
A Career in Science Will Cost You Your Firstborn - timr
http://www.johnskylar.com/post/107416685924/a-career-in-science-will-cost-you-your-firstborn
======
wwweston
"Why does anyone think science is a good job?

The average trajectory for a successful scientist is the following:

* age 18-22: paying high tuition fees at an undergraduate college

* age 22-30: graduate school, possibly with a bit of work, living on a stipend of $1800 per month

* age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000 per year

* age 36-43: professor at a good, but not great, university for $65,000 per year

* age 44: with (if lucky) young children at home, fired by the university ("denied tenure" is the more polite term for the folks that universities discard), begins searching for a job in a market where employers primarily wish to hire folks in their early 30s

This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in
college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT.
His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at
University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research
wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to
commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years
old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a 'second rate has-been'
label on his forehead."

[http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-
science](http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science)

~~~
letitgo12345
Dunno about other fields, but atleast if you're doing a PhD in CS/math/stats,
the industrial options (tech, finance, data scientist, etc.) are great enough
that this article posts too bleak a picture imo of doing a PhD and trying out
a career in science.

If one wants to stay in science, then there are many other options than being
a prof including but not limited too industrial or government labs, research
scientist positions at universities, etc.

Also the majority of assistant professors actually do get tenure and I feel
this article is implying that they don't. And salaries are definitely higher
than 65K a year. Though again, a CS perspective.

~~~
wwweston
Sure, and I'm not complaining too much as a guy who studied Math/CS in my
undergrad days (and I'm even considering graduate work!). The author also
gives a nod to the industrial paths.

On the other hand:

* I think if you consider "tech, finance, data scientist", some reflection reveals a discouraging fact: we're usually not talking about science or even engineering at all, but essentially support functions allowing new kinds of productivity or scale for mundane business functions. So there's careers out there for us educated in these quantitative/technological arts... but it's generally not a career in science.

* More concretely, my math/CS education is almost entirely superfluous to my six-figure job _doing CSS and wrangling squirrelly JavaScript frameworks /apps_ (mostly as a support function to sell automobiles). Meanwhile there are tenured faculty making half what I do (and postdocs/grad students on poverty incomes) actually working to figure out how life works, cure cancer, and build space elevators.

I don't know much about research related to tenure achievement and salaries,
but I found these:

[http://chronicle.com/article/Average-Faculty-Salaries-
by/126...](http://chronicle.com/article/Average-Faculty-Salaries-by/126586/)
[http://www.opia.psu.edu/sites/default/files/AIR_Tenure_Flow_...](http://www.opia.psu.edu/sites/default/files/AIR_Tenure_Flow_Paper_06.pdf)

My takeaway from skimming is that (a) faculty salaries vary, those in areas
with the industrial options we've talked about seem to be higher, but an
average of $65-70k seems credible (b) data on tenure is hard to come by but
everyone agrees it's very difficult to get at high status institutions.

~~~
nagrom
As someone who did a PhD and 6 years of post-doc in nuclear physics at a high
status institution, I would disagree that tenure is difficult to get at a high
status institution. I would argue that tenure at a high status institution
depends on skills that are wholly orthogonal to scientific research. Yes, I'm
bitter. And so are all my (ex)-colleagues.

~~~
lotsofmangos
Tenure is a social position for promoting an establishment.

The concept entirely predates modern ideas of science and research, so it is
no real surprise that it does not serve that purpose.

------
dnautics
I think it's important to consider that maybe scientists aren't worth paying
that much. The average scientist is probably moving society forward, but I'm
not so sure the _median_ scientist is. Having been to a 'top 10' PhD program
in a 'hard science' (chemistry), I am not sure 75% of the professors there
were worth a dime. I am not sure 50% of the thesis defenses were, either (mine
included).

This is in contrast to the doorman example, or in my case, being a Lyft driver
(which pays more than being a postdoc). Every night, I help society out by
providing a service that someone wants, and if you want to be more abstract,
by keeping drunk people off the road.

