5 ms·

Academia places unrealistic goals on brilliant people and pays them so meagerly that they have to often find other sources of income. On top of this, some of th

Academia places unrealistic goals on brilliant people and pays them so meagerly that they have to often find other sources of income. On top of this, some of the advisors are outright unbearable with their demands and work expectations, the world seems bleak for even a motivated researcher. Amidst the scarcity of grants, measly pay, extremely competitive environment, uncertainties tied with job market, failures in experimental methods, intractable theoretical adventures, publish-or-perish culture, and the better alternatives available for someone with a skill-set enough to pursue grad school, it's hardly any surprise grad students have mental health issues.

fatnoah 3y ago
> Academia places unrealistic goals on brilliant people and pays them so meagerly that they have to often find other sources of income Early in my career, I considered (with an MS in Electrical Engineering, but with 4 years of professional programming experience) a switch into law. Big firms hire (or did in the past) people with tech degrees to do patent work and will pay a salary plus pay for law school. When I joined the big firm, there were about 25 people in my role. I was the only with with an EE or CS degree/background, the only one without a PhD, and the only one with actual post-academic work experience. For me, it was a 10% pay cut before accounting for law school tuition, similar benefits, and an small increase in hours. For all of the PhDs, it was essentially a 100% raise, substantially less work, and superior benefits.
- jebarker 3y ago
  > Big firms hire (or did in the past) people with tech degrees to do patent work and will pay a salary plus pay for law school. I've never heard this before. What job title would you search for?
  - iancmceachern 3y ago
    I'm not the parent poster, but I believe they are generally called patent agents
    - fatnoah 3y ago
      Patent Agent is related, but is a subset of the role. Only one of the patent technology specialists at my firm was a patent agent when they joined. While, it was expected that we'd eventually sit for the patent bar, but it wasn't a requirement to get the job. The further expectation was that we'd also go to law school, receive our JDs, and pass the state bar as well.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    Although I AM a patent agent, the job title that I had at Google was "technical advisor." Most of the others with my job were not patent agents and the credential was really not necessary. Litigation is not something you study to pass the Patent Bar. If you're looking for a job like that with Big Law, you might look for "litigation advisor" or something similar.
    - fatnoah 3y ago
      The specific role I had was on the Patent Prosecution side vs. the Patent Litigation side. The litigators were more "normal" attorneys, and while we did some small level of advisement, for any real litigation they'd always hire an outside expert.
      - AlbertCory 3y ago
        Same with Google: there's always an outside firm that does the work. The Google attorney was in charge and monitored all their bills.
  - fatnoah 3y ago
    For this particular role, it was "Patent Technology Specialist" or "Technology Specialist". For example: https://foleyhoag.com/careers/technology-specialists/ https://foleyhoag.com/careers/technology-specialists/ (note, this is the firm where I did that work)
eli_gottlieb 3y ago
Yeah, it's not a matter of the "culture" at all. It's just a matter of low pay, long hours, and minuscule chances of job security and advancement. (He says as he writes his thesis and prepares to start his postdoc.)
- kevviiinn 3y ago
  Honestly I would be happy if I just got paid as a 100% FTE. I'm literally in the lab all the time, this 50% nonsense is BS. They say it's because international students are restricted to 20 hours per week, so okay just double the pay then and still call it 50%. The salary for my current work is super low anyhow, I'd be making way more if I got a job at big pharma with my current degrees
  - explorer83 3y ago
    I toggle around with the idea that the system is designed or heavily influenced to be like this to benefit the big-industries and rich people. Have talent but need money? Work for big industry. Have money and can afford to stay in school? Get some patents and get more rich. I know this is a bit tin foil hat-ish.
greenhearth 3y ago
Can the institutions be blamed for trying to stay afloat? Where is this money coming from to pay the scientists? A collective decision has to be made to keep science healthy in a meaningful and productive way. I think academia (through its ethos of critical approach and peer review) may be the single social structure that keeps some kind of sanity.
- tptacek 3y ago
  Academic research is funded by grants.
  - greenhearth 3y ago
    Can these grants provide a living wage?
    - ordersofmag 3y ago
      Wages paid by grants in general have to match whatever the institutions 'standard' pay scales are. So it's the institutions deciding pay rates. At least in the U.S..
      - CrazyStat 3y ago
        My wife is currently in the middle of a fight over this. Her salary is paid by a grant from an organization that has a minimum pay scale for postdocs. The university has its own standard pay scale for postdocs, which is about $20k/year lower. So far they've refused to budge. It's not even their money, there's just 4 layers of bureaucracy who have nothing better to do than ~enforce policy~ no matter the cost.
        EatingWithForks 3y ago
        Of course they'd fight your wife. They don't want any history or evidence of potentially paying more under any circumstances.
    - 3y ago
spamizbad 3y ago
