20 ms·

Postdoc Myths

123 points by mrry 7y ago

jonathanstrange 7y ago
Nice list, I think it lays out the problem with the current system in fine details. I'm surprised that it seems to be as bad as where I live in the UK, too. I call myself a Senior Research Fellow, but in the end I'm just a postdoc in the late 40s who has almost no chances to get full tenure and has messed up his life for good. Before anyone blames me, think twice. I've got new contracts offered with almost no effort on my behalf over the years, and all my positions where pure research with no teaching duties. It's not easy to turn down such seemingly generous offers and try to make a living in another way (with a background in linguistics & philosophy!), even when you know these contracts won't last and only delay the inevitable.
- azhenley 7y ago
  It doesn't seem like you have messed up your life. If you have made it that far in the humanities, then I think you're the type that can figure out how to keep going.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    They’re almost 50 and don’t have a full time job with pension. That is not a good position to be in unless you come from money, are married to someone who does, or has a solid professional career or gold plated benefits and a permanent job.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - WWWWH 7y ago
      I don't know the specific detail of OP's position, but (all?) post-docs in the UK are members of the same pension scheme as all other academics in their institution. Your fundamental point is quite right--short-term contracts are a lousy and difficult game to play into middle-age.
    - lonelappde 7y ago
      They have a government pension. They spent 30 years "working" on their research interest instead of at the beck of bosses and clients. Even if they spend retirement stuck as a grocery clerk, they'll have a better life (more funded free time to pursue their personal interests) than almost everyone.
      - sadfklsjlkjwt 7y ago
        Will the job of grocery clerk exist in 20 years?
      - cedex12 7y ago
        research interests ≠ personal interests, necessarily.
      - rusticpenn 7y ago
        Research is not very different from work actually. You always work on the basis of market demand (In this case, the funding organisations)
- rusticpenn 7y ago
  I was in a similar situation ( in early 30s) , however ,I moved to industry when I realised that even banks dont trust these contracts for long term financing.
- jhbadger 7y ago
  I'm a "Staff Scientist" in the US which is basically the same thing. But I don't think that's a bad thing. I get to do science. Professors/PIs mostly spend their research time writing grant proposals and managing their staff, not actually spending much (or any) time doing experiments themselves or analyzing the data.
cousin_it 7y ago
> Of course, the more candidates there are, the more competition for the jobs. But it doesn't follow that the jobs' terms will become increasingly exploitative, such as being offered in shorter term, with less pay, lower status and fewer benefits. That requires a separate decision to degrade the offering. [...] Anyone who tries to explain it purely as supply and demand, or even “nature”, is either ignorant or is trying to sell you something. Higher supply does lead to lower price, though.
- svara 7y ago
  ... in a free market, but research funding is dominated by governments, where this does not automatically apply.
  - einpoklum 7y ago
    There is no such thing as a "free market", especially when it comes to working for a living.
- Angostura 7y ago
  It can do, but it's not a given. Universities can decide not to race to the bottom, but instead choose the best candidates and keep remuneration reasonable.
  - tasogare 7y ago
    > choose the best candidates In lot of places (and companies too) there is increasingly policies to avoid that.
  - idiot900 7y ago
    Sadly, they don’t have to. There are too many PhDs, and universities prefer to hire administrators.
- sigwinch28 7y ago
  The author is in the UK where nearly all universities are public, and due in no small part to the efforts of the University and College Union (UCU), most Higher Education staff (including "postdocs") are paid according to a national (published) salary system: https://www.ucu.org.uk/payscales https://www.ucu.org.uk/payscales Universities of course have maneuverability in the specific spine point they pay people for different positions based on experience or demand, but in the grand sceheme of things specific roles are paid specific amounts of money. At the author's current university, for example, the national pay scale is split up into different pay grades (each of which includes a contiguous range of spine points) for different roles, e.g. Research Assistant, Research Associate, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, etc.
anjc 7y ago
Good article, but I must misunderstand, how do the suggestions at the bottom overcome the issues/myths listed, particularly "postdocs formally [don't] exist" which seems to be the issue at the root of all problems. The tenuous employment status of postdocs seems to be a choice made at an institutional level, although seemingly across every institution in the world. I'm not aware of any funding stipulations that prevent institutions from giving postdocs proper employment status/permanent contracts. Sure, a new project might require a postdoc and might have funds allocated for this, but why can't unis use their already-existing projections for incoming funds and allocate jobs (i.e. permanent postdoc positions), just as private companies hire staff on the basis of cash flow/revenue projections?
- wbhart 7y ago
