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"Why does anyone think science is a good job? The average trajectory for a successful scientist is the following: * age 18-22: paying high tuition fees at an

"Why does anyone think science is a good job? The average trajectory for a successful scientist is the following: * age 18-22: paying high tuition fees at an undergraduate college * age 22-30: graduate school, possibly with a bit of work, living on a stipend of $1800 per month * age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000 per year * age 36-43: professor at a good, but not great, university for $65,000 per year * age 44: with (if lucky) young children at home, fired by the university ("denied tenure" is the more polite term for the folks that universities discard), begins searching for a job in a market where employers primarily wish to hire folks in their early 30s This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a 'second rate has-been' label on his forehead." http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

eranation 12y ago
Wow, this is sad. I knew the situation wasn't great, but it makes Breaking Bad look much more realistic than I thought. I guess the people who do it, don't do it for the money, I hope that those 8% who make it to tenure, do it because they love what they do. I just hope they have enough energy to keep things up once they get there. There has to be a better way. I liked the mention of DIY scientists, if people could have done hobby medicine research the same way they can 3D print, start a SaaS company, built a home automation solution using an Arduino and some stuff from ebay, if doing DIY lab research would be as easy as launching a mini delorean style quadrocopter (search on youtube), I'm sure a lot of the community here in HN would have been working on the next cure for cancer.
- longlivegnu 12y ago
  I think DIY scientists have it the hardest, especially the ones that cannot survive without a job.
  - spiritplumber 12y ago
    Also because it's really hard to get published if you're not working with an organization. It has happened to me that I had to take someone as coauthor just because they knew scientific-paper-ese and were associated with $BIGLAB.
- scrumper 12y ago
  I'm reminded of 18th and 19th century astronomers and naturalists, some of whom made very important advances. Of course these were usually wealthy individuals before they came to science. Perhaps there's room for a 21st century form of patronage instead.
  - Nelson69 12y ago
    First off, there are some fields where scientists can write their own ticket. Certain medical areas where an MD as well as a microbiological PhD is required, those guys just don't hardly exist... I've heard of relatively insane levels of pay for them. Then if you do get a good research position somewhere, you get your base pay and all but a lot of scientists reach out for grants and they can pay themselves from them, padding their base. If you can get one of those cherry positions, it's potentially way nicer than what most engineers make. If you work on things with industrial applications you can get royalties and such, all while working at a university. Seems a number of these places have like real pension type retirement programs as well. The haves in science are doing great, the vast majority are have-nots though and they live near poverty in a lot of positions. It's my opinion looking in (my wife is a scientist) is that there are 2 main problems: 1) Little understanding and appreciation for real science, it's thankless, there are tons of failures to usually make incremental progress, the level of meticulousness is something else.. and 2) They've got their own culture running it now and there is a history of paying dues and lot's of unwritten traditions about how you can grow and evolve a career. Post-docs don't get paid much, that's how it is, even if a lab can afford it, post-docs don't often get jobs where they post-doc, even if they're experts on the lab's area of work because that's just not how its done. It's kind of like how MDs are stereotypically just ground up by working insane shifts at the at their residency because that's what the doctors before them had to do, almost like hazing..
    - foobarqux 12y ago
      Can you elaborate on MD/PhD? What positions are these exactly and what qualifies as "insane" pay?
      - 12y ago
cryoshon 12y ago
1800 a month is a high stipend, FYI. Some of the schools around here (Boston) have stipends which work out to be about 18,000 per year.
- danielweber 12y ago
  15 years ago $1200-$1500 was what me and friends got at MIT. (And in many ways I was living like a king.)
  - omilu 12y ago
    Same for me, but at a different university. School was free, good stipend, and free housing cause i was also an RA (not normally allowed but they let me do it). Living like a king is an apt description. Best 5 years of my life, without question.
    - Chronic30 12y ago
      I heard Stanford gives a (pre-tax) monthly stipend of $4k to their graduate students.
- DaveWalk 12y ago
  It's always low, with a strict limit set by the NIH, and schools have a tiny bit of wiggle room. For example, a stipend in NYC is the biggest nationwide[1], but that's mostly cost of living. 1500-1800 was common at the schools in the mid atlantic that I knew of recently. [1] http://www.wendychao.com/science/stipends/ http://www.wendychao.com/science/stipends/
ttflee 12y ago
A Stanford Ph.D. turned taxi driver http://kentridgecommon.com/?p=4962 http://kentridgecommon.com/?p=4962 Even if you had been successful for 16 years, it could still turn bad.
- dnautics 12y ago
  Not to mention Douglas Prasher (shuttle bus driver for a toyota dealership) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Prasher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Prasher I'm a chem phd driving for lyft while I'm running my nonprofit science outfit. Some of my passengers have told me there are others out there.
  - analog31 12y ago
    This is not new: "What did one New York City cabbie say to another? So, what did you get your PhD in?" ... was a well known joke when I was a grad student in the late 80's.
    - aidenn0 12y ago
      When I started in Physics, my sister was in music; my joke was "At least I'll know why the hamburgers flip"
  - pcrh 12y ago
    Douglas Prasher now has a job in the Tsien Lab at UCSD http://www.tsienlab.ucsd.edu/People.htm http://www.tsienlab.ucsd.edu/People.htm
    - DaveWalk 12y ago
      That's awesome -- this story comes up more than you'd think. I'm glad that Tsien did this, and without fanfare. Academics can also be a place where integrity shines, too.
refurb 12y ago
That's for a scientist staying in academics. I used to work as a scientist in a science-focused industry and the salary trajectory is much better. As a newly minted PhD, you can pulled $120K + bonus (20%) right out of your post-doc. You'll probably hit a ceiling of $200-250K/yr relatively quickly (10 years) if you don't move into management. Of course, that doesn't take into account the fact that as R&D person you'll be viewed as a cost center and a target for cost cutting if the time comes.
- kayhi 12y ago
  What industry? I've never seen anything close to these averages for hard science research.
  - rm999 12y ago
    More than 80% of the data scientists I've worked with who were born before 1978 have physics phds and went through that trajectory. Data scientists younger than that have a wider variety of degrees, often computer science and/or applied math. But I don't know if most people count data science as a real scientific field. I have friends in the bio/medical side (phds, not MDs) who are following that trajectory too.
    - learc83 12y ago
