Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’ • Hacker News Board

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#51

Post by sudosteph » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 2:19 AM UTC

jiggawatts wrote: post #36

sudosteph wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a personal level, I feel empathy for you and your struggling peers. You should not hate your life that severely, no matter what your line of work is. And it's not right to be lied to by people who should be looking for out for you. But to be honest - as someone who was born and raised working class and has a perspective colored by that - I can't for the life of me understand why you do this to yourself. Why don't…

To play the devil's advocate: We really, truly, desperately need academics. The human race would be very much worse off if there weren't a significant number of people spending their lives on purely intellectual pursuits in the name of curiosity instead of quarterly profits. The problem is not the role of academics in the world, that's clearly very important. The problem is the current economic situation of Universit…

I don't deny that the world needs people who can be dedicated to intellectual pursuits - but the stagnation you've described might be further proof that academia itself is the reason the job isn't getting done. There are hundreds of well-regarded universities in the world, many with massive private endowments - if just one of those universities could prove that they are capable of advancing valuable knowledge without falling into that publishing trap - why wouldn't they? All of these institutions claim to have education and knowledge discovery as missions, but all they seem to do is build up barriers in the name of elitism.

The world needs innovators, discoverers, creatives, and engineers - but why is a university structure required for someone to be acknowledged as such? The market's needs certainly can't drive every valuable intellectual discovery - but I don't think they preclude them. Government agencies (NASA, EPA) are also capable of doing research and publishing.

To be clear, I do think academia does serve a valuable role and is a good thing in general. I just think that it's grown too broad in scope - probably because of the massive availability of government grants and competition for those grants.

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#52

Post by valarauko » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 2:20 AM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #23

marta_morena_9 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Into a senior position straight from university? That's going to be interesting.

That's pretty normal for hiring PhDs in my practical experience. My first job was 'senior' and it's the same for everyone else I can think of. You are senior - you've been part of the community for around four years by that point and by graduation you're probably part of several committees and starting to mentor others. Why isn't that 'senior'?

Not the case in my field - biomedical. The hiring manager at a large pharmaceutical company told an audience of postdocs & graduate students at a career event a few weeks ago that they prefer to see a postdoc of at least 2-4 years to be considered for a senior scientist position.

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#53

Post by echelon » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 2:23 AM UTC

supernova87a wrote: post #31

I mean, isn't it clear, ever since the bulk creation / funding of so many colleges (and faculty positions) pre + post WW2, the US faculty job market has been on a decline ever since -- (that is, from the average postdoc's point of view of success % when seeking a faculty position). It is structurally not a growing, dynamic market where you're going to have an easy time. I would call it stagnant, or in the worst case,…

It's suddenly dawned on me in the past month or so that the era of growth for many American ways of life is at an end. Not just academia.

The post-war, post-energy boom should have been obvious. Millennials have been complaining about lack of job growth, housing, and affordable education. Their parents had lower-hanging fruit to pluck. (I'm assuming this isn't just some myth I've been told about the 60's - 90's.) The blame is sometimes placed on "bad Boomer policies", but I'm not so sure. It feels as though we burned through the "easy" years.

In academia, international students aren't flocking to US institutions anymore. The playing field has been leveled.

Asian tech is coming into prominence at full stride and is reminiscent of Japan's meteoric rise.

The manufacturing story is obviously much different.

Is this happening because the rest of the world caught up? Or did America put investments in the wrong places?

What's causing this, and how do we get back to prosperity for all young Americans?

Am I simply missing the areas where things have improved?

Genuinely curious about thematic ideas / shifts, what we might change, or if my views are wrong.

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#54

Post by chrisseaton » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 2:25 AM UTC

michaelhoffman wrote: post #49

chrisseaton wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not making it up out of nowhere! > Meaning "office of a professor" (1816) is extended from the seat from which a professor lectures (mid-15c.). https://www.etymonline.com/word/chair Seems to be in-use in the US? https://depts.washington.edu/givemed/prof-chair/creating-you... It even talks about how the endowment for the professorship or chair funds the professor.

