

The Secret Lives of Professors (What Being a Professor is Really Like) - sinc
http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/05/secret-lives-of-professors.html

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_delirium
This does vary based on the field and kind of school. It's definitely accurate
for being a professor at a top-tier research university in the sciences or
engineering. A prof job at those kinds of places could accurately be titled
"research manager": the main job requirements are managing and bringing in
funding for a fairly large research lab of 5-10 grad students and possibly
some research scientists and postdocs.

But you can shift the balance of the various components if you go to different
kinds of schools. To take the opposite end of the spectrum, if you're the CS
prof at a small liberal-arts college, your job will involve a lot more
teaching and mentoring undergrads, and a lot less grant-writing and research-
lab management. It's unfortunately not true that there's a happy medium to fit
every kind of temperament, but there are _some_ options at least.

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abstractbill
This nicely sums up a bunch of reasons why I decided not to do a postdoc, and
instead joined my first startup after finishing my PhD. I'm sure it works for
some people, but I just couldn't see myself being happy with it.

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timr
Same for me. I had a few opportunities for good post-docs, but I just couldn't
see the point. I didn't really want to be a professor, and if you don't want
to be a prof, a post-doc is just a really low-rent job.

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anongradstudent
Do you think there's a point to getting a PhD at all? I've been debating
dropping out of my PhD program (after one year), mostly for personal reasons,
but partially because most grads from my (top N) program end up not being able
to land a research or academic position after graduation. If I end up like 95%
of the graduates from my program, will it have been a waste of time?

Is there any value in a PhD if you do your own startup, become a dev at a huge
company like Google, or become a dev at a small company like Yelp? And if so,
what does it get you over having five years of experience? I don't mean in
monetary terms -- a PhD is obviously a net negative monetarily; what I'm
looking for is the chance to make a living working on 'interesting' problems.

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stoney
As you said, there is not much in the way of direct financial compensation for
having a PhD in industry, but it can act as a foot in the door and it can
(depending on the company) mean you get treated a bit differently once you are
hired. Researchy type projects tend to get pushed to people who are good at
open ended researchy things, and having a PhD is a good indicator of that.

For me the biggest value from my PhD came from the writing up. It is really,
really, really hard to get from having "done all of the work" to writing a
coherent, well defended thesis on it. You will get very good at spotting holes
in arguments (particularly yours, but also other peoples). You will get a very
real understanding of how much work is involved in getting from 95% to 100%
finished. It's not directly valued in industry but I know that I benefit
personally from my writing up experience.

And you get to call yourself doctor. That's nice.

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ephermata
What settings have you found where you could call yourself "doctor" without
someone mistakenly believing you are an MD? The only ones I've found so far
are in academia and at work, but in both cases it's not really that much of a
boost. (At work everyone more or less has a PhD.)

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yummyfajitas
The pub.

"Hey baby, I'm a doctor. I do radiology." (Both true statements.)

"Ooh, tell me more."

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stoney
Yeah, mainly the pub, but also any situation where you want someone to do
something that seems risky:

"Trust me, I'm a doctor!"

And dealing with unhelpful customer service:

"We're sorry Mr Smith but we can't do that..."

"Actually that's DOCTOR Smith"

It won't help you get what you want, but the amusement factor will make you
feel better.

A friend of mine has Dr on all of his credit cards. He claims to have received
free upgrades on rental cars from time to time as a result. Not sure if I
believe that.

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phreeza
I wish some of my professors would have read this as grad students. Become a
professor because you love teaching, not because you want to do research.

Which also raises the question whether there should be a similarly
venerable(and compensated) position reserved for researchers who don't teach?

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pgbovine
_Which also raises the question whether there should be a similarly
venerable(and compensated) position reserved for researchers who don't teach?_

an academic research lab sponsored by a big company (note that this is _not_
the same as a corporate R&D division) ... in the 1970's, this was epitomized
by Xerox PARC and AT&T Bell Labs. today, Microsoft Research is currently the
leader in this category.

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pwhelan
MSFT Research also sends the nicest rejection letters you can imagine.

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ciupicri
Do you have some examples?

