5 ms·

I think work hours and salary have a bimodal distribution, driven by tenured / non-tenured status. My experience is in theoretical math/physics -- I got my PhD

by ptero 9y ago

I think work hours and salary have a bimodal distribution, driven by tenured / non-tenured status. My experience is in theoretical math/physics -- I got my PhD but decided not to stay in academia; there are pros and cons to both options. IME most tenured professors have to work significantly less than others for the same salary (those who work more mostly do it because they like working with grad students, not because they get financial benefits for it). Quality of life is good, good benefits, few and flexible work hours, sabbaticals, etc. Salary is lower than at the top of the industry, but sufficient for a comfortable life. Those who do good research can escape for the summer to interesting parts of the world to summer schools and visiting colleagues using grant money. However, non-tenured professors have it much harder. And postdocs are usually the underclass.

Qworg 9y ago
Also, many tenured professors double dip into industry as well, leveraging their guaranteed position for minimized exposure if the startup goes poorly.
- mathperson 9y ago
  Depends on field.
aswanson 9y ago
Was your original plan to become a professor? If so, why did you change course?
- ptero 9y ago
  Absolutely, for the first 2 years. I suspect 3-6 years of postdoc plus 3-5 years at tenure track before getting tenure was a significant burden. And all that is not a guarantee of success. Maybe I was also tired at being inside academia and wanted to see what life outside was. I am not sure, but I do know that at some time I knew I did not want to stay in academia. And when I understood this the first thought was "why did not I realize this a year ago"? Nothing wrong with academia, I just chose a different path. EDIT: On some thought the mentality "if you did not stay in academia you are a loser" probably delayed the above realization. It was very prevalent.
  - pm90 9y ago
    > EDIT: On some thought the mentality "if you did not stay in academia you are a loser" probably delayed the above realization. It was very prevalent. I see that as a common feeling among some of my friends slaving away on their PhDs. Its hard to not feel this way if all your friends, social circle, basically your entire world, is built around the school/program you are attending (which isn't that unusual since you're likely to be friends with other PhD students). Additionally, I've noticed some of my peers who did very well academically in undergrad want to continue the "good streak" right through PhD. I know it sounds rather silly, but if you've been killing it with grades and awards and the like, its easy to feel that you are special and if you don't do a PhD, who will? This is unfortunately what happened with me. Although, I realized my mistake within the first year and decided to leave with a Masters degree.
    - hpcjoe 9y ago
      Yeah, I heard the "loser" bit. Somewhat comforted by the end of my third year in industry, in that my compensation was 2.5x what new profs was making. The postdocs I looked at included a number for which the salary for 60+ hours of real work/week would have been (well) below the poverty level for my family. This was a bridge too far, coupled with the 1000+ applicants per position. Made it hard to make a case to continue in that field.
- hpcjoe 9y ago
  When I entered grad school it was. Then the Soviet Union died, and the market, already awash in a large number of Ph.D.s in physics suddenly transformed into something that I could not effectively compete in. To some degree, you are measured, as a student/postdoc, by the number of highly rated papers in good journals that you produce, as well as citations, invitations to speak, etc. All of this factors into how high in the stack you will rise. When I was looking at applying for tenure track positions, I was hampered to a degree, by being in a group that didn't publish often (and of course, as a student, I couldn't push my advisor to publish more ... she had tenure already). So I had a couple of good papers, but nothing compared to these senior folks from FSU, with 20+ years experience, many Phys. Rev. Letters, and other top journals. And hey, to make it even more fun, they were willing to work for less than the newly minted Ph.D.s. I don't blame them. Would have done the same thing in their shoes. We are better off for them having come here and advanced physics. But to the younger me, thinking ... damn ... this ain't fair ... it wasn't so obvious at the time. I made a conscious decision to go into industry, knowing full well that it ended my hopes of landing a job as a prof. I've had a few side research associate prof gigs to teach HPC programming or work in a CS group (not bad for an ex-physics guy), and for the most part, they were fulfilling. This is a hard choice to make though. All grad students and post docs need to know what awaits them in the world. Don't, as in never, believe anyone ever telling you about shortages. Assume that they have an agenda. I was part of a cohort to whom the NSF exhorted the looming shortage of scientists for staffing physics positions (mid 80s). I was both naive enough