10 ms·

Where Can a Ph.D. Take You? Back to School, Usually

103 points by simonorlovsky 10y ago

amist 10y ago
A Ph.D. in a field where the only thing you can do with it is teaching it to other people is no more than a pyramid scheme.
mookerific 10y ago
The real article should be discussing where a JD will take you. That's the scam of the century.
- gunshigh 10y ago
  In what way?
  - pmiller2 10y ago
    Law school bar pass rates and first year associate salaries are not what they used to be. According to http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/15/pf/jobs/lawyer-salaries/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/15/pf/jobs/lawyer-salaries/ , the median salary for a first year associate is $62k. Add to the mix that law schools inflate their employment stats by including people whose jobs have nothing to do with the law, and what you get is students suing their law schools for fraud (e.g. http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/08/pf/college/lawsuit-thomas-jefferson-school-of-law/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/08/pf/college/lawsuit-thomas-je...)
    - rayiner 10y ago
      A JD is still a big step up for the sorts of people who get them. Humanities majors as a group don't hit much more than $60k mid-career, and more than half of fresh college graduates are unemployed or working a job that doesn't require a college degree.
      - pmiller2 10y ago
        Even after factoring in massive debt?
        rayiner 10y ago
        College and graduate school loan payments are limited to 10% of discretionary income under Obama's recent programs. So yes, even with the debt.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - nyolfen 10y ago
      oh noo, 50% increase on the median annual income. whatever will they do.
      - jacalata 10y ago
        And what's the percentage increase on student debt?
- hyperliner 10y ago
  strawman
pmiller2 10y ago
Academia, as a career path, is a non-starter for the huge majority of people who even want to go down that path. Universities are not growing at the same rates that they were in the 60's and 70's. If you're a graduate student, not only are your classmates your competition, but every professor who supervises more than 1 PhD thesis is actually contributing to the overpopulation of PhDs. These two things in combination are why we have so many adjuncts on campus doing most of the teaching of undergrads. Even if the above weren't true, the path to a tenured position is not something I'd wish on a mortal enemy. Start off with several years in grad school making poverty-level wages. Add on 1-3 postdocs at a minimum, making probably 3/4 or less of what an assistant professor would. Then, there's the 6 year job interview (i.e. the tenure process). And, then, factor in that you don't get to choose where you live during all this. You have to go where the jobs are, and there might only be a handful of jobs in your subfield any given year. That all amounts to about 6-10 years of post-baccalaureate slog before you can even start a career and begin living like an adult. If you come out the other end without a job, then your next search becomes even harder. If you get the job, then, yes, congratulations, it's now very hard to fire you, but good luck finding another tenured position if you decide you want to move. Oh, and the people you work with, you're going to see most of them every day for the next 10, 20, or 30 years. In spite of all that, I might have actually ridden the train to the end, had I not realized that I was preparing to enter a field where I'd literally have to wait for someone to die before I got a job. Nobody told me any of this until I was already in grad school for a couple of years, and even then I ended up figuring most of it out on my own.
- argonaut 10y ago
  I will say that fortunately things are better in computer science academia. (Note I'm assuming you go to a top school for your PhD). The extreme competition is still there (even at a top 4 school), but: 1) it is common to skip a postdoc or only do 1 postdoc 2) the "backup" option is going to work for an industry research lab or a tech company for 200k+ per year. And if your field is one applicable to industry, like systems (databases, networking, distributed systems, OS) or AI/ML, you've also gained skills that actually do command a salary premium (although the premium does not come close to the opportunity cost of a PhD) and some job security.
sndean 10y ago
We should better educate people entering (or considering) PhD programs about their likely job prospects after graduation. There have been a lot of articles (example [2]) written about the terrible situation that graduating PhD students are put in, where they'll likely be stuck in a postdoc for 10+ years with no chance of advancement. It's insane that 1/3 are graduating without a job in hand. Either we limit the number of PhDs we generate or we increase the available number of (academic?) positions [1]. [1] https://research.wisc.edu/biomedworkforce/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2015/03/Larson-et-al-2014.pdf https://research.wisc.edu/biomedworkforce/wp-content/uploads... [2] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/the-phd-bust-americas-awful-market-for-young-scientists-in-7-charts/273339/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/the-phd-...