I was able to raise $56,000 for an experiment in anticancer research. That
doesn't seem like much (it isn't) but in retrospect it's about right. I asked
for money for one experiment, and that's what I got. It doesn't pay my salary,
but I probably don't deserve it (yet) until I've proven myself at least at one
stage. Drug development is risky, why should society pay much more than the
bare minimum to get it done?

~~~
noobiemcfoob
Your Lyft example is exactly the point of this article, and many other
comments here.

Science, specifically academic pursuits, is not something that can be
quantized in the now. The scientific work that enables us to live our lives,
that enables that very Lyft app to function, wasn't made last month or even
last year. These technologies are based on fundamental theories developed 30
or more years ago (centuries if you want to count the basic electronic theory
that's enabled circuits).

Scientific research has practically $0 value in the now, but it is nigh
impossible to say what value any specific scientist's work will have in 50
years. It is for that reason that science and its practitioners need to be
seen as public service/benefit, not a business commodity. They aren't even
playing the same game as CEOs

~~~
dnautics
and because there's effectively no accountability, it's ripe to be gamed with
fraud and cronyism. Although it is not a business commodity. The knee-jerk
reaction of the 20th century is to fund public benefit causes using the
government, but that's especially irresponsible when there is no
accountability. It's a problem compounded by diminishing returns on science
(low hanging fruit has been picked) creating a greater demand on money, a top-
down funding structure, and nationalistic measuring contests. None of these
are conducive to good science being done.

There is a demand for science. People like contributing to something bigger
than themselves. Just, the demand may not be as big as we 'hope for it to be'.
But 'get it done now' might not be the best approach to some parts of
science... Often times discoveries that were a total schlep to get through
become nearly trivialized, shortly after discovery, by an orthogonal set of
technical enablements.

~~~
DaveWalk
> there's effectively no accountability, it's ripe to be gamed with fraud and
> cronyism

Are you talking about NIH funding here, or crowdfunding? The accountability
for government funds is vigilant (some may even say restrictive), as anyone
who's applied for a grant or sat on a study section will tell you.

I disagree with the accountability aspect from experience, but I concur about
cronyism, which is a major bias that the system is not set up to handle. It
takes time to get good at winning grants, thus older applicants (tenured
professors) have a much greater advantage over new ones (postdocs). There is a
cultural sentiment that the best years of one's research career are near the
end after amassing knowledge (or influence). This leads to many PIs shunning
retirement and dampening enthusiasm for any new recruits.

~~~
dnautics
I don't see how you can make claims about accountability.

The government is somewhat vigilant about fraud, but incredibly not-vigilant
about bad ideas (Arsenic life comes to mind). But the accountability I refer
to pretty clearly in my screed is long-term, 50-200 year accountability. You
don't go back in time and rescind the grant of some scientist whose work was
less than marginally relevant. And there is plenty of that stuff (Nanoputians
come to mind).

------
kohanz
I only did a Master's and avoided the academic route (wasn't interested). My
lab peers at the time were 5 PhD students. Of that group at a good Canadian
University, 3 are still post-docs (4-6 years after graduation), 1 has a
decent-paying research position (non-teaching) and 1 is a faculty member... in
the Middle East. Meanwhile, I work in an R&D field alongside many current
faculty members, a surprising number of whom are 65+ and will die before they
retire.

In general, my observation has been that the students that quit after a
Masters tend to do better financially than those who continue on. That's not
to say that Master's graduates are hitting the big time; they just tend to end
up getting their market value.

~~~
entee
I think the downside of no PhD is that you're much more likely to hit a glass
ceiling. There are obviously exceptions but you're more likely to be put in
charge of a research project in industry if you have a PhD than not.

Clearly an MS or BS level science student can absolutely eventually do the
same things as a PhD or postdoc. The latter just have scientific approaches
that have usually been subject to repeated and rigorous challenge by their
peers, which means they are typically (though by no means always) more
rigorous out of the box. In my time in industry I've found that in many cases
that kind of critical challenge doesn't happen as much as in academia.

In the end I think people in hiring positions use the PhD letters as a
screening tool for how strong a scientist the person is, without necessarily
really evaluating the individual.

~~~
kohanz
_I think the downside of no PhD is that you 're much more likely to hit a
glass ceiling._

I would agree in the context of staying within the R&D field. However, I know
more than a few people who used the extra years not spent doing PhD post-doc
to develop their careers in a different direction (sales, biz-dev) that
allowed them to stay in their field and shattered those glass ceilings. You
can still do these things with a PhD, but it will be more difficult (people
pigeon-hole you, and you're playing catch-up time-wise).