  They can do that with people who will be teaching, since that is bringing funding in for the university. But they don't do it for Research Assistants, because once the funding for the project the Research Assistant is paid from (usually a fixed term grant of a 2-3 years) runs out, then the university would have no income to match the cost of the salary. As there may be hundreds or thousands of such salaries, this would result in a funding shortfall of something of the order of $100m a year (including overheads). And that is to say nothing of the expensive equipment such employees might need to continue their work. Project centred research does not bring in income for universities on an ongoing basis, which is what the argument about core funding is all about. If more funding were core funding, not tied to a specific project, then it would be possible for universities to do the right thing and provide career paths for Research Assistants. Please note: I'm not arguing that universities in the UK are doing the right thing. I used to work as a postdoc there and understand very well what the author of the Postdoc Myths list is talking about. I'm simply answering the question as to why universities can't just do the right thing.
  - anjc 7y ago
    Oh well I understand that funds are allocated for a project. But in my experience, postdocs who are coming to the end of the funding for one project tend to be moved to another incoming one. I.e. they're essentially permanent staff anyway. I know of people who've gone on like this for 10+ years. "Revenue generating" centres within unis have targets and projections (e.g. commercialization teams) so they DO have an idea of what funds they'll have in the medium term, even though it's on a project by project basis. I don't see how this is any different from any company that needs revenue in order to keep staff, but yet companies manage to keep staff permanently. In fact, even universities seem to be able to keep staff permanently, unless they're researchers.
dfdz 7y ago
>Myth: postdocs formally exist. In almost all universities I know, formally there is no such thing as a postdoc. In research councils' view of the world, it's the same: there are no postdocs, only “Research Assistants” and “academic staff (lecturer or equivalent)”. As someone who is (formally) a postdoc it seems that the points raised in this article seem to apply mostly to postdocs who are not (formally) postdocs.
- einpoklum 7y ago
  I believe you're partially mistaken. That is, indeed, there is no such thing as a "post-doc". But in most academic institutions, there are non-tenured researcher positions - fixed-period or otherwise - which have a Ph.D. as a requirement. They may called something like "Researcher", "Research Engineer" or "Research Staff Member" (as opposed to "Academic Staff Member"). Of course, my knowledge is as anecdotal as yours.
  - dfdz 7y ago
    >I believe you're partially mistaken. In my field (math) and country (USA) there are many postdocs. Maybe you are in a different field or country? (If you really don't believe me try search "postdoc" on math jobs https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs?joblist-0-0------ https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs?joblist-0-0------
    - einpoklum 7y ago
      I see those positions as "Researcher", "Research Fellow", "Associate"(-member of the academic staff) etc. They add the term "post-doctoral" to indicate that you need to have completed a Doctorate. Or if you wish - to indicate that the conditions will be poor :-(
    - anjc 7y ago
      The titles for these roles are not "postdoc" though, that's his point no? The role "postdoc" doesn't exist, at least in any institutions I know. Of course there are postdocs in the world, but the actual payscale that you're on may be one that a person without a PhD can be hired on, e.g. research assistant. They then call this a "postdoc" position to indicate that you need a PhD to be hired, but the contracts and conditions do not specifically cater towards people pursuing careers in academia.
buboard 7y ago
as a part-time postdoc out of choice, i also see EU grants being used mainly as a way to prevent unemployment for highly skilled people. If the public knew where this money is going i doubt there would be much support for these grants. Tons of bureaucracy, travel and 'disemmination' spending, a system designed to enrich established PIs, a culture of "apply for grants or perish" , and the instagrammification of academic CVs make this academic culture unattractive, and in anyway there is too few positions for all these people. It very rare to meet a 'weird' academic anymore.
- AlexCoventry 7y ago
  Why do you choose to participate in such a system?
  - buboard 7y ago
    i like learning stuff and working with smart people, and my self-employment leaves me enough time to do it. i m too old for academic ambitions anyway
- anjc 7y ago
  These grants tend to require industry partners and matched funds, so the value for money with regard to public funds is probably far higher now than the "weird" era you're talking about. > enrich established PIs Nobody stays in academia to be "rich", and in general they could earn far more and be far less stressed by working in industry.
oefrha 7y ago
Semi-related anecdote: when I was choosing between several grad school offers in math and physics, I visited a couple of top institutions, and at one math department I told the department chair about my dilemma of whether to continue in (pure) math or theoretical physics. I was basically told: look, if you graduate with a math PhD you'll likely find an assistant professor position right away, whereas if you graduate with a theoretical physics PhD you'll likely be looking at at least two terms of postdoc (assuming you're successful in both cases, that is). (I chose physics in the end.) There was one of the first instances of ideal clashing with reality for me.
- heinrichf 7y ago
  This is so simply not true, or highly subfield-dependent. Unless you are a superstar, there is no way you get a TT job without a postdoc in math.
  - oefrha 7y ago