      >But I don't know if most people count data science as a real scientific field. If you're using it in the big data, industry buzzword sense, then I doubt the OP would consider it "hard science research."
      - timr 12y ago
        Those salary numbers are also arguably bubbly..."data science" is so new and hype-driven that we might be looking back in a few years at the ridiculous salad days where someone who knew a bit of statistics and a bit of programming could pull down $100k a year. It's starting to read like "webmaster" salaries in the late 90s...
civilian 12y ago
I read this article a year ago and my google-fu wasn't good enough to find it again! Thanks for posting it, and thanks for posting it originally if this is something you post periodically. I will now bookmark it and send it to all of my relatives.
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
>wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. Sounds like to me like this is the problem. Its a lot to ask for lifetime employment, pension, etc. The tenure system causes this. A more fluid employment system would provide more opportunity as recruitement wouldn't be this overly neurotic thing. That said, I know people in this exact situation. They bounce from university to university. They eventually ended up somewhere, at least most of them, with a couple scragglers who always came off as hugely unlikeable trust fund kiddies, so I'm not surprise they can't convince anyone to keep them or that they feel motivated to work hard. The people I mentioned above were mostly U of C grads. Salaries there: >The average salary for a full-time professor at the U of C during the 2007-08 academic year was $170,800—the fifth highest in the nation 170k 5 years ago is nice scratch. Even in "poor" public schools like the University of Illinois, you're looking at 110-120k for entry level professors. Oh, and usually that's without working any of the summer months. I'm not sure why there's so much hang-wringing over these jobs, many of which pay a decent wage. Yet there's no hang-wringing over the millions who are just as smart and talented in the private sector who have no tenure protections, no publishing rights, no patent co-ownership rights, no royalty rights, and fear layoffs all the time.
- tobinfricke 12y ago
  > Oh, and usually that's without working any of the summer months. Hah! This must be one of the strangest and most pervasive myths about academia. Typically you only get the summer off ... from teaching. It's the prime time to do that research that motivated you to get into the business in the first place... And conveniently, the University doesn't pay you a salary for this time. You can elect to pay yourself... out of your research budget. At the opportunity cost of students, postdocs, staff, equipment, travel, etc.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
letitgo12345 12y ago
Dunno about other fields, but atleast if you're doing a PhD in CS/math/stats, the industrial options (tech, finance, data scientist, etc.) are great enough that this article posts too bleak a picture imo of doing a PhD and trying out a career in science. If one wants to stay in science, then there are many other options than being a prof including but not limited too industrial or government labs, research scientist positions at universities, etc. Also the majority of assistant professors actually do get tenure and I feel this article is implying that they don't. And salaries are definitely higher than 65K a year. Though again, a CS perspective.
- cheriot 12y ago
  I wish people would break this out by discipline for exactly the reason you mention. Sadly the articles describing a lack of STEM graduates and the ones describing how shit being a scientist is both paint all science with one brush.
  - chriswarbo 12y ago
    I agree. Reminds me of "X% of published results can't be replicated", "Y% of researchers don't understand statistics", etc., most of which turn out to be problems in particular fields like sociology, psychology or medicine.
- wwweston 12y ago
  Sure, and I'm not complaining too much as a guy who studied Math/CS in my undergrad days (and I'm even considering graduate work!). The author also gives a nod to the industrial paths. On the other hand: * I think if you consider "tech, finance, data scientist", some reflection reveals a discouraging fact: we're usually not talking about science or even engineering at all, but essentially support functions allowing new kinds of productivity or scale for mundane business functions. So there's careers out there for us educated in these quantitative/technological arts... but it's generally not a career in science. * More concretely, my math/CS education is almost entirely superfluous to my six-figure job doing CSS and wrangling squirrelly JavaScript frameworks/apps (mostly as a support function to sell automobiles). Meanwhile there are tenured faculty making half what I do (and postdocs/grad students on poverty incomes) actually working to figure out how life works, cure cancer, and build space elevators. I don't know much about research related to tenure achievement and salaries, but I found these: http://chronicle.com/article/Average-Faculty-Salaries-by/126586/ http://chronicle.com/article/Average-Faculty-Salaries-by/126... http://www.opia.psu.edu/sites/default/files/AIR_Tenure_Flow_Paper_06.pdf http://www.opia.psu.edu/sites/default/files/AIR_Tenure_Flow_... My takeaway from skimming is that (a) faculty salaries vary, those in areas with the industrial options we've talked about seem to be higher, but an average of $65-70k seems credible (b) data on tenure is hard to come by but everyone agrees it's very difficult to get at high status institutions.
zeidrich 12y ago
I don't think that anyone really thinks science is a good job. You rarely talk to anyone who says "I want to make a lot of money so I'm going to be a researcher!" Normally people (want to) become scientists because they are passionate about science. The problem is that science is not highly valued, especially academically. We live in a society that values trading commodities, and science isn't easily commoditized. The closest thing we can come to a commodity in science is papers, and maybe patents in the commercial world. The shame is that science is a public benefit. In our whole history, nearly everything is ephemeral, but the things we have learned and understood and documented have persisted. Technology can be good or bad, but (well founded) science is knowledge, and it's only ever good as it lets us better understand. We live inefficiently as long as we focus on letting people live comfortable lives only when they have something they can restrict access to and barter in exchange for that opportunity. There are people out there that would like to do science, who would like to further our understanding of the world and universe we live in, who don't do so only because they need to help produce something that people will pay for. In my opinion, we should pay for education and a fair income for any person who wants to practice academics. Sure, you can save luxurious salaries and budgets for the superstars, but make it such that everyone who has the capability and desire to do so can work in science, or possibly other academic pursuits, that they will have a wage that will let them have a home, healthy food on the table, support a family and live a comfortable, if modest life. The condition being that all of your results are made available to the public for free and you might get called to teach. I think of it kind of like being in the military. Enough money gets spent on the military, TONS of money gets spent on the military, and for much of it, the public sees minor benefit. But you know that when you join, that at least while you're serving, you are going to be guaranteed to have a place to stay, food to eat, health care, education options. Nearly anyone who is fit can join. If you could do the same for science, I think that would be great. Our governance would need to change first though, and our culture. I don't trust that government employed scientists give good results over lies to promote an agenda. At least in our current private economy you have conflicting interests that can act as oversight. But as automation and technology supply more of our needs with less labour, we're losing more and more jobs. This leads to people without jobs. If there are people in that group that are smart enough to be scientists, there's always room for more science.