 _In the end I think people in hiring positions use the PhD letters as a
screening tool for how strong a scientist the person is, without necessarily
really evaluating the individual._

This is key. I've actually found that a PhD. is a relatively poor predictor of
how well a person might function in an industry R&D role. Please note that I'm
not saying it's a negative predictor. I've just found there's little to no
correlation. I've worked with incredibly smart and capable people with PhD's
and others who could not function outside of a low-consequence lab setting.

~~~
Periodic
I did my undergraduate in Physics and Mathematics about ten years ago now.
When I started the program I wanted to be a researcher and delve into the
secrets of the universe. I quickly discovered that it wasn't for me and moved
into Computer Science.

One piece of advice that stuck with me the most was from the director of
career development, who had previously been a research manager at IBM. He told
us that if we wanted to go into industry just skip graduate school and focus
on getting lab experience. He told us if we really wanted to do graduate work
to just get a MS and then go into industry. He told us to only do a PhD if you
wanted to go into academia because not only was it a waste of time compared to
what you could learn and earn in industry, it would pigeon hole you into a
very specific field.

He was very adamant that a key skill in business was being flexible and PhD
programs most certainly aren't.

------
mathattack
It seems strange to me that people assume that more education in any field
they want will necessarily result in more money.

Schools are producing too many Biology Phds. Or Forensic Science undergrads.
Such is life. There's no way to predict 100% what the market will be like, so
we make do. There's no intrinsic right to a job in the field that one chooses
to study, and most people work in fields outside of their major.

It's also true that your choice of first (or second or third) job is no
guarantee. GM used to be a job for life. Now it isn't. As individuals we make
our best choices, and then have a small safety net to fall back on if we're
wrong.

The only thing we should push for schools to do is show transparency on where
the alums wind up, because unfortunately their incentives in producing Phds
(and JDs and Russian literature degrees) differ from ours in receiving them.

~~~
fat0wl
yeah i guess it strikes me as odd that these silos are painted as such dire
straits when describing a scenario that includes the backdoor of "unless you
choose to go into industry and immediately make 100k+".

I and the other people in my graduate program don't have that option... I
studied music technology, degree was pretty expensive. no stipends, literal
you pay for degree, BA-style, but are not going into a six-figure business
field.

These are the choices you make in life, and being presented with an opt-out
like that is as they say "a good problem to have". It would be cool if every
field could make intelligent people rich as they improved the world but, you
know.... its life.

If I had chosen a different field maybe I would be making 6-figures instead of
doing boring enterprise work (decent money but most of my research peers were
less programming focused, didn't even have _this_ type of out), but I also
would be even further from my goals. I wouldn't have the foundation of
knowledge that I'm hoping to return to / build from in the future.

I guess the point of this comment is that the author should be thankful that
people in science are valued by industry (even many programmers are only
considered "labor", basically). There are lots of fields people devote
themselves to that have no industrial use & they are relegated to lower-paying
dayjobs regardless of who they are willing to sign on with. As for whether or
not academia should be more lucrative, well.... should people be paid to
learn? is academia the most efficient way of learning? is it an antiquated
social construct? many open-ended questions.... got my masters but didn't go
back for PhD, waiting to see whether or not there is a better way to make it
happen out on the pavement.

~~~
mathattack
Many scientists struggle with the Plan B. If it's very math heavy (physics or
engineering) then Wall Street is an option, but by the time many others opt
out, they are too specialized to use their knowledge for a 100K job.

------
paulmd
Yup - "STEM jobs pay well" is just wrong at this point. Neither Science nor
Mathematics pays worth a damn, what people actually mean when they say this is
"go work in technology or engineering".

~~~
brianwawok
Can you draw that conclusion from this article?

I think Academia is not paying that well. I think a lot of these post-docs
could make a lot more in industry, no? I think if you are willing to sell your
soul to the devil, most STEM pays pretty dang well...

~~~
IndianAstronaut
> I think a lot of these post-docs could make a lot more in industry, no?

If you are in a programming heavy field, yes, else no. If you did
biochemistry, developmental biology, etc, you are SOL.

~~~
entee
I think this is only partially true. It's really a case of what you worked on,
where you worked on it, and who you did it with.

For example: a lot of Biochemistry and Dev Bio these days relies at least in
part on so-called next-generation sequencing. If you happened to work on a
project where you worked with that technology, there are lots of well paying
jobs out there for you. If not, it might be harder to find one, but again it's
very person-project-location dependent.

Of my graduate school (PhD Biochemistry) cohort, I don't know anyone who
doesn't have a job they're happy in. Some of them went postdoc, some went to
industry (maybe 50-50 at this stage), and I have no doubt those who stayed in
academia would have no problem finding a job in industry. That said, I went to
a strong program in an area where there's a lot of Biotech, so that helps.