    > Unless you are a superstar, there is no way you get a TT job without a postdoc in math. Seeing that my institution and lots more do have assistant professorships for new PhDs in math, and I even have friends who have attained such positions, this is very much true. Of course one needs to be relatively successful. Edit: Okay, it appears that some people consider those positions “postdoc in disguise”.
    - heinrichf 7y ago
      This is exactly one of the points raised in the text. Non-TT assistant professorships are indeed postdocs, which often come with more teaching load than other fellowship-based postdocs. This is for example the case of the "Hills Assistant professorship" at Rutgers
    - raincom 7y ago
      Szegö Assistant Professor is one such example. For more on this, https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/15969 https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/15969
laGrenouille 7y ago
My experience in the U.S. academic market has been that postdoc positions vary widely based on your field of study. In areas with relatively good job markets, such as CS/Stats/Economics/Finance, Postdocs are often quite prestigious and are marketed by top schools as a way to attract promising young scholars and give them time to research without the pressures of teaching/service. In areas with very bad job markets, such as the humanities, they are also seen as prestigious because any academic position after the Ph.D. is extremely difficult to come by. For the lab sciences, my understanding is that a postdoc actually is more similiar to doing a doctorate in another domain. Experiments are too expensive and time consuming to let a Ph.D. student design and develop a line of research on their own. Instead, that's what the postdocs do. Also, it is not an option. You must do a postdoc (often a long one, and often multiple) in order to have the experience needed for a TT job. For mathematics and much of the social sciences postdocs are awkardly in-between all of these. They are increasingly common and almost required and increasingly long. Yet, there's no good place for them in the current system, where they are technically fully-credentially academics but treated like overgrown students.
- kevinventullo 7y ago
  In my experience with pure mathematics, it was much closer to your description of CS/Stats. The standard path is to spend 4-7 years doing the PhD, then another 4-6 or so doing postdocs under various guises ("research fellow", "visiting researcher", "<non-TT identifier> assistant professor"). Most American mathematicians I've met followed this path, including profs at teaching-focused institutions as well as Fields medalists.
  - laGrenouille 7y ago
    Yes, that’s actually my understanding as well of pure mathematics. What I was trying to say is that in Stats (my field) and CS its quite common to go straight into a TT job, and a postdoc is often a sign of particular prestige. In mathematics a postdoc is the standard post-Ph.D. route; of course some positions are very well regarded and others less so, but having a postdoc itself is just the status-quo for an aspiring academic at that point.
- 7y ago
gww 7y ago
This is slightly off topic but I think post-docs need to be better protected by their institutions. When I was a post-doc I learned that we have essentially zero protections at least in North America. Most institutions hire post-docs as contract workers and can be fired at the drop of a pin with minimal severance. Disagree with your supervisor about the direction of your project or how your work should be published? Threaten to fire them or fire them and they have essentially zero recourse. Their work is owned by their institute and they essentially leave with nothing. This is particularly problematic for international post-docs.
teddyh 7y ago
See also: http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1744 http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1744
borroka 7y ago
I was a postdoc or I was employed in similar roles (Research Fellow, Reseach Scholar) for close to 10 years before moving into tech. Although I overall enjoyed my postdoc years – in particular, I enjoyed doing research, writing papers, and having the freedom to explore and travel – I kinda regret not having been more pro-active during those years in terms of looking for what was next. I sent ~ 70 job applications for TT jobs that I believed were within my reach (I had > 25-30 publications with me as a first author, some of them published in prestigious journals, and a research plan that I had the belief was forward-looking, and novel and solid at the same time), but I was not called even for a phone interview by any of the committees. I have a few clues about why that happened, but it is not relevant here. What I recommend to postdocs of Ph.D. students when they reach out to me asking for some advice on what to do in their career, I always recommend not to pursue a second postdoc. One can be fine and fun, you become basically a senior researcher in a field you feel some passion for, and you do not have the stress of completing and defending 5+ years of work (my Ph.D. actually lasted less than 3 years). But by starting your second postdoc, with no solid chances of landing a TT position at a good research institution (I assume that it is what most people continuing their postdoc career are looking forward to getting), you get deeper and deeper into a maze from which it becomes more and more difficult to find a way out; you start to become too old and credentialed for junior or mid-level positions, people in tech (or industry more in general) identify you as an academic – which is always a bad thing if you are not a renowned academic in a particular niche of current interest, say NLP, Computer Vision –, you lose your confidence in being able to change your career. However, the story does not have a happy ending. Very rarely, these postdocs listen to me; they prefer to succumb to the authoritarian voices of their advisors and peers, who more often than not say that if they do good work, they will find a TT position soon, maybe they just need another publication, a little grant, or some luck.
