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Academics are necessarily optimizing for something other than money. Nobody spends 4-7 years obtaining a PhD and then another 5-7 years pursuing tenure if their
by beambot 10y ago
Academics are necessarily optimizing for something other than money. Nobody spends 4-7 years obtaining a PhD and then another 5-7 years pursuing tenure if their primary motivation in life is money.
The reality is: Academia can be a real shitty gig when it comes down to it. A vast majority of a professor's life is spent dealing with politics, administrative minutiae, "service", pedantic peer review, teaching, and writing grants. By the time all of that's done, you have no time left for the "fun" parts: doing the research, communicating results and having impact, and seeing its effects on the world. Not to mention the abysmal funding climate, changing role of universities, and the fact that many fields (esp. in CS) are now being pushed further, faster, and better by industry...
There's a mass exodus going on right now. At least 25% of the professors I know (I'm friends with many) have either left or are thinking about leaving academia.
- mattkrause 10y agoBingo. CS is lucky in that it's relatively cheap to study. Other than compute time, all most people need is a good coffee maker and a white board. Biology professors need to bring in an order of magnitude more grant money to keep their labs running. As a result, most of them do very little of their own research; they may look at data or plan an experiment with a grad student or postdoc, but the vast majority of their time is spent raising money or reviewing other people's work.
- danieltillett 10y agoHaving been a biology professor this is 100% accurate except most of your time is spent dealing with politics and administrative garbage.
- mattkrause 10y agoFrom your profile, it looks like you got out. Any regrets (or advice)?
- danieltillett 10y agoYes I regret every day leaving science as I love it. In an ideal world I would still be a professional scientist, but we don't live in an ideal world so you have to make the best of what opportunities you have - I certainly can't complain about my life. My only advice is seize the chances that come your way and make the most of them. It is all too easy to stay in the warm cocoon of academia even when you know you should leave.
- jawilson2 10y agoI got out a little over a year ago. I was a BME PhD and did a lot of software engineering and signal analysis of brain signals for brain-computer interfaces. I was a neurology professor for a few years (after a 4 year neurosurgery postdoc), and decided academia wasn't for me. I now work at a trading firm as a quant researcher/trading system software engineer. I have never been happier, but definitely miss the science part of research (i.e., NOT grant writing, politics, etc). I have been doing part time consulting work on Upwork focusing primarily on helping with biomedical signal analysis and software/app design. I still get to be involved in that niche, but now I have money left to feed my kids after all my student loans have been paid. We are actually able to buy a house, which was going to be more than a decade away had I stayed in academia (and got NIH funding, and tenure, etc). I guess I value financial security and that of my kids too much to sacrifice my life for doing science.
- return0 10y ago> There's a mass exodus going on right now This seems to be a common sentiment. I wonder if someone has done the statistics on this.
- math_and_stuff 10y agoAs someone who recently left what was ostensibly a dream job (a tenure-track position at a top university), I largely agree . Being able to start to avoid the "service" of donating my time to support the paywalled journal system and actually enjoying open source development again (even though I get to do less of it) is the best part.