
Goodbye Academia - andyjohnson0
http://anothersb.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/goodbye-academia.html?m=1
======
naterator
These kinds of things are daily discussions in laboratories all over the
world. Everyone knows there's no future in academia, and so everyone is
looking for an exit plan. I actively discourage people from doing a PhD.
Academia is a horrible feudalistic system that doesn't pay well enough to keep
the bright minds it attracts. There is no sense in being a post-doc for life.
Much better to take that hedge fund job.

The really concerning potential consequence of this is that it could result in
a dearth of innovation in cures for diseases, and we won't see the affect of
losses until 5 or 10 years down the road. No one will fund a biotech startup
that's not backed by MDs or PhDs and academia-approved proof-of-concept
results. Good luck getting that when everyone is running for the lifeboats.

~~~
shas3
> I actively discourage people from doing a PhD. Academia is a horrible
> feudalistic system that doesn't pay well enough to keep the bright minds it
> attracts. There is no sense in being a post-doc for life. Much better to
> take that hedge fund job.

Underlying your comment is the assumption that every one wants the hedge fund
(or other) job. One of the allures of academia is the prospect of doing
fundamental research. You ignore that many people derive satisfaction from
doing fundamental research that has the potential to be widely used across the
research community (and possibly, for product development, e.g. industry labs,
some government labs). It is simplistic to dismiss academia as a feudalistic
system. There are merits, demerits, and other nuances.

Also, there are, figuratively speaking, thousands of academic fields, each
with its own system and culture. For example, academic jobs are plentiful for
PhD graduates in these areas (in my experience): information
technology/information systems (as opposed to computer science), management,
accounting, finance, organizational behavior, etc.

A summary dismissal of academia as 'feudal', especially when such an
assessment underlies 'advice' is an unnecessary exaggeration.

~~~
jseliger
_One of the allures of academia is the prospect of doing fundamental research_

It's also a false allure: the problem is that fundamental research requires
funding, and the OP is pointing out that he can't get it. He'll be in essence
locked out of research _and_ not make a lot of money at it.

This is like saying, "One of the allures of acting is the prospect of being
famous and sleeping with lots of fans." On the one hand it's true; on the
other, it's very unlikely.

~~~
shas3
The analogy does not make sense. I know many colleagues who got into academia
and were able to find plenty of funding. It wasn't a lucky break that helped
them, but hard work and talent. The system is far from perfect, but it is not
'feudal', etc. as the parent comment claims. Systematic hard work can get you
results in academia. From what I understand about show-biz, it requires a lot
more than just talent and hard work.

Also, your comment ignores the fact that OP is in just one nook of academia.
Further, OP is one data point in that one nook of academia. That he is the top
institutes doesn't 'weight' his opinion either way, in the grand scheme of
things.

~~~
scott_s
I got a PhD in computer science, and I landed a research job in industry where
I get to do both research and development. So, half production, half academia.

I consider myself _extraordinarily_ lucky. I can point to many different
instances of luck that enabled me to be where I am now. Hard work and talent
are a given, but among those that work hard and are talented, there's a lot of
blind luck that determines who gets the few positions that are available. I
continually remind myself not to fall prey to the narrative fallacy, and think
that I was somehow "destined" for my current position, and that I got here
entirely because of my own work. I was not, and I did not.

I know people who did _not_ land those academic positions, and are either in
industry not doing research, or stuck in the post-doc waiting room.

~~~
shas3
This is not about the philosophical debate of luck vs. effort. In my opinion,
show-biz vs. academia analogy is not valid (Though there are no Jaden Smith's
in academia, I won't use that as a counter-example. Doing so would perpetuate
this analogy.). The metrics on which actors are judge are fuzzy and subjective
at best, and spurious at worst. Academics, OTOH, (excluding China and a few
other offenders) are mostly judged justly- whether in grant applications or in
job applications or for tenure.

~~~
robotresearcher
There are indeed Jaden Smiths in academia. I personally know people who did
their first degree in (humanities subject) and got a PhD position in (top 5
world school) doing (in-demand science subject) and followed by a postdoc in a
great institution based entirely on their father being very important in the
subject.

These people got funded graduate spots in the best departments in the world,
beating out others who obtained first-class degrees (4.0 for the North
Americans) and worked their entire lives towards this dream.

How does this happen? Do you want to be the guy who refused to supervise the
daughter of the nth most important person in your field? A man who has given
you important references in the past and may do so again? When this
relationship could get you even closer to the Will Smith of your field? This
is good old fashioned corrupt nepotism for all the good old fashioned reasons.

Now, these people are both genetically and environmentally predisposed to be
much better than average at this work. Sometimes it works out well. It is
possible that this is a good outcome for science. But is it fair? It is not.

(Written as a working prof who had no academic connection advantages. I
acknowledge that being white, male and having English as a first language was
not a a bad place to start from).

~~~
foobarian
> Do you want to be the guy who refused to supervise the daughter of the nth
> most important person in your field?

I never witnessed literal nepotism where family relations were involved. But,
this definitely does happen when it comes to academic "family"\- a famous
advisor's "son" or "daughter" usually has a significant edge.

------
WestCoastJustin
It's worth noting that this guy is running a kickstarter campaign re: " _A
free, up-to-date, crowdsourced protocol repository for the life sciences_ ".
If we are sending tons of traffic his way, maybe we should send some to his
kickstarter too.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1881346585/protocolsio-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1881346585/protocolsio-
life-sciences-protocol-repository)

------
dnautics
I quit my second postdoc to launch a nonprofit research institute (we did not
get funding, and are retrying later this year). I currently drive for lyft -
and make more money than I did as a postdoc, with far fewer hours and better
working conditions. This makes economic sense; it's not clear to me that what
I was doing as a scientist was really doing society any good, at least as a
late night driver I'm 1) giving people what they want and 2) keeping drunk
people off the streets (a social good).

My Academic path has been tortured; graduated from a really good undergrad,
went to an even better grad school (my cohort is basically placed as faculty
at places like Berkeley, Stanford, UCSD, TSRI, etc). But in grad school I lost
time cleaning up after an irresponsible grad student (who, btw, is faculty at
UW) and only published two papers that aren't flashy but are solid, and in
second-tier journals. Did an amazing first postdoc actually possibly helping
the world (pushing forward a drug candidate), at a third-tier school - since
due to the economic collapse, was hard to get a job/good position in 2009. One
publication, second-tier journal. Did a more amazing second "postdoc"
(actually hired as a BS biologist, via craigslist) under a nobel laureate, at
an institution where publishing isn't a priority, and the resources available
are somewhat orthogonal to doing the comprehensive set of experiments
necessary to get a cell/nature/science paper. My efforts resulted in improving
an enzyme - three times (there are very few people who can claim to have done
that even once), again, second-tier journals (two are papers-in-work, even
though I've quit, i'm still going over there to get them written up). I'm not
really ever going to get a faculty position (tried, two years running). I see
crappier postdocs and grad students get their run, but you know what? I don't
care anymore.