Part of what contributes to this is the "brainwashing" that takes place in PhD programs that discourages applicants from transitioning out of academia into "the industry". Academia has tons of extremely smart, hard-working individuals, most of whom would have excellent white collar careers with half the work and 2-10x the pay. There are a handful of academics who are truly built for working in academia and wouldn't be as successful in "the industry" but at least half could transition out of academia and clean-up with a normal office job.
- f6v 3y ago
  You should be discouraged from abandoning projects when hitting a wall. I’d advise against dropping out of PhD program if you don’t have a publication ready in second year. Also, there’re people who truly enjoy science and pay isn’t the deciding factor.
  - vkou 3y ago
    > Also, there’re people who truly enjoy science and pay isn’t the deciding factor. If that's a good reason to keep pay low, why don't we apply this to the management and administrative class? Surely, we could find someone smart and capable who'd be happy to do an exec's or a director's job, without seven-figure pay as a consideration... Think of all the money we could return to shareholders, if we just made the directors subsist on prayers and ramen...
    - bumby 3y ago
      >Surely, we could find someone smart and capable who'd be happy to do an exec's or a director's job, without seven-figure pay as a consideration... We do, depending on domain. Directors in a lot of social programs make low pay for what they deal with. Luckily, many are mission oriented rather than being motivated primarily by money.
    - f6v 3y ago
      I don’t know how the pay is where you are. It’s fine in the country I live in.
geysersam 3y ago
Funny that this is published in Nature. Arguably they're part of the corruption (not in the legal sense) prevalent in the "industry". Self-awareness is good but less impressive when they're still charging universities obscene amounts to access material the journal obtained basically for free.
qazpot 3y ago
I think the part about "unrealistic goals" is applicable to a lot of spheres of life and exacerbated by the social media. Social media after all inflicts high expectations and pressure to convert your life into a performance on everyone irrespective of profession, culture, age, country. And ofcourse the Titans of social media - zuckerberg, chamath, tiktok and 1000s of engineers, PMs will not pay for the harm their engineered products have caused because waters have been muddied enough and no true accounting of the harm can happen. It is kind of like inventing a new synthetic highly addictive drug which is technically legal but very harmful and you can sell it to everyone.
- vkou 3y ago
  Blaming social media for this is shooting the messenger. You don't need Facebook or the Gram to be keenly aware that all your university buddies who went into tech are going on vacations to Maui and buying their second homes, while you're still grinding your life away for nothing in a university lab. In fact, all you need to do be aware of this is to show up to your friends' bi-weekly happy hour at the local.
  - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
    I’m curious how that isn’t obvious to someone going into research.
    - vkou 3y ago
      It is quite obvious, which is why the parent poster's ire is misplaced.
  - obscurette 3y ago
    > Blaming social media for this is shooting the messenger. No, it's not. Social media created a world wide bullying environment. Most of people all over the world are in trouble because they have to compete with unrealistic image of you or your profession created by social media. Whatever you are or do, you are never good enough. Education, medical field and science are especially vulnerable in this regard. Tech sector isn't really exception, but insane amount of money people get in some parts of the world for compensation makes it more tolerable.
photochemsyn 3y ago
Some advice for grad students who want to preserve their mental health: 1) Have an entirely separate life outside of academia. Do not mix the two, maintain a strict separation, and keep all academic relationships strictly professional. 2) Don't think of your advisor as anything other than an employer. They're not a father figure or a mentor or anything like that. You're just cheap labor, and don't forget it. 3) Don't think of you university as a 'place of learning and research' - they've all been corporatized to the hilt, and are basically run on the same lines as any business entity, including the worst aspects of corporate HR. 4) If you do have mental health issues, absolutely never go to anyone like a university-affiliated therapist, etc. If you ever have a dispute with the university, they'll use any such interaction in an effort to discredit you. 5) Fraudulent manipulation of data is more common than not as is dishonest behavior by PIs, and if your data from your own research doesn't agree with their past work, they'll try to prevent it from getting published and otherwise sabotage your progress, so expect that. 6) Academic politics is among the nastiest that exists, and enemies of your PI will also happily sabotage your progress just to make your PI look bad. Even other grad students might try something like this, so trust noone (and see #1). 7) If you have any really brilliant ideas with commercial potential, don't say a word about it to anyone, don't write it down, because the university will claim that it owns all your IP and will demand a percentage of anything you do with it, so keep quiet until you've left the system. You can learn a lot if you get into the right situation, however. Careful vetting of any prospective research group is important in that respect.
- CollinEMac 3y ago
  My wife is a researcher and it's astounding to me how many people she works with ignore point 1. Almost everyone is dating other people in the same lab or at least the same institution. As you can imagine some people do great with it but I'm also aware of some catastrophes. I like to think that our relationship, where we're free to vent about our work but also talk about and enjoy lots of other things, helps to keep us both mentally healthy.