Fede_V 12y ago
"Why does anyone think science is a good job?" - Because you get paid to investigate some of the most interesting things in the world, in the company of mostly great people. Science is awesome. Scientific careers right now are shitty, but that's because the current system is broken, not because of anything intrinsic to science. We should try to fix it.
- untilHellbanned 12y ago
  Solutions? I've tried quite HARD with Onarbor, https://onarbor.com https://onarbor.com, a crowdfunding for Science site, but its not exactly setting the world on fire. Would love if you have any specific suggestions.
  - Fomite 12y ago
    I think the problem is that even most "Holy shit, we broke all our expectations!" Kickstarters are...modestly successful grants, in terms of scientific funding. And most crowd funding for science is, for lack of a better word, not worth the effort. The campaigns that are existing dwell mainly in the realm of "can fund a grad student's field work", and carry a significant burden in teaching/educating university admin in terms of where this money comes from, trying to not get them to take overhead from it, etc.
  - lumberjack 12y ago
    I don't think that a very good idea. People outside of that specific area of research would have no way of knowing whether a particular research proposal is worth funding or not. I would expect people to end up funding the department which can produce the best promotional video. Then I expect departments to start spending ridiculous man hours producing promotional youtube videos.
    - untilHellbanned 12y ago
      Our site has a whole Stackoverflow-based review and voting processes. So crowdfunding is a smaller part of it. Also, you don't submit a video. You just post the work and a preview if you see fit. The content can be of any type (doc, audio, video, images, HTML5 apps). It is worth understanding the site more before striking it down.
Osmium 12y ago
It's certainly a bit grim. To offer a personal perspective... > * age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000 per year You can earn more than that (and younger) if you're prepared to travel outside the US, though it's still not great. I'm hesitant to share personal details, but I'm personally in my mid-twenties and just starting a "postdoc" (in a sense; still waiting to defend my thesis), and I'm earning quite a bit more than that, albeit in an expensive city and with a large tax/student loan burden. I'd like to do a postdoc in the US next year, but I'd have to take a large pay cut to do it, which is something I'm on the fence about–I figure you're only young once, and money isn't everything, but I can't help but feel I'd be being taken advantage of just because I happen to enjoy doing science, and the additional opportunity cost would be high too. Is it worth it? I'm not sure. Beyond that... I wrote a much longer comment but deleted it. The fact is, academia is in an unhealthy place right now, and there's quite so much wrong with it that it's very difficult to articulate. Where do you begin? Whether to even stay in academia or leave is a question that seems to be discussed a lot lately, certainly among my colleagues, and I expect to see a lot more threads like this in the future. Edit: Actually, I should add, that despite being in a decent place now, I had to unexpectedly work without pay for a time last year due a (ahem) 'funding hiccup.' This experience was so very terrible at the time that I'm surprised I didn't just give up on the PhD right then. To explain: in the UK, STEM funding is typically 3 years, and when that runs out you're in trouble: you can't go and get another job because you need to finish your thesis to get your PhD. Most people can't finish a PhD in 3 years (unsurprisingly). Some people manage to get extra funding from somewhere or start postdocs while still technically writing-up, but most people don't. Some people are told there will be extra funding which never materialises, or doesn't arrive on time. Several of my friends ended up going back home to live with their parents to write-up (and are still there); this is not uncommon. I know someone else who ended up living in a hostel. Once you've started the PhD you're invested, and the longer you do it the harder it is to walk away. The real kicker to me is that a lot of people accept this and think it's okay.
- cozzyd 12y ago
  The situation in bio seems dire, but in physics our postdocs are typically $50k+ (obviously depends on where).
jacquesm 12y ago
You forgot to mention that the likes of Elsevier then make more money off their research than they do.
noelwelsh 12y ago
These figures might be correct for the US, but the UK is much better about things. As a PhD student (a teaching assistance) I received a tax-free income that was equivalent to earning about £20K a year, which is about USD30K. I think post-docs are in the range £25-35K. We also don't have the brutal tenure system.
- Iepai2eg 12y ago
  I wish. Most EPSRC-funded PhD student are paid the minimum EPSRC rate [1], currently £13,863 (or USD 20,965). [1] http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/skills/students/help/minimumpay/ http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/skills/students/help/minimumpay/
  - jschwartzi 12y ago
    I think that's about what I would have made unloading shipping containers by hand for a year.
  - aaren 12y ago
    That £13k is a tax-free stipend. You don't have to pay income tax and some other things (e.g. an all student house pays no council tax). When you work out the equivalent taxed income that would reduce to that stipend, it approaches £20k.
nether 12y ago
> age 36-43: professor at a good, but not great, university for $65,000 per year Podunk U in the midwest gets filled with MIT/Harvard degreed profs, who couldn't wait for existing profs to die off at their alma maters. It also captures the Harvard rejects with 4.0 GPA's, 2300 SAT's, 12 AP courses. Extreme selectivity at the elite institutions improves the quality of the non-elite schools. Better profs, better students. Does Podunk U have the potential to churn out some great students then? Even if its prestige isn't as good as an elite.
- Chronic30 12y ago
  Since your brought up the prestige issue. Prestige is a very important component when applying to jobs, meeting people, or going to graduate school. So no, Podunk U will not churn out great students.
speeder 12y ago
I am currently unemployed. My mother is nagging me to join a masters degree so I can get a job as professor in a public university. She does not think it is a good job, she thinks it is a easy job, her words were: "I think you are smart enough to pass the tests to get the position." That is because in a public university, after some time tenured you can't be ever fired unless you commit a serious crime, so it is a "good job" in the sense you will never be unemployed again... At least this is the situation in Brazil.
- IndianAstronaut 12y ago