~~~
irollboozers
The question is - would you continue to do science if you could remove all of
the current broken system? Is doing science what you love? Is it possible that
there can be a way to continue doing science without being a part of that
machine?

~~~
dnautics
answer:

[http://indysci.org/projectmarilyn](http://indysci.org/projectmarilyn)

------
eykanal
This is almost exactly my story as well.

One point he doesn't mention is that there are _many_ interesting problems in
the "real world". Lots of academics just point to industry in general and say,
"no freedom, no thanks." I've held a few jobs and all of them presented with
unique, interesting, and challenging problems. I've had the freedom to choose
my own approach to solving problems and met up with other academic-minded
people to have good lab-meeting style discussions about how to tackle a
project. Industry positions can be pretty attractive.

~~~
burntsushi
I'm currently in the middle of a PhD, and you've touched on the exact fear I
have. I intend on finding a job in industry after I graduate, and the biggest
fear I have is a restriction on freedom. I totally get that there are jobs out
there that still give you some amount of freedom to pick your own tools and/or
approach a problem in your own way.

Every now and then, I casually leaf through job ads and I have _no idea_ how
to tell which are which. I think _that 's_ what scares me. I get this feeling
that when it comes time to join industry, it's just going to be a crapshoot---
maybe I'll get lucky and maybe I won't.

(Note that this isn't a criticism lodged in comparison to academia. I've
already made up my mind that I'll be leaving once I graduate.)

~~~
a_bonobo
Ask your supervisor if (s)he supports you doing an industry project for a
month, (s)he might even get you a position with collaborators.

I worked with a huge crop science company for four weeks and got some valuable
insights (mostly, I had to justify every little step, and the local boss was a
huge fan of micromanagement: meetings, meetings a few a day. But they did have
a lot of money and were willing to throw it at possibly not profitable
projects; and people did proper 9-5, not 9-5678910 like academia)

------
plg
Yet another worrying sign is that at my university (and I've heard similar
stories from colleagues at others) is now deciding that instead of hiring 2 or
3 junior faculty positions (new academics straight out of a postdoc into their
first faculty job), instead the priority is to spend the same money on one
mid-career "poach" from a competing institution. Double the salary, and bigger
startup package. Their rationale is that mid-career scientists will bring
larger and more research grants (and will do so faster after arriving) than
junior scientists. Essentially, let someone else take on the "risk" of the new
faculty members and we poach the proven ones.

It's a jungle out there people. If you care about salary and upward mobility
for god's sake don't go into academia.

PS I am a full professor at a large research oriented university in north
america. Most of my contemporaries from high school and undergrad who have
spent similar numbers of years amassing expertise in their chosen fields, but
in the private sector, are now making approximately 5x to 7x my annual salary
(not including their annual bonuses).

~~~
mynewwork
Most are making 5x to 7x? If we estimate that a professor in a low-paid field
makes maybe $60k (ignoring the possibility of grants to pay for additional
salary during the summer) this would mean most of your high school friends are
now making $300k to $420k. It's rare that most of a high school or college's
students go on to become 1 percenters.

~~~
amark
He said contemporaries, not friends. Meaning that other successful
PHDs/Scientists that put in the same amount of work that he did, but in the
private sector, are making that much money.

------
gjuggler
This is a really thoughtful post highlighting many of the deeply-rooted
problems in securing funding as an early-stage academic. It's depressing for
bright young scientists to be looking forward to lives as assistant professors
submitting grant after grant with an expected ~10% success rate.

But what surprised me most was that at the end of the essay, after having
described his fear of facing such uncertainty in NIH funding, the author
mentions that he left academia to co-found a startup making software for life
scientists.

Wait a minute — don't small software startups have equally poor success rates?
(e.g. [http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-truth-behind-9-out-
of-10-st...](http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-truth-behind-9-out-
of-10-startups-fail))

If uncertainty of success was his major concern, hasn't the author chosen a
pretty poor next step in life?

~~~
newyorklenny
Indeed, I left academia for a startup. Securing funding for ZappyLab is by no
means easy ([http://anothersb.blogspot.com/2014/03/hello-startup-
sequel-t...](http://anothersb.blogspot.com/2014/03/hello-startup-sequel-t...))
But as hard as it is, there are many VCs, angels, and there is crowd funding
(we are running a Kickstarter campaign now). Certainly not easy, but there are
more options. You run a genetics lab and lose your NIH grant - where do you
go?

~~~
daniel_reetz
Wherever you go, whatever you do, do this: quadruple your effort and input
into your relationship with your wife.

------
k2enemy
It isn't just that research funds are drying up. There's also a growing number
of Ph.D.s fighting over the shrinking pot of money [0]. I usually advise
students not to pursue a Ph.D. because the life of the median academic is
pretty awful. But at the same time the general job market for new grads (in
most fields) isn't all that great either, meaning that in relative terms the
Ph.D. route hasn't fallen too far in the rankings of post-graduate plans.

[0]
[http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/2012/data_table.cfm](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/2012/data_table.cfm)

------
eranki
Trying to become a successful academic seems about as insane as trying to
become a rock star.

Here's Peter Higgs on the subject of how academics today compares to the past:
[http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-
higgs-b...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-
academic-system)

Most people I know who went down the academic route have left the world or are
seriously thinking about leaving. I know a couple people with positions at top
universities, and around the age of 30 their careers are just starting, with
tenure being potentially a coin flip.

And it always traps the most _brilliant_ people. That's the worst part.

~~~
gammarator
Here's a contrary point of view: by his own admission in that article, Higgs
has published "fewer than 10" papers in the last _50 years!_ What has he been
doing since 1964?

Raw metrics like papers and citations are easily gamed, and not great ways to
evaluate productivity, but surely there are limits...

(And before you say, "but he gave us the Higgs!", several other researchers
did closely related work at the same time [1], so humanity would still know
about a mass-producing scalar boson.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_PRL_symmetry_breaking_pap...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_PRL_symmetry_breaking_papers)

------
ChristianMarks
I've left academia and returned, then left and am returning again. Thanks to
the sequester, the NIH and NSF funding situation is bleak--I know successful
PIs who currently have zilch. They're pursuing consulting contracts to make
ends meet--at least in engineering this is possible. At this point it is
trolling--pure sadism--to suggest that confidence and hard work will overcome
the destructively competitive working conditions many academics look forward
to every day. (I suppose I could be confident, for an additional charge.) Why
is it trolling? Because the troll will never ever acknowledge his expectation
that scientists (and science along with them) should thrive in a plutocracy as
if it were a meritocracy [cf. Leiter, Brian, The Truth is Terrible (February
22, 2014). Daniel Came (ed.), Nietzsche on Morality and the Affirmation of
Life (Oxford University Press, Forthcoming). Available at SSRN:
[http://ssrn.com/abstract=2099162](http://ssrn.com/abstract=2099162) or
[http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2099162](http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2099162)]

I happen to be returning to academia after leaving a non-academic job a few
months ago. I spent the intervening months working an application with a
friend. Over the past decade we have been attempting to solve a certain
problem for ourselves. After dead end upon dead end, we have a prototype. Now,
on the verge of re-joining the academic precariat, a potential customer has
asked us for how much we would license our software. We'll see how that goes.

