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

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.