- munin 10y ago
  they know. there is no other path to the job that they want. what do you propose they do instead?
  - rwallace 10y ago
    The same thing 99% of the human race does and always has done, and the 1% who are wasting their lives trying to become astronauts or movie stars should also do: accept that the job you ideally want is not available, and learn to enjoy a job you can get.
    - munin 10y ago
      tell that to start-up founders and people trying to be athletes as well
      - rwallace 10y ago
        My remarks were certainly addressed also, by the same logic, to people trying to become Olympic athletes. Founding a startup isn't quite the same, because there isn't so much a fixed quota of startups. It is possible to win without having to make ten thousand other people lose.
algirau 10y ago
Got me to being a CTO of a nanotechnology start-up. Academia is not the only end goal.
whyenot 10y ago
Another problem that the article didn't mention is that with the end of mandatory retirement, professors take a lot longer to leave [1]. With people sticking around longer, there is less turnover in tenure track positions, and more competition when positions open up. It's the reason people accept the poor pay and terrible job security of being an adjunct: you've got to hang out somewhere waiting for that dream job and you don't want to stray that far from academia... Serial postdocs are doing the same thing. From personal experience, its very difficult to find that one thing that you absolutely excel at, your life calling, but having to face the likelihood that you may never get that dream professorship and make the money to have children or buy a house. 1. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/02/new-study-shows-difficulty-encouraging-professors-retire https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/02/new-study-sho...
scott_s 10y ago
I found some of the phrasing in the NYT article odd, and this sentence clued me into why: "The authors, who did not get postdoctoral degrees themselves ..." I think the NYT reporter thinks that people in postdocs are pursuing another degree. They are not. It's just a way for people with PhDs to remain in academia, doing research, so that they can build up their publication list to land tenure-track academic positions. (And, sometimes, even industry positions.) Perhaps what the study authors told the NYT reporter that they did not do postdocs, and the NYT reporter translated that to "did not get postdoctoral degrees". I agree this is a holding pattern, as the author says it is. But it's not quite "back to school", as the title implies. (I know the person who wrote the article probably did not supply the title, but I suspect they both have the same confusion.) They're not pursuing another degree.
- otoburb 10y ago
  Also, chances are that the authors of the original study[1] did not pass erroneous information to the NYT reporter as they both hold PhDs in their field. [1] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6286/663 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6286/663
- chrisseaton 10y ago
  I'm not sure holding pattern is fair either. I think doing a postdoc is a normal healthy part of a research career. I don't think most people are ready to start their own groups straight after finishing a PhD.
  - scott_s 10y ago
    I think that one, or even two, postdoc positions is reasonable. But three or four is not unheard of, and that's definitely "holding pattern" territory.
  - compactmani 10y ago
    I agree. The title should read 'Where Can a Ph.D. Take You? Forward to More Research, Usually' Which is the entire point getting a PhD in the first place. More research. Forever. I (along with many others) cringed at the phrasing of postdoctoral degree. A post-doc is not a degree. The article's comparison of a post-doc to law school for liberal arts majors was equally egregious. Sloppy writing. Now, to be fair to their point. What they are observing is a cultural phenomenon in academia which is to stay in academia until you can't stay any more. Industry is for those who fail at academic research, whether that failure occurs at the post-doc stage or pre-tenure stage. This is in contrast to the sentiments of the real world (the perspective of the article author) which wonders why these "students" take so long to get a real job.
argonaut 10y ago
I've heard a few people in CS say they loved their postdocs. My outsider's impression is: there's generally no teaching responsibility, no pressure or anxiety over your thesis/graduation (the biggest stressor for a PhD), generally more flexibility in your research agenda (though it depends on the lab), less pressure to find funding, and there's no stigma to just leaving or moving around whenever you want (it is common to leave a postdoc after just a year). Although you're still paid poorly.
- a_bonobo 10y ago
  >Although you're still paid poorly. In the US, yes - in Australia postdocs get between 60k and 90k per year, with an additional 15-17% that goes into your Super (retirement account - Australia's equivalent of US' 401k). I'm a "new" post-doc in Perth with a salary of 86k p/y and my wife doesn't need to work. But yes, so far I'm enjoying it greatly, after a few years of the constant Damocles' sword of my thesis deadline dangling over my head the freedom is great!