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winzie
I can certainly see the entrepreneurial aspect of being a professor --
managing a lab, hiring and firing people, and sourcing funding, and I don't
disagree that professors are there to inspire the next generation. However,
there is still a part of me that feels professors have that "safety net".
Tenured professors are paid a monthly salary by the university, and often
times at / above industry (that's true at least in Canada anyways). With a
steady income, they have no risk, and the risk factor is a big part of being
an entrepreneur.

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fadmmatt
I was an entrepreneur (failed twice), and I'm now a professor.

Being a pre-tenure professor is way more terrifying than being an entrepreneur
was.

And, depending on the field, between 25% and 75% of your salary as a professor
will come from being able to procure external funding.

If you can't convince the funding agencies to pay you, then tenure buys you an
office, a teaching load and health care.

It's been terrifying for me because my hit rate is about the same as Matt's.
I've had very little luck getting funding for my research.

And, at the last funding panel I served on, the funding rate was down to 5%.
My own fund-seeking overhead is now at 60% of my time, and I'm still not
getting any.

Either we have too many scientists, or not enough science funding. I don't
think the current system is sustainable.

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frossie
_Either we have too many scientists, or not enough science funding._

A little bit of both, to which I would add a third: the way we fund science
is... I'm going to charitably say "sub-optimal"

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liedra
And then there's us lot in non-science disciplines who sit back and think
"gosh, lucky scientists, they get all the funding..." :)

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_delirium
It tends to produce a treadmill, though--- since science funding is available,
science profs are expected to get it. In some areas with less funding, it's
perfectly normal for professors to have their students TA most of the time;
but in most science departments, the prof's expected to pay a substantial
proportion of their students from grant money, and it'll look bad if a prof is
always "dumping students on the department" by funding them through TAships.

And if you're expected to pay your students, it takes a lot of money! One
student, including tuition, stipend, and departmental overhead, costs around
$50k, so if your lab is 5 students, you have to bring in $250k a year just to
support your grad students. And if you start dipping below about $150k, so are
supporting fewer than half your students, people will start grumbling, and
it'll look bad for your tenure case. (You can't avoid it by having fewer
students, either, because having only 2 students will _also_ look bad for your
tenure case.)

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tjmaxal
I really liked how he compared being a young professor to being in a startup.
I don't know how accurate that analogy really is but it's certainly fun to
think about. At my undergrad they had a whole program designed to
commercialize faculty research by funding school centric startups. I still
find the whole thing fascinating.

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holdenc
When you join an elite school as an academic you become a bureaucrat in a
bureaucracy. Want to spend the institution's money? Make an important
decision? Get people to help you? Get ready to grovel, and sacrifice much of
what you believe is worth fighting for.

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DannoHung
Where the _fuck_ is all the money going?

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DannoHung
I'm sorry, but I wasn't just referring to the grant money. I mean the money
that colleges get from tuition, donations, etc. Where is all that money going
to? What is costing so much now?

For all the talk about costs of colleges going up, I have never seen a single
explanation of where the money is _going_. And if it ain't going into
research, then it's gotta be going _somewhere_.

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amichail
It's more fun to create something novel that many people use and appreciate
(e.g., an iPhone game).

Much better than research prototypes that go no where beyond a publication or
two.

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pgbovine
ok, i'll bite ;)

if everyone thought the way that you did, then we'd still be programming by
submitting our punch cards to some gigantic centralized machine. think about
how much basic academic research occurred before the invention of something
like the iPhone became possible

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natrius
There are plenty of necessary things in life that aren't exciting to do.
There's nothing wrong with pointing it out unless you're trying to get more
people to unwittingly do those things without fully understanding their
choice.

EDIT: I'm not trying to say that pure science is universally unexciting. Few
things are. But generally, more people seem to be interested in consumer
products than pure science research.

~~~
_delirium
I think a lot of researchers (myself included) really do prefer doing what
we're doing, though. It's not like I'm doing research instead of making iPhone
games because I have no choice; if I wanted to jump and make iPhone games
instead, plenty of companies have open positions. I just find what I'm
currently doing a lot more interesting.

(That said, I wouldn't want this prof's job, because managing a large group of
people, whether in industry or a research lab, is not my idea of fun.)