to believe them, and foolish enough not to do my own research. I would have gone in a different direction, had I known what I learned later. One more pragmatic. Likely Math or CS. My recommendation to younger versions of me, my wife (also an ex-physicist, now a math/physics teacher in a local high school) would be to look carefully at how the world is moving toward some things and away from others. Estimate where we will be in N years when you finish up, and try see if something you think you would like to do aligns with something people are willing to pay for. Make sure you are flexible enough to change, and you can adapt as needed. Learn how to learn, learn how to think, learn how to move beyond your comfort zones. Learn how to communicate, how to sell (not necessarily things, but ideas). Learn what value is. Then when you get to be an older fart, responding, slightly wistfully, to posts on HN, you can pass along your own experiences, thereby, hopefully, helping someone to optimize their own journey.
fhood 9y ago
I happen to be extremely well acquainted with one tenured professor of biological oceanography, and one tenure track professor of physical oceanography, and I can't say I agree with your observation. My experience has been that tenure or not, the amount of work that these individuals have on their plate is essentially endless. Grants are extremely difficult to come by these days, although its getting better, and it is worth noting both of these individuals must pay a significant chunk of their salaries from grants. Not to mention that the pressure to keep publishing is essentially unending. Also, sabatical is not code for vacation. The system is the same, if you don't publish it's hard to get funding, and if you don't get funding you don't get your full salary. That said, my experience in this is only with Oceanography professors who are research professors first and teachers a distant second.
- tertius 9y ago
  > Grants are extremely difficult to come by these days Only because of competition. It's still vastly better in the U.S. than any other country. Competition is good.
  - mattkrause 9y ago
    To a point. There was a retrospective study looking at grant scores vs. outcomes (citations of the papers produced). The correlation was pretty weak. Reviewers can identify the obvious dreck, but beyond that was a bit of a toss-up. If you have too much competition, people start rushing sexy, half-baked results out the door, regardless of whether they seem likely to hold up--or even make sense. This selects against the people doing the careful sort of research that we probably intend to encourage.
    - tertius 9y ago
      Yes, competition is good. But as you say, the incentives are not aligned correctly. And yes, it's very difficult for reviewers to make the best decisions. So instead, they reject and request preliminary data. Which requires money. But at least this is better than a sexy shot in the dark, which I think private institutions should be funding. Or things like MD Anderson's moonshot program. Things aren't perfect, but I think we can both agree that there is no perfect solution to this problem, incremental improvement? Certainly.
BeetleB 9y ago
I don't know about theoretical physics, but math professors usually have almost no burden to produce grant money. My observation is the same - they are very relaxed. In my school, the physics department was part of the College of Engineering. They had the usual 80 hour weeks because their evaluations depended on the amount of grant money they brought in.
- chrisBob 9y ago
  This is related to the cost of doing experiments and running a lab. My wife is a bio-physicist and goes through $1k is supplies on a good day. In contrast you could run a math lab on almost nothing.
  - tincholio 9y ago
    There's this old joke about math departments being the second cheapest to run, since you only need pen, paper, and a trash can. The cheapest department to run is Philosophy, since you only need pen and paper.
  - xyzzyz 9y ago
    The biggest cost of running math department is travel costs, but then again, biophysicist probably spend just as much on that.
  - BeetleB 9y ago
    >This is related to the cost of doing experiments and running a lab. Only tangentially. In my engineering department, the expectations on the professor who ran a lab with heavy and expensive equipment were no greater than the one whose work was all computational and just needed a bunch of PC's to run simulations on.
- ptero 9y ago
  Interesting. In my school math and physics were part of College of Science and CS was in College of Engineering. Maybe this burden of grant money production is college-based.
at-fates-hands 9y ago
> I think work hours and salary have a bimodal distribution, driven by tenured / non-tenured status. After I got my masters in Anthropology, I had been planning on a career in academia. At the time (early aughts), there was a huge backlash against tenure and there was a big movement trying to do away with it completely and it really turned me off. I subsequently left the field altogether in large part to the idea of having to "prove" my tenure, when, at the time, it was one of the few things which gave professors some stability in their role at a given university.