As for me, I left academia and am now a hybrid data scientist/biochemist, I'm
fortunate to have a decent salary and a job I love. Was the PhD worth it? I
wouldn't have this job if I didn't, but I don't know. If it wasn't it's mostly
because a PhD was a huge opportunity cost for me I think.

~~~
IndianAstronaut
>That said, I went to a strong program in an area where there's a lot of
Biotech, so that helps.

What area is that?

------
carlmcqueen
Maybe it's just me, but I've never really thought getting a PhD had to do with
money, but instead the result of either extreme curiosity or a very strong
passion about a more granular complex topic.

I never understood it to mean a path with a defined cost to equal a defined
salary. This scientific equation of years of school to salary just feels
foolish.

~~~
debacle
Regardless of who you are, it's very likely that at some point in your life
you'll want love, rest time, a family, financial security.

Being a scientist offers nearly none of those things.

~~~
avz
It's true that most people seek family and stability. However, there is more
to human existence than that. There are people who lead very eccentric life
styles that express passions for other pursuits. For some reason scientists do
seem more prone to eccentricities than most. Examples abound in biographies of
great scientists and engineers like Galois, Tesla, Whitehead, Heaviside,
Erdős...

------
eykanal
Excellent post. Even more depressing, the author didn't discuss the fact that
when this young researcher—who just finished a PhD and postdoc training in a
specific research area—applies for her first grant, she is effectively
required to submit a grant for whatever topics are "hot" at that moment. These
topics may not be directly related to her field of interest, and may be
something she has very little expertise in. However, by writing a proposal in
simply whatever area she finds interesting, she is taking her already dismal
chances of obtaining funding and decreasing them further.

Even MORE depressing, once our young female scientist has done a good job,
built her lab, and is now in her mid-forties, if she really wants to improve
her pay at that point she will have such attractive options as "department
chair", which adds a lot of non-research administrative work to an already
overworked person. What fun!

------
djoshea
Certainly a depressing perspective, but as a Stanford PhD student (neuro), my
thoughts have always been that pursuing science was a decision to work on the
problems that interested me at the _expense_ of not receiving good financial
compensation. The particular things I'm interested in studying happen to exist
primarily within academia (and non-university academic institutions like Allen
Brain and Janelia), because the neuroscience work being done in industry
(today) is far more primitive (e.g. EEG). This may change in the near future,
and I'll reconsider my options then, but for now, I'm under no delusion that
my salary (~30k) is anywhere near what it could be for an EE/CS in industry.
That being said, if the amount of bullshit and politics becomes so burdensome
that it kills the attractiveness of the science, then I'd leave.

~~~
koof
I think you might find this article relevant. I think that liking your work
shouldn't be in exchange for fair compensation and work conditions.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/do_what_you_love_love_what_you_do_an_omnipresent_mantra_that_s_bad_for_work.html)

~~~
djoshea
Read the article, but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make with it.
Of course I don't think that scientists "should" make less money as they're
doing something they love, but since when are salaries determined by how much
someone "deserves" to make? My working conditions are excellent; I'm at
Stanford in a well-funded lab. And I decided and continue to believe that this
is research that I'd like to do despite the financial opportunity cost.

If I'm reading it correctly, this article seems to suggest that the advice
that pursuing work that you find fulfilling is itself responsible for lowering
wages, which may be true in as much as people are willing to accept lower
wages if they enjoy the work despite having better options. But what would you
propose as an alternative? Pursuing work that you find less fulfilling in
exchange for more money? That's not a sacrifice I'm willing to make, and I've
been privileged with enough opportunity and financial security to have a
choice. Of course everyone has different objective functions they're seeking
to optimize, so I see why others would make different choices, which is all
good by me.

------
stalcottsmith
Passed on a career in science when I was 17 and noticed after interviewing
professors that it was mostly full of politics and money stress and precious
little science. Fact is there are a lot of fields that are "desirable" and
enjoy and endless supply of willing young and talented recruits. These fields
always pay terribly for all but the elite and offer tremendous competition.
Publishing seemed to be another one. It was common knowledge or at least
patently obvious to me that you should not attempt a career in publishing
(editing and evaluating manuscripts for major publishing houses) in NYC
without a trust fund and or a magic credit card paid by daddy. Science is like
that. I hope my children can do science.

------
tsotha
>Frankly, everything about the career, the business of science, is constructed
to impoverish and disenfranchise young scientists, delaying the maturation of
their careers beyond practicality.

That's because way, way too many people want to be scientists. Lots of people
want to be actors, too, and most of them end up working as waiters for the
same reason.

I've never run across such a smart group of people who are so dumb. Even if
you win the lottery and get that coveted tenured position you're not going to
be doing much in the way of research - you're going to spend all your time
filling out grant applications and managing grad students.

You may as well get an MBA instead.

------
debacle
If it weren't for our current economic system, having a glut of lawyers,
doctors, scientists, engineers, etc, would be an incredibly good thing. For
everyone.