fatnoah 3y ago

> Academia places unrealistic goals on brilliant people and pays them so meagerly that they have to often find other sources of income Early in my career, I considered (with an MS in Electrical Engineering, but with 4 years of professional programming experience) a switch into law. Big firms hire (or did in the past) people with tech degrees to do patent work and will pay a salary plus pay for law school. When I joined the big firm, there were about 25 people in my role. I was the only with with an EE or CS degree/background, the only one without a PhD, and the only one with actual post-academic work experience. For me, it was a 10% pay cut before accounting for law school tuition, similar benefits, and an small increase in hours. For all of the PhDs, it was essentially a 100% raise, substantially less work, and superior benefits.

jebarker 3y ago
> Big firms hire (or did in the past) people with tech degrees to do patent work and will pay a salary plus pay for law school. I've never heard this before. What job title would you search for?
- iancmceachern 3y ago
  I'm not the parent poster, but I believe they are generally called patent agents
  - fatnoah 3y ago
    Patent Agent is related, but is a subset of the role. Only one of the patent technology specialists at my firm was a patent agent when they joined. While, it was expected that we'd eventually sit for the patent bar, but it wasn't a requirement to get the job. The further expectation was that we'd also go to law school, receive our JDs, and pass the state bar as well.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  Although I AM a patent agent, the job title that I had at Google was "technical advisor." Most of the others with my job were not patent agents and the credential was really not necessary. Litigation is not something you study to pass the Patent Bar. If you're looking for a job like that with Big Law, you might look for "litigation advisor" or something similar.
  - fatnoah 3y ago
    The specific role I had was on the Patent Prosecution side vs. the Patent Litigation side. The litigators were more "normal" attorneys, and while we did some small level of advisement, for any real litigation they'd always hire an outside expert.
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      Same with Google: there's always an outside firm that does the work. The Google attorney was in charge and monitored all their bills.
- fatnoah 3y ago
  For this particular role, it was "Patent Technology Specialist" or "Technology Specialist". For example: https://foleyhoag.com/careers/technology-specialists/ https://foleyhoag.com/careers/technology-specialists/ (note, this is the firm where I did that work)

eli_gottlieb 3y ago

Yeah, it's not a matter of the "culture" at all. It's just a matter of low pay, long hours, and minuscule chances of job security and advancement. (He says as he writes his thesis and prepares to start his postdoc.)

kevviiinn 3y ago
Honestly I would be happy if I just got paid as a 100% FTE. I'm literally in the lab all the time, this 50% nonsense is BS. They say it's because international students are restricted to 20 hours per week, so okay just double the pay then and still call it 50%. The salary for my current work is super low anyhow, I'd be making way more if I got a job at big pharma with my current degrees
- explorer83 3y ago
  I toggle around with the idea that the system is designed or heavily influenced to be like this to benefit the big-industries and rich people. Have talent but need money? Work for big industry. Have money and can afford to stay in school? Get some patents and get more rich. I know this is a bit tin foil hat-ish.

greenhearth 3y ago

Can the institutions be blamed for trying to stay afloat? Where is this money coming from to pay the scientists? A collective decision has to be made to keep science healthy in a meaningful and productive way. I think academia (through its ethos of critical approach and peer review) may be the single social structure that keeps some kind of sanity.

tptacek 3y ago
Academic research is funded by grants.
- greenhearth 3y ago
  Can these grants provide a living wage?
  - ordersofmag 3y ago
    Wages paid by grants in general have to match whatever the institutions 'standard' pay scales are. So it's the institutions deciding pay rates. At least in the U.S..
    - CrazyStat 3y ago
      My wife is currently in the middle of a fight over this. Her salary is paid by a grant from an organization that has a minimum pay scale for postdocs. The university has its own standard pay scale for postdocs, which is about $20k/year lower. So far they've refused to budge. It's not even their money, there's just 4 layers of bureaucracy who have nothing better to do than ~enforce policy~ no matter the cost.
      - EatingWithForks 3y ago
        Of course they'd fight your wife. They don't want any history or evidence of potentially paying more under any circumstances.
  - 3y ago

spamizbad 3y ago

Part of what contributes to this is the "brainwashing" that takes place in PhD programs that discourages applicants from transitioning out of academia into "the industry". Academia has tons of extremely smart, hard-working individuals, most of whom would have excellent white collar careers with half the work and 2-10x the pay. There are a handful of academics who are truly built for working in academia and wouldn't be as successful in "the industry" but at least half could transition out of academia and clean-up with a normal office job.

