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Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

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Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#41

Post by s-shellfish »

spamizbad wrote: post #21

Genuinely shocked that graduate programs remain stuffed to the gills. You live off a meager stipend for about a decade and then, in your mid-30s, you go on the job market for the first time. Unless you're somehow in the top 0.1% of your field, you're probably going to be fighting for a tenure-track positions at any institution that will take you. Big dreams of teaching in the Pacific Northwest? Too bad, the only plac…

There's no reason to go into academia unless you value it. There's no reason to be negative about it just because it looks like pretensiousness.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#42

Post by neuromantik8086 »

Just as a PSA for anyone considering quitting academia who happens to be on this thread, here are some good posts about how to do that:

http://www.paullitvak.com/2013/05/16/why-social-science-grad...

http://www.paullitvak.com/faq-for-academic-social-scientists...

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#43

Post by ethelward »

navidfarhadi wrote: post #31
spamizbad wrote: post #21

Genuinely shocked that graduate programs remain stuffed to the gills. You live off a meager stipend for about a decade and then, in your mid-30s, you go on the job market for the first time. Unless you're somehow in the top 0.1% of your field, you're probably going to be fighting for a tenure-track positions at any institution that will take you. Big dreams of teaching in the Pacific Northwest? Too bad, the only plac…

> You live off a meager stipend for about a decade Keep in mind that this is not necessarily true for schools in countries outside of the US. At my school, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, as a PhD student you are considered an employee of the school and you are paid a living wage with full benefits. The current salary starts at 28600 SEK/month and can reach up to 33500 SEK/month [1] which is definitel…

> but I am not sure about other schools in Europe.

For France and Germany, stipend/wages range roughly from 1200€ to 1800€/mont, so a bit over minimal wage, and definitely under what you could do in the private sector.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#44

Post by booleandilemma »

username_123 wrote: post #40

I feel like PhDs in Computer Science should have better job prospects outside of Academia. Some jobs, like "research scientist", require PhDs. Look at companies like Lyft that are currently hiring "Research Scientist" (e.g. https://www.lyft.com/jobs/4014499002 ) where they require a M.S.or PhD.

I wonder if interviewers still ask you to do fizz buzz when you have a PhD?

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#45

Post by forkandwait »

I gotmy PhD because grad school was more fun than a real job, and I made about 40,000 a year because I can program. The prospect of being a junior professor at a middling university gives me nightmares (think about the faculty meetings...), so now I am analyst / programmer in government.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#46

Post by ylmm »

luizfzs wrote: post #20
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why the hell should I research for publishing? Because publications pretty much define your scientific contributions, i.e. your productivity as a researcher. > One should get the results AND THEN publish it. You must have had a body of work that was just about worthy of publication though, right?

Im not saying 'why publishing?'. Im saying 'why publish if I barely know if what Im doing will have some positive result? Think of this example: we are researching for a few months whether an arbitrary compound X has relieffing effects on people with headache, but since we are still researching, there is no concrete result or any slight evidence yet. maybe the compound will relief the headache in 30min but maybe it w…

I'm not sure I see what your issue is. It seems the scenario you're describing is just a case of working harder to make a deadline, which there's nothing wrong with per se. If you're talking about fudging results or cutting corners to make a deadline, then that'd be a problem. Otherwise, I'm not sure I see your point.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#47

Post by simonbarker87 »

ethelward wrote: post #43
navidfarhadi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You live off a meager stipend for about a decade Keep in mind that this is not necessarily true for schools in countries outside of the US. At my school, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, as a PhD student you are considered an employee of the school and you are paid a living wage with full benefits. The current salary starts at 28600 SEK/month and can reach up to 33500 SEK/month [1] which is definitel…

> but I am not sure about other schools in Europe. For France and Germany, stipend/wages range roughly from 1200€ to 1800€/mont, so a bit over minimal wage, and definitely under what you could do in the private sector.

UK had a couple of options in my day for STEM stuff. Basic research council stipend was an untaxed £13K per year and then it could be upped with industry funding to £18K. I know that the Wellcomme Trust had some cross discipline medical/engineering programs that went up to £24K. Decent money and graduated in 4 years

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#48

Post by geoalchimista »

cageface wrote: post #14
geoalchimista wrote: post #9

Because most modern PhD factories are sweat shops that offer a rather dismal career prospect. (If you've been through the process --- I suspect there are a lot on HN --- you know what I mean.)

I bailed out three years into a chemistry PhD and my only regret is that I started it at all. I'm not saying that going to graduate school is necessarily a mistake but I think a lot of people go because they've done well in school up to that point and aren't sure what else to do with themselves.

I commend you on your courage. Reminds me of one of my good friends from college, who bailed out in the second year of his PhD program in geochemistry and started anew in a MSc program in Computer Science. He now works happily in a startup company as a SDE and never looks back.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#49

Post by emilfihlman »

ethelward wrote: post #43
navidfarhadi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You live off a meager stipend for about a decade Keep in mind that this is not necessarily true for schools in countries outside of the US. At my school, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, as a PhD student you are considered an employee of the school and you are paid a living wage with full benefits. The current salary starts at 28600 SEK/month and can reach up to 33500 SEK/month [1] which is definitel…

> but I am not sure about other schools in Europe. For France and Germany, stipend/wages range roughly from 1200€ to 1800€/mont, so a bit over minimal wage, and definitely under what you could do in the private sector.

lolwat, first year summer students make that in Finland :D Generally speaking, no graduated Bachelors should accept anything under 1800€ from the school and for graduated Masters anything under 2100€ from the school is an insult (in the workforce the numbers are something like 2k€ for first year students and PhD students definitely earn >=2k1 here.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#50

Post by foepys »

ethelward wrote: post #43
navidfarhadi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You live off a meager stipend for about a decade Keep in mind that this is not necessarily true for schools in countries outside of the US. At my school, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, as a PhD student you are considered an employee of the school and you are paid a living wage with full benefits. The current salary starts at 28600 SEK/month and can reach up to 33500 SEK/month [1] which is definitel…

> but I am not sure about other schools in Europe. For France and Germany, stipend/wages range roughly from 1200€ to 1800€/mont, so a bit over minimal wage, and definitely under what you could do in the private sector.

This is false for Germany.

A full-time position pays around 44.000€/year (varying a bit from state to state) which is ~3.650€/month. This goes up over time, up to around 56.500€/year. All of this is public information, TV-L 13 is the keyword to look for (TV-L stands for "Tarifvertrag der Länder", 13 is the group in which PhD students are typically placed by universities). Source in German: http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/tv-l/west/ Table for salary per month in Euro (relevant row is E 13): http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/c/t/rechner/tv-l/west?id=tv...

If you don't get a full-time position, you get proportionally less, obviously. In theory if you only have a 50% position and only get 1.800€/month, you should be able to work somewhere else to make up for it. In reality, though, this isn't happening as the professors are tricking the system and are practically abusing the PhD students' dependency on the professor's good-will as he/she is the one who is deciding whether they graduate or not. So even even if a PhD student is only being paid for 20 hours of work a week (50%), they are still expected to work 40h or more.

In non-STEM fields this is sadly happening all the time, sometimes to the extreme where 4 (or even more!) PhD students are being paid from the budget for a single full-time position. In Computer Science, however, I didn't meet a single PhD student that wasn't employed full-time.

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