  When I was doing my PhD I. The US, I seriously considered the Brazil option. Took Portuguese courses and everything. I bailed though in the middle of my degree. However, eu falo um poucu de Portugues.
xaa 12y ago
I'm 27, skipped postdoc, and make $60K in a staff scientist position. I am able to get away with this because bioinformatics is in huge demand. At my institution this also does not preclude a later tenure-track position. Basically, you have to play it smart, find a niche, and you can beat the averages.
- cli 12y ago
  Hello, could you please describe what being a staff scientist is about? It seems that you are someone who does research at a university but is not a professor. Do you work under a professor?
  - xaa 12y ago
    Sort of. Yes, I do research at a university-equivalent (a nonprofit academic research institution). Someone else's grant funds my paycheck, but in practice, staff scientist is often a position which is intermediate in freedom between postdocs (who virtually always pursue someone else's research goals) and faculty (who, in theory, always pursue their own, once they're done writing grants and doing paperwork). So, I work "under" no one, but I do have someone who expects me to spend roughly 30% of my time on their research goals, and people would refer to me as a member of the X lab (where Dr. X is the faculty member paying my salary). Staff scientist typically connotes a relatively senior, but non-tenure track position. So, someone who either did not want, or could not cut it in, the cutthroat world of tenure-track positions. The hours often are lighter than for professors. It is typically filled by someone in their late 30s or early 40s and who has done a postdoc. In my case, and at my institution, it is different. I got this position because I and the person hiring me felt I deserved better salary, benefits, and prestige than a postdoc, whose salaries are fairly rigidly set by the NIH in the mid 40Ks. I can still become a professor later (the main way to do that would be to successfully write some grants). So overall, for me, this position is a step up from the likely alternative of postdoc, but for someone in their 40s whose competing alternative is faculty member, it would not be nearly so appealing. A related position, slightly higher up the food chain but more definitively non tenure-track, is that of "core director". That means you run a "core" (a facility that all the researchers at an institution can use for a particular kind of experiment or analysis). A bioinformatics "core director" would then take datasets from researchers who come to them and perform analyses on them, and by playing their cards right, would get lots and lots of coauthorships.
analog31 12y ago
I read Greenspun's article. It's certainly sobering, and that's coming from a PhD with a decent industry job. Still, one concept struck me: >>> Consider taking the same high IQ and work ethic, going into business, and being put on the fast track at a company such as General Electric. My concern is that "work ethic" is not an independent, immutable trait, but is instead situational. If so, then a high work ethic, transplanted to General Electric, could become a low work ethic. Some folks may need their motivation to come from what they are doing, more than others. Those folks aren't helped much by a simple list of what jobs pay the most.
- rtpg 12y ago
  There seems to be a strong myth with my friends in graduate school that somehow everything you're forced to do in "industry" is terrible boring busywork and could not possibly be interesting, and that a career in research, while tiring, means you can work on what you want. Truth is that so long as somebody is above you, it's very possible to have to work on things imposed on you, and in research that can mean working on topics you disagree with, along with all the office politics that come with it. I think someone who has done both industry and research can comment, but my impression has always been that they're mostly the same thing if you're between 20 and 40.
  - analog31 12y ago
    Thanks for that point. I was extremely lucky to have role models: Both of my parents are retired industrial scientists, and had good careers. But they were also the ones who first warned me that you don't go into science to get rich. I also got lucky with my choice of advisor and thesis project. While the topic of my thesis was an esoteric matter of academic interest, the _execution_ was an honest to goodness engineering project involving optics, electronics, and programming. So I had something to talk about in an interview. I actually don't mind having work imposed on me. Among the many reasons why I left academia, one is that I simply didn't have my own research idea. I've even told my boss that he can assign anything to me, so long as he is confident that it's urgent, meaty work. Now, I'd have a tough time sitting in an office, manipulating pivot tables and "dashboards," and bikeshedding at stand-up meetings. Another myth or bias among a lot of grad students is that they have to be loyal to their specialty. I was fortunate to be fairly opportunistic about my technical interests. I should also note that I'm reading all of this with a less than arms length interest: Both of my kids are potentially interested in science careers.
lotsofmangos 12y ago
Science isn't a good job. It is a calling. Which is why the insincere find it so easy to take them for a ride.
dougabug 12y ago
I've had friends whose careers have followed more or less that trajectory. It seems to me that there's an arbitrage possibility here, tremendously undervalued intellectual capital.
sebastianavina 12y ago
that only happens in the US, in Mexico, you get scholarships from the State, If you're studying a Master Degree, first of all, most of the PNPC degrees are free (the best degrees indexed by conacyt), the mexican state gives you a scholarship for about $8000 pesos monthly, (most people fresh out of the bs earns about that so it's ok), for a Phd, they pay you about 12k which is ok too, and for a postdoc pays about 18k. All good science programs are free, on top research centers like Cinvestav, Cimat, UNAM, you name it. you have mobility (that means that the mexican state pays you for making and internship on a university abroad), and well, maybe in the industry is hard to get a good with such credentials, and if you are a very good prospect you could top about 100k pesos in a top white collar job, but, lets be fair, is very hard to get one of those jobs. So getting a PhD is basically a very easy and good route to have financial stability. Also, there are a lot of opportunities on the state universities around the country for people with PhDs. Sad fact, there is no will in the general population for this programs. I'm studying right now a master degree on applied statistics and we are a generation of 6 persons.
yodsanklai 12y ago
Maybe that's the average trajectory in the US (and not for a successful scientist since she fails in the end!). But let's not forget that the US is not the only place where a scientists can find a job. There are many research institutes or universities in the world where someone with a PhD from Stanford and a postdoc from MIT (and less than that) could find a stable position. Besides, one has to consider the other options available. Would the person in your example be happier had she taken a different path? who knows. I wouldn't discourage people to try and work in that field if that's what they want to do.
hudibras 12y ago
Greenspun loses a lot of credibility by ranting on child support, though.
- selimthegrim 12y ago
  Did somebody take him to the cleaners once? He's had all his recent children by surrogate and there is rarely any mention of his wife (I believe he has one) - it seems to be a neurosis with him.