Yes, it is true that there are SOME professors with chairs. Not that all professors have a chair. analog31 already explained this in response to your last comment.

The professors I’ve worked with usually only get that title when they have a couple of decades of experience and are at the very top of their fields with international recognition and will of course be funded and tenured. It sounds like you’re using ‘professor’ to mean something far more junior which is why we aren’t understanding each other.

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#55

Post by valarauko » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 2:28 AM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #35

analog31 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. First of all, you don't get tenure right away, so your first few years are brutal -- 80 hour weeks. You typically get "start up" funding, which eventually runs out. Then you have to come up with your own money. The basic salary is 9 months. Your summer salary comes out of your own grants. Also, if you stop making research progress, your promotions and pay raises evaporate, and it becomes difficult to prom…

> you don't get tenure right away I don't understand how you can be a professor and not be tenured, so I guess we're talking about different things.

A fresh postdoc able to secure an academic job joins as an "Assistant Professor". Fresh Assistant Professors usually cannot recruit PhD students, have limited funds to establish their lab, and no job security. It takes several grades and 15+ years to reach the position of "Professor", which comes with tenure.

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#56

Post by sudosteph » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 2:45 AM UTC

ebg13 wrote: post #39

sudosteph wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a personal level, I feel empathy for you and your struggling peers. You should not hate your life that severely, no matter what your line of work is. And it's not right to be lied to by people who should be looking for out for you. But to be honest - as someone who was born and raised working class and has a perspective colored by that - I can't for the life of me understand why you do this to yourself. Why don't…

> Why don't you quit I did after several years. I, luckily, was in CS and landed on my feet. My partner and many friends did not quit. They, unluckily, were not in CS. So I have the displeasure of seeing it from both ends of the degree and many angles. > Is it just sunk-cost fallacy? Some but not all. You have to realize that the entire world is gaslighting kids every day into thinking that the hole-in-one once-in-a-…

I'm glad to hear you did get out and did well for yourself. Thanks for explaining it from your perspective. As much as you were personally influenced by the people surrounding you - it was probably the exact same dynamic, but opposite (the people around me taught me was that academia was a debt-trap or a luxury for elites who didn't want to be demeaned by real jobs) and that is likely the source of my bewilderment and even low-grade bias against the field as a whole. I can see how if you are someone who respects academics, and listened to respected academics (who necessarily experienced success) - how that would lead you down a totally different path. Seems similar to what I hear about people who try to get into acting in Hollywood - they always listen to the people who make it.

Feel you about unionizing though. I'm in the southern US, and we don't see a lot success here. Still, I'm an IWW member, and my local hospital just successfully unionized a few months back - so it's something I do truly believe is worth continuing to fight for.

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#57

Post by Mmrnmhrm » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 3:37 AM UTC

ebg13 wrote: post #2

Postgraduate student depression and suicidality is at horrifying proportions. The universities don't care. No one cares. Academia is super fucked and super fucked up, and it just keeps marching onward with blindfold on and fingers in ears, yelling "LA LA LA LA" as loud as possible. Academic positions are basically gone. Whatever didn't vanish completely after the 2009 recession is definitely gone now. Universities co…

I can relate. I just read this at 3am while trying to stop wondering what to do with my life. I had the childhood dream of being a professor, and after a short stint in industry, when someone gave me the chance to do a PhD I took it. Life got in the way and got my PhD at 36 years old. Nobody guided me, and did not optimize my publication schedule, so it is impossible to land a job in academia. Now I am postdoc 39, non hirable bc I'm old and my cv compares badly to anyone elses. No clue how to provide for my family.

Last month we helped clean the room of a colleague after he "passed away" after 10 years of post doc.

Another colleague got a job at 36 as a bare programmer after a very successful PhD where he wrote books and was invited to conferences. At 40 he rage quit this job after a bout of frustration and we haven't heard from him since.

