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This part gets best at why I jumped ship last year, at the end of my math postdoc: "(4) Academia: Where Originality Will Hurt You "The good, healthy mentality

This part gets best at why I jumped ship last year, at the end of my math postdoc: "(4) Academia: Where Originality Will Hurt You "The good, healthy mentality would naturally be to work on research that we believe is important. Unfortunately, most such research is challenging and difficult to publish, and the current publish-or-perish system makes it difficult to put bread on the table while working on problems that require at least ten years of labor before you can report even the most preliminary results. [...] "Ideally, the academic system would encourage those people who are already well established and trusted to pursue these challenges, and I’m sure that some already do. However, I cannot help but get the impression that the majority of us are avoiding the real issues and pursuing minor, easy problems that we know can be solved and published. The result is a gigantic literature full of marginal/repetitive contributions. This, however, is not necessarily a bad thing if it’s a good CV that you’re after." I came away with the impression that there are a few people given extremely wide latitude to work (or not) on problems of real significance, who had generally been granted 'rock star' status by the math community in one way or another. It's a 1% whose academic freedoms serves as a motivation for the other 99%, who will try to write a bulk of irrelevant papers while dealing with a massive teaching load. A job in industry ultimately felt like it might provide more freedom in the long run than the academic track, with less danger of ending up in a adjunct teaching gig in Wichita.

otoburb 12y ago
>A job in industry ultimately felt like it might provide more freedom in the long run than the academic track [...] Does having a full-time industry job allow you to seriously pursue your own research interests on the side? For mathematics research especially, why don't more research-oriented mathematicians pursue this dual path? I understand part-time research necessarily implies a slower publication rate, but since you're already eschewing this anyway, are there any other drawbacks? Two that spring to mind are a restriction to travel to mathematics conferences and socializing with mathematicians during the day -- are these big show stoppers?
- bra-ket 12y ago
  right, Einstein's part-time research is a good example
- yodsanklai 12y ago
  > why don't more research-oriented mathematicians pursue this dual path? I think there are two non exclusive ways of doing research successfully. Intense work and collaboration (in particular supervision of students). PhD students and postdoc fall in the first category. They work full time on their research and do little else. On the other hand, most successful experienced researchers are busy writing grant proposals, teaching, attending various committees. There's not enough time left to do meaningful research by themselves (plus getting older doesn't help to stay sharp and passionate), so they end up supervising students that to the bulk of the research. I think someone that would try to do research on its spare time won't have enough time to devote to it (unlike a phd student), and won't be able to supervise students (unlike a professor).
  - otoburb 12y ago
    Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought mathematics was one of the few areas of study where one could noodle away on a problem or area with little in the way of supporting or expensive infrastructure. As most on this site can probably attest to, one of the biggest issues with part-time/hobby/side projects is motivation and discipline. That problem seems to be already partially solved by the freedom to pick an area of mathematics one is already interested in. Not having enough time to devote to a problem part-time doesn't seem like a large problem if somebody wants to work on problems of their own choosing as per the OP. Thus, my confusion. I can definitely see that collaboration is a tougher nut to crack unless most participation starts shifting to evening group meetings.
    - colechristensen 12y ago
      You can, but... Some do actually use supercomputers to do mathematics. Most however, thrive in an actual academic environment including spending a lot of time interacting with other mathematicians and going to conferences. There's a big difference between living in an academic environment and spending your whole life thinking about math and being around people who do the same... and working a 9-5 and doing a little math on the side. Not to say it isn't possible, but most reasonable jobs don't leave much left over mental energy for doing maths.
ryanSrich 12y ago
Aubrey De Grey discusses the articles points on why he left academia in yesterday's GRE podcast http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeCpHugyI80 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeCpHugyI80
jfoutz 12y ago
Knuth took a decade off because he wanted his papers to look better. (I know this is glib, typesetting is fabulously complicated. But he did get to spend a decade making his papers look nicer.)

otoburb 12y ago

>A job in industry ultimately felt like it might provide more freedom in the long run than the academic track [...] Does having a full-time industry job allow you to seriously pursue your own research interests on the side? For mathematics research especially, why don't more research-oriented mathematicians pursue this dual path? I understand part-time research necessarily implies a slower publication rate, but since you're already eschewing this anyway, are there any other drawbacks? Two that spring to mind are a restriction to travel to mathematics conferences and socializing with mathematicians during the day -- are these big show stoppers?

bra-ket 12y ago
right, Einstein's part-time research is a good example
yodsanklai 12y ago
> why don't more research-oriented mathematicians pursue this dual path? I think there are two non exclusive ways of doing research successfully. Intense work and collaboration (in particular supervision of students). PhD students and postdoc fall in the first category. They work full time on their research and do little else. On the other hand, most successful experienced researchers are busy writing grant proposals, teaching, attending various committees. There's not enough time left to do meaningful research by themselves (plus getting older doesn't help to stay sharp and passionate), so they end up supervising students that to the bulk of the research. I think someone that would try to do research on its spare time won't have enough time to devote to it (unlike a phd student), and won't be able to supervise students (unlike a professor).
- otoburb 12y ago
  Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought mathematics was one of the few areas of study where one could noodle away on a problem or area with little in the way of supporting or expensive infrastructure. As most on this site can probably attest to, one of the biggest issues with part-time/hobby/side projects is motivation and discipline. That problem seems to be already partially solved by the freedom to pick an area of mathematics one is already interested in. Not having enough time to devote to a problem part-time doesn't seem like a large problem if somebody wants to work on problems of their own choosing as per the OP. Thus, my confusion. I can definitely see that collaboration is a tougher nut to crack unless most participation starts shifting to evening group meetings.
  - colechristensen 12y ago
    You can, but... Some do actually use supercomputers to do mathematics. Most however, thrive in an actual academic environment including spending a lot of time interacting with other mathematicians and going to conferences. There's a big difference between living in an academic environment and spending your whole life thinking about math and being around people who do the same... and working a 9-5 and doing a little math on the side. Not to say it isn't possible, but most reasonable jobs don't leave much left over mental energy for doing maths.

ryanSrich 12y ago

Aubrey De Grey discusses the articles points on why he left academia in yesterday's GRE podcast http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeCpHugyI80 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeCpHugyI80

jfoutz 12y ago

Knuth took a decade off because he wanted his papers to look better. (I know this is glib, typesetting is fabulously complicated. But he did get to spend a decade making his papers look nicer.)