- musicale 7y ago
  > sent ~ 70 job applications for TT jobs that I believed were within my reach ... but I was not called even for a phone interview by any of the committees. If there are around 500 applicants per position, presumably you would need to apply to around 500 positions.
kkwteh 7y ago
A lot of these problems postdocs are running seem to be the result of an inefficient allocation of talent by our current educational system. All the smartest kids get tracked into getting math and physics PhDs and by the time they get to the postdoc stage it just becomes this insane impossible rat race tournament. I saw the writing on the wall and got out of academia as soon as I defended my utterly mediocre PhD thesis in math. I jumped on the data science wave in 2013 and all of a sudden everyone thought I was a genius for being able to run model.fit() and interpret the results. These tracks that funnel you into cutthroat tournaments just seem like bad places to be. Already data science is starting to become more of a commodity skill set. Instead of trying to outcompete everyone I’m keeping my eyes open for my next big opportunity.
- mattkrause 7y ago
  In a similar vein.... Why doesn't industry recruit postdocs more aggressively? It's a large pool of smart, hardworking people, most of whom don't have stable or well-paying jobs. I work in a reasonably hot area (neuro/ML), have relevant skills (Python, C++), and a decent pedigree, but I think I've talked to ~3 recruiters ever—and two of them were introduced to me by a mutual friend.
  - borroka 7y ago
    I tried many unsuccessful times to convince recruiters at different companies to recruit postdocs, especially those coming from the more quantitative sciences that were not computer science or adjacent to computer science. The main reasons are inertia (they never recruited postdocs before), aversion to risk (postdocs did not work in industry before), and a sprinkle of laziness here and there. They were much more open to interviewing postdocs that had spent a few weeks getting up to speed (or so recruiters and hiring managers thought) on industry practices in boot camps (such as Insight DS for my field). Some forward-looking companies could organize one-month boot camps specifically for hired postdocs, but the interviews should also change (e.g., you cannot ask a postdoc on how to put a certain model in production, since they never did that before). And there is nothing more solidly written in stone than the way of interviewing for tech positions, apparently.
  - 7y ago
Traster 7y ago
What always strikes me about academia is the propensity for complaining. I only sort of mean that in a bad way. Maybe my experience is exceptional, but I have met quite a lot of people with PhDs. The vast majority of PhDs who went into industry afterwards viewed their PhD more as a rite of passage than actual valuable work. Every one of them has a story of their supervisor or some other academic putting them through random bullshit for no reason. The more experienced academics I've met are in two camps: the climbers- the small handful of academics who are more interested in becoming chief commissar of the faculty and get onto that gravy train. They're generally terrible people - the sort of person who complains that women simply aren't smart enough to do engineering. The other kind are the flagellators, people who will give you a dissertation in why their life sucks, and how the hoops of academia are so completely at odds with what real research requires. It all leaves me at a loss as to why anyone would choose that life. There are bad things about life in industry, but no one I work with complains anything like that badly.
- borroka 7y ago
  It is the result of the combination of path dependency and it-will-be-different-for-me syndrome. Path dependency because many PhDs specialize in fields and skills that have little value outside of academia – think biology (e.g., all those researchers that spend years in the lab and their only marketable skills without further training lead them to a career as lab technicians; nothing wrong with that, but not what you expect after 5-7 years of Ph.D. studies), humanities, obscure areas of math etc. Then, academia is an environment that tends to infantilize people. And kids either want to become their parents (more frequently) or the opposite of their parents. It-will-be-different-for-me is self-explanatory and particularly strong when there is some kind of emotional commitment to the cause. Another example is marriage.
  - mattkrause 7y ago
    In partial defense of "It-will-be-different-for-me" syndrome.... Most grad students and postdocs know that academia is competitive and tenure-track jobs are rare, and I bet many of them can quote the 1:9 statistic (or whatever applies to their field). However, that's just the prior. It's really hard to know your individual likelihood because it depends on a ton of factors that you don't--and sometimes can't--know or control. It really might be different this time. For example, Cell/Nature/Science papers have a huge impact on hiring; a recent study suggested CNS authors are ~5x more likely to find a job. While you need to work hard to develop a good paper, you also need to be lucky in a lot of ways, ranging from the initial choice of topic to how well your write-up comports with 3 reviewers' whims. It's also unclear how to weight many other factors. Is your advisor well-known? But what about the department's reputation? Is your sub-field trendy? How does your publication record stack up? I don't think anyone can confidently answer those questions and decide they're in the top 11%