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    Wow, that's pretty good! I'm an Australian citizen starting a PhD in the US this year, so I'll keep an eye on any postdoc openings Down Under when I'm nearing completion. But I'm kind of worried that there won't be many opportunities for the field I'm in (circuit design).
    - a_bonobo 10y ago
      Yes, that's my problem too - there are only very few groups that work in any given area, after this contract is over I may have to go overseas
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- mfukar 10y ago
  Teaching responsibility is mandatory in all CS PhD programs I'm aware of. The pressure is not as bad as other areas, but the deadlines can get very stressful, circumstantially I suppose. The flexibility doesn't really exist: when going for a PhD, you already have a subject picked up, or a project responsibility undertaken, and probably very few ways of going about it because of where the funding's coming from. It's true that the responsibility of getting funding is limited, although some advisors will delegate writing the proposals to postgrads and just review those, taking up the time which you'd spent on your research. That said, all my friends loved their PhD's, and started hating their choice after they got it.
snaggley 10y ago
How can you take this article seriously when they write "getting postdoctoral degrees"? There are things to do in Universities beyond getting degrees... like doing science.
rdlecler1 10y ago
When you spend ten years of your life pursuing something, and you feel you have few prospects then it's likely that you'll continue down the same path. The attitude is better the devil you know than the devil you don't. I left academia after my PhD because I felt that I couldn't do another ten years in academia scraping by on $35k/year postdoc salary... Instead I went through a couple of startups, and here I am seven years later making what I probably would have been making had I never left academia. PhDs can make you painfully unhireable. Oh the irony!
rifung 10y ago
The article makes assumptions about job prospects for PhDs and which careers getting a PhD will enable, but is it strange that I want to get a PhD just because I want to be able to do research and learn about all the currently unsolved problems? I realize that I might not be able to do it for a living, but being able to take a few years off and get paid (although very little) to study something of your choosing sounds great in contrast to getting paid more but spending your time doing things other people want you to do. Would I be better served just taking a few years off and studying on my own? That seems unlikely though since having an advisor is very useful/important..
- Hermel 10y ago
  In my experience, the better option is to seek work with a better pay and then learn to enjoy that. If you find joy in doing things well, almost any job that challenges you will bring you happiness.
- chrisfosterelli 10y ago
  This is why I'm doing my research Masters. I have no interesting in pursuing a long-term career in academia, but I love research and this path keeps me reasonably well-funded for the next few years to focus on a really hard problem that I find interesting. I figure that I have the rest of my life to work in industry, so spending a couple years doing paid research into something I am really interested in sounds good to me!
  - rifung 10y ago
    This is the first time I've heard about this.. In the US our Master's degrees are unfunded and actually quite expensive, although they sometimes involve research too. How does it work? I assume you're doing this in the UK?
    - gambiting 10y ago
      I've got friends who are doing PhDs in computer science(in UK) and they both had to do a Masters course first - but they have funding for the whole duration, including the masters course. I actually work as a C++ programmer, and they both make more than I do, doing a PhD is very well paid, at least in Computer Science.
FourSigma 10y ago
I am extremely happy that the my initial postdoc route was a total bust. It was so hard to leave academia and take a risk in the startup space directly after my PhD. I ended up in data engineering/science at a small EdTech startup. Looking beyond the bump in salary (relative to a postdoc), I find my work extremely rewarding, love my colleagues, and really look forward to going into work everyday and developing my skill set. This was probably the best career decision that I made in life so far. This non-traditional career path is hard for my family, friends, and professors to fully digest and absorb. My dad still wonders why I got a degree in virology/immunology and decided to basically go into software engineering. My friends who are still in academia think I made a terrible mistake going into a startup scene completely unrelated to my graduate education. However, I feel like I am getting great training and setting up for a wonderful career. I seriously doubt I would have felt the same way if I ended up as a postdoc in some research lab.
- ludamad 10y ago
  Luckily, 'programmer with thorough knowledge of X' is almost always a desirable skill set, for any given field X. But seriously, I never knock a job that someone is happy about.
- otoburb 10y ago
