4 ms·

The professor job is an absurd ask: - Enterprise sales rep with a $500k-$1M annual quota (aka grants). - R&D manager of a team comprised almost entirely of ju

The professor job is an absurd ask: - Enterprise sales rep with a $500k-$1M annual quota (aka grants). - R&D manager of a team comprised almost entirely of junior employees - Lecturer and administration for teaching. - Administrator & volunteer within the department, chair roles for key academic conferences, and editor on major journals -- all to check the "service" box for tenure. - Because they aren't a proper CEO, they don't even have the ability to push back on obscene G&A costs (ie 50%+ of grant contracts going to university overhead!). It's a labor of love (esp in STEM!), and I feel bad that many are caught in this morass.

ktln2 5y ago
also - getting paid below (barely above if you are lucky) 6 figures - requires 3+ years of postdoc training which paid even worse
- batch12 5y ago
  Yeah. 6 figures would put me back on ramen.
Plasmoid 5y ago
> (ie 50%+ of grant contracts going to university overhead!). This is why a lot of grants are made in-kind rather than in cash. Give the research $750K in equipment instead of $1M in cash where the university pockets $500k of it.
- Fomite 5y ago
  As noted elsewhere, that's not how overhead works, and vanishingly few grants are in-kind. Also, expressly, large capital expenditures like equipment are exempt from indirect costs at most universities. HN's notion of how universities work is probably about as accurate as my notions of how VC funding works.
- mattkrause 5y ago
  In-kind grants are fairly uncommon and generally aren't a "substitute" for cash: salaries, even being what they are, are a fairly major expense for most labs. In my experience, in-kind grants mostly occur when the "giver" has/gets the "gift" cheaply. For example, NVIDIA gave out tons of graphics cards, but they certainly don't pay full retail for their own product. This lets them give you a grant "worth" $5k, but costs them substantially less. Ditto pharma companies, which may not even sell the thing given. It seems clever to give the funder a shopping list, and then get an "in-kind" grant for exactly what you want. However, many places will waive/reduce indirect costs on equipment (which, per the NIH is $5000 and lasts for >1 year).
yaur 5y ago
the successful professors that I've seen out source everything but number 1 and get a healthy cut of number 5.
Fomite 5y ago
As has been previously noted, HN seems to be convinced 50% overhead means that 50% of the grant is taken to cover overhead. This is inaccurate. That would be 100% overhead, which is vanishingly rare (I've only encountered one institution above that rate, and they have to maintain research ships). 50% overhead means that the indirect costs of a grant are 50% of the direct costs, i.e. 1/3rd of the total grant. Notably, a lot of grant mechanisms (i.e. NIH R01s) are discussed at the direct cost rate, instead of the totals, so this doesn't "sting" nearly as badly as you all seem to think it does. Additionally: - I've seen private industry overhead rates. They're not lower. Indeed, many of them are quite a bit higher. - A funder can specify a cap on overhead costs, and as long as that's public and known, every university I've ever been at has accepted it. The Gates Foundation is notorious for this, as are most charities. Hell, I had a grant from Merck that didn't pay "full freight". - We push back on overhead costs all the time. Faculty are wily creatures. We have lots of ways.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  I saw a "private grant" project funded at $500k, the budget that hit floor where work actually happened was $25k. The accountants went to absurd lengths to turn that into "$75k spent" in the year end statements, but it didn't help: the CEO met with the grant givers the next year on the porch of his brand new house, to explain why the actual goals they'd funded hadn't been realized yet. The people doing the work weren't invited; but we heard the story later about how much blame we took for the failure.
- derbOac 5y ago
  I think the problem though is that whatever those indirects are, they exceed the actual costs, and those direct costs are covering important things. So the indirects are being used as profit at what is supposed to be a nonprofit. That might be fine except then it leads to massive distortion in incentives, so faculty are being driven to bring in money rather than do research per se. It's kinda like the classic stereotype of a drug company not putting any RD money into something where they can't control the profit, despite efficacy, only now you're talking about this happening at a nonprofit that's supposed to be committed to research for its own sake.

ktln2 5y ago

also - getting paid below (barely above if you are lucky) 6 figures - requires 3+ years of postdoc training which paid even worse

batch12 5y ago
Yeah. 6 figures would put me back on ramen.

Plasmoid 5y ago

> (ie 50%+ of grant contracts going to university overhead!). This is why a lot of grants are made in-kind rather than in cash. Give the research $750K in equipment instead of $1M in cash where the university pockets $500k of it.

Fomite 5y ago
As noted elsewhere, that's not how overhead works, and vanishingly few grants are in-kind. Also, expressly, large capital expenditures like equipment are exempt from indirect costs at most universities. HN's notion of how universities work is probably about as accurate as my notions of how VC funding works.
mattkrause 5y ago
In-kind grants are fairly uncommon and generally aren't a "substitute" for cash: salaries, even being what they are, are a fairly major expense for most labs. In my experience, in-kind grants mostly occur when the "giver" has/gets the "gift" cheaply. For example, NVIDIA gave out tons of graphics cards, but they certainly don't pay full retail for their own product. This lets them give you a grant "worth" $5k, but costs them substantially less. Ditto pharma companies, which may not even sell the thing given. It seems clever to give the funder a shopping list, and then get an "in-kind" grant for exactly what you want. However, many places will waive/reduce indirect costs on equipment (which, per the NIH is $5000 and lasts for >1 year).

yaur 5y ago

the successful professors that I've seen out source everything but number 1 and get a healthy cut of number 5.

Fomite 5y ago

As has been previously noted, HN seems to be convinced 50% overhead means that 50% of the grant is taken to cover overhead. This is inaccurate. That would be 100% overhead, which is vanishingly rare (I've only encountered one institution above that rate, and they have to maintain research ships). 50% overhead means that the indirect costs of a grant are 50% of the direct costs, i.e. 1/3rd of the total grant. Notably, a lot of grant mechanisms (i.e. NIH R01s) are discussed at the direct cost rate, instead of the totals, so this doesn't "sting" nearly as badly as you all seem to think it does. Additionally: - I've seen private industry overhead rates. They're not lower. Indeed, many of them are quite a bit higher. - A funder can specify a cap on overhead costs, and as long as that's public and known, every university I've ever been at has accepted it. The Gates Foundation is notorious for this, as are most charities. Hell, I had a grant from Merck that didn't pay "full freight". - We push back on overhead costs all the time. Faculty are wily creatures. We have lots of ways.

h2odragon 5y ago
I saw a "private grant" project funded at $500k, the budget that hit floor where work actually happened was $25k. The accountants went to absurd lengths to turn that into "$75k spent" in the year end statements, but it didn't help: the CEO met with the grant givers the next year on the porch of his brand new house, to explain why the actual goals they'd funded hadn't been realized yet. The people doing the work weren't invited; but we heard the story later about how much blame we took for the failure.
derbOac 5y ago
I think the problem though is that whatever those indirects are, they exceed the actual costs, and those direct costs are covering important things. So the indirects are being used as profit at what is supposed to be a nonprofit. That might be fine except then it leads to massive distortion in incentives, so faculty are being driven to bring in money rather than do research per se. It's kinda like the classic stereotype of a drug company not putting any RD money into something where they can't control the profit, despite efficacy, only now you're talking about this happening at a nonprofit that's supposed to be committed to research for its own sake.