eranation 12y ago

Wow, this is sad. I knew the situation wasn't great, but it makes Breaking Bad look much more realistic than I thought. I guess the people who do it, don't do it for the money, I hope that those 8% who make it to tenure, do it because they love what they do. I just hope they have enough energy to keep things up once they get there. There has to be a better way. I liked the mention of DIY scientists, if people could have done hobby medicine research the same way they can 3D print, start a SaaS company, built a home automation solution using an Arduino and some stuff from ebay, if doing DIY lab research would be as easy as launching a mini delorean style quadrocopter (search on youtube), I'm sure a lot of the community here in HN would have been working on the next cure for cancer.

longlivegnu 12y ago
I think DIY scientists have it the hardest, especially the ones that cannot survive without a job.
- spiritplumber 12y ago
  Also because it's really hard to get published if you're not working with an organization. It has happened to me that I had to take someone as coauthor just because they knew scientific-paper-ese and were associated with $BIGLAB.
scrumper 12y ago
I'm reminded of 18th and 19th century astronomers and naturalists, some of whom made very important advances. Of course these were usually wealthy individuals before they came to science. Perhaps there's room for a 21st century form of patronage instead.
- Nelson69 12y ago
  First off, there are some fields where scientists can write their own ticket. Certain medical areas where an MD as well as a microbiological PhD is required, those guys just don't hardly exist... I've heard of relatively insane levels of pay for them. Then if you do get a good research position somewhere, you get your base pay and all but a lot of scientists reach out for grants and they can pay themselves from them, padding their base. If you can get one of those cherry positions, it's potentially way nicer than what most engineers make. If you work on things with industrial applications you can get royalties and such, all while working at a university. Seems a number of these places have like real pension type retirement programs as well. The haves in science are doing great, the vast majority are have-nots though and they live near poverty in a lot of positions. It's my opinion looking in (my wife is a scientist) is that there are 2 main problems: 1) Little understanding and appreciation for real science, it's thankless, there are tons of failures to usually make incremental progress, the level of meticulousness is something else.. and 2) They've got their own culture running it now and there is a history of paying dues and lot's of unwritten traditions about how you can grow and evolve a career. Post-docs don't get paid much, that's how it is, even if a lab can afford it, post-docs don't often get jobs where they post-doc, even if they're experts on the lab's area of work because that's just not how its done. It's kind of like how MDs are stereotypically just ground up by working insane shifts at the at their residency because that's what the doctors before them had to do, almost like hazing..
  - foobarqux 12y ago
    Can you elaborate on MD/PhD? What positions are these exactly and what qualifies as "insane" pay?
    - 12y ago

cryoshon 12y ago

1800 a month is a high stipend, FYI. Some of the schools around here (Boston) have stipends which work out to be about 18,000 per year.

danielweber 12y ago
15 years ago $1200-$1500 was what me and friends got at MIT. (And in many ways I was living like a king.)
- omilu 12y ago
  Same for me, but at a different university. School was free, good stipend, and free housing cause i was also an RA (not normally allowed but they let me do it). Living like a king is an apt description. Best 5 years of my life, without question.
  - Chronic30 12y ago
    I heard Stanford gives a (pre-tax) monthly stipend of $4k to their graduate students.
DaveWalk 12y ago
It's always low, with a strict limit set by the NIH, and schools have a tiny bit of wiggle room. For example, a stipend in NYC is the biggest nationwide[1], but that's mostly cost of living. 1500-1800 was common at the schools in the mid atlantic that I knew of recently. [1] http://www.wendychao.com/science/stipends/ http://www.wendychao.com/science/stipends/

ttflee 12y ago

A Stanford Ph.D. turned taxi driver http://kentridgecommon.com/?p=4962 http://kentridgecommon.com/?p=4962 Even if you had been successful for 16 years, it could still turn bad.

dnautics 12y ago
Not to mention Douglas Prasher (shuttle bus driver for a toyota dealership) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Prasher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Prasher I'm a chem phd driving for lyft while I'm running my nonprofit science outfit. Some of my passengers have told me there are others out there.
- analog31 12y ago
  This is not new: "What did one New York City cabbie say to another? So, what did you get your PhD in?" ... was a well known joke when I was a grad student in the late 80's.
  - aidenn0 12y ago
    When I started in Physics, my sister was in music; my joke was "At least I'll know why the hamburgers flip"
- pcrh 12y ago
  Douglas Prasher now has a job in the Tsien Lab at UCSD http://www.tsienlab.ucsd.edu/People.htm http://www.tsienlab.ucsd.edu/People.htm
  - DaveWalk 12y ago
    That's awesome -- this story comes up more than you'd think. I'm glad that Tsien did this, and without fanfare. Academics can also be a place where integrity shines, too.

refurb 12y ago

That's for a scientist staying in academics. I used to work as a scientist in a science-focused industry and the salary trajectory is much better. As a newly minted PhD, you can pulled $120K + bonus (20%) right out of your post-doc. You'll probably hit a ceiling of $200-250K/yr relatively quickly (10 years) if you don't move into management. Of course, that doesn't take into account the fact that as R&D person you'll be viewed as a cost center and a target for cost cutting if the time comes.

kayhi 12y ago
What industry? I've never seen anything close to these averages for hard science research.
- rm999 12y ago
  More than 80% of the data scientists I've worked with who were born before 1978 have physics phds and went through that trajectory. Data scientists younger than that have a wider variety of degrees, often computer science and/or applied math. But I don't know if most people count data science as a real scientific field. I have friends in the bio/medical side (phds, not MDs) who are following that trajectory too.
  - learc83 12y ago
    >But I don't know if most people count data science as a real scientific field. If you're using it in the big data, industry buzzword sense, then I doubt the OP would consider it "hard science research."
    - timr 12y ago
      Those salary numbers are also arguably bubbly..."data science" is so new and hype-driven that we might be looking back in a few years at the ridiculous salad days where someone who knew a bit of statistics and a bit of programming could pull down $100k a year. It's starting to read like "webmaster" salaries in the late 90s...

civilian 12y ago

I read this article a year ago and my google-fu wasn't good enough to find it again! Thanks for posting it, and thanks for posting it originally if this is something you post periodically. I will now bookmark it and send it to all of my relatives.