123 points by mrry 7y ago

Nice list, I think it lays out the problem with the current system in fine details. I'm surprised that it seems to be as bad as where I live in the UK, too. I call myself a Senior Research Fellow, but in the end I'm just a postdoc in the late 40s who has almost no chances to get full tenure and has messed up his life for good. Before anyone blames me, think twice. I've got new contracts offered with almost no effort on my behalf over the years, and all my positions where pure research with no teaching duties. It's not easy to turn down such seemingly generous offers and try to make a living in another way (with a background in linguistics & philosophy!), even when you know these contracts won't last and only delay the inevitable.

azhenley 7y ago
It doesn't seem like you have messed up your life. If you have made it that far in the humanities, then I think you're the type that can figure out how to keep going.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  They’re almost 50 and don’t have a full time job with pension. That is not a good position to be in unless you come from money, are married to someone who does, or has a solid professional career or gold plated benefits and a permanent job.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - WWWWH 7y ago
    I don't know the specific detail of OP's position, but (all?) post-docs in the UK are members of the same pension scheme as all other academics in their institution. Your fundamental point is quite right--short-term contracts are a lousy and difficult game to play into middle-age.
  - lonelappde 7y ago
    They have a government pension. They spent 30 years "working" on their research interest instead of at the beck of bosses and clients. Even if they spend retirement stuck as a grocery clerk, they'll have a better life (more funded free time to pursue their personal interests) than almost everyone.
    - sadfklsjlkjwt 7y ago
      Will the job of grocery clerk exist in 20 years?
    - cedex12 7y ago
      research interests ≠ personal interests, necessarily.
    - rusticpenn 7y ago
      Research is not very different from work actually. You always work on the basis of market demand (In this case, the funding organisations)
rusticpenn 7y ago
I was in a similar situation ( in early 30s) , however ,I moved to industry when I realised that even banks dont trust these contracts for long term financing.
jhbadger 7y ago
I'm a "Staff Scientist" in the US which is basically the same thing. But I don't think that's a bad thing. I get to do science. Professors/PIs mostly spend their research time writing grant proposals and managing their staff, not actually spending much (or any) time doing experiments themselves or analyzing the data.

cousin_it 7y ago

> Of course, the more candidates there are, the more competition for the jobs. But it doesn't follow that the jobs' terms will become increasingly exploitative, such as being offered in shorter term, with less pay, lower status and fewer benefits. That requires a separate decision to degrade the offering. [...] Anyone who tries to explain it purely as supply and demand, or even “nature”, is either ignorant or is trying to sell you something. Higher supply does lead to lower price, though.

svara 7y ago
... in a free market, but research funding is dominated by governments, where this does not automatically apply.
- einpoklum 7y ago
  There is no such thing as a "free market", especially when it comes to working for a living.
Angostura 7y ago
It can do, but it's not a given. Universities can decide not to race to the bottom, but instead choose the best candidates and keep remuneration reasonable.
- tasogare 7y ago
  > choose the best candidates In lot of places (and companies too) there is increasingly policies to avoid that.
- idiot900 7y ago
  Sadly, they don’t have to. There are too many PhDs, and universities prefer to hire administrators.
sigwinch28 7y ago
The author is in the UK where nearly all universities are public, and due in no small part to the efforts of the University and College Union (UCU), most Higher Education staff (including "postdocs") are paid according to a national (published) salary system: https://www.ucu.org.uk/payscales https://www.ucu.org.uk/payscales Universities of course have maneuverability in the specific spine point they pay people for different positions based on experience or demand, but in the grand sceheme of things specific roles are paid specific amounts of money. At the author's current university, for example, the national pay scale is split up into different pay grades (each of which includes a contiguous range of spine points) for different roles, e.g. Research Assistant, Research Associate, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, etc.

anjc 7y ago

Good article, but I must misunderstand, how do the suggestions at the bottom overcome the issues/myths listed, particularly "postdocs formally [don't] exist" which seems to be the issue at the root of all problems. The tenuous employment status of postdocs seems to be a choice made at an institutional level, although seemingly across every institution in the world. I'm not aware of any funding stipulations that prevent institutions from giving postdocs proper employment status/permanent contracts. Sure, a new project might require a postdoc and might have funds allocated for this, but why can't unis use their already-existing projections for incoming funds and allocate jobs (i.e. permanent postdoc positions), just as private companies hire staff on the basis of cash flow/revenue projections?