~~~
protomyth
what economic system values having a glut of people of the same profession?

~~~
debacle
One that recognizes the realities of a globalized, post-scarcity, automated
economy. Not everyone can work.

~~~
aetherson
A post-scarcity economy is not a "reality."

~~~
lotyrin
Post-scarcity doesn't mean "scarcity-naive" or that everything has to be non-
scarce.

We already have things that aren't scarce and by assuming scarcity is a factor
of value, we irrationally devalue them. Post-scarcity economic systems attempt
to resolve that.

Look at the struggle the entertainment and journalism industries have had
since the value they provide was divorced from distributing scarce
print/recording media, etc. Disregard human subjective behavior, the rational
behavior under capitalism before was to buy the thing you wanted, now it's to
try to be a free rider, so that's what most people are doing, despite valuing
creativity and journalism no less.

So, instead of being able to participate in an economic system that solves the
problem of compensating the creators of non-scarce information, they turn to
DRM and paywalls and other ineffective solutions to try to force their bits to
be effectively scarce for the majority of consumers, and therefore remain
valuable and prevent the free riders.

That said, a post-scarce economic system also shouldn't aim to be producing a
glut of any one variety of professional, so it certainly isn't a good argument
within the original thread.

------
throwaway-4321
This hits just way too close to home to keep a straight face :-(

If anyone on HN has any questions/doubts/need details, AMA. I'm a Life
Sciences Post-Doc at a major US university. I'll try my best to answer (no
personal details please).

~~~
sosuke
I loved science as a child, genetics was my hobby. The more I read, the more I
learned, and the more I learned that to make a difference would require a
monumental effort. To learn about the world, the understand the world, these
are fun things. To unlock the secrets of the world puts you in a completely
different category, and you need a certain drive and focus that not many have.

My view of STEM and liberal arts have begun to merge. To excel academically in
either requires devotion, and you have to learn 10 years to have the base
knowledge enough to even start making headway into new territory. The idea of
a 10,000 hour expert doesn't work through college education.

Going to college used to be an affair for the intellectual elite, something
that you did when you had family that could already cover living expenses for
their children. The pursuit of knowledge was because you wanted to, and there
wasn't often jobs connected to degrees. That is different now, thanks to
available credit and a golden carrot people from all corners can sit in
university, and get an education. The costs are deferred, hidden, for their
future selves to contend with.

Knowing what you know now, would you again go into Life Sciences with the
thought of making a living in it? Would you go again perhaps because you love
Life Sciences, that is your hobby, your passion, but do it on the side and get
a 'regular job'. Maybe you could finish getting your PhD, decide that the joy
of discovery was worth the time and cost, but then go into a more lucrative
but perhaps unrelated field.

Whatever happens, the price, the time of learning everything I assume you have
learned has value. I took a different path, but I loved my 2 years of
community college that I did as a hobby, learning about history, art, geology
has all brought richness to my life.

You're on HN, you have a hacker mind I assume, you see the startups. You have
a valuable asset in your knowledge that most (top 20% easy) don't have. Look
at the world, find a problem, solve it, do it on the side like programmers
bootstrap. You can make the future what you want, but an education is very
valuable, and a really cool thing to have done.

~~~
throwaway-4321
TL;DR Well, there isn't one, except an apology for the somewhat ranty writing.

\---

 _You can make the future what you want, but an education is very valuable,
and a really cool thing to have done._

Yes, as is having composed a symphony, painted a masterpiece or written a
magnum opus. But none of those _require_ an investment of youth(time) along
with an opportunity cost that is near-impossible to recoup, in more ways than
one.

I understand the essence of what you are conveying in terms of _value_ and I
was motivated by primarily the same ideals and thoughts before I decided to
dedicate my life to science and research, discarding a tried-and-true (by
social standards) career as a medical doctor (and before anyone asks, no I
can't go back, it's too late for that).

The _romance_ of science is one thing, paying the bills is another. And
watching your fellow college-mates make (undeserved, imo) high salaries with
far less education than you, makes you question many things, including that
pesky thing called your career choice.

I have been a long term (~6 years) HN user (lurker). Here, in front of my own
eyes, I have seen Web 1.0 implode, HN explode and the birth of Web 2.0 as well
as it being raised, milked and put to pasture. I have seen HN legends, both
companies and people, come and go.

Somewhere, within me, lies a dreamer, the same dude who lured me into the
romance of science, whispering the possibilities that may lie in life-
sciences+software entrepreneurship. But that implies taking huge risks, not
_easily_ possible with a wife in the same science-boat and a very young kid.
No real savings, coz life science doesn't really pay much in research. Can't
go the ramen route, am almost (back) on it as a Post-Doc!

So, what are my possibilities? Anything that can open the doors to
entrepreneurship, draw upon my polymath training (biology + software) and a
deeply diverse skill-set (molecules-of-life + mostly python coding + systems
administration). Hello HN! Any takers?

