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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

#291

Post by junar »

hervature wrote: post #287
jboggan wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely true. I saw this play out in my lab where we had 1-2 PhD students (including myself) and about 12-16 rotating postdocs. They worked insane hours for very little pay, no benefits, and produced 95% of the output of the lab. Our professor was definitely the "wrong" kind of professor, as about 50% of them left academia entirely and not by choice after being wrung dry of all productive output and then discarded…

> The professor also only hired visa applicants to have extra leverage over them. For any postdoc that thinks the university has leverage for this reason, if you are able to get a H1B, you can switch employers easily. You are not stuck at whichever company sponsored you.

Is that a realistic scenario?

* My understanding is that universities prefer J-1 visas in almost all cases [1][2], and such visas are not portable.

* H-1B is more flexible than J-1, but still not as flexible compared to a green card. In particular, the new employer has to fill out a new application, pay the fees, etc. Also, universities are exempt from the H-1B cap, but other employers may not be.

[1] https://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/ucb_departments/h-1...

[2] https://postdocs.stanford.edu/postdoc-admins/how-quick-links...

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

#292

Post by bananaquant »

hervature wrote: post #287
jboggan wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely true. I saw this play out in my lab where we had 1-2 PhD students (including myself) and about 12-16 rotating postdocs. They worked insane hours for very little pay, no benefits, and produced 95% of the output of the lab. Our professor was definitely the "wrong" kind of professor, as about 50% of them left academia entirely and not by choice after being wrung dry of all productive output and then discarded…

> The professor also only hired visa applicants to have extra leverage over them. For any postdoc that thinks the university has leverage for this reason, if you are able to get a H1B, you can switch employers easily. You are not stuck at whichever company sponsored you.

False. H1B visas given to work for a university are "cap exempt." They allow to work for universities and other nonprofits only. H1B visas to work for a for-profit company can only be obtained through a lottery.

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

#293

Post by thephyber »

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…

Are there other postdoc countries/systems which work well, that we could use as examples?

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

#294

Post by ev1 »

Master_Odin wrote: post #107
april_22 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what really changed is that people who have a PhD nowadays certainly also have great coding skills and the latter is so much more attractive job wise

Fair number of the CS PhD students I knew while I was there were not good coders, with professors being even worse at it. There's no incentive to write good code, just that it "functions".

I would always dread new teammates that were 100% academia with no industry experience or real project experience. More often than not if you leave them alone for a bit you come back to functions with several dozen one character parameters or something equally odd. Really uncertain why this is, but this has consistently happened multiple times and it's always this type of situation.

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

#295

Post by LegitShady »

mirker wrote: post #289
doliveira wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just for very, very specific fields. For instance, for something very practical, market-ready, basically Engineering I'd say you're correct. For basic research, not at all.

Well ya know, industry solved Fermat’s Last theorem numerous times but only managed to scribble it in the corner of their performance review.

Industry solved it as many times as the academics have

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

#296

Post by doliveira »

LegitShady wrote: post #295
mirker wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well ya know, industry solved Fermat’s Last theorem numerous times but only managed to scribble it in the corner of their performance review.

Industry solved it as many times as the academics have

Fermat's last theorem has been solved back in the 90s. But it's obviously just one example to illustrate the main point, it's not about whether it specifically has been solved or not.

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

#297

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

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…

Who needs a PhD for a "junior python developer role". Is it really necessary. This "python developer" idea sounds like it only applies to a small slice of PhD programs, notably the ones focused solely on computers. For example, what percentage of PhDs in molecular biology choose to become "junior python developer". When someone who believes a computer performing pattern recognition equates to a child having feelings and sensations^1 can become a "senior software engineer" at Google,^2 why is a PhD needed.

1. https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-inte...

2. https://research.google/people/106471/ (Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20220612100903if_/https://resear... )

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

#298

Post by Retric »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #297
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…

Who needs a PhD for a "junior python developer role". Is it really necessary. This "python developer" idea sounds like it only applies to a small slice of PhD programs, notably the ones focused solely on computers. For example, what percentage of PhDs in molecular biology choose to become "junior python developer". When someone who believes a computer performing pattern recognition equates to a child having feelings…

People get PHD’s because they love the subject matter and can get loans etc. But they then have a PHD that might not actually be worth anything and still need to eat.

Assuming just because you have a PHD means you need to use it is a sunk cost fallacy. Starting over can be a completely rational choice.

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

#299

Post by dinvlad »

bananaquant wrote: post #292
hervature wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The professor also only hired visa applicants to have extra leverage over them. For any postdoc that thinks the university has leverage for this reason, if you are able to get a H1B, you can switch employers easily. You are not stuck at whichever company sponsored you.

False. H1B visas given to work for a university are "cap exempt." They allow to work for universities and other nonprofits only. H1B visas to work for a for-profit company can only be obtained through a lottery.

There's more nuance here. There're ways to "port" your H1B to another company (incl. while working part-time with one leg at a non-profit and another at a startup), but few want to go that route because of all the other bullshit we already had to go through.

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

#300

Post by dinvlad »

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…

I would even say this goes down further - the motivation to even finish a PhD program may disappear entirely after hearing piles and piles of such stories in the first few years. The lack of sufficient funding from above combined with oversaturation of the industry with PhDs has a long-lasting and chilling effect on the entire academia, and possibly the industry itself too.
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