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

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

#231

Post by anjc »

sevensor wrote: post #220
anjc wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your adviser was right though. If there was an infinite amount of money then they'd have lecturers who are dedicated to lecturing. But there is never enough money so...what options are there but to do the things that will bring more in so that your role/group/department/university survives. I've seen it myself...groups whither and disappear due to lack of funds.

You're right, of course, there's no place for teachers in the academy, except as members of that most degraded and despised class, contingent faculty. But I think this is a serious problem. Not to put too fine a point on it, but many recipients of engineering degrees being turned out by our well-respected institutions of higher learning can't engineer their way out of a wet paper bag. I worked with people who didn't…

No doubt about it. People made it through 4 years of my CS degree from a good university, and couldn't code a line. However these people all found their place in the workforce which suited their own skills.

I'm not sure how much can be done at the teaching level, but like you, it's something I'd also like to help correct.

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

#232

Post by laxatives »

amenod wrote: post #226

Is that really news? Obligatory joke: Taxi driver to passenger: "Well, someone looks happy today!" Passenger: "I just got my PhD! :)" Taxi driver wistfully: "Yeah, I remember the day when I got mine..."

A professor of mathematics noticed that his kitchen sink at his home leaked. He called a plumber. The plumber came the next day and sealed a few screws, and everything was working as before.

The professor was delighted. However, when the plumber gave him the bill a minute later, he was shocked.

"This is one-third of my monthly salary!" he yelled.

Well, all the same he paid it and then the plumber said to him, "I understand your position as a professor. Why don't you come to our company and apply for a plumber position? You will earn three times as much as a professor. But remember, when you apply, tell them that you completed only seven elementary classes. They don't like educated people."

So it happened. The professor got a job as a plumber and his life significantly improved. He just had to seal a screw or two occasionally, and his salary went up significantly.

One day, the board of the plumbing company decided that every plumber had to go to evening classes to complete the eighth grade. So, our professor had to go there too. It just happened that the first class was math. The evening teacher, to check students' knowledge, asked for a formula for the area of a circle. The person asked was the professor. He jumped to the board, and then he realized that he had forgotten the formula. He started to reason it, and he filled the white board with integrals, differentials, and other advanced formulas to conclude the result he forgot. As a result, he got "minus pi times r square."

He didn't like the minus, so he started all over again. He got the minus again. No matter how many times he tried, he always got a minus. He was frustrated. He gave the class a frightened look and saw all the plumbers whisper: "Switch the limits of the integral!!"

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

#233

Post by munin »

ptero wrote: post #213
Ar-Curunir wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't get students without grants. Most professors want students, because they like doing research, and so have to apply for grants.

> 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.

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

#234

Post by pm90 »

ptero wrote: post #148
aswanson wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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're likely to be friends with other PhD students).

Additionally, I've noticed some of my peers who did very well academically in undergrad want to continue the "good streak" right through PhD. I know it sounds rather silly, but if you've been killing it with grades and awards and the like, its easy to feel that you are special and if you don't do a PhD, who will?

This is unfortunately what happened with me. Although, I realized my mistake within the first year and decided to leave with a Masters degree.

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

#235

Post by [deleted] »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #183
hyperbovine wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... you work 80 hours per week and make less than ... I've read so many comments like yours, on HN and elsewhere, and invariably the argument hinges on some variation of the above sentiment. I've come to believe I just have fundamentally different values than the vast majority of people who work in industry. To answer your (friends') question, because the work is more interesting and I make plenty of money as it st…

>I've read so many comments like yours, on HN and elsewhere, and invariably the argument hinges on some variation of the above sentiment. I've come to believe I just have fundamentally different values than the vast majority of people who work in industry. Indeed! Why is the assumption always, "We all value money, so just switch to industry!"? It's like telling a public servant that if they wanted a living wage they'…

[deleted]