~~~
sosuke
Well my hidden friend, I don't have a success, but I just haven't stopped
trying so you can take my advice with a healthy heaping of salt. It sounds
like you've got a real good combo of expertise. Have you considered writing
applications for biologists, biologists in training? A good deal of successful
products and SaaS tools are selling to the developers. You know the math of
biology, what pocket app might be useful, is there anything in managing a
history of stuff, notes, etc. Something targeting biologists. I've seen folks
make some decent side money writing calculators for stuff like beam strength
based on material and dimensions. Things you've done a thousand times or do
often but can be wrapped up in a nice little package.

------
greymeatball
I know it's N of 1 but I did grad school with a wife and kid both at home, all
of us supported on my typical student stipend. Then lived in one of the most
expensive locales in the country as a postdoc, again, wife was at home with
the kid(s). Started making $45k, 2.5 years later was at $55k (you do know that
postdocs can ask for raises, right?). Now in a tenure-track faculty position,
have federal funding, and making $125k/year. It's not impossible to make it
work, and I'd do it all again.

~~~
theorique
You're one of the fortunate ones - and undoubtedly you worked extremely hard
to get into that position. But many people also work hard but do not wind up
with the same reward at the end of the road.

------
cryoshon
I don't have a PhD, and won't be getting one. While it's something I'd love to
do for the sake of knowledge, it simply isn't workable money wise, family
wise, or time wise. The postdocs and graduate students work 6 days a week for
10 hours each day for a pittance.

I'd like to think that all these gripes about science are reaching some sort
of boiling point, and that some solution is right around the corner-- except
that I'm here in the trenches, so I know there is no such thing happening.
People suffer through it, grumbling once in a while, but refusing to attempt
to better their own circumstances in any way other than more work.

Many of them lead outwardly lonely or empty lives spent slaving away at their
lab benches or tissue culture rooms. They cannot afford to replace their old
clothes, phones, or bicycles. They live in houses with 4-6 other people, even
into their 30s. When they publish their paper, it is their supervisor's name
that is noticed. The bitterness and beatdown demeanor they express suffuses
many of their non-work conversations.

Science is a pretty bad life in academia. Industry scientists still need to
muddle around in academia for at least some period of time, but on the whole
they seem much better off... except that most people from the academic side
don't consider them to be scientists at all.

~~~
Retra
>except that most people from the academic side don't consider them to be
scientists at all.

Are they publishing their work in a way that other people can use? Or are they
grinding out the meat of patents and trade secrecy?

------
fiatmoney
Not brilliant to ensure a good fraction of your smartest citizens are
effectively unable to reproduce.

~~~
saschajustin
Would your smartest citizens really make such dumb life choices?

My professors pushed me so hard to get on the grad school track.

I was too smart to do something so stupid.

Professors are no longer the smartest people in society because only idiots go
into academia. Grad students are often not the best or brighest but people
with some kind of mental illness that prevents them from making rational long-
term decisions.

There is no way that an intelligent person would ever try to get into academia
in this climate. The people who try are on par with the pothead guitar player
starting a garage band to get rich--they're not smart.

~~~
almost_usual
Not all smart people care about money, stability, or following social norms.
Do you know much about Galois? He layed the foundation of modern Algebra as a
teenager.

