I got a PhD in particle physics 6 years ago. I did my first postdoc and enjoyed it - I got to travel, and work on relatively interesting things occasionally. Ev

I got a PhD in particle physics 6 years ago. I did my first postdoc and enjoyed it - I got to travel, and work on relatively interesting things occasionally. Every year since then it's got worse, to the point where I've given up on getting a permanent job and am actively looking elsewhere. If I was offered an tenured academic post tomorrow, I would decline. The other thing that is generally left out of this discussion is that academic excellence does not matter for a permanent job. There's no politics as vicious as academic politics (since so little is at stake), and who your supervisor is for your PhD matters more than how clever you are. If your achievements are first-rate, no-one up the chain will really understand them, and you'll be derided. If what you do is unoriginal, but suits the political landscape fame and riches (60 hour weeks and a starting salary of $75k) may become yours after you've moved city, country or continent a few times. That is scale-independent. If you have tenure, funding committees become the new tenure or interview committees. Collaboration boards and conference boards (which confer status and prestige and therefore opportunity) work who likes whom - not on competency. All the best people (technically and personally) I met during my PhD have left the field and I'm hoping to join them soon...I'm just slightly ashamed of myself for staying in the field this long.