The probability of my landing a tenure-track position anywhere is less than
the probability that the software venture succeeds (perhaps this isn't
surprising, judging from my posts online here). One tires of playing zero-sum
games for diminishing payoffs against people who should be your collaborators.
This is the kind of the cost-benefit analysis one doesn't do explicitly that
seems to underlie decisions to leave. (I am rational, according to a cost-
benefit analysis I haven't done.)

------
zenbowman
On the one hand, it is sad that good, forward-looking academics are being
denied funding.

On the other hand, during my time as a PhD student doing research for a top
tier university, I saw quite a few projects where I was disturbed by the fact
that we were contributing any taxpayer dollars to the project at all.

I think the existing academic model is unfair to both professors and
especially to undergraduate student. Allowing the very top professors to focus
on research, while making the rest take teaching seriously could remedy the
situation.

~~~
doktrin
> _I saw quite a few projects where I was disturbed by the fact that we were
> contributing any taxpayer dollars to the project at all._

Research has to happen somewhere. Where research happens, there will always be
bunk projects. Some will fail despite good intentions, some due to negligence.

Given that there will always be _some_ waste, you can do a lot worse than
putting the $ towards academia. The alternative being a research institution,
where researchers are paid actual living wages.

There are pros and cons to both models, but academia is undeniably cheaper.
Thus, the cost of failure is lower. I didn't mention the third alternative,
which is to remove public funding from research altogether. I don't think this
is a good idea.

------
6cxs2hd6
Not to sound like some crazy person with the word SOCIALIST written on the
inside of my forehead in neon colors, but:

It should be possible for WhatsApp to get "only" $18 billion and scientific
research gets the remaining $1 billion. About a 5% tax.

That way, venture capitalists could claim to fund innovation and would
actually be truth-tellers.

~~~
pyrrhotech
It's funny to me when people call companies like Twitter "tech companies".
What technology has twitter invented? There are open source clones with 70% of
the features in < 1k LoC. Bootstrap? give me a break.

It's time we got rid of this misnomer. Just because part of your company
revolves around a piece of software you wrote doesn't mean you are a tech
company. Writing software is not necessarily creating technology. Otherwise
anyone who's written their own html site has just progressed technology.

~~~
simonw
"What technology has twitter invented?"

[http://twitter.github.io/](http://twitter.github.io/) currently lists 101
public repositories. Highlights include a SPDY library for iOS, Zipkin (a
distributed tracing system), flockdb (a distributed, fault-tolerant graph
database), Finagle (their own highly concurrent RPC system)... a TON of stuff.

~~~
hatred
No offence meant but that is like saying "Kia is also a car, does the same
work. Why the hell even BMW exists"

May be BMW is doing things on the back that make it a better choice. Same is
the difference between twitter and its thousand clones.

~~~
dajohnson89
Do you have any idea the amount of engineering effort required to handle the
scale of Twitter's service?

------
Balgair
My brother is leaving industry and going into the ivory tower later this year.
He says that it's not just the DoD or the academy, its all government funding.
He says the PhD is like a union card now. Lockheed just fired 4000 people[0]
and NASA's average age is about 53 [1]. The entire DoD is aging and about to
retire, with no-one in the 25-50 year old range, effectively. You'd think that
they would then start hiring people in those age brackets, but no. It seems
that the idea is to just let government funding die a slow death, that or
transition to drones somehow. Its increasingly likely that the good jobs are
going to be from private funding due to decreased tax revenue. We can see this
in the Valley right now. This means you gotta know people to get the work, not
just be 'good.'

[0][http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-
xml/awx...](http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-
xml/awx_11_14_2013_p0-636944.xml) [1][https://wicn.nssc.nasa.gov/c10/cgi-
bin/cognosisapi.dll?b_act...](https://wicn.nssc.nasa.gov/c10/cgi-
bin/cognosisapi.dll?b_action=powerPlayService&m_encoding=UTF-8&BZ=1AAABgNNr_f942m2PQWuDQBCF~8yOaS9hdlTUgwd1DRHamEahZ6NjCTFuUFOaf981KYTSzu7wHm__gV2ryJdFme~STIXjpAfO1BMQHSShS5TK2I89x~NXsYt24AfKd4Mg8mLHMM~WvJtGu2S9jcp1CLSqdT9xPxnX6q7hAdwYHOyrE4OtFttBt4eOgTC57HlcgKsMea7qY~XBv9F3PRxbPdQz~LM245YqkmWSbzZpUmZGotc0~Ae14rewRRQSEaVEIQQKFwWhmI8QUdcZOD2dO31lHgGDvDeBukxXI0DtPP0yP2m4MfaFq082kADygWwDsATaAwX3QD4C8afk7c7m~qBbP_obQJNj2A%3D%3D)

~~~
declan
Um, FedGov tax revenue continually increases in current dollars, short
downturns caused by the stock and housing bubbles notwithstanding. Tax revenue
for 2013 is expected to be over 50% higher than 2003, for instance:
[http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Doc...](http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200)

And tax revenue for 2018 is expected to be nearly 50% higher than 2013. The
idea that tax revenue has somehow "decreased" is folly. It's just not being
spent on what this particular special interest group (academics in science-
related disciplines, it seems) would prefer.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Have you adjusted those numbers for inflation?

~~~
declan
Both my comment above and the label on the chart refer to "current dollars."

------
slamdesu
Many of the recent 'goodbye acadaemia' that I've come across seem to be from
people in molecular biology, which has a reputation for being a particularly
competitive field for funding. I wonder whether academics in other fields are
dropping out at a similar rate..?

------
Create
"How should we make it attractive for them [young people] to spend 5,6,7 years
in our field, be satisfied, learn about excitement, but finally be qualified
to find other possibilities?" \-- H. Schopper

Indeed, even while giving complete satisfaction, they have no forward vision
about the possibility of pursuing a career at CERN.

This lack of an element of social responsibility in the contract policy is
unacceptable. Rather than serve as a cushion of laziness for supervisors, who
often have only a limited and utilitarian view when defining the opening of an
IC post, the contract policy must ensure the inclusion of an element of social
justice, which is cruelly absent today.

[http://staff-
association.web.cern.ch/content/unsatisfactory-...](http://staff-
association.web.cern.ch/content/unsatisfactory-contract-policy)

In my three years of operation, I have unfortunately witnessed cases where
CERN duties and educational training became contradictory and even
conflicting. This has particularly been the case when the requirements of the
CERN supervisor conflict with the expected time dedicated to a doctoral
student’s thesis.

[http://cds.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2013/27/News%20Artic...](http://cds.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2013/27/News%20Articles/1557868)

------
api
I turned down an opportunity to do a really interesting Ph.D in machine
learning / biologically-inspired computation because I wasn't either willing
or able to take the vow of poverty required. Since then I've consistently made
many times what most scientists make doing programming and even IT work that
is far below my abilities.

Basic research is economically worthless-- you can't patent a concept or a law
of nature, nor can you sell understanding of nature's principles to anyone.
The transistor may be worth billions, but the understanding that enabled the
transistor is worth $0 as there is no way to monetize it.

The economic worth of scientific understanding seems to obey an extreme
hockey-stick graph: it is worthless until it nears the instant of delivering a
marketable technology, at which point it skyrockets. As a result, the market
only rewards the last few people in a very long line of innovation that began
with basic principles. Mark Zuckerberg is worth billions. How much is Tim
Berners-Lee worth? How about the communications theorists before him that
pioneered the idea of hypertext? (Do we even know who they were?) ... and so
on, with each step back in time being worth exponentially less.

Why do science, except as a hobby?

------
academocrat
Can someone post some numbers please?

How many people are getting doctorates (probably increasing)?

How many faculty positions are there over time (probably increasing much
less)?

How much money per researcher is out there (probably shrinking RAPIDLY)?

How can we measure if we are getting more lenient with giving out PhD's?
Shouldn't only the cream of the crop get to do research, not just the ones who
claim to love it.