by ptero 9y ago

Qworg 9y ago

Also, many tenured professors double dip into industry as well, leveraging their guaranteed position for minimized exposure if the startup goes poorly.

mathperson 9y ago
Depends on field.

aswanson 9y ago

Was your original plan to become a professor? If so, why did you change course?

ptero 9y ago
Absolutely, for the first 2 years. I suspect 3-6 years of postdoc plus 3-5 years at tenure track before getting tenure was a significant burden. And all that is not a guarantee of success. Maybe I was also tired at being inside academia and wanted to see what life outside was. I am not sure, but I do know that at some time I knew I did not want to stay in academia. And when I understood this the first thought was "why did not I realize this a year ago"? Nothing wrong with academia, I just chose a different path. EDIT: On some thought the mentality "if you did not stay in academia you are a loser" probably delayed the above realization. It was very prevalent.
- pm90 9y ago
  > EDIT: On some thought the mentality "if you did not stay in academia you are a loser" probably delayed the above realization. It was very prevalent. I see that as a common feeling among some of my friends slaving away on their PhDs. Its hard to not feel this way if all your friends, social circle, basically your entire world, is built around the school/program you are attending (which isn't that unusual since you're likely to be friends with other PhD students). Additionally, I've noticed some of my peers who did very well academically in undergrad want to continue the "good streak" right through PhD. I know it sounds rather silly, but if you've been killing it with grades and awards and the like, its easy to feel that you are special and if you don't do a PhD, who will? This is unfortunately what happened with me. Although, I realized my mistake within the first year and decided to leave with a Masters degree.
  - hpcjoe 9y ago
    Yeah, I heard the "loser" bit. Somewhat comforted by the end of my third year in industry, in that my compensation was 2.5x what new profs was making. The postdocs I looked at included a number for which the salary for 60+ hours of real work/week would have been (well) below the poverty level for my family. This was a bridge too far, coupled with the 1000+ applicants per position. Made it hard to make a case to continue in that field.
hpcjoe 9y ago
When I entered grad school it was. Then the Soviet Union died, and the market, already awash in a large number of Ph.D.s in physics suddenly transformed into something that I could not effectively compete in. To some degree, you are measured, as a student/postdoc, by the number of highly rated papers in good journals that you produce, as well as citations, invitations to speak, etc. All of this factors into how high in the stack you will rise. When I was looking at applying for tenure track positions, I was hampered to a degree, by being in a group that didn't publish often (and of course, as a student, I couldn't push my advisor to publish more ... she had tenure already). So I had a couple of good papers, but nothing compared to these senior folks from FSU, with 20+ years experience, many Phys. Rev. Letters, and other top journals. And hey, to make it even more fun, they were willing to work for less than the newly minted Ph.D.s. I don't blame them. Would have done the same thing in their shoes. We are better off for them having come here and advanced physics. But to the younger me, thinking ... damn ... this ain't fair ... it wasn't so obvious at the time. I made a conscious decision to go into industry, knowing full well that it ended my hopes of landing a job as a prof. I've had a few side research associate prof gigs to teach HPC programming or work in a CS group (not bad for an ex-physics guy), and for the most part, they were fulfilling. This is a hard choice to make though. All grad students and post docs need to know what awaits them in the world. Don't, as in never, believe anyone ever telling you about shortages. Assume that they have an agenda. I was part of a cohort to whom the NSF exhorted the looming shortage of scientists for staffing physics positions (mid 80s). I was both naive enough to believe them, and foolish enough not to do my own research. I would have gone in a different direction, had I known what I learned later. One more pragmatic. Likely Math or CS. My recommendation to younger versions of me, my wife (also an ex-physicist, now a math/physics teacher in a local high school) would be to look carefully at how the world is moving toward some things and away from others. Estimate where we will be in N years when you finish up, and try see if something you think you would like to do aligns with something people are willing to pay for. Make sure you are flexible enough to change, and you can adapt as needed. Learn how to learn, learn how to think, learn how to move beyond your comfort zones. Learn how to communicate, how to sell (not necessarily things, but ideas). Learn what value is. Then when you get to be an older fart, responding, slightly wistfully, to posts on HN, you can pass along your own experiences, thereby, hopefully, helping someone to optimize their own journey.