Luckily they didn't have kids. Wouldn't I have kids I would definitely follow their path.

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#58

Post by RhysU » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 4:07 AM UTC

bransonf wrote: post #6

Serious question: Why don’t they leave? I’m not saying that they should, or that conditions shouldn’t improve, but if academia is that stressful to you, why stick with it? The only potential outcomes sticking with it are that you will fail later on, or you will fill a role with an increasing amount of stressors.

Sunk cost fallacy.

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#59

Post by analog31 » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 4:51 AM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #46

chrisseaton wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you don't get tenure right away I don't understand how you can be a professor and not be tenured, so I guess we're talking about different things.

> " I don't understand how you can be a professor and not be tenured " Sound like you are laboring under considerable misconceptions about the way academia works. To the best of my knowledge, there are no institutions that automatically grant tenure upon being hired as a professor, let alone a chair, which is considered prestigious. There are various ranks of professorship and assistant professors (entry level) have…

Indeed, getting hired with tenure, much less into a chair, is rarely or ever your first job. But if you already have tenure, then you are likely to be hired with tenure if you switch to another university. You don't have to start from scratch, otherwise nobody in their right mind would ever switch jobs. The grade level and tenure are always negotiable.

Re: Postdocs under pressure: ‘Can I even do this any more?’

#60

Post by idrios » Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 5:04 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #53

supernova87a wrote: post #31

I mean, isn't it clear, ever since the bulk creation / funding of so many colleges (and faculty positions) pre + post WW2, the US faculty job market has been on a decline ever since -- (that is, from the average postdoc's point of view of success % when seeking a faculty position). It is structurally not a growing, dynamic market where you're going to have an easy time. I would call it stagnant, or in the worst case,…

It's suddenly dawned on me in the past month or so that the era of growth for many American ways of life is at an end. Not just academia. The post-war, post-energy boom should have been obvious. Millennials have been complaining about lack of job growth, housing, and affordable education. Their parents had lower-hanging fruit to pluck. (I'm assuming this isn't just some myth I've been told about the 60's - 90's.) The…

My take on it is this.

As a whole, there are fewer jobs to be had because we've really upped efficiency by magnitudes. Things like coal mining used to be done by teams of people (it's what my grandpa did) but now can be mostly done by machines. Houses can be mass produced by a handful of orgs. And of course the US also used to do much more manufacturing before it was mostly outsourced. So we became a service economy.

Except we automated the heck out of services too. Bookkeeping types of jobs have been mostly replaced by software tools. Likewise the kinds of jobs that connect people to other people like phone operators or marketing/advertising agencies have either been made obsolete or so efficient that a handful of companies (e.g. Google, Facebook, Amazon) can basically meet the needs of the entire nation. Nearly every industry has been disrupted now by tech, which means we've increased efficiency & reduced jobs in all those fields

On top of all of this, we have had great success in bringing women and minorities into the workforce. The economic prosperity we had post-WW2 was primarily not shared with African Americans, so the vision of getting a good job and buying a house while young was not a possibility for that group. Probably the best time for economic opportunity for minorities in the US is right now.

Most of the above is good. And I wouldn't even label what we have as "bad Boomer policies" so much as just outdated ones. We are sooo slow to adopt any sort of policy changes whatsoever. The free market is good at solving lots of problems, but it is utterly incapable of solving problems related to distribution of wealth, because companies only have the power to direct wealth inward (if the company were, on average, directing wealth outward it would very quickly go bankrupt and cease to exist).

As for academia, a lot of low hanging fruit has been had across multiple disciplines, so testing new theories has become exponenially more expensive. Cutting edge research 100 years ago would have cost $10k to set up a bunch of mirrors to measure the speed of light. Now it costs in the $billions to measure the presense of certain kinds of matter. So the return value of scientific funding has gone down... so scientific funding has gone down. Despite this, the state of the job market in the US is not very appealing so more people than ever are pursuing / staying in academia.

I have no idea what the fix is but I think a basic income policy would help