~~~
Create
The numbers make the problem clear. In 2007, the year before CERN first
powered up the LHC, the lab produced 142 master's and Ph.D. theses, according
to the lab's document server. Last year it produced 327. (Fermilab chipped in
54.) That abundance seems unlikely to vanish anytime soon, as last year ATLAS
had 1000 grad students and CMS had 900.

In contrast, the INSPIRE Web site, a database for particle physics, currently
lists 124 postdocs worldwide in experimental high-energy physics, the sort of
work LHC grads have trained for.

The situation is equally difficult for postdocs trying to make the jump to a
junior faculty position or a permanent job at a national lab. The Snowmass
Young Physicists survey received responses from 956 early-career researchers,
including 343 postdocs. But INSPIRE currently lists just 152 "junior"
positions, including 61 in North America. And the supply of jobs isn't likely
to increase, says John Finley, an astrophysicist at Purdue University in West
Lafayette, Indiana, who is leading a search to replace two senior particle
physicists.

~~~
jpwagner
_The numbers make the problem clear_

Right, so the problem is that there are way too many students. Is the burden
on the upcoming students to discontinue their track or on the universities
(etc) to slow admissions and hiring postdocs?

~~~
deong
The problem facing universities is that if they slow the rate of new PhD
students and postdocs, they will quite simply have to shutter the labs. The
entire system is built on the backs of very cheap research labor. That
superstar researcher you see on television talking about the big new
breakthrough from his or her lab hasn't written a line of code or laid hands
on a beaker in 20 years. His or her job is to get a grant, hire students and
postdocs to do the work, and immediately start chasing the next grant.
Universities run on the 40% cut they get from these grants, which is why
there's so much pressure to get funding in the first place.

Everyone knows we have too many PhD students, but no one can afford to be the
person who doesn't hire more of them, since that would mean your lab has one
person working, writing papers, and chasing funding, and the people you're
competing with have an army doing the same things.

~~~
jpwagner
offering phd programs and granting phds is ultimately the responsibility of
the university/institute.

although grad students get paid little, the total cost to a lab of a grad
student is higher than a tech[nical assistant]. if there were less grad
students, labs would hire more techs.

~~~
deong
I imagine it depends a lot on the field. I'm in computer science, and while a
few academic research programs need lots of programmers, mostly there aren't a
lot of things that a relatively untrained tech can do. We need PhD students
and postdocs to actively do novel research, publish papers, and chase grants.

It's also really unlikely that we'd find anywhere near enough techs to make up
the difference anyway. In CS, your options as a bright student are to go into
research or go make a fortune for Facebook. We can compete with industry only
because we're offering the promise of a career in research. If we had to staff
the labs with people who had no desire to join academia, the costs would go up
substantially.

------
jamesash
I made lemonade from the lemons: came out of an MIT postdoc with a Science
paper, the academic track didn't pan out (2 application cycles) but I saw that
there was a need for a great online organic chemistry resource, so I started
building one. 4 years in, it's self-supporting, and I have many of the
advantages of an instructor with very little of the red tape I'd be
experiencing if I were teaching in academia. Miss the research sometimes, but
I'm sure someone would accept me as a visiting researcher for a year if I ever
wanted to get back into it.

~~~
selimthegrim
Link? As a fellow chemist turned software engineer I am curious.

------
001sky
_However, one aspect of being a professor has been terrifying me for over five
years now – the uncertainty of getting funding from NIH. No let me rephrase
that. What is terrifying is the near-certainty that any grant I submit would
be rejected. I have been waiting for the funding situation to improve, but it
seems to only be getting worse. I personally know about ten scientists who
have become professors in the last 3-4 years. Not a single one of them has
been able to get a grant proposal funded; just rejection, after rejection,
after rejection. One of these is a brilliant young professor who has applied
for grants thirteen times and has been rejected consistently, despite glowing
reviews and high marks for innovation. She is on the brink of losing her lab
as her startup funds are running out and the prospect of this has literally
led to sleepless nights and the need for sleeping pills. How can this not
terrify me?_

Why does MIT require funding from the NIH? Isn't this what endowmnets and
tuition is for? Imaginge of google or GE hired people and forced them to raise
money from the federal government to actually build their next project?
Notwithstanding the mis-appropriation of the profits, purely from a managerial
perspective this is highly flawed.

The flipside is also true, Universities are sturctured to leverage outside
capital rather than their own (despite having gobs of it). MIT has $11B in the
bank, they are not desperate for cash. To do "science", or otherwise.

~~~
HarryHirsch
_Why does MIT require funding from the NIH?_

Because research nowadays is very expensive. Seventy years ago you could win
the Nobel Prize with a cyclotron half a meter in diameter, nowadays you need
the LHC at CERN to do that. And it isn't just high-energy physics, it's
biology, chemistry, even computer science. Big data requires big storage.

Research grants go to research and upkeep of facilities (the dreaded indirect
costs), tuition and endowment is for salaries, building projects and startup
grants.

It's accepted that the mission of universities is to conduct research on
behalf of the taxpayer, and that these results are public. Google is not
serving the taxpayer, and that's why what falls out of their research is a
trade secret.

~~~
avani
At many universities grants for the sciences subsidize other university
functions. In computer science, at least, you may have to pay your own salary
out of your grants after the university has taken their (substantial) cut for
keeping the lights on. Also, all of your graduate students and postdocs must
be paid out of your grants (if they don't have their own money); the
universities won't pay them to do research in your lab, though they will
happily claim the IP they generate.

------
egocodedinsol
There are several alternatives to the current funding giants, and I think
they'll offer superior returns. If they do, NIH and others will change.

My favorite example:

Janelia Farm - I believe they expect 50% of their projects to fail.

A Janelia recruitment excerpt is illustrative (and you don't have to have done
a post-doc even to lead a lab):

"We invite applications from biochemists, biologists, chemists, computer
scientists, engineers, mathematicians, neurobiologists and physicists who are
passionate in their pursuit of important problems in basic scientific and
technical research.

 _All laboratories are internally funded without extramural grants._
Scientists at Janelia have no formal teaching duties and minimal
administrative responsibilities. Janelia labs are small groups of postdoctoral
fellows, graduate students, and technicians tackling challenging research
problems that are expected to have transformative impact. Group leaders are
expected to engage in the direct conduct of research in a highly interactive
and collaborative environment."

It's not the only way - and I doubt Janelia thinks it should be - but this
style could be good for science in general. Even if funding levels return, I
think they should probably return in a different form. Janelia might offer a
blueprint for that.

[http://www.janelia.org/](http://www.janelia.org/)

------
singingfish
It's not just the US, it's internationally. Last time I was interviewed for an
academic position the interview feedback I got made no sense whatsoever. A
different (ivy league) position doing some really interesting work fell
through for bureaucratic reasons around the same time. It was around that time
that I FYIQ'ed myself.

If you're technically minded, open source software developer provides many of
the good things about academic work without many of the downsides.

------
leobelle
What a weird comment at the end about ending his relationship with his wife,
even if it is in a hypothetical context. He could have stated that differently
and not ended on such a dreadful tone.

------
mbreese
One of the major issues in academia is the total abuse of the postdoc system.
Instead of doing a postdoc for a 1-2 years, you can now see people in postdocs
for 5+ years. It's a horrible half-way existence. You have your PhD, but you
don't have your own lab so you get paid like crap. Instead of PIs paying staff
scientists (which would demand 2X higher salaries), they just load up on
postdocs because they are available and cheap.

Unfortunately, we have way too many highly trained scientists and not enough
research funding. Realistically, the only way out of this is increased
government funding, and that's not happening anytime soon.

------
it_learnses
It is indeed sad what's going on in the U.S. with regards to Research funding.
Maybe you can go directly to the public who sympathises, for example maybe a
kickstarter of sorts for researchers?

