
Postdoc Myths - mrry
https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/srk21/blog/2019/12/02/#postdoc-myths
======
laGrenouille
My experience in the U.S. academic market has been that postdoc positions vary
widely based on your field of study.

In areas with relatively good job markets, such as CS/Stats/Economics/Finance,
Postdocs are often quite prestigious and are marketed by top schools as a way
to attract promising young scholars and give them time to research without the
pressures of teaching/service. In areas with very bad job markets, such as the
humanities, they are also seen as prestigious because _any_ academic position
after the Ph.D. is extremely difficult to come by.

For the lab sciences, my understanding is that a postdoc actually is more
similiar to doing a doctorate in another domain. Experiments are too expensive
and time consuming to let a Ph.D. student design and develop a line of
research on their own. Instead, that's what the postdocs do. Also, it is not
an option. You _must_ do a postdoc (often a long one, and often multiple) in
order to have the experience needed for a TT job.

For mathematics and much of the social sciences postdocs are awkardly in-
between all of these. They are increasingly common and almost required and
increasingly long. Yet, there's no good place for them in the current system,
where they are technically fully-credentially academics but treated like
overgrown students.

~~~
kevinventullo
In my experience with pure mathematics, it was much closer to your description
of CS/Stats. The standard path is to spend 4-7 years doing the PhD, then
another 4-6 or so doing postdocs under various guises ("research fellow",
"visiting researcher", "<non-TT identifier> assistant professor"). Most
American mathematicians I've met followed this path, including profs at
teaching-focused institutions as well as Fields medalists.

~~~
laGrenouille
Yes, that’s actually my understanding as well of pure mathematics. What I was
trying to say is that in Stats (my field) and CS its quite common to go
straight into a TT job, and a postdoc is often a sign of particular prestige.
In mathematics a postdoc is the standard post-Ph.D. route; of course some
positions are very well regarded and others less so, but having a postdoc
itself is just the status-quo for an aspiring academic at that point.

------
jonathanstrange
Nice list, I think it lays out the problem with the current system in fine
details. I'm surprised that it seems to be as bad as where I live in the UK,
too.

I call myself a _Senior Research Fellow_ , but in the end I'm just a postdoc
in the late 40s who has almost no chances to get full tenure and has messed up
his life for good.

Before anyone blames me, think twice. I've got new contracts offered with
almost no effort on my behalf over the years, and all my positions where pure
research with no teaching duties. It's not easy to turn down such seemingly
generous offers and try to make a living in another way (with a background in
linguistics & philosophy!), even when you know these contracts won't last and
only delay the inevitable.

~~~
azhenley
It doesn't seem like you have messed up your life. If you have made it that
far in the humanities, then I think you're the type that can figure out how to
keep going.

~~~
barry-cotter
They’re almost 50 and don’t have a full time job with pension. That is not a
good position to be in unless you come from money, are married to someone who
does, or has a solid professional career or gold plated benefits and a
permanent job.

~~~
lonelappde
They have a government pension.

They spent 30 years "working" on their research interest instead of at the
beck of bosses and clients. Even if they spend retirement stuck as a grocery
clerk, they'll have a better life (more funded free time to pursue their
personal interests) than almost everyone.

~~~
cedex12
research interests ≠ personal interests, necessarily.

------
kkwteh
A lot of these problems postdocs are running seem to be the result of an
inefficient allocation of talent by our current educational system.

All the smartest kids get tracked into getting math and physics PhDs and by
the time they get to the postdoc stage it just becomes this insane impossible
rat race tournament.

I saw the writing on the wall and got out of academia as soon as I defended my
utterly mediocre PhD thesis in math.

I jumped on the data science wave in 2013 and all of a sudden everyone thought
I was a genius for being able to run model.fit() and interpret the results.

These tracks that funnel you into cutthroat tournaments just seem like bad
places to be.

Already data science is starting to become more of a commodity skill set.

Instead of trying to outcompete everyone I’m keeping my eyes open for my next
big opportunity.

~~~
mattkrause
In a similar vein....

Why doesn't industry recruit postdocs more aggressively? It's a large pool of
smart, hardworking people, most of whom don't have stable or well-paying jobs.

I work in a reasonably hot area (neuro/ML), have relevant skills (Python,
C++), and a decent pedigree, but I think I've talked to ~3 recruiters ever—and
two of them were introduced to me by a mutual friend.