fhood 9y ago

I happen to be extremely well acquainted with one tenured professor of biological oceanography, and one tenure track professor of physical oceanography, and I can't say I agree with your observation. My experience has been that tenure or not, the amount of work that these individuals have on their plate is essentially endless. Grants are extremely difficult to come by these days, although its getting better, and it is worth noting both of these individuals must pay a significant chunk of their salaries from grants. Not to mention that the pressure to keep publishing is essentially unending. Also, sabatical is not code for vacation. The system is the same, if you don't publish it's hard to get funding, and if you don't get funding you don't get your full salary. That said, my experience in this is only with Oceanography professors who are research professors first and teachers a distant second.

tertius 9y ago
> Grants are extremely difficult to come by these days Only because of competition. It's still vastly better in the U.S. than any other country. Competition is good.
- mattkrause 9y ago
  To a point. There was a retrospective study looking at grant scores vs. outcomes (citations of the papers produced). The correlation was pretty weak. Reviewers can identify the obvious dreck, but beyond that was a bit of a toss-up. If you have too much competition, people start rushing sexy, half-baked results out the door, regardless of whether they seem likely to hold up--or even make sense. This selects against the people doing the careful sort of research that we probably intend to encourage.
  - tertius 9y ago
    Yes, competition is good. But as you say, the incentives are not aligned correctly. And yes, it's very difficult for reviewers to make the best decisions. So instead, they reject and request preliminary data. Which requires money. But at least this is better than a sexy shot in the dark, which I think private institutions should be funding. Or things like MD Anderson's moonshot program. Things aren't perfect, but I think we can both agree that there is no perfect solution to this problem, incremental improvement? Certainly.

BeetleB 9y ago

I don't know about theoretical physics, but math professors usually have almost no burden to produce grant money. My observation is the same - they are very relaxed. In my school, the physics department was part of the College of Engineering. They had the usual 80 hour weeks because their evaluations depended on the amount of grant money they brought in.

chrisBob 9y ago
This is related to the cost of doing experiments and running a lab. My wife is a bio-physicist and goes through $1k is supplies on a good day. In contrast you could run a math lab on almost nothing.
- tincholio 9y ago
  There's this old joke about math departments being the second cheapest to run, since you only need pen, paper, and a trash can. The cheapest department to run is Philosophy, since you only need pen and paper.
- xyzzyz 9y ago
  The biggest cost of running math department is travel costs, but then again, biophysicist probably spend just as much on that.
- BeetleB 9y ago
  >This is related to the cost of doing experiments and running a lab. Only tangentially. In my engineering department, the expectations on the professor who ran a lab with heavy and expensive equipment were no greater than the one whose work was all computational and just needed a bunch of PC's to run simulations on.
ptero 9y ago
Interesting. In my school math and physics were part of College of Science and CS was in College of Engineering. Maybe this burden of grant money production is college-based.

at-fates-hands 9y ago

> I think work hours and salary have a bimodal distribution, driven by tenured / non-tenured status. After I got my masters in Anthropology, I had been planning on a career in academia. At the time (early aughts), there was a huge backlash against tenure and there was a big movement trying to do away with it completely and it really turned me off. I subsequently left the field altogether in large part to the idea of having to "prove" my tenure, when, at the time, it was one of the few things which gave professors some stability in their role at a given university.