~~~
delinquentme
[https://experiment.com/](https://experiment.com/)

------
DanAndersen
I'm curious about what areas of academia are more or less affected by these
trends. I'm planning on starting a PhD program this year in computer science
(emphasis on graphics research), and I had been under the impression that the
state of funding was not so dire in CS as it is in the other sciences (the
sciences that are more science than engineering), but I'd certainly be
interested in any perspectives about academia in my field in particular.

------
curveship
My own theory is that it will take academia another generation to figure out
what it has done to itself. With entry-level conditions becoming more and more
terrible, the best students will increasingly seek careers outside the
academy, and academia will become populated by the second tier. At that point,
it will have lost a prestige which will take another century to repair.

~~~
deong
One reason that may not happen is that unless something drastic happens,
supply for faculty positions will continue to outpace demand by a couple of
orders of magnitude.

The average professional baseball player spends his life in the minor leagues,
never making much, never seeing any real security. But the upside of being one
of the lucky ones is such that you'll never have a lack of talented people
trying to play in the big leagues. Academia's upsides are not financial, but
the dynamics are basically the same.

------
rachellaw
I declined a PhD offer (full-ride even!) for a start-up

It wasn't the money potential, but the lack of opportunities in the field. You
can work for less pay if you're compensated for something else in terms of
opportunity cost (social status, privilege of doing what you love etc) but
right now there's zero incentive and it's so bleak

A lot of my professor friends don't rely purely on salary even if they're
tenured. There's other ways like speaking engagements, book royalties etc. I
know some tenured professors who don't use grant system at all (especially in
humanities) instead they get funding through collaborations and other sources

~~~
cwal37
Just fyi, you would have been getting robbed if your PhD wasn't paid for.

~~~
rachellaw
yes that's what my professor/mentor told me. It was just hard to turn this one
down since the university did not usually offer scholarships (nyu)

~~~
cwal37
Well, it's not even scholarships in the traditional sense necessarily, but the
department covers tuition and you get a stipend. I'm eyeing a PhD down the
road, swapping with my significant other when she finishes hers, and I would
also turn down any non-stipend positions.

It's really surprising to me that a wealthy university like NYU would charge
PhD candidates. If you don't mind sharing, what field/topic were you
considering?

~~~
rachellaw
Nah this was a traditional scholarship with research funding inclusive. It was
difficult to turn down because of that

NYU and other private universities (Saas-fae etc.) will charge PhD candidates
because they can. They have prestige, more applicants than they can deal with
and the whole snob-appeal. I was going to join their Media Studies/Computer
Science department

~~~
cwal37
Ahhh, that is a tough situation. Oh, there it is, I completely forgot they are
a private university. Well, best of luck with where you're at now!

~~~
rachellaw
thank you! I'm hoping this thing works out.

It sounds super idealistic, but nowadays I think the only way to get real
research out is to leave academia... which is why I decided to form a startup
with my research partner. We aren't really into the whole get-acquired!money
thing, it's more like; non-profits rarely work because people don't listen,
using productizing techniques spreads ideas faster and research funding is
dwindling. In the offer I was given, I was lucky to be fully funded but all
the work I did would belong to NYU/Intel....

------
ThePhysicist
I'm an (ex-)academic myself and can really understand the author's position
and concerns, but I wonder if this situation has been so much different in the
past. Academia has always been a highly competitive field with a high workload
and comparatively low salaries as compared to industry, so it obviously is not
for everyone. I think though that the article omits many of the benefits of
positions in science, so I want to list a few (of course not all of these
apply to all positions in science):

-You don't have a boss that yells at you and tells you what to do.

-You can work on your own projects and ideas (if you're capable of developing such).

-You can't get fired , or at least the likelihood of you being fired is pretty low.

-You can do a lot of traveling (conferences, summer schools, workshops, exchange visits)

-You can work with very intelligent and motivated people.

-You can work on hard, interesting and (sometimes) important problems.

Personally, what I miss most since leaving science is the possibility to work
on really interesting, hard problems, because although most companies will
tell job applicants that they're working on really cool and important stuff,
most of the work consists of pretty boring, uninspiring things (this is not
necessarily different in science, but at least there there are some really
cool things mixed in between the boring parts). As one of my colleagues once
put it, "the problems are hard and complex in an uninteresting way".

So, I think if people would have the choice between a well-paying position in
industry and a position as a research scientist, many would choose the latter
even if it meant a lower income and a higher workload. The author is of course
absolutely right about the fact that there are not enough "B-level" positions
in science (i.e. permanent researcher positions situated somewhere between
post-docs and professors), which really has to change in my opinion.
Personally, it makes me sad to see so many brillant PhDs leave university and
work e.g. as data scientists in companies where they basically try to make
people "click more on stuff".

------
NPMaxwell
One guidebook to the archeological site of ancient Troy, starts with, "Having
solved the money problem, Heinrich Schliemann turned to archeology." (For a
bio, see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Schliemann.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Schliemann.))
Perhaps rather than starting in science and then bailing to industry,
academics might follow Schliemann's path and earn their funding first. This
won't work for many very expensive fields, but it's unclear how well the
funding lottery is working for those fields now.

------
Maria1987
Loved your article - inspiring and I can definitely see your point! Sharing my
personal experience I left academia a year ago (leaving a promising
neuroinformatics career) to what it seems crazy starting my own company! I now
make at Lear ten times more money that what I used to make, I work only half
weekends, I can sleep at night without the Need of drinking alcohol before bed
( yes it was necessary with the stress of publications) and I enjoy my friends
and family! I don't know if company will go well but I know I am now happy!
Very well done to you and good luck x

------
whitewhim
This is one of my biggest fears as a physics student graduating in two months
time. I love to learn and from my previous summers work I love to research.
I've gotten into one of the top schools to research my dream subject. Despite
all of this there is the overwhelming feeling of dread that I will dedicate
myself for five years and than not be able to find a career afterwards in
something even tangentially related to my research and be able to support a
family. Not to mention the large debt I will still have from my undergrad.

------
newyorklenny
Indeed, I left academia for a startup. Securing funding for ZappyLab is by no
means easy ([http://anothersb.blogspot.com/2014/03/hello-startup-
sequel-t...](http://anothersb.blogspot.com/2014/03/hello-startup-sequel-to-
goodbye-academia.html)) But as hard as it is, there are many VCs, angels, and
there is crowd funding (we are running a Kickstarter campaign now). Certainly
not easy, but there are more options. You run a genetics lab and lose your NIH
grant - where do you go?

------
altyus
I stopped reading at the first paragraph. What an inflated sense of self to
think that ones' own feelings after leaving academia imply a dire situation
for all of academia.

------
supergeek133
Universities and large schools prices go up and up, so does the amount of loan
assistance. Where in the heck does all that money go if not to these people?

------
namocat
This is so dead on. I recently left my post-doc position from a top school,
and it evoked such a reaction of "take me with you" from my fellow labmates
when I was leaving. The hopelessness is palpable in a lot of grad
students/post-docs. Everyone seems to be shopping for a way out. Sad, but very
true...

------
balladeer
Such news are no less than scary and disheartening for a (third world)
programmer who is applying for a master's and then intends to do a PhD and
enter academia. My belief is there's always two sides of a coin, I hope I
don't end up with a biased one.

------
fonnesbeck
Apparently, its not possible to leave academia unless you write a detailed
blog post about it.

