> Why should a lab with $200k/year to spend on postdoc salaries be unable to hire a single postdoc at $200k/year? Current guidelines stipulate the lab must inst

> Why should a lab with $200k/year to spend on postdoc salaries be unable to hire a single postdoc at $200k/year? Current guidelines stipulate the lab must instead hire 4 postdocs at $50k/year. The article pretty much answers this. It's impossible to convince the program office that a postdoc is worth $200K/year - that's substantially more than the PI himself probably makes. In reality, the program office will majorly push back if you ask for 10k more than the going rate. You can swing $5k more for a postdoc with some years of postdoc experience, but not more than that. Given the way the contractual relationship of postdocs are setup, it's actually hard to find mediocre postdocs that survive in the system. Mediocre postdocs would be fired soon enough and a bright fresh PhD from China or India would take their place who's willing to work at $50k/year. That bright Chinese or Indian postdoc cannot easily accept a better paying industry job due to the nature of work visas for those countries so will work as a postdoc for several years till they can finagle a green card.