved my PhD work and I'm happy I did it. But I'm also happy I was careful to consider how this degree might help my employment down the line. Which it did. I've got an absolutely amazing research position that is well supported in the research arm of a BigCo now. I wouldn't expect that the pay is optimal versu…
You directly contradict your sibling post, which claims coming back is nearly impossible. Do you have many examples of people who have done this?
Re: Scientists Aging Faster Than Other Workers
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
The more I think about it, the more I come to the realization that academia isn't really a great place to be. Thankfully I'm at the start of my PhD and don't have a MS (I can drop out with the MS), so I'm not exactly stuck for the long run. The thing is, I'd really like the option to "retire" as a college professor after a decade or so in industry. Having a PhD in hand from early on in my career will make that much,…
What's your field? In most hard science fields it's impossible to get a professorship if you take a break from academia. (Unless you were somewhere like Microsoft Research / IBM Research, which are basically parts of academia.)
Electrical engineering. It happens, especially if you worked in R&D and continued to publish over the years. One of the professors currently teaching me spent 5 years at a startup and came back to his alma mater as an assistant professor. He's an expert on botnets and quite active, so that might be an exception haha!
Re: Scientists Aging Faster Than Other Workers
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't let me totally discourage you! Far from it, just be sure to have realistic expectations. I absolutely loved my PhD work and I'm happy I did it. But I'm also happy I was careful to consider how this degree might help my employment down the line. Which it did. I've got an absolutely amazing research position that is well supported in the research arm of a BigCo now. I wouldn't expect that the pay is optimal versu…
You directly contradict your sibling post, which claims coming back is nearly impossible. Do you have many examples of people who have done this?
Only anecdotally.
I know that at Texas, in engineering (where I got my PhD) we had many, many professors with previous industry experience. I remembered thinking it was not nearly as terminal a decision as I had expected.