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

>wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. Sounds like to me like this is the problem. Its a lot to ask for lifetime employment, pension, etc. The tenure system causes this. A more fluid employment system would provide more opportunity as recruitement wouldn't be this overly neurotic thing. That said, I know people in this exact situation. They bounce from university to university. They eventually ended up somewhere, at least most of them, with a couple scragglers who always came off as hugely unlikeable trust fund kiddies, so I'm not surprise they can't convince anyone to keep them or that they feel motivated to work hard. The people I mentioned above were mostly U of C grads. Salaries there: >The average salary for a full-time professor at the U of C during the 2007-08 academic year was $170,800—the fifth highest in the nation 170k 5 years ago is nice scratch. Even in "poor" public schools like the University of Illinois, you're looking at 110-120k for entry level professors. Oh, and usually that's without working any of the summer months. I'm not sure why there's so much hang-wringing over these jobs, many of which pay a decent wage. Yet there's no hang-wringing over the millions who are just as smart and talented in the private sector who have no tenure protections, no publishing rights, no patent co-ownership rights, no royalty rights, and fear layoffs all the time.

tobinfricke 12y ago
> Oh, and usually that's without working any of the summer months. Hah! This must be one of the strangest and most pervasive myths about academia. Typically you only get the summer off ... from teaching. It's the prime time to do that research that motivated you to get into the business in the first place... And conveniently, the University doesn't pay you a salary for this time. You can elect to pay yourself... out of your research budget. At the opportunity cost of students, postdocs, staff, equipment, travel, etc.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

letitgo12345 12y ago

Dunno about other fields, but atleast if you're doing a PhD in CS/math/stats, the industrial options (tech, finance, data scientist, etc.) are great enough that this article posts too bleak a picture imo of doing a PhD and trying out a career in science. If one wants to stay in science, then there are many other options than being a prof including but not limited too industrial or government labs, research scientist positions at universities, etc. Also the majority of assistant professors actually do get tenure and I feel this article is implying that they don't. And salaries are definitely higher than 65K a year. Though again, a CS perspective.

cheriot 12y ago
I wish people would break this out by discipline for exactly the reason you mention. Sadly the articles describing a lack of STEM graduates and the ones describing how shit being a scientist is both paint all science with one brush.
- chriswarbo 12y ago
  I agree. Reminds me of "X% of published results can't be replicated", "Y% of researchers don't understand statistics", etc., most of which turn out to be problems in particular fields like sociology, psychology or medicine.
wwweston 12y ago
Sure, and I'm not complaining too much as a guy who studied Math/CS in my undergrad days (and I'm even considering graduate work!). The author also gives a nod to the industrial paths. On the other hand: * I think if you consider "tech, finance, data scientist", some reflection reveals a discouraging fact: we're usually not talking about science or even engineering at all, but essentially support functions allowing new kinds of productivity or scale for mundane business functions. So there's careers out there for us educated in these quantitative/technological arts... but it's generally not a career in science. * More concretely, my math/CS education is almost entirely superfluous to my six-figure job doing CSS and wrangling squirrelly JavaScript frameworks/apps (mostly as a support function to sell automobiles). Meanwhile there are tenured faculty making half what I do (and postdocs/grad students on poverty incomes) actually working to figure out how life works, cure cancer, and build space elevators. I don't know much about research related to tenure achievement and salaries, but I found these: http://chronicle.com/article/Average-Faculty-Salaries-by/126586/ http://chronicle.com/article/Average-Faculty-Salaries-by/126... http://www.opia.psu.edu/sites/default/files/AIR_Tenure_Flow_Paper_06.pdf http://www.opia.psu.edu/sites/default/files/AIR_Tenure_Flow_... My takeaway from skimming is that (a) faculty salaries vary, those in areas with the industrial options we've talked about seem to be higher, but an average of $65-70k seems credible (b) data on tenure is hard to come by but everyone agrees it's very difficult to get at high status institutions.

zeidrich 12y ago

I don't think that anyone really thinks science is a good job. You rarely talk to anyone who says "I want to make a lot of money so I'm going to be a researcher!" Normally people (want to) become scientists because they are passionate about science. The problem is that science is not highly valued, especially academically. We live in a society that values trading commodities, and science isn't easily commoditized. The closest thing we can come to a commodity in science is papers, and maybe patents in the commercial world. The shame is that science is a public benefit. In our whole history, nearly everything is ephemeral, but the things we have learned and understood and documented have persisted. Technology can be good or bad, but (well founded) science is knowledge, and it's only ever good as it lets us better understand. We live inefficiently as long as we focus on letting people live comfortable lives only when they have something they can restrict access to and barter in exchange for that opportunity. There are people out there that would like to do science, who would like to further our understanding of the world and universe we live in, who don't do so only because they need to help produce something that people will pay for. In my opinion, we should pay for education and a fair income for any person who wants to practice academics. Sure, you can save luxurious salaries and budgets for the superstars, but make it such that everyone who has the capability and desire to do so can work in science, or possibly other academic pursuits, that they will have a wage that will let them have a home, healthy food on the table, support a family and live a comfortable, if modest life. The condition being that all of your results are made available to the public for free and you might get called to teach. I think of it kind of like being in the military. Enough money gets spent on the military, TONS of money gets spent on the military, and for much of it, the public sees minor benefit. But you know that when you join, that at least while you're serving, you are going to be guaranteed to have a place to stay, food to eat, health care, education options. Nearly anyone who is fit can join. If you could do the same for science, I think that would be great. Our governance would need to change first though, and our culture. I don't trust that government employed scientists give good results over lies to promote an agenda. At least in our current private economy you have conflicting interests that can act as oversight. But as automation and technology supply more of our needs with less labour, we're losing more and more jobs. This leads to people without jobs. If there are people in that group that are smart enough to be scientists, there's always room for more science.