wbhart 7y ago
They can do that with people who will be teaching, since that is bringing funding in for the university. But they don't do it for Research Assistants, because once the funding for the project the Research Assistant is paid from (usually a fixed term grant of a 2-3 years) runs out, then the university would have no income to match the cost of the salary. As there may be hundreds or thousands of such salaries, this would result in a funding shortfall of something of the order of $100m a year (including overheads). And that is to say nothing of the expensive equipment such employees might need to continue their work. Project centred research does not bring in income for universities on an ongoing basis, which is what the argument about core funding is all about. If more funding were core funding, not tied to a specific project, then it would be possible for universities to do the right thing and provide career paths for Research Assistants. Please note: I'm not arguing that universities in the UK are doing the right thing. I used to work as a postdoc there and understand very well what the author of the Postdoc Myths list is talking about. I'm simply answering the question as to why universities can't just do the right thing.
- anjc 7y ago
  Oh well I understand that funds are allocated for a project. But in my experience, postdocs who are coming to the end of the funding for one project tend to be moved to another incoming one. I.e. they're essentially permanent staff anyway. I know of people who've gone on like this for 10+ years. "Revenue generating" centres within unis have targets and projections (e.g. commercialization teams) so they DO have an idea of what funds they'll have in the medium term, even though it's on a project by project basis. I don't see how this is any different from any company that needs revenue in order to keep staff, but yet companies manage to keep staff permanently. In fact, even universities seem to be able to keep staff permanently, unless they're researchers.

dfdz 7y ago

>Myth: postdocs formally exist. In almost all universities I know, formally there is no such thing as a postdoc. In research councils' view of the world, it's the same: there are no postdocs, only “Research Assistants” and “academic staff (lecturer or equivalent)”. As someone who is (formally) a postdoc it seems that the points raised in this article seem to apply mostly to postdocs who are not (formally) postdocs.

einpoklum 7y ago
I believe you're partially mistaken. That is, indeed, there is no such thing as a "post-doc". But in most academic institutions, there are non-tenured researcher positions - fixed-period or otherwise - which have a Ph.D. as a requirement. They may called something like "Researcher", "Research Engineer" or "Research Staff Member" (as opposed to "Academic Staff Member"). Of course, my knowledge is as anecdotal as yours.
- dfdz 7y ago
  >I believe you're partially mistaken. In my field (math) and country (USA) there are many postdocs. Maybe you are in a different field or country? (If you really don't believe me try search "postdoc" on math jobs https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs?joblist-0-0------ https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs?joblist-0-0------
  - einpoklum 7y ago
    I see those positions as "Researcher", "Research Fellow", "Associate"(-member of the academic staff) etc. They add the term "post-doctoral" to indicate that you need to have completed a Doctorate. Or if you wish - to indicate that the conditions will be poor :-(
  - anjc 7y ago
    The titles for these roles are not "postdoc" though, that's his point no? The role "postdoc" doesn't exist, at least in any institutions I know. Of course there are postdocs in the world, but the actual payscale that you're on may be one that a person without a PhD can be hired on, e.g. research assistant. They then call this a "postdoc" position to indicate that you need a PhD to be hired, but the contracts and conditions do not specifically cater towards people pursuing careers in academia.

buboard 7y ago

as a part-time postdoc out of choice, i also see EU grants being used mainly as a way to prevent unemployment for highly skilled people. If the public knew where this money is going i doubt there would be much support for these grants. Tons of bureaucracy, travel and 'disemmination' spending, a system designed to enrich established PIs, a culture of "apply for grants or perish" , and the instagrammification of academic CVs make this academic culture unattractive, and in anyway there is too few positions for all these people. It very rare to meet a 'weird' academic anymore.

AlexCoventry 7y ago
Why do you choose to participate in such a system?
- buboard 7y ago
  i like learning stuff and working with smart people, and my self-employment leaves me enough time to do it. i m too old for academic ambitions anyway
anjc 7y ago
These grants tend to require industry partners and matched funds, so the value for money with regard to public funds is probably far higher now than the "weird" era you're talking about. > enrich established PIs Nobody stays in academia to be "rich", and in general they could earn far more and be far less stressed by working in industry.

oefrha 7y ago

Semi-related anecdote: when I was choosing between several grad school offers in math and physics, I visited a couple of top institutions, and at one math department I told the department chair about my dilemma of whether to continue in (pure) math or theoretical physics. I was basically told: look, if you graduate with a math PhD you'll likely find an assistant professor position right away, whereas if you graduate with a theoretical physics PhD you'll likely be looking at at least two terms of postdoc (assuming you're successful in both cases, that is). (I chose physics in the end.) There was one of the first instances of ideal clashing with reality for me.