Do you know what else Galois did in his free time? He became a political
radical, served a nine month jail sentence, and had an affair with the prison
medic's daughter ultimately resulting in his death at the age of 20.

~~~
tomjakubowski
Another example is Erdős who lived out of a suitcase, traveling from
colleague's home to colleague's home and collaborating on papers with them
before moving on after a few days.

------
CurtMonash
I got my PhD in Math from Harvard in 1979. Based on
[http://abel.harvard.edu/dissertations/index.html](http://abel.harvard.edu/dissertations/index.html),
it seems that 5-10 folks per year did that in those days. Perhaps 20% went on
to research careers big enough to have Wikipedia articles now -- mainly in
academia, although there's one in industrial cryptography (Don Coppersmith)
and another in finance. Most of the rest have had decent careers in academia
or business.

However, I don't recall grants -- beyond grad school fellowships or whatever
-- playing a major role in pure math at that time.

------
varelse
Grad school cost me close to ~$100M... My bad...

No I am not exaggerating. I would have been #3 at a very successful tech
company had I chosen it over grad school and that's about half what #1 and #2
are worth these days.

That said, over a decade after I tripled my salary in a day by fleeting my
post-doc for the dotcom boom, everything I learned in academia suddenly became
relevant and continues to increase in relevance every year.

~~~
puredemo
What became more relevant that you learned?

~~~
varelse
bioinformatics and machine learning

------
roadnottaken
I have never heard of a professor "forgoing their own salary" to keep the
lights on. I'd be surprised if this was allowed, actually.

Also, for what it's worth, I did a PhD and a post-doc and have a nice biotech
job that pays well. It's not an easy road (what is?) but it's not as bleak as
all-that, if you enjoy doing science.

~~~
regehr
I routinely forego summer salary in order to make sure the students are fed.
This works because I receive a perfectly adequate 9-month salary from the
state (and also my household has two incomes).

~~~
mjt0229
This is my family's situation as well. My wife has a 9-month salary for her
tenure-track position at a state university. Her startup package hardly
covered anything. The university has virtually no money to give out in small
grants to help along until she gets an extramural grant from the NIH or the
NSF, but the kind of research you can do at a small state university that's
focused on teaching is not sexy enough to garner big money from most
extramural granting agencies.

As a result, she's applying for grants at the moment to pay a few students a
paltry sum to stay and work in her lab over the summer. She will work for
free. Any students who can't cover their own room and board on their own
probably couldn't afford to stay and work; they need to spend 30 or 40 hours a
week in the lab, which pretty much excludes other sources of income. My wife
makes the point that it's unfair that poor students can't afford the
experience to work in a lab as an undergraduate, even if it will benefit their
careers in the long term.

~~~
zaroth
> The university has money to give out... The kind of research you can do...is
> not sexy enough.

Capitalism is like this, but I don't see why in this day and age there isn't
sexy research that you could do just about anywhere. Research -> Patents ->
Profit. Just like in most startups, if the revenue model is nothing to sell
and just hope VCs keep you flush, it's not going to work out in most cases.

It sounds like the research simply isn't profitable so the lab fails. That is
the definition of capitalism, and the same reason most startups fail.

We need to make good research easier to monetize and more profitable, not
figure more ways to hand out grants. At least that's the Economic argument.

------
throwaway1979
I have a PhD in CS from a highly ranked school (systems) and work for an
industrial lab (6 years out of school). I make the same as a fresh graduate
from Waterloo from recent empirical evidence. It is just dressed up
differently ... the fresh grad in question has a salary at the 100K mark
salary with 25K-ish in guaranteed bonus for a few years (plus some stock
options). I make that in guaranteed salary with no bonus or options. My work
week just ended (easily 10 hours a day doing very cool stuff but not science).
I'm juggling reading some papers out of true interest (deep belief nets),
reviewing some crappy papers for some journal that were due two weeks ago, and
spending time with my wife. Clearly I made some very bad career decisions.

~~~
billsossoon
Then get out of your comfort zone. If you want to shake up your career, now's
the time to do it. And nobody is going hand it to you.

------
kevinalexbrown
"Why do we do this to ourselves?" She asked me. "We train forever and ever,
live in near poverty, work insane hours—all of it to get jobs that don’t
exist, as tenure track faculty. Why do we suffer this way?"

Because it's fun and fulfilling. My lab has had people who left banking and
consulting gigs, at extraordinary financial cost, measured in dollars. Neither
seemed to regret the switch much, but many who go the other way feel the same.

Planning on a tenure track job isn't very reasonable, it's like planning for a
successful startup, I suppose. But right now I get to do exactly what I want
to be doing. The 'premium' economists would say I pay is worth it to me, for
now.