~~~
kkwteh
My guess is that it's mainly because postdocs are an unknown quantity without
_legible_ , _interpretable_ experience, which greatly increases the risk of
hiring them.

One of the main achievements of the Insight Data Science program (which I have
participated in), is that it makes you produce output (a web app) that is
legible to employers.

People are very risk-averse when making hiring decisions, and tend to hire
people who know what they know.

------
borroka
I was a postdoc or I was employed in similar roles (Research Fellow, Reseach
Scholar) for close to 10 years before moving into tech. Although I overall
enjoyed my postdoc years – in particular, I enjoyed doing research, writing
papers, and having the freedom to explore and travel – I kinda regret not
having been more pro-active during those years in terms of looking for what
was next. I sent ~ 70 job applications for TT jobs that I believed were within
my reach (I had > 25-30 publications with me as a first author, some of them
published in prestigious journals, and a research plan that I had the belief
was forward-looking, and novel and solid at the same time), but I was not
called even for a phone interview by any of the committees. I have a few clues
about why that happened, but it is not relevant here.

What I recommend to postdocs of Ph.D. students when they reach out to me
asking for some advice on what to do in their career, I always recommend not
to pursue a second postdoc. One can be fine and fun, you become basically a
senior researcher in a field you feel some passion for, and you do not have
the stress of completing and defending 5+ years of work (my Ph.D. actually
lasted less than 3 years). But by starting your second postdoc, with no solid
chances of landing a TT position at a good research institution (I assume that
it is what most people continuing their postdoc career are looking forward to
getting), you get deeper and deeper into a maze from which it becomes more and
more difficult to find a way out; you start to become too old and credentialed
for junior or mid-level positions, people in tech (or industry more in
general) identify you as an academic – which is always a bad thing if you are
not a renowned academic in a particular niche of current interest, say NLP,
Computer Vision –, you lose your confidence in being able to change your
career. However, the story does not have a happy ending. Very rarely, these
postdocs listen to me; they prefer to succumb to the authoritarian voices of
their advisors and peers, who more often than not say that if they do good
work, they will find a TT position soon, maybe they just need another
publication, a little grant, or some luck.

~~~
musicale
> sent ~ 70 job applications for TT jobs that I believed were within my reach
> ... but I was not called even for a phone interview by any of the
> committees.

If there are around 500 applicants per position, presumably you would need to
apply to around 500 positions.

~~~
borroka
If you assume the probability of getting a position is uniformly distributed
over the applicants. If you think about it for 10 seconds, you can agree with
me it is a spherical-cow assumption.

------
cousin_it
> _Of course, the more candidates there are, the more competition for the
> jobs. But it doesn 't follow that the jobs' terms will become increasingly
> exploitative, such as being offered in shorter term, with less pay, lower
> status and fewer benefits. That requires a separate decision to degrade the
> offering. [...] Anyone who tries to explain it purely as supply and demand,
> or even “nature”, is either ignorant or is trying to sell you something._

Higher supply does lead to lower price, though.

~~~
sigwinch28
The author is in the UK where nearly all universities are public, and due in
no small part to the efforts of the University and College Union (UCU), most
Higher Education staff (including "postdocs") are paid according to a national
(published) salary system:

[https://www.ucu.org.uk/payscales](https://www.ucu.org.uk/payscales)

Universities of course have maneuverability in the specific spine point they
pay people for different positions based on experience or demand, but in the
grand sceheme of things specific roles are paid specific amounts of money.

At the author's current university, for example, the national pay scale is
split up into different pay grades (each of which includes a contiguous range
of spine points) for different roles, e.g. Research Assistant, Research
Associate, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, etc.

~~~
michaelt
Even when you have fixed salaries for job titles, employers can't escape
market forces - just instead of raising the salary until they fill the post,
they have to increase the title too.

That's why you can be a 'senior software engineer' 2 years out of college :)

------
gww
This is slightly off topic but I think post-docs need to be better protected
by their institutions.

When I was a post-doc I learned that we have essentially zero protections at
least in North America. Most institutions hire post-docs as contract workers
and can be fired at the drop of a pin with minimal severance. Disagree with
your supervisor about the direction of your project or how your work should be
published? Threaten to fire them or fire them and they have essentially zero
recourse. Their work is owned by their institute and they essentially leave
with nothing. This is particularly problematic for international post-docs.

------
dfdz
>Myth: postdocs formally exist. In almost all universities I know, formally
there is no such thing as a postdoc. In research councils' view of the world,
it's the same: there are no postdocs, only “Research Assistants” and “academic
staff (lecturer or equivalent)”.