  Is there any chance that you would wish to initiate research part-time in your field? I would presume any self-funded research program would need to be limited in scope and heavily weighted towards computational citizen science, which seems to be where your growing skillset can be readily applied.
  - IndianAstronaut 10y ago
    >computational citizen science, This is actually a good approach. As a former bio PhD now in software, I am working on some side projects in the area.
  - FourSigma 10y ago
    I would definitely be interested. One the biggest problems is that the barrier for entry to do any type of laboratory science is really high (lab space, equipment, expensive kits and reagents, etc) compared to software. I think bioinformatics is a good place to start.
atemerev 10y ago
Pursuing a PhD only makes sense if you want to go to the academia. Staying in the academia only makes sense if you genuinely love science to the point that financial reward is much less motivating for you. (There are some shortcuts and exceptions to that. If you have PhD in physics or probability-related applied mathematics, you can become a quant trader; a common career path for those who decided that purely scientific pursuits are not their cup of tea.)
- cft 10y ago
  Another exception is biotech startup world I think. You need a PhD cofounder to start a biotech company.
  - timroy 10y ago
    I think that's true. Most biotech companies are filled with PhDs. The cloud lab Transcriptic is an exception, started by a biomedical engineer in undergrad, but generally speaking it seems you need a PhD for credibility (not to discount the deep domain expertise one needs as well).
- denzil_correa 10y ago
  > Pursuing a PhD only makes sense if you want to go to the academia. The pursuit of a PhD makes sense if you are interested in research.
  - atemerev 10y ago
    Not really. You can do quite a lot of research without PhD. Being paid for it is another story, though.
    - triplesec 10y ago
      except there's nothing like the rigour of a good PhD to teach you good methods, stats and epistemology. Not all do that, but there are many people out there whose code, research and generaly understanding woudl be much better had they studied for a PhD. Now, of course it's not necessary that these learnings have to come through a PhD, but few people pick up good research habits without one. And that includes masters students who at least in some fields definitely get Research-lite levels of understanding from the teaching given.
Ulti 10y ago
This article shows a gross ignorance of the reality. Academic sciences especially are woefully under funded and anyone coming out now with a PhD has no position to go into especially if you are half decent. Accepting to only teach in a crap university and struggle to have a research career is not a choice for competent people. Instead they leave once they fully understand the insermountable task of obtaining a decent life in the academic world is. Worse is the younger 40-45 yol academics think people now face the same world they did. Whereas there has been a 10x increase in PhD graduates since they went looking for a position. The number of available jobs has not dramatically increased at all. This and the stochastic nature of funding of grant proposals means no one chooses to remain in academia. Apart from the top 1% or the no hopers who think being a stooge for the next 40 years is admirable and they should take one for the team to pursue "science". The reality is research jobs outside of academia are obviously booming with this sudden availability of talented and highly educated work force.
saryant 10y ago
Every day I'm glad I bombed my GRE.
OJFord 10y ago
Is this at all surprising? Obviously they're interested in research; ask anyone to name one place where research will happen - how many do you think won't pick "universities"?
VLM 10y ago
Stepping back and having a non-emotional discussion about sportsball might help. Consider that the default plan for the stereotypical high school football player is to play college ball, of course. Also, of course, they know the odds of a successful pro career are very low. Its just something to do until you have something else to do, and there's really nothing wrong with that. Maybe another way to put it is the most interesting cultural change is the death of the career and the rise of the gig or job as the default. Once you know you're very unlikely to have a career, you're free to have a fun job or a fun gig or fun life while doing work you like, or at least like the most out of your options. So the article boils down to the career path is dead, and that's had little short term effect on the workers, like every other job in the country.
santaclaus 10y ago
I know a non-negligible number of new professors who, when offered faculty positions, negotiated a later starting date to pursue a postdoc for a year. Postdocs are a great low risk way to expose yourself to different research groups, to undertake crazy projects that you might not be able to do at your next institution, and to expose yourself to new communities (eg a theory CS PhD working in a math group) and to other researchers. Postdocs are also, in some sense, the most freedom you'll have as a researcher. As a grad student you are more beholden to an advisor than as a postdoc, while as a professor you have administrative duties, recruiting, teaching, and all that jazz distracting you from your work.