~~~
apples2apples
I like to think if it as a last call for attention. Remember academics are
attention addicts.

------
quarterwave
Years ago I was an engineering post-doc in the US, and happened to meet this
science post-doc (you can guess at which institute) at an airport. I was
amazed to learn this person was spending 2X my hours in the lab at 0.5X my
salary.

------
rdl
I wanted to be a scientist until the Superconducting Supercollider got killed
by politicians, in a way which actually cost more than finishing it. After
that, I stopped being interested in any grant-funded research career.

------
tibbon
My girlfriend right now is trying to figure out her postdoc in neuroscience.

While I fully support her passion, the industry of academia seems completely
irrational from almost every sense and full of traps. While the end goal of a
tenured professor is exceedingly stable, getting there requires heroic acts of
risk, going with the flow and instability that even when compared with the
world of startups seems insane.

After 4-7 years on a PhD (which is fraught with the possibility of your PI
losing funding, vets shutting you down for weeks on end, the university
messing up shipping of things that need to stay frozen, strange policies of
academic journals, endless bureaucracy, the university threatening to cancel
health insurance or not pay you for a few months despite them wanting you to
work) you exit with the ability to make _less money_ at a Postdoc than you had
with just your undergraduate degree, and certainly less than you'd make if you
had just stayed as a lab tech for that term.

In admission to a Postdoc program, you've gotta deal with PIs who seem to
check their email in more archaic ways than RMS and seem to play games with
you with their intermittent responsiveness. The chances of you getting into a
place doing the research you'd like in a geographic region that has any
semblance of culture or livability. Of course, all the pitfalls of your PhD
are still present, as funding is constantly on the brink and your PI might die
or retire without notice- which essentially ends your academic career.

Then _maybe_ after a postdoc (or two), you find a tenure track position
(again, where this is... you seem to have little control over), which also
seems to pay crap considering the amount of knowledge and experience you have.

All of these funnels seem to have a 20:1 (or worse) completion rate. Something
always seems to screw up. Fortunately, my girlfriend is almost done with the
PhD part, and the Postdoc part is looking more promising than it is for most.

Whatever relationships, life, family or culture you'd like to maintain through
this seem nearly impossible. Now, I'm aware that 'softer' subjects are a
little more flexible on parts of this. You don't need a lab with a half
million a year funding to write the next great american novel or study the
culture of people on 4Chan.

In comparison, startups seem much more certain. Move to SF|Boston|NYC, program
awesome things, get funding, etc... no one's going to ask you suddenly to move
to Alabama to work with the one startup in the US that does Haskell
programming, but in science academia that's entirely possible. Worst case
scenario, you go work for Google or similar. And after working for 10 years,
they aren't going to pay you barely livable wages.

Unless you're running a center (which probably less than 0.1% of people
entering into a PhD program ever will), the monetary reward almost _never_
catches up. The risk of failure is high, and the alternatives for leaving are
grim. Whereas if you leave your CS PhD, you can get a job at a startup...
there are few places that are dying to hire PhD dropouts.

~~~
rwallace
> While I fully support her passion

This is not a criticism of you; I understand you're trying to do your best for
someone you care about, which is laudable in itself; but there is something I
think needs to be pointed out.

You did _not_ say "I fully support her rational and well-informed career
choice". Probably you would love to be able to say that but, well, it wouldn't
be true.

There is a meme floating around at the moment that _passion_ should be the
deciding factor in career choice. Every society has its characteristic errors,
and this seems to be one of the more harmful ones of 21st-century Western
society. In reality, emotion should be _an input_ , yes, but not the only or
necessarily decisive one; our emotions evolved in a very different
environment, after all, and they don't actually know very much about what's
going on today so it's hardly surprising that they often make bad decisions.

Another common wording of this meme is "do what you love". Put that way, it's
easier to see why it's bad advice for most people. If you love doing
something, probably lots of other people do too, and they'll bid down income
and working conditions in that field until your life degenerates into
miserable slog.

The obvious reply is that if you end up in a job you hate, your life will also
degenerate into miserable slog, which is true. You don't want to end up in a
job you hate if you can avoid it.

The best career choice is usually somewhere in the middle: try for something
you _don 't mind_ doing that will pay a decent wage for no more than forty
hours a week without unreasonable demands. If your passion doesn't offer a
realistic prospect of that, then it's probably time for reason to overrule
passion.

~~~
tibbon
True.

She's well informed about it, and honestly better than the majority of people
in the field, but it still doesn't make the field in general a rational
decision. In the end her goal isn't to make money or have tenure, but to do
science that changes the world; which I admire greatly.

I could say the same about my friend pursuing music professionally (I myself
went to school for music, but I'm now in software and far happier)- I went to
school with people who probably haven't made $500 in the past year on music,
and also with people who won Grammies recently and are at the top of Pitchfork
and Billboard's charts. By no means does it make it rational; its a broken
system that hasn't caught up to the 21st century, but overall there are still
people in it who will do well no matter how hard it is.

On average, you're right however that the best choices are often somewhere in
the middle for most of us.

------
lnanek2
There's only as many grants as there are money. If he and his brilliant
friends can't get grants, maybe they shouldn't have their own labs like they
are trying to have. Maybe they should just work for someone else's lab, or god
forbid, industry. It would be great if we had unlimited money for everyone
that wants to run their own lab, but it just isn't going to happen right now.

------
randomsearch
It seems to me that there is an enormous amount of negativity towards
academia, here. I think it's very unbalanced. Let me redress this a little.