As someone who is (formally) a postdoc it seems that the points raised in this
article seem to apply mostly to postdocs who are not (formally) postdocs.

~~~
einpoklum
I believe you're partially mistaken.

That is, indeed, there is no such thing as a "post-doc". But in most academic
institutions, there are non-tenured researcher positions - fixed-period or
otherwise - which have a Ph.D. as a requirement. They may called something
like "Researcher", "Research Engineer" or "Research Staff Member" (as opposed
to "Academic Staff Member").

Of course, my knowledge is as anecdotal as yours.

~~~
dfdz
>I believe you're partially mistaken.

In my field (math) and country (USA) there are many postdocs.

Maybe you are in a different field or country?

(If you really don't believe me try search "postdoc" on math jobs
[https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs?joblist-0-0------](https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs?joblist-0-0------)

~~~
einpoklum
I see those positions as "Researcher", "Research Fellow", "Associate"(-member
of the academic staff) etc.

They add the term "post-doctoral" to indicate that you need to have completed
a Doctorate. Or if you wish - to indicate that the conditions will be poor :-(

------
oefrha
Semi-related anecdote: when I was choosing between several grad school offers
in math and physics, I visited a couple of top institutions, and at one math
department I told the department chair about my dilemma of whether to continue
in (pure) math or theoretical physics. I was basically told: look, if you
graduate with a math PhD you'll likely find an assistant professor position
right away, whereas if you graduate with a theoretical physics PhD you'll
likely be looking at at least two terms of postdoc (assuming you're successful
in both cases, that is). (I chose physics in the end.) There was one of the
first instances of ideal clashing with reality for me.

~~~
heinrichf
This is so simply not true, or highly subfield-dependent. Unless you are a
superstar, there is no way you get a TT job without a postdoc in math.

~~~
oefrha
> Unless you are a superstar, there is no way you get a TT job without a
> postdoc in math.

Seeing that my institution and lots more do have assistant professorships for
new PhDs in math, and I even have friends who have attained such positions,
this is very much true. Of course one needs to be relatively successful.

Edit: Okay, it appears that some people consider those positions “postdoc in
disguise”.

~~~
heinrichf
This is exactly one of the points raised in the text. Non-TT assistant
professorships are indeed postdocs, which often come with more teaching load
than other fellowship-based postdocs. This is for example the case of the
"Hills Assistant professorship" at Rutgers

------
Traster
What always strikes me about academia is the propensity for complaining. I
only sort of mean that in a bad way. Maybe my experience is exceptional, but I
have met quite a lot of people with PhDs. The vast majority of PhDs who went
into industry afterwards viewed their PhD more as a rite of passage than
actual valuable work. Every one of them has a story of their supervisor or
some other academic putting them through random bullshit for no reason. The
more experienced academics I've met are in two camps: the climbers- the small
handful of academics who are more interested in becoming chief commissar of
the faculty and get onto that gravy train. They're generally terrible people -
the sort of person who complains that women simply aren't smart enough to do
engineering. The other kind are the flagellators, people who will give you a
dissertation in why their life sucks, and how the hoops of academia are so
completely at odds with what real research requires.

It all leaves me at a loss as to why anyone would choose that life. There are
bad things about life in industry, but no one I work with complains anything
like that badly.

~~~
borroka
It is the result of the combination of path dependency and it-will-be-
different-for-me syndrome. Path dependency because many PhDs specialize in
fields and skills that have little value outside of academia – think biology
(e.g., all those researchers that spend years in the lab and their only
marketable skills without further training lead them to a career as lab
technicians; nothing wrong with that, but not what you expect after 5-7 years
of Ph.D. studies), humanities, obscure areas of math etc. Then, academia is an
environment that tends to infantilize people. And kids either want to become
their parents (more frequently) or the opposite of their parents.

It-will-be-different-for-me is self-explanatory and particularly strong when
there is some kind of emotional commitment to the cause. Another example is
marriage.

~~~
mattkrause
In partial defense of "It-will-be-different-for-me" syndrome....

Most grad students and postdocs know that academia is competitive and tenure-
track jobs are rare, and I bet many of them can quote the 1:9 statistic (or
whatever applies to their field). However, that's just the prior. It's really
hard to know your individual likelihood because it depends on a ton of factors
that you don't--and sometimes can't--know or control. It really might be
different this time.