f6v 3y ago
You should be discouraged from abandoning projects when hitting a wall. I’d advise against dropping out of PhD program if you don’t have a publication ready in second year. Also, there’re people who truly enjoy science and pay isn’t the deciding factor.
- vkou 3y ago
  > Also, there’re people who truly enjoy science and pay isn’t the deciding factor. If that's a good reason to keep pay low, why don't we apply this to the management and administrative class? Surely, we could find someone smart and capable who'd be happy to do an exec's or a director's job, without seven-figure pay as a consideration... Think of all the money we could return to shareholders, if we just made the directors subsist on prayers and ramen...
  - bumby 3y ago
    >Surely, we could find someone smart and capable who'd be happy to do an exec's or a director's job, without seven-figure pay as a consideration... We do, depending on domain. Directors in a lot of social programs make low pay for what they deal with. Luckily, many are mission oriented rather than being motivated primarily by money.
  - f6v 3y ago
    I don’t know how the pay is where you are. It’s fine in the country I live in.

geysersam 3y ago

Funny that this is published in Nature. Arguably they're part of the corruption (not in the legal sense) prevalent in the "industry". Self-awareness is good but less impressive when they're still charging universities obscene amounts to access material the journal obtained basically for free.

qazpot 3y ago

I think the part about "unrealistic goals" is applicable to a lot of spheres of life and exacerbated by the social media. Social media after all inflicts high expectations and pressure to convert your life into a performance on everyone irrespective of profession, culture, age, country. And ofcourse the Titans of social media - zuckerberg, chamath, tiktok and 1000s of engineers, PMs will not pay for the harm their engineered products have caused because waters have been muddied enough and no true accounting of the harm can happen. It is kind of like inventing a new synthetic highly addictive drug which is technically legal but very harmful and you can sell it to everyone.

vkou 3y ago
Blaming social media for this is shooting the messenger. You don't need Facebook or the Gram to be keenly aware that all your university buddies who went into tech are going on vacations to Maui and buying their second homes, while you're still grinding your life away for nothing in a university lab. In fact, all you need to do be aware of this is to show up to your friends' bi-weekly happy hour at the local.
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  I’m curious how that isn’t obvious to someone going into research.
  - vkou 3y ago
    It is quite obvious, which is why the parent poster's ire is misplaced.
- obscurette 3y ago
  > Blaming social media for this is shooting the messenger. No, it's not. Social media created a world wide bullying environment. Most of people all over the world are in trouble because they have to compete with unrealistic image of you or your profession created by social media. Whatever you are or do, you are never good enough. Education, medical field and science are especially vulnerable in this regard. Tech sector isn't really exception, but insane amount of money people get in some parts of the world for compensation makes it more tolerable.

photochemsyn 3y ago

Some advice for grad students who want to preserve their mental health: 1) Have an entirely separate life outside of academia. Do not mix the two, maintain a strict separation, and keep all academic relationships strictly professional. 2) Don't think of your advisor as anything other than an employer. They're not a father figure or a mentor or anything like that. You're just cheap labor, and don't forget it. 3) Don't think of you university as a 'place of learning and research' - they've all been corporatized to the hilt, and are basically run on the same lines as any business entity, including the worst aspects of corporate HR. 4) If you do have mental health issues, absolutely never go to anyone like a university-affiliated therapist, etc. If you ever have a dispute with the university, they'll use any such interaction in an effort to discredit you. 5) Fraudulent manipulation of data is more common than not as is dishonest behavior by PIs, and if your data from your own research doesn't agree with their past work, they'll try to prevent it from getting published and otherwise sabotage your progress, so expect that. 6) Academic politics is among the nastiest that exists, and enemies of your PI will also happily sabotage your progress just to make your PI look bad. Even other grad students might try something like this, so trust noone (and see #1). 7) If you have any really brilliant ideas with commercial potential, don't say a word about it to anyone, don't write it down, because the university will claim that it owns all your IP and will demand a percentage of anything you do with it, so keep quiet until you've left the system. You can learn a lot if you get into the right situation, however. Careful vetting of any prospective research group is important in that respect.

CollinEMac 3y ago
My wife is a researcher and it's astounding to me how many people she works with ignore point 1. Almost everyone is dating other people in the same lab or at least the same institution. As you can imagine some people do great with it but I'm also aware of some catastrophes. I like to think that our relationship, where we're free to vent about our work but also talk about and enjoy lots of other things, helps to keep us both mentally healthy.