Fede_V 12y ago

"Why does anyone think science is a good job?" - Because you get paid to investigate some of the most interesting things in the world, in the company of mostly great people. Science is awesome. Scientific careers right now are shitty, but that's because the current system is broken, not because of anything intrinsic to science. We should try to fix it.

untilHellbanned 12y ago
Solutions? I've tried quite HARD with Onarbor, https://onarbor.com https://onarbor.com, a crowdfunding for Science site, but its not exactly setting the world on fire. Would love if you have any specific suggestions.
- Fomite 12y ago
  I think the problem is that even most "Holy shit, we broke all our expectations!" Kickstarters are...modestly successful grants, in terms of scientific funding. And most crowd funding for science is, for lack of a better word, not worth the effort. The campaigns that are existing dwell mainly in the realm of "can fund a grad student's field work", and carry a significant burden in teaching/educating university admin in terms of where this money comes from, trying to not get them to take overhead from it, etc.
- lumberjack 12y ago
  I don't think that a very good idea. People outside of that specific area of research would have no way of knowing whether a particular research proposal is worth funding or not. I would expect people to end up funding the department which can produce the best promotional video. Then I expect departments to start spending ridiculous man hours producing promotional youtube videos.
  - untilHellbanned 12y ago
    Our site has a whole Stackoverflow-based review and voting processes. So crowdfunding is a smaller part of it. Also, you don't submit a video. You just post the work and a preview if you see fit. The content can be of any type (doc, audio, video, images, HTML5 apps). It is worth understanding the site more before striking it down.

Osmium 12y ago

It's certainly a bit grim. To offer a personal perspective... > * age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000 per year You can earn more than that (and younger) if you're prepared to travel outside the US, though it's still not great. I'm hesitant to share personal details, but I'm personally in my mid-twenties and just starting a "postdoc" (in a sense; still waiting to defend my thesis), and I'm earning quite a bit more than that, albeit in an expensive city and with a large tax/student loan burden. I'd like to do a postdoc in the US next year, but I'd have to take a large pay cut to do it, which is something I'm on the fence about–I figure you're only young once, and money isn't everything, but I can't help but feel I'd be being taken advantage of just because I happen to enjoy doing science, and the additional opportunity cost would be high too. Is it worth it? I'm not sure. Beyond that... I wrote a much longer comment but deleted it. The fact is, academia is in an unhealthy place right now, and there's quite so much wrong with it that it's very difficult to articulate. Where do you begin? Whether to even stay in academia or leave is a question that seems to be discussed a lot lately, certainly among my colleagues, and I expect to see a lot more threads like this in the future. Edit: Actually, I should add, that despite being in a decent place now, I had to unexpectedly work without pay for a time last year due a (ahem) 'funding hiccup.' This experience was so very terrible at the time that I'm surprised I didn't just give up on the PhD right then. To explain: in the UK, STEM funding is typically 3 years, and when that runs out you're in trouble: you can't go and get another job because you need to finish your thesis to get your PhD. Most people can't finish a PhD in 3 years (unsurprisingly). Some people manage to get extra funding from somewhere or start postdocs while still technically writing-up, but most people don't. Some people are told there will be extra funding which never materialises, or doesn't arrive on time. Several of my friends ended up going back home to live with their parents to write-up (and are still there); this is not uncommon. I know someone else who ended up living in a hostel. Once you've started the PhD you're invested, and the longer you do it the harder it is to walk away. The real kicker to me is that a lot of people accept this and think it's okay.

cozzyd 12y ago
The situation in bio seems dire, but in physics our postdocs are typically $50k+ (obviously depends on where).

jacquesm 12y ago

You forgot to mention that the likes of Elsevier then make more money off their research than they do.

noelwelsh 12y ago

These figures might be correct for the US, but the UK is much better about things. As a PhD student (a teaching assistance) I received a tax-free income that was equivalent to earning about £20K a year, which is about USD30K. I think post-docs are in the range £25-35K. We also don't have the brutal tenure system.

Iepai2eg 12y ago
I wish. Most EPSRC-funded PhD student are paid the minimum EPSRC rate [1], currently £13,863 (or USD 20,965). [1] http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/skills/students/help/minimumpay/ http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/skills/students/help/minimumpay/
- jschwartzi 12y ago
  I think that's about what I would have made unloading shipping containers by hand for a year.
- aaren 12y ago
  That £13k is a tax-free stipend. You don't have to pay income tax and some other things (e.g. an all student house pays no council tax). When you work out the equivalent taxed income that would reduce to that stipend, it approaches £20k.

nether 12y ago

> age 36-43: professor at a good, but not great, university for $65,000 per year Podunk U in the midwest gets filled with MIT/Harvard degreed profs, who couldn't wait for existing profs to die off at their alma maters. It also captures the Harvard rejects with 4.0 GPA's, 2300 SAT's, 12 AP courses. Extreme selectivity at the elite institutions improves the quality of the non-elite schools. Better profs, better students. Does Podunk U have the potential to churn out some great students then? Even if its prestige isn't as good as an elite.

Chronic30 12y ago
Since your brought up the prestige issue. Prestige is a very important component when applying to jobs, meeting people, or going to graduate school. So no, Podunk U will not churn out great students.

speeder 12y ago

I am currently unemployed. My mother is nagging me to join a masters degree so I can get a job as professor in a public university. She does not think it is a good job, she thinks it is a easy job, her words were: "I think you are smart enough to pass the tests to get the position." That is because in a public university, after some time tenured you can't be ever fired unless you commit a serious crime, so it is a "good job" in the sense you will never be unemployed again... At least this is the situation in Brazil.