103 points by simonorlovsky 10y ago

amist 10y ago

A Ph.D. in a field where the only thing you can do with it is teaching it to other people is no more than a pyramid scheme.

mookerific 10y ago

The real article should be discussing where a JD will take you. That's the scam of the century.

gunshigh 10y ago
In what way?
- pmiller2 10y ago
  Law school bar pass rates and first year associate salaries are not what they used to be. According to http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/15/pf/jobs/lawyer-salaries/ http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/15/pf/jobs/lawyer-salaries/ , the median salary for a first year associate is $62k. Add to the mix that law schools inflate their employment stats by including people whose jobs have nothing to do with the law, and what you get is students suing their law schools for fraud (e.g. http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/08/pf/college/lawsuit-thomas-jefferson-school-of-law/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/03/08/pf/college/lawsuit-thomas-je...)
  - rayiner 10y ago
    A JD is still a big step up for the sorts of people who get them. Humanities majors as a group don't hit much more than $60k mid-career, and more than half of fresh college graduates are unemployed or working a job that doesn't require a college degree.
    - pmiller2 10y ago
      Even after factoring in massive debt?
      - rayiner 10y ago
        College and graduate school loan payments are limited to 10% of discretionary income under Obama's recent programs. So yes, even with the debt.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - nyolfen 10y ago
    oh noo, 50% increase on the median annual income. whatever will they do.
    - jacalata 10y ago
      And what's the percentage increase on student debt?
hyperliner 10y ago
strawman

pmiller2 10y ago

Academia, as a career path, is a non-starter for the huge majority of people who even want to go down that path. Universities are not growing at the same rates that they were in the 60's and 70's. If you're a graduate student, not only are your classmates your competition, but every professor who supervises more than 1 PhD thesis is actually contributing to the overpopulation of PhDs. These two things in combination are why we have so many adjuncts on campus doing most of the teaching of undergrads. Even if the above weren't true, the path to a tenured position is not something I'd wish on a mortal enemy. Start off with several years in grad school making poverty-level wages. Add on 1-3 postdocs at a minimum, making probably 3/4 or less of what an assistant professor would. Then, there's the 6 year job interview (i.e. the tenure process). And, then, factor in that you don't get to choose where you live during all this. You have to go where the jobs are, and there might only be a handful of jobs in your subfield any given year. That all amounts to about 6-10 years of post-baccalaureate slog before you can even start a career and begin living like an adult. If you come out the other end without a job, then your next search becomes even harder. If you get the job, then, yes, congratulations, it's now very hard to fire you, but good luck finding another tenured position if you decide you want to move. Oh, and the people you work with, you're going to see most of them every day for the next 10, 20, or 30 years. In spite of all that, I might have actually ridden the train to the end, had I not realized that I was preparing to enter a field where I'd literally have to wait for someone to die before I got a job. Nobody told me any of this until I was already in grad school for a couple of years, and even then I ended up figuring most of it out on my own.

argonaut 10y ago
I will say that fortunately things are better in computer science academia. (Note I'm assuming you go to a top school for your PhD). The extreme competition is still there (even at a top 4 school), but: 1) it is common to skip a postdoc or only do 1 postdoc 2) the "backup" option is going to work for an industry research lab or a tech company for 200k+ per year. And if your field is one applicable to industry, like systems (databases, networking, distributed systems, OS) or AI/ML, you've also gained skills that actually do command a salary premium (although the premium does not come close to the opportunity cost of a PhD) and some job security.

sndean 10y ago

We should better educate people entering (or considering) PhD programs about their likely job prospects after graduation. There have been a lot of articles (example [2]) written about the terrible situation that graduating PhD students are put in, where they'll likely be stuck in a postdoc for 10+ years with no chance of advancement. It's insane that 1/3 are graduating without a job in hand. Either we limit the number of PhDs we generate or we increase the available number of (academic?) positions [1]. [1] https://research.wisc.edu/biomedworkforce/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2015/03/Larson-et-al-2014.pdf https://research.wisc.edu/biomedworkforce/wp-content/uploads... [2] http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/the-phd-bust-americas-awful-market-for-young-scientists-in-7-charts/273339/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/the-phd-...

