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The thing is, a postdoc is a classic case of credential inflation. You don't really need a postdoc, especially if an industry job is your goal. The purpose of a
by N1H1L 5y ago
The thing is, a postdoc is a classic case of credential inflation. You don't really need a postdoc, especially if an industry job is your goal. The purpose of an academic postdoc is to strictly increase the items in your CV to make you more marketable for academic employment. Industries are hiring senior postdocs strictly because more postdocs are applying for such jobs. And this is a side effect of poor mentorship in academia in general, with freshly minted PhDs drifting into postdocs just because.
Very few graduate students think seriously about their destination during their doctoral program and are happy to be in the lab all day meeting goals their advisor sets out for them. And advisors are also happy to let this be the state of affairs since you are getting highly trained, motivated workers for pennies. This passivity starts dissipating only during a postdoc and not always. Poor mentorship can be excused in industry, but this is inexcusable when academics are paid to be mentors; it's literally in a professor's job description. NSF/DOE/NIH grants all have significant mentorship sections - and they are there for a reason.
- nextos 5y agoExactly. But this is very variable across fields. In CS or Math, it is feasible to get a tenure-track position or the equivalent in industry without a postdoc. In Biology for instance, inflation is so insane that most tenure-track positions demand you have significant postdoctoral experience. Same applies to many industry jobs.
- chrisseaton 5y ago> In Biology for instance, inflation is so insane that most tenure-track positions demand you have significant postdoctoral experience. “Senior job demands significant work experience” what am I misunderstanding?
- valarauko 5y agoThe issue is the inflation of requirements in some fields due to competition. A postdoc is generally understood to be further training in running your own lab as a PI - you might manage and guide doctoral students, for example, or learn how to write and apply for grants. With that in mind, a lot of people are happy to commit to a few years of postdoctoral work. In some fields, however, the extreme shortage of tenure track positions has made very long postdoctoral stints a requirement, rather than as something to sweeten the deal. Like others have pointed out, in CS a PhD is enough to get you a tenure track academic position, while industry jobs abound. Meanwhile, in biology I commonly see 5+ years of postdoc experience being typical just to be in the consideration for an industry job that 10 years ago would have happily hired a fresh PhD. The general thinking is that a postdoc only makes sense if you want an academic position, but the glut of PhDs in the market has pushed up the requirements for all kinds of jobs.
- chrisseaton 5y agoI still don’t really get it sorry - why isn’t being a postdoctoral research assistant a valid career by itself? I know people who don’t want to teach or lead a group or work in industry so they do postdoctoral RA work. That’s their career. Why’s that not seen as a valid thing to do in the US? People are saying ‘because you might not get tenure.’ Ok but not everyone wants that career.
- N1H1L 5y agoBecause it's time limited. National lab postdocs are valid only upto 5 years from PhD. Many grants won't fund you if you are X years since PhD. That's why the position of Research Assistant Professors exist - the way around the postdoc time limit loophole. However, RAPs are significantly more expensive than postdocs, which is why faculty are more eager to phase out senior postdocs and hire fresh blood rather than convert them to RAPs.