It is true that young academics are not well paid, don't have good job
security, and that the academic system is run from the top in the wrong way.
Grant-chasing is a fact of life, and administration can distract you from your
work.

However, being an academic can be great. I've worked in industry and academia,
and I found academia to be less stressful, more rewarding, and more
intellectually challenging.

Here are a few great things about academia:

* You get to work with really smart, creative, intellectual, people. Probably the smartest people you meet in your life will be colleagues. It's a very stimulating environment.

* You get to work with young and enthusiastic students and researchers, who constantly challenge you and bring new ideas to the table. It keeps you young.

* You see ideas and technologies that most people don't. For example, I recently saw a bunch of robots in development at another UK institution.

* It's an opportunity to continue learning, with access to great resources (huge libraries, experts on a wide variety of disciplines and sub disciplines down the hallway / across campus).

* You are not constrained to thinking about product development or the short-term. You can think on much greater timescales, and propose and investigate ideas with no direct application.

* When you make a real contribution, find a great result, or inspire other researchers, it's hugely rewarding.

* You're part of a machine that has generated enormous progress. Often people don't recognise it, particularly in Computer Science, because commercial companies appear to have "invented" things that they actually developed from work in academia. The most incredible discoveries and theories have come from academia.

* Every day can be different. You don't repeat the same research twice, so it's a constant progression. This can be really exciting and stimulating.

* You get to travel the world to collaborate, to attend conferences etc. Sometimes you can extend these trips to holidays; I've travelled more since I became an academic than anyone I know outside of academia. You have the opportunity to move overseas and work at foreign institutions.

* You have flexibility in terms of what you wear, how you work, where you work, who you work with -- you get to choose much of the time.

* You have an enormous amount of freedom to organise your time as you see fit. Your hours and holidays are incredibly flexible.

* The money, whilst not great, is enough to live on. If you progress up the ladder to be a senior lecturer or professor (UK), the money is good.

~~~
mattfenwick
I'd like to present an alternative viewpoint based solely on my own personal
experiences at a middling institution. (I should note that I have no
industrial experience to compare to)

> I found academia to be less stressful, more rewarding, and more
> intellectually challenging.

I've found it to be quite stressful, unrewarding, and intellectually
smothering. Reasons include overlong hours, jerks and bullies in positions of
power, territorial battles, arrogance and shortsightedness.

> You get to work with really smart, creative, intellectual, people. Probably
> the smartest people you meet in your life will be colleagues. It's a very
> stimulating environment.

Some of the people I work with are really smart. Others are also really smart,
but don't care (deeply about what they do). Most are pretty smart, but not
very interested in anything outside of an extremely narrow focus. Since most
people have no interest in or knowledge of what others do, or desire to learn,
I find it decidedly un-stimulating.

> You get to work with young and enthusiastic students and researchers, who
> constantly challenge you and bring new ideas to the table.

As a young and enthusiastic student bringing new ideas to the table, I'm on
the other end of this. Ideas are met with resistance, mockery, endless rounds
of meetings and debates, and intellectual laziness (i.e. "I could spend some
time thinking about this idea and give meaningful feedback, but instead I'll
just axe it"). It's incredibly demotivating.

> It's an opportunity to continue learning, with access to great resources
> (huge libraries, experts on a wide variety of disciplines and sub
> disciplines down the hallway / across campus).

Partly agree -- the free access to academic journals is great (although,
arguably, they should be free to everybody since the studies are typically
performed with public funds, but that's another debate). It's also great to
have the freedom to pursue topics I'm interested in, solely because I'm
interested in them.

However, I haven't really gotten much benefit from being physically near to
experts. Perhaps that's my fault.

> You are not constrained to thinking about product development or the short-
> term. You can think on much greater timescales, and propose and investigate
> ideas with no direct application.

This has not been true in my experience. We're forced to focus on what is
publishable (often, in the short term). Also, negative results (i.e.
disproving a hypothesis, or showing that there's no link between two
variables) -- which can be significant, applicable data -- aren't publishable.
We're also forced to focus on what is likely to bring in grant money.

> When you make a real contribution, find a great result, or inspire other
> researchers, it's hugely rewarding.

Wouldn't know. My work has been crap-covered crap, with a side-helping of
crap. I feel that the current trend to focus only on extraordinarily
meaningful results has actually made it tougher for people to make real
contributions -- because if you don't sell it (in the sense of over-hyping
it), even if it's going to make a real difference, it'll be tough to publish
in a decent journal, or to get grant money.

> You're part of a machine that has generated enormous progress. The most
> incredible discoveries and theories have come from academia.

I don't want to be part of a machine that has generated enormous progress, if
1) it's not currently generating enormous progress, or 2) I'm not helping it
to generate enormous progress.

> You get to travel the world to collaborate, to attend conferences etc.
> Sometimes you can extend these trips to holidays; I've travelled more since
> I became an academic than anyone I know outside of academia. You have the
> opportunity to move overseas and work at foreign institutions.

Agreed. Conferences are awesome.

> You have flexibility in terms of what you wear, how you work, where you
> work, who you work with -- you get to choose much of the time.

How, where, with whom -- I have little control over these.

> You have an enormous amount of freedom to organise your time as you see fit.
> Your hours and holidays are incredibly flexible.

This has been somewhat true for me. However, doesn't really matter how
flexible the hours are, if they're way too much (and they are).

> The money, whilst not great, is enough to live on.

Agreed. However, the number of hours worked must be taken into account. I
expect that it would be extremely tough to afford a family.

~~~
randomsearch
ok, to clarify: I was talking about academia as a job, not as a PhD student.
Also, I think your points were interesting and I didn't disagree with a lot of
them, but I'd like to add a little more, don't know if this helps at all...

> I've found it to be quite stressful, unrewarding, and intellectually
> smothering. Reasons include overlong hours, jerks and bullies in positions
> of power, territorial battles, arrogance and shortsightedness.

I know plenty of PhD students who struggle to cope with the stress. Not so
many academics, to be honest. The academics who complain about stress would
also likely struggle in industry.

Also, I did say _less stressful_ than industry. I can assure you my industrial
job was a lot more stressful - if only because I had responsibility for major
systems that affected 10000s of people directly. Basically, being terrified of
messing things up or trying to fire fight when things went wrong. Overlong
hours are rife in the tech industry, and you won't find the other complaints
to be any different, I'm afraid. So, it's a relative decision. Most jobs carry
some stress. But for me, the wins of academia far outweigh the downsides. It's
not for everyone, but I felt it important to point out that the academia-
backlash we're seeing at the moment is not necessarily an objective viewpoint.

> Others are also really smart, but don't care (deeply about what they do).

That is far more common in industry, because people turn up for the pay cheque
more than anything else. I know few academics with this attitude.

> Most are pretty smart, but not very interested in anything outside of an
> extremely narrow focus. Since most people have no interest in or knowledge
> of what others do, or desire to learn, I find it decidedly un-stimulating.

I guess this depends on the institution you're at. The two I've worked in
within the UK are quite highly regarded. Colleagues tend to love learning.

> As a young and enthusiastic student bringing new ideas to the table, I'm on
> the other end of this. Ideas are met with resistance, mockery, endless
> rounds of meetings and debates, and intellectual laziness (i.e. "I could
> spend some time thinking about this idea and give meaningful feedback, but
> instead I'll just axe it"). It's incredibly demotivating.