munin 10y ago
they know. there is no other path to the job that they want. what do you propose they do instead?
- rwallace 10y ago
  The same thing 99% of the human race does and always has done, and the 1% who are wasting their lives trying to become astronauts or movie stars should also do: accept that the job you ideally want is not available, and learn to enjoy a job you can get.
  - munin 10y ago
    tell that to start-up founders and people trying to be athletes as well
    - rwallace 10y ago
      My remarks were certainly addressed also, by the same logic, to people trying to become Olympic athletes. Founding a startup isn't quite the same, because there isn't so much a fixed quota of startups. It is possible to win without having to make ten thousand other people lose.

algirau 10y ago

Got me to being a CTO of a nanotechnology start-up. Academia is not the only end goal.

whyenot 10y ago

Another problem that the article didn't mention is that with the end of mandatory retirement, professors take a lot longer to leave [1]. With people sticking around longer, there is less turnover in tenure track positions, and more competition when positions open up. It's the reason people accept the poor pay and terrible job security of being an adjunct: you've got to hang out somewhere waiting for that dream job and you don't want to stray that far from academia... Serial postdocs are doing the same thing. From personal experience, its very difficult to find that one thing that you absolutely excel at, your life calling, but having to face the likelihood that you may never get that dream professorship and make the money to have children or buy a house. 1. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/02/new-study-shows-difficulty-encouraging-professors-retire https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/02/new-study-sho...

scott_s 10y ago

I found some of the phrasing in the NYT article odd, and this sentence clued me into why: "The authors, who did not get postdoctoral degrees themselves ..." I think the NYT reporter thinks that people in postdocs are pursuing another degree. They are not. It's just a way for people with PhDs to remain in academia, doing research, so that they can build up their publication list to land tenure-track academic positions. (And, sometimes, even industry positions.) Perhaps what the study authors told the NYT reporter that they did not do postdocs, and the NYT reporter translated that to "did not get postdoctoral degrees". I agree this is a holding pattern, as the author says it is. But it's not quite "back to school", as the title implies. (I know the person who wrote the article probably did not supply the title, but I suspect they both have the same confusion.) They're not pursuing another degree.

otoburb 10y ago
Also, chances are that the authors of the original study[1] did not pass erroneous information to the NYT reporter as they both hold PhDs in their field. [1] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6286/663 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6286/663
chrisseaton 10y ago
I'm not sure holding pattern is fair either. I think doing a postdoc is a normal healthy part of a research career. I don't think most people are ready to start their own groups straight after finishing a PhD.
- scott_s 10y ago
  I think that one, or even two, postdoc positions is reasonable. But three or four is not unheard of, and that's definitely "holding pattern" territory.
- compactmani 10y ago
  I agree. The title should read 'Where Can a Ph.D. Take You? Forward to More Research, Usually' Which is the entire point getting a PhD in the first place. More research. Forever. I (along with many others) cringed at the phrasing of postdoctoral degree. A post-doc is not a degree. The article's comparison of a post-doc to law school for liberal arts majors was equally egregious. Sloppy writing. Now, to be fair to their point. What they are observing is a cultural phenomenon in academia which is to stay in academia until you can't stay any more. Industry is for those who fail at academic research, whether that failure occurs at the post-doc stage or pre-tenure stage. This is in contrast to the sentiments of the real world (the perspective of the article author) which wonders why these "students" take so long to get a real job.

argonaut 10y ago

I've heard a few people in CS say they loved their postdocs. My outsider's impression is: there's generally no teaching responsibility, no pressure or anxiety over your thesis/graduation (the biggest stressor for a PhD), generally more flexibility in your research agenda (though it depends on the lab), less pressure to find funding, and there's no stigma to just leaving or moving around whenever you want (it is common to leave a postdoc after just a year). Although you're still paid poorly.