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

#236

Post by kkylin »

hyperbovine wrote: post #94
chriskanan wrote: post #6

The longer students stay in a PhD program, the less likely they want to be professors. Typically many first year students say this, but the numbers quickly drop off in later years. When I was a PhD student, I gave a few talks and blogged about this issue. I would present all these statistics in my talks about what they needed to do to be competitive, and people just absolutely hated me for it. One person said she wan…

> ... you work 80 hours per week and make less than ... I've read so many comments like yours, on HN and elsewhere, and invariably the argument hinges on some variation of the above sentiment. I've come to believe I just have fundamentally different values than the vast majority of people who work in industry. To answer your (friends') question, because the work is more interesting and I make plenty of money as it st…

Indeed, many of us can get paid more in industry. (Computational applied mathematician here.) But (i) professor pay isn't terrible in the grand scheme of things, and (ii) I view my salary as paying for the things I wouldn't want to do for free, e.g., grading exams, serving on committees, etc., and I'm reasonably well-compensated in having my own time to do the things I love enough to do for free: my own research, work with grad students, learning about things I find interesting and teaching a course on it, etc.

But getting here wasn't easy, took equal measures of hard work and luck.

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

#237

Post by Animats »

The growth area seems to be academic administration. As I pointed out previously, Stanford is building a new "campus" in Redwood City.[1] It's all administrators. 2700 of them. More administrators than Stanford has faculty. "School of Medicine administration; Stanford Libraries and University Archives; the major administrative units of Business Affairs; Land, Buildings and Real Estate; University Human Resources; Residential & Dining Enterprises; and the Office of Development" will move there. This is in addition to all the administrators and staff back on the main campus.

Don't become a doctor - become a Medical Administrator! It pays better.

[1] https://redwoodcity.stanford.edu/

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

#238

Post by sliverstorm »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #5

When deciding to do my PhD I did so under the assumption that I wouldn't work in academia afterward. I evaluated it like a any other job offer at the time and decided that the tax free pay, coupled with the freedom to run my project how I wanted and work on what I wanted (within reason) for a fixed period of time was a better offer than a grad scheme with BAE, Nissan, Seimens etc. Doing a PhD built a large array of s…

I don't think a PhD is only valuable for a career in academia

I thought it was pretty well established that this depends heavily on your field.

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

#239

Post by Balgair »

daemonk wrote: post #209
hyperbovine wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... you work 80 hours per week and make less than ... I've read so many comments like yours, on HN and elsewhere, and invariably the argument hinges on some variation of the above sentiment. I've come to believe I just have fundamentally different values than the vast majority of people who work in industry. To answer your (friends') question, because the work is more interesting and I make plenty of money as it st…

Because not all work in academia is interesting. I don't know about your field but academic research is more about doing what your funding bodies want you to do or following the latest trend to get funding. Publishing can be a political game where institution and contacts matter more than merit. Advancement in your career can be the same. I don't want to make a blanket statement for everyone because I am sure there a…

I'll echo this. The large majority of PIs I have interacted with (or know of via friends/family) could care less about their research. You get a skewed view from conferences, presentations, TED Talks, etc. They are 'on stage' at those events and are 'selling' their research largely. Get a beer in them and the facade drops quickly (ok, 3 beers for the people that really hate the mess, their tolerance is higher)

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

#240

Post by Balgair »

mbesto wrote: post #219
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've read so many comments like yours, on HN and elsewhere, and invariably the argument hinges on some variation of the above sentiment. I've come to believe I just have fundamentally different values than the vast majority of people who work in industry. Indeed! Why is the assumption always, "We all value money, so just switch to industry!"? It's like telling a public servant that if they wanted a living wage they'…

> "Just switch to industry" is turning into the scholarly equivalent of, "just learn to code". Instead of all giving up on some people making the best impact they can, the impact they work desperately hard for, maybe we should just fix the academic labor system. And unfortunately we have pundits here in the HN community and refinforeced by YC, that this should be the case. Oh and btw, those same people think the solu…

Youch, that is pretty bad 'Valley Think'.
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