IndianAstronaut 12y ago
When I was doing my PhD I. The US, I seriously considered the Brazil option. Took Portuguese courses and everything. I bailed though in the middle of my degree. However, eu falo um poucu de Portugues.

xaa 12y ago

I'm 27, skipped postdoc, and make $60K in a staff scientist position. I am able to get away with this because bioinformatics is in huge demand. At my institution this also does not preclude a later tenure-track position. Basically, you have to play it smart, find a niche, and you can beat the averages.

cli 12y ago
Hello, could you please describe what being a staff scientist is about? It seems that you are someone who does research at a university but is not a professor. Do you work under a professor?
- xaa 12y ago
  Sort of. Yes, I do research at a university-equivalent (a nonprofit academic research institution). Someone else's grant funds my paycheck, but in practice, staff scientist is often a position which is intermediate in freedom between postdocs (who virtually always pursue someone else's research goals) and faculty (who, in theory, always pursue their own, once they're done writing grants and doing paperwork). So, I work "under" no one, but I do have someone who expects me to spend roughly 30% of my time on their research goals, and people would refer to me as a member of the X lab (where Dr. X is the faculty member paying my salary). Staff scientist typically connotes a relatively senior, but non-tenure track position. So, someone who either did not want, or could not cut it in, the cutthroat world of tenure-track positions. The hours often are lighter than for professors. It is typically filled by someone in their late 30s or early 40s and who has done a postdoc. In my case, and at my institution, it is different. I got this position because I and the person hiring me felt I deserved better salary, benefits, and prestige than a postdoc, whose salaries are fairly rigidly set by the NIH in the mid 40Ks. I can still become a professor later (the main way to do that would be to successfully write some grants). So overall, for me, this position is a step up from the likely alternative of postdoc, but for someone in their 40s whose competing alternative is faculty member, it would not be nearly so appealing. A related position, slightly higher up the food chain but more definitively non tenure-track, is that of "core director". That means you run a "core" (a facility that all the researchers at an institution can use for a particular kind of experiment or analysis). A bioinformatics "core director" would then take datasets from researchers who come to them and perform analyses on them, and by playing their cards right, would get lots and lots of coauthorships.

analog31 12y ago

I read Greenspun's article. It's certainly sobering, and that's coming from a PhD with a decent industry job. Still, one concept struck me: >>> Consider taking the same high IQ and work ethic, going into business, and being put on the fast track at a company such as General Electric. My concern is that "work ethic" is not an independent, immutable trait, but is instead situational. If so, then a high work ethic, transplanted to General Electric, could become a low work ethic. Some folks may need their motivation to come from what they are doing, more than others. Those folks aren't helped much by a simple list of what jobs pay the most.

rtpg 12y ago
There seems to be a strong myth with my friends in graduate school that somehow everything you're forced to do in "industry" is terrible boring busywork and could not possibly be interesting, and that a career in research, while tiring, means you can work on what you want. Truth is that so long as somebody is above you, it's very possible to have to work on things imposed on you, and in research that can mean working on topics you disagree with, along with all the office politics that come with it. I think someone who has done both industry and research can comment, but my impression has always been that they're mostly the same thing if you're between 20 and 40.
- analog31 12y ago
  Thanks for that point. I was extremely lucky to have role models: Both of my parents are retired industrial scientists, and had good careers. But they were also the ones who first warned me that you don't go into science to get rich. I also got lucky with my choice of advisor and thesis project. While the topic of my thesis was an esoteric matter of academic interest, the _execution_ was an honest to goodness engineering project involving optics, electronics, and programming. So I had something to talk about in an interview. I actually don't mind having work imposed on me. Among the many reasons why I left academia, one is that I simply didn't have my own research idea. I've even told my boss that he can assign anything to me, so long as he is confident that it's urgent, meaty work. Now, I'd have a tough time sitting in an office, manipulating pivot tables and "dashboards," and bikeshedding at stand-up meetings. Another myth or bias among a lot of grad students is that they have to be loyal to their specialty. I was fortunate to be fairly opportunistic about my technical interests. I should also note that I'm reading all of this with a less than arms length interest: Both of my kids are potentially interested in science careers.

lotsofmangos 12y ago

Science isn't a good job. It is a calling. Which is why the insincere find it so easy to take them for a ride.

dougabug 12y ago

I've had friends whose careers have followed more or less that trajectory. It seems to me that there's an arbitrage possibility here, tremendously undervalued intellectual capital.

sebastianavina 12y ago

that only happens in the US, in Mexico, you get scholarships from the State, If you're studying a Master Degree, first of all, most of the PNPC degrees are free (the best degrees indexed by conacyt), the mexican state gives you a scholarship for about $8000 pesos monthly, (most people fresh out of the bs earns about that so it's ok), for a Phd, they pay you about 12k which is ok too, and for a postdoc pays about 18k. All good science programs are free, on top research centers like Cinvestav, Cimat, UNAM, you name it. you have mobility (that means that the mexican state pays you for making and internship on a university abroad), and well, maybe in the industry is hard to get a good with such credentials, and if you are a very good prospect you could top about 100k pesos in a top white collar job, but, lets be fair, is very hard to get one of those jobs. So getting a PhD is basically a very easy and good route to have financial stability. Also, there are a lot of opportunities on the state universities around the country for people with PhDs. Sad fact, there is no will in the general population for this programs. I'm studying right now a master degree on applied statistics and we are a generation of 6 persons.

yodsanklai 12y ago

Maybe that's the average trajectory in the US (and not for a successful scientist since she fails in the end!). But let's not forget that the US is not the only place where a scientists can find a job. There are many research institutes or universities in the world where someone with a PhD from Stanford and a postdoc from MIT (and less than that) could find a stable position. Besides, one has to consider the other options available. Would the person in your example be happier had she taken a different path? who knows. I wouldn't discourage people to try and work in that field if that's what they want to do.

hudibras 12y ago

Greenspun loses a lot of credibility by ranting on child support, though.

selimthegrim 12y ago
Did somebody take him to the cleaners once? He's had all his recent children by surrogate and there is rarely any mention of his wife (I believe he has one) - it seems to be a neurosis with him.