a_bonobo 10y ago
>Although you're still paid poorly. In the US, yes - in Australia postdocs get between 60k and 90k per year, with an additional 15-17% that goes into your Super (retirement account - Australia's equivalent of US' 401k). I'm a "new" post-doc in Perth with a salary of 86k p/y and my wife doesn't need to work. But yes, so far I'm enjoying it greatly, after a few years of the constant Damocles' sword of my thesis deadline dangling over my head the freedom is great!
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  Wow, that's pretty good! I'm an Australian citizen starting a PhD in the US this year, so I'll keep an eye on any postdoc openings Down Under when I'm nearing completion. But I'm kind of worried that there won't be many opportunities for the field I'm in (circuit design).
  - a_bonobo 10y ago
    Yes, that's my problem too - there are only very few groups that work in any given area, after this contract is over I may have to go overseas
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
mfukar 10y ago
Teaching responsibility is mandatory in all CS PhD programs I'm aware of. The pressure is not as bad as other areas, but the deadlines can get very stressful, circumstantially I suppose. The flexibility doesn't really exist: when going for a PhD, you already have a subject picked up, or a project responsibility undertaken, and probably very few ways of going about it because of where the funding's coming from. It's true that the responsibility of getting funding is limited, although some advisors will delegate writing the proposals to postgrads and just review those, taking up the time which you'd spent on your research. That said, all my friends loved their PhD's, and started hating their choice after they got it.

snaggley 10y ago

How can you take this article seriously when they write "getting postdoctoral degrees"? There are things to do in Universities beyond getting degrees... like doing science.

rdlecler1 10y ago

When you spend ten years of your life pursuing something, and you feel you have few prospects then it's likely that you'll continue down the same path. The attitude is better the devil you know than the devil you don't. I left academia after my PhD because I felt that I couldn't do another ten years in academia scraping by on $35k/year postdoc salary... Instead I went through a couple of startups, and here I am seven years later making what I probably would have been making had I never left academia. PhDs can make you painfully unhireable. Oh the irony!

rifung 10y ago

The article makes assumptions about job prospects for PhDs and which careers getting a PhD will enable, but is it strange that I want to get a PhD just because I want to be able to do research and learn about all the currently unsolved problems? I realize that I might not be able to do it for a living, but being able to take a few years off and get paid (although very little) to study something of your choosing sounds great in contrast to getting paid more but spending your time doing things other people want you to do. Would I be better served just taking a few years off and studying on my own? That seems unlikely though since having an advisor is very useful/important..

Hermel 10y ago
In my experience, the better option is to seek work with a better pay and then learn to enjoy that. If you find joy in doing things well, almost any job that challenges you will bring you happiness.
chrisfosterelli 10y ago
This is why I'm doing my research Masters. I have no interesting in pursuing a long-term career in academia, but I love research and this path keeps me reasonably well-funded for the next few years to focus on a really hard problem that I find interesting. I figure that I have the rest of my life to work in industry, so spending a couple years doing paid research into something I am really interested in sounds good to me!
- rifung 10y ago
  This is the first time I've heard about this.. In the US our Master's degrees are unfunded and actually quite expensive, although they sometimes involve research too. How does it work? I assume you're doing this in the UK?
  - gambiting 10y ago
    I've got friends who are doing PhDs in computer science(in UK) and they both had to do a Masters course first - but they have funding for the whole duration, including the masters course. I actually work as a C++ programmer, and they both make more than I do, doing a PhD is very well paid, at least in Computer Science.

FourSigma 10y ago

I am extremely happy that the my initial postdoc route was a total bust. It was so hard to leave academia and take a risk in the startup space directly after my PhD. I ended up in data engineering/science at a small EdTech startup. Looking beyond the bump in salary (relative to a postdoc), I find my work extremely rewarding, love my colleagues, and really look forward to going into work everyday and developing my skill set. This was probably the best career decision that I made in life so far. This non-traditional career path is hard for my family, friends, and professors to fully digest and absorb. My dad still wonders why I got a degree in virology/immunology and decided to basically go into software engineering. My friends who are still in academia think I made a terrible mistake going into a startup scene completely unrelated to my graduate education. However, I feel like I am getting great training and setting up for a wonderful career. I seriously doubt I would have felt the same way if I ended up as a postdoc in some research lab.