For example, _Cell_ / _Nature_ / _Science_ papers have a huge impact on
hiring; a recent study suggested CNS authors are ~5x more likely to find a
job. While you need to work hard to develop a good paper, you also need to be
lucky in a lot of ways, ranging from the initial choice of topic to how well
your write-up comports with 3 reviewers' whims.

It's also unclear how to weight many other factors. Is your advisor well-
known? But what about the department's reputation? Is your sub-field trendy?
How does your publication record stack up? I don't think anyone can
confidently answer those questions and decide they're in the top 11%

~~~
borroka
I agree with your points, except for not knowing whether you have good chances
or not of landing a TT position, say at a top R1 institution. The world is
full of delusional people, and I have been among those a few times, but
especially if you are doing your Ph.D. or a postdoc in a good lab, that is a
lab that produces TT material, you know your chances. Then, life outcomes are
probabilistic – looking back, my chances were at 5% (which does not mean that
I have to apply to x positions to have > 50% probability of getting a TT
position, it means that if we have 100 replicates of myself on the job market
for 5 years, only 5 will get an offer).

My "it-will-be-different-for-me" syndrome was one of the reasons I found for
why people still want to have an academic career when most academics are
(quite vocally) miserable: burdened by endless bureaucratic work, often
bullied by more powerful or astute colleagues, constantly receiving the
complaints of students and committees, and brutally rejected on the regular by
granting agencies, reviewers, and conference organizers. Most think or hope it
will be different for them. But very likely, it won't be.

------
buboard
as a part-time postdoc out of choice, i also see EU grants being used mainly
as a way to prevent unemployment for highly skilled people. If the public knew
where this money is going i doubt there would be much support for these
grants. Tons of bureaucracy, travel and 'disemmination' spending, a system
designed to enrich established PIs, a culture of "apply for grants or perish"
, and the instagrammification of academic CVs make this academic culture
unattractive, and in anyway there is too few positions for all these people.
It very rare to meet a 'weird' academic anymore.

~~~
AlexCoventry
Why do you choose to participate in such a system?

~~~
buboard
i like learning stuff and working with smart people, and my self-employment
leaves me enough time to do it. i m too old for academic ambitions anyway

------
anjc
Good article, but I must misunderstand, how do the suggestions at the bottom
overcome the issues/myths listed, particularly "postdocs formally [don't]
exist" which seems to be the issue at the root of all problems.

The tenuous employment status of postdocs seems to be a choice made at an
institutional level, although seemingly across every institution in the world.
I'm not aware of any funding stipulations that prevent institutions from
giving postdocs proper employment status/permanent contracts. Sure, a new
project might require a postdoc and might have funds allocated for this, but
why can't unis use their already-existing projections for incoming funds and
allocate jobs (i.e. permanent postdoc positions), just as private companies
hire staff on the basis of cash flow/revenue projections?

~~~
wbhart
They can do that with people who will be teaching, since that is bringing
funding in for the university. But they don't do it for Research Assistants,
because once the funding for the project the Research Assistant is paid from
(usually a fixed term grant of a 2-3 years) runs out, then the university
would have no income to match the cost of the salary. As there may be hundreds
or thousands of such salaries, this would result in a funding shortfall of
something of the order of $100m a year (including overheads). And that is to
say nothing of the expensive equipment such employees might need to continue
their work.

Project centred research does not bring in income for universities on an
ongoing basis, which is what the argument about core funding is all about. If
more funding were core funding, not tied to a specific project, then it would
be possible for universities to do the right thing and provide career paths
for Research Assistants.

Please note: I'm not arguing that universities in the UK are doing the right
thing. I used to work as a postdoc there and understand very well what the
author of the Postdoc Myths list is talking about. I'm simply answering the
question as to why universities can't just do the right thing.

~~~
anjc
Oh well I understand that funds are allocated for a project. But in my
experience, postdocs who are coming to the end of the funding for one project
tend to be moved to another incoming one. I.e. they're essentially permanent
staff anyway. I know of people who've gone on like this for 10+ years.

"Revenue generating" centres within unis have targets and projections (e.g.
commercialization teams) so they DO have an idea of what funds they'll have in
the medium term, even though it's on a project by project basis. I don't see
how this is any different from any company that needs revenue in order to keep
staff, but yet companies manage to keep staff permanently. In fact, even
universities seem to be able to keep staff permanently, unless they're
researchers.

------
teddyh
See also:
[http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1744](http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1744)