This just sounds like bad supervision. A lot of PhD students complaining on
the web seem to have had poor supervision. It's not uncommon either, and
something I think academia really needs to work on. FWIW, the people I work
closely with dedicate a huge amount of time to their PhD students and the
feedback we get from them is overwhelmingly positive. It does take a lot of
time though, and we do go above-and-beyond somewhat.

> However, I haven't really gotten much benefit from being physically near to
> experts. Perhaps that's my fault.

Could it be the stage in your career? Have you never walked into a seminar on
something completely different? Or sat down with a colleague over coffee and
had them explain (say) the current state of cancer research, amidst their
cutting-edge discoveries? Those opportunities are priceless.

> This has not been true in my experience. We're forced to focus on what is
> publishable (often, in the short term).

This is true, to some extent. But you _can_ spend significant time looking
further ahead, that's the difference. And what may be regarded as "short-term
publishable" doesn't have to be something you can deploy in a product. It
could be something insightful and far-reaching, but ready for publication. Or
just a great idea. Or something that inspires people. Most companies are not
going to say "that's a great idea that will never make us money, do some more
of that!"

> Also, negative results (i.e. disproving a hypothesis, or showing that
> there's no link between two variables) -- which can be significant,
> applicable data -- aren't publishable.

They're actually _less publishable_ , rather than unpublishable, and there's
plenty of research on the relative publishability (to coin an unwanted
phrase). See "Bad Science" for a summary.

> We're also forced to focus on what is likely to bring in grant money.

This is true to some extent. But really, you have to find a balance. The
greatest, supersmart researchers I've met have to follow the money too -- to
an extent. But they get a balance, do their bit, contribute some money that
often supports PhD students through their study (as someone once pointed out
to me when I made the same complaint as a PhD student!), and then get back to
working on their research.

> Wouldn't know. My work has been crap-covered crap, with a side-helping of
> crap. I feel that the current trend to focus only on extraordinarily
> meaningful results has actually made it tougher for people to make real
> contributions -- because if you don't sell it (in the sense of over-hyping
> it), even if it's going to make a real difference, it'll be tough to publish
> in a decent journal, or to get grant money.

Selling is indeed part of the job -- it also has been. Communication is really
important in academia. Collaboration and dissemination are key.

I'm sorry you don't feel that your work has been great :-/. Sometimes this can
be a problem of judging your own position; it's really hard to see the big
picture wrt your work. You may be your own worst critic. I don't know your
situation, but I've seen others students feel the same and it wasn't true in
those cases...

> I don't want to be part of a machine that has generated enormous progress,
> if 1) it's not currently generating enormous progress, or 2) I'm not helping
> it to generate enormous progress.

ok, (1) is clearly false, if you're objective.

(2) is more difficult. I don't think you can expect to see how your
contribution fits in without looking back over a long period. And much of
research is about 10 people trying something and one person's idea comes off -
the kind of reason why industry doesn't do the work we do. I still think the
other 9 people made a worthwhile contribution. Also, you don't have to change
the world to help. If you're involved in teaching; if you're part of the wider
academic environment; if you contribute a tool that helps others; there are
many ways to contribute to the overall, phenomenal, progress that academia has
provided. And it takes time to learn how to do important work. It's not as
straightforward as it sounds!

One problem PhD students often have is that they don't realise that the
purpose of their PhD is research training. Most of the real research
contributions come from postdocs, at least in the UK. Lecturers and Professors
are busy and mostly act as supervisors/managers. PhD students are very much
learning their craft, and as my assessor said to me "you can forget about your
PhD work now -- the best things you do will be in another 10 years and you'll
have forgotten what your thesis was about by then" ;-). She was being
facetious, but there's a grain of truth there.

> Agreed. Conferences are awesome.

:-) I would add perhaps that "some conferences are awesome"! btw, I find
conferences to be a larger and more specialised example of the environment of
academic life in general -- so maybe you have been a bit unlucky with your
environment, if you haven't found the same experience at your uni.

> How, where, with whom -- I have little control over these.

If you're a student, I could imagine this may be the case.

> This has been somewhat true for me. However, doesn't really matter how
> flexible the hours are, if they're way too much (and they are).

Again, compare to working for Google and the like...

> I expect that it would be extremely tough to afford a family.

The average household income in the UK is £40k, where two people work. A
senior lecturer or a professor is going to be earning more than that on their
own, and it is not uncommon for professors in particular to earn much, much
more than that. I don't think academic wages reflect the sacrifices we make,
particularly the time and money sacrificed during a PhD; however, I love what
I do and I feel I'm contributing to society in a way that my previous work in
industry didn't allow.

~~~
mattfenwick
Thank you for taking the time to reply. I'm glad you've found a way to make
science work for you -- and shared your experiences -- and I wish you the all
the best.

------
assqwert
I wish I can say the same!

------
stokedmartin
tldr; I get a lot of satisfaction/happiness[0] from being taught by good
teachers and talking to people doing research in CS and that's why I got back
to academia. Not sure what will happen after this.

=======

I first entered industry as a software engineer after my Master's from a good
university in the US. I felt the job to be very structured. By `structured` I
mean - goals were well defined; best practices of SE were applied; at times
there was confusion of what exactly the requirement meant but we all had it
sorted since meetings with managers and product managers were regular.
Research there meant to dive into existing code and/or ask experienced
developers around. After having spent ~10 months, I decided to apply for a PhD
program. The reason I gave to a lot of my friends at the time of leaving
industry was, `I didn't have enough meat to chew`. IMO the company's structure
hampered my ability to learn deeper concepts of Math-CS, and made me lethargic
(probably due to the compensation). Of course, had I stayed there long enough,
I could have probably defined the structure, but at that time I thought there
were more interesting things to study.

I was fortunate to get accepted for a PhD program. Having an average Math
background, I struggled in my first year studying mathematical models behind
CS, for instance queuing theory. Everyone around me had a better intuition to
such things and I felt really awkward. I survived the first semester, and in
the second managed to handle more than a course.

I am currently in my second year. Most of my classes are theory based and not
at all intuitive to me. However, I spend hours to understand the proofs. There
are some amazing theoretical work which goes in developing algorithms[1] and
concepts like these this keeps me going. Of the some I understand, I feel
excited. Of the ones I don't, I hope to get my head around them some day. I
meet people who are great researchers. Class projects are a great way to sow
seeds of research ideas and challenging since I have to compete, in some
cases, with a few classmates who have a lot more knowledge in the subject.
With all classes till now, I am able to do mediocre research which aligns with
the research grant given to my advisor. However, in the future, I hope to do
much concrete research. My advisor knows that my current focus is on courses
and he's fine with me investing more time in them as opposed to research.

Till now, all this has been challenging, and exciting. I don't know whether
I'll end up in the steady state[2] of research as OP pointed out or may be I
am already there :)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philomathean_Society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philomathean_Society)

[1]
[http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/mmds.html](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/mmds.html)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_state)

------
smartiq
not sure why such a mundane story got such a huge outpouring