ludamad 10y ago
Luckily, 'programmer with thorough knowledge of X' is almost always a desirable skill set, for any given field X. But seriously, I never knock a job that someone is happy about.
otoburb 10y ago
Is there any chance that you would wish to initiate research part-time in your field? I would presume any self-funded research program would need to be limited in scope and heavily weighted towards computational citizen science, which seems to be where your growing skillset can be readily applied.
- IndianAstronaut 10y ago
  >computational citizen science, This is actually a good approach. As a former bio PhD now in software, I am working on some side projects in the area.
- FourSigma 10y ago
  I would definitely be interested. One the biggest problems is that the barrier for entry to do any type of laboratory science is really high (lab space, equipment, expensive kits and reagents, etc) compared to software. I think bioinformatics is a good place to start.

atemerev 10y ago

Pursuing a PhD only makes sense if you want to go to the academia. Staying in the academia only makes sense if you genuinely love science to the point that financial reward is much less motivating for you. (There are some shortcuts and exceptions to that. If you have PhD in physics or probability-related applied mathematics, you can become a quant trader; a common career path for those who decided that purely scientific pursuits are not their cup of tea.)

cft 10y ago
Another exception is biotech startup world I think. You need a PhD cofounder to start a biotech company.
- timroy 10y ago
  I think that's true. Most biotech companies are filled with PhDs. The cloud lab Transcriptic is an exception, started by a biomedical engineer in undergrad, but generally speaking it seems you need a PhD for credibility (not to discount the deep domain expertise one needs as well).
denzil_correa 10y ago
> Pursuing a PhD only makes sense if you want to go to the academia. The pursuit of a PhD makes sense if you are interested in research.
- atemerev 10y ago
  Not really. You can do quite a lot of research without PhD. Being paid for it is another story, though.
  - triplesec 10y ago
    except there's nothing like the rigour of a good PhD to teach you good methods, stats and epistemology. Not all do that, but there are many people out there whose code, research and generaly understanding woudl be much better had they studied for a PhD. Now, of course it's not necessary that these learnings have to come through a PhD, but few people pick up good research habits without one. And that includes masters students who at least in some fields definitely get Research-lite levels of understanding from the teaching given.

Ulti 10y ago

This article shows a gross ignorance of the reality. Academic sciences especially are woefully under funded and anyone coming out now with a PhD has no position to go into especially if you are half decent. Accepting to only teach in a crap university and struggle to have a research career is not a choice for competent people. Instead they leave once they fully understand the insermountable task of obtaining a decent life in the academic world is. Worse is the younger 40-45 yol academics think people now face the same world they did. Whereas there has been a 10x increase in PhD graduates since they went looking for a position. The number of available jobs has not dramatically increased at all. This and the stochastic nature of funding of grant proposals means no one chooses to remain in academia. Apart from the top 1% or the no hopers who think being a stooge for the next 40 years is admirable and they should take one for the team to pursue "science". The reality is research jobs outside of academia are obviously booming with this sudden availability of talented and highly educated work force.

saryant 10y ago

Every day I'm glad I bombed my GRE.

OJFord 10y ago

Is this at all surprising? Obviously they're interested in research; ask anyone to name one place where research will happen - how many do you think won't pick "universities"?

VLM 10y ago

Stepping back and having a non-emotional discussion about sportsball might help. Consider that the default plan for the stereotypical high school football player is to play college ball, of course. Also, of course, they know the odds of a successful pro career are very low. Its just something to do until you have something else to do, and there's really nothing wrong with that. Maybe another way to put it is the most interesting cultural change is the death of the career and the rise of the gig or job as the default. Once you know you're very unlikely to have a career, you're free to have a fun job or a fun gig or fun life while doing work you like, or at least like the most out of your options. So the article boils down to the career path is dead, and that's had little short term effect on the workers, like every other job in the country.

santaclaus 10y ago

I know a non-negligible number of new professors who, when offered faculty positions, negotiated a later starting date to pursue a postdoc for a year. Postdocs are a great low risk way to expose yourself to different research groups, to undertake crazy projects that you might not be able to do at your next institution, and to expose yourself to new communities (eg a theory CS PhD working in a math group) and to other researchers. Postdocs are also, in some sense, the most freedom you'll have as a researcher. As a grad student you are more beholden to an advisor than as a postdoc, while as a professor you have administrative duties, recruiting, teaching, and all that jazz distracting you from your work.