heinrichf 7y ago
This is so simply not true, or highly subfield-dependent. Unless you are a superstar, there is no way you get a TT job without a postdoc in math.
- oefrha 7y ago
  > Unless you are a superstar, there is no way you get a TT job without a postdoc in math. Seeing that my institution and lots more do have assistant professorships for new PhDs in math, and I even have friends who have attained such positions, this is very much true. Of course one needs to be relatively successful. Edit: Okay, it appears that some people consider those positions “postdoc in disguise”.
  - heinrichf 7y ago
    This is exactly one of the points raised in the text. Non-TT assistant professorships are indeed postdocs, which often come with more teaching load than other fellowship-based postdocs. This is for example the case of the "Hills Assistant professorship" at Rutgers
  - raincom 7y ago
    Szegö Assistant Professor is one such example. For more on this, https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/15969 https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/15969

laGrenouille 7y ago

My experience in the U.S. academic market has been that postdoc positions vary widely based on your field of study. In areas with relatively good job markets, such as CS/Stats/Economics/Finance, Postdocs are often quite prestigious and are marketed by top schools as a way to attract promising young scholars and give them time to research without the pressures of teaching/service. In areas with very bad job markets, such as the humanities, they are also seen as prestigious because any academic position after the Ph.D. is extremely difficult to come by. For the lab sciences, my understanding is that a postdoc actually is more similiar to doing a doctorate in another domain. Experiments are too expensive and time consuming to let a Ph.D. student design and develop a line of research on their own. Instead, that's what the postdocs do. Also, it is not an option. You must do a postdoc (often a long one, and often multiple) in order to have the experience needed for a TT job. For mathematics and much of the social sciences postdocs are awkardly in-between all of these. They are increasingly common and almost required and increasingly long. Yet, there's no good place for them in the current system, where they are technically fully-credentially academics but treated like overgrown students.

kevinventullo 7y ago
In my experience with pure mathematics, it was much closer to your description of CS/Stats. The standard path is to spend 4-7 years doing the PhD, then another 4-6 or so doing postdocs under various guises ("research fellow", "visiting researcher", "<non-TT identifier> assistant professor"). Most American mathematicians I've met followed this path, including profs at teaching-focused institutions as well as Fields medalists.
- laGrenouille 7y ago
  Yes, that’s actually my understanding as well of pure mathematics. What I was trying to say is that in Stats (my field) and CS its quite common to go straight into a TT job, and a postdoc is often a sign of particular prestige. In mathematics a postdoc is the standard post-Ph.D. route; of course some positions are very well regarded and others less so, but having a postdoc itself is just the status-quo for an aspiring academic at that point.
7y ago

gww 7y ago

This is slightly off topic but I think post-docs need to be better protected by their institutions. When I was a post-doc I learned that we have essentially zero protections at least in North America. Most institutions hire post-docs as contract workers and can be fired at the drop of a pin with minimal severance. Disagree with your supervisor about the direction of your project or how your work should be published? Threaten to fire them or fire them and they have essentially zero recourse. Their work is owned by their institute and they essentially leave with nothing. This is particularly problematic for international post-docs.

teddyh 7y ago

See also: http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1744 http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1744

borroka 7y ago

I was a postdoc or I was employed in similar roles (Research Fellow, Reseach Scholar) for close to 10 years before moving into tech. Although I overall enjoyed my postdoc years – in particular, I enjoyed doing research, writing papers, and having the freedom to explore and travel – I kinda regret not having been more pro-active during those years in terms of looking for what was next. I sent ~ 70 job applications for TT jobs that I believed were within my reach (I had > 25-30 publications with me as a first author, some of them published in prestigious journals, and a research plan that I had the belief was forward-looking, and novel and solid at the same time), but I was not called even for a phone interview by any of the committees. I have a few clues about why that happened, but it is not relevant here. What I recommend to postdocs of Ph.D. students when they reach out to me asking for some advice on what to do in their career, I always recommend not to pursue a second postdoc. One can be fine and fun, you become basically a senior researcher in a field you feel some passion for, and you do not have the stress of completing and defending 5+ years of work (my Ph.D. actually lasted less than 3 years). But by starting your second postdoc, with no solid chances of landing a TT position at a good research institution (I assume that it is what most people continuing their postdoc career are looking forward to getting), you get deeper and deeper into a maze from which it becomes more and more difficult to find a way out; you start to become too old and credentialed for junior or mid-level positions, people in tech (or industry more in general) identify you as an academic – which is always a bad thing if you are not a renowned academic in a particular niche of current interest, say NLP, Computer Vision –, you lose your confidence in being able to change your career. However, the story does not have a happy ending. Very rarely, these postdocs listen to me; they prefer to succumb to the authoritarian voices of their advisors and peers, who more often than not say that if they do good work, they will find a TT position soon, maybe they just need another publication, a little grant, or some luck.

musicale 7y ago
> sent ~ 70 job applications for TT jobs that I believed were within my reach ... but I was not called even for a phone interview by any of the committees. If there are around 500 applicants per position, presumably you would need to apply to around 500 positions.

kkwteh 7y ago

A lot of these problems postdocs are running seem to be the result of an inefficient allocation of talent by our current educational system. All the smartest kids get tracked into getting math and physics PhDs and by the time they get to the postdoc stage it just becomes this insane impossible rat race tournament. I saw the writing on the wall and got out of academia as soon as I defended my utterly mediocre PhD thesis in math. I jumped on the data science wave in 2013 and all of a sudden everyone thought I was a genius for being able to run model.fit() and interpret the results. These tracks that funnel you into cutthroat tournaments just seem like bad places to be. Already data science is starting to become more of a commodity skill set. Instead of trying to outcompete everyone I’m keeping my eyes open for my next big opportunity.

mattkrause 7y ago
In a similar vein.... Why doesn't industry recruit postdocs more aggressively? It's a large pool of smart, hardworking people, most of whom don't have stable or well-paying jobs. I work in a reasonably hot area (neuro/ML), have relevant skills (Python, C++), and a decent pedigree, but I think I've talked to ~3 recruiters ever—and two of them were introduced to me by a mutual friend.
- borroka 7y ago
  I tried many unsuccessful times to convince recruiters at different companies to recruit postdocs, especially those coming from the more quantitative sciences that were not computer science or adjacent to computer science. The main reasons are inertia (they never recruited postdocs before), aversion to risk (postdocs did not work in industry before), and a sprinkle of laziness here and there. They were much more open to interviewing postdocs that had spent a few weeks getting up to speed (or so recruiters and hiring managers thought) on industry practices in boot camps (such as Insight DS for my field). Some forward-looking companies could organize one-month boot camps specifically for hired postdocs, but the interviews should also change (e.g., you cannot ask a postdoc on how to put a certain model in production, since they never did that before). And there is nothing more solidly written in stone than the way of interviewing for tech positions, apparently.
- 7y ago

Traster 7y ago

What always strikes me about academia is the propensity for complaining. I only sort of mean that in a bad way. Maybe my experience is exceptional, but I have met quite a lot of people with PhDs. The vast majority of PhDs who went into industry afterwards viewed their PhD more as a rite of passage than actual valuable work. Every one of them has a story of their supervisor or some other academic putting them through random bullshit for no reason. The more experienced academics I've met are in two camps: the climbers- the small handful of academics who are more interested in becoming chief commissar of the faculty and get onto that gravy train. They're generally terrible people - the sort of person who complains that women simply aren't smart enough to do engineering. The other kind are the flagellators, people who will give you a dissertation in why their life sucks, and how the hoops of academia are so completely at odds with what real research requires. It all leaves me at a loss as to why anyone would choose that life. There are bad things about life in industry, but no one I work with complains anything like that badly.

borroka 7y ago
It is the result of the combination of path dependency and it-will-be-different-for-me syndrome. Path dependency because many PhDs specialize in fields and skills that have little value outside of academia – think biology (e.g., all those researchers that spend years in the lab and their only marketable skills without further training lead them to a career as lab technicians; nothing wrong with that, but not what you expect after 5-7 years of Ph.D. studies), humanities, obscure areas of math etc. Then, academia is an environment that tends to infantilize people. And kids either want to become their parents (more frequently) or the opposite of their parents. It-will-be-different-for-me is self-explanatory and particularly strong when there is some kind of emotional commitment to the cause. Another example is marriage.
- mattkrause 7y ago
  In partial defense of "It-will-be-different-for-me" syndrome.... Most grad students and postdocs know that academia is competitive and tenure-track jobs are rare, and I bet many of them can quote the 1:9 statistic (or whatever applies to their field). However, that's just the prior. It's really hard to know your individual likelihood because it depends on a ton of factors that you don't--and sometimes can't--know or control. It really might be different this time. For example, Cell/Nature/Science papers have a huge impact on hiring; a recent study suggested CNS authors are ~5x more likely to find a job. While you need to work hard to develop a good paper, you also need to be lucky in a lot of ways, ranging from the initial choice of topic to how well your write-up comports with 3 reviewers' whims. It's also unclear how to weight many other factors. Is your advisor well-known? But what about the department's reputation? Is your sub-field trendy? How does your publication record stack up? I don't think anyone can confidently answer those questions and decide they're in the top 11%