~~~
Retra
It's not that fun though. It's a fun _dream_, and a dream that is worth
chasing in theory, but most of us never come close to living it. Instead you
just say "well, I'm sure things will work out after the hard part is over."

There is no reliable point where the hardship ends. It's just sacrifice or
career change for most.

------
api
It's simple: we have de-funded science just like we've de-funded other liberal
pursuits.

People like Peter Thiel are right about the drought of fundamental innovation
since the early 70s, but they are wrong in other ways that ultimately render
their arguments void and hypocritical. Thiel backs the same right-libertarian
economic policies that caused this problem in the first place. The reason we
stopped going to the Moon and inventing new paradigms in computing is because
we stopped funding it.

The simple fact is that only three kinds of entities can fund basic research
in most fields:

(1) Governments.

(2) _Gigantic_ corporations with entrenched monopolies so profitable that they
can afford to spend like governments (e.g. the old Bell Labs). Usually deep
lasting monopolies of that sort are government-granted... again Bell Labs is a
good example. So this goes back to governments or alternately government can
be seen as the ultimate super-monopoly.

(3) Individuals with absolutely stratospheric net worth (over one billion at a
minimum). The problem is that there are few of these and fewer who really get
science and care about it that much.

You can't -- and shouldn't be able to -- patent a law of nature. Discovering a
fundamental principle that led eventually to practical fusion power,
interstellar travel, or radical life extension (to give examples) would be
among the most valuable acts in human history, but its economic value would be
pretty darn close to $0. There is no way to directly monetize it. As a result,
markets cannot efficiently fund basic research. There is no way to securitize
it -- no marketable financial vehicle for valuing it, capitalizing it, or
delivering returns on it.

Monetize-ability doesn't come in until later -- until engineers have
assimilated the new scientific discovery or principle and designed practical
and workable technologies based around it. Usually these are different people
than the original discoverers. Sometimes this process takes generations.

Science won't come back from its present abyss until and unless we get over
market fundamentalism and realize that there are some classes of human
endeavor that markets just aren't very good at funding.

It's a fact that's been true throughout history too. All the wonders of the
ancient world (pyramids, Roman roads and aqueducts, etc.) were built by
governments. None were built by commerce. All the wonders of the modern world
-- the Moon landings, the Internet, the ISS, the Human Genome Project, the
harnessing of the atom -- are either wholly government funded or were set into
motion by a substantial initial investment of government money. The only big
set of counterexamples I can think of are mostly out of Bell Labs, which was
funded by a government-backed telephone monopoly.

If you think Xerox Parc is a counterexample, go find the Engelbart demo. Parc
was doing stuff that was trail-blazed by a DOD-funded SRI project a decade
earlier. If you think Elon Musk's ventures are counterexamples, understand
that both Tesla and _especially_ SpaceX are built directly on massive amounts
of government R&D over the past 50 years. SpaceX is basically commercializing
a lot of NASA (and Soviet, and German) technology. Elon himself says this, to
his credit.

Most libertarians are simultaneously pro-tech and anti-state-investment. This
requires an act of willful blindness and ideologically driven self-delusion on
the same level as believing that the Earth is 6000 years old and mankind
coexisted with dinosaurs. There is simply zero historical evidence that you
can have that cake and eat it too. This is a special case of the more general
"public good denialism" of right-libertarian and conservative ideology. Market
fundamentalism is, quite ironically, America's own version of Soviet dogma.

The deeper underlying reality is that to make a huge step forward like this
requires enough capital to effectively insulate a group of smart motivated
people _from_ the market (and other forces and demands) long enough to enable
them to try something fundamentally new. Nothing like that is _ever_
profitable from the get-go. You can't bootstrap it. It must be a "pure act,"
almost Nietzschean, undertaken for the goal itself and nothing more. "We will
go to the moon" or "we will build a pyramid" because... we decided to. Period.
Only once the trail has been blazed can commerce come in and line the street
with shops and houses. At that point you've de-risked the path enough that
bootstrapping and venture funding and similar things become thinkable.

I'm not _anti-_ market. I reject that fundamentalism too, and generally reject
fundamentalism as a way of thinking. Governments can fund basic research
because they can, but they stink at taking it beyond the discovery or
prototype phase. I'm just saying that markets are good at some things, but not
others. Market should be free to act where they are effective, but they should
be part of a larger political landscape that encompasses multiple mechanisms
that are (hopefully) given jurisdiction where they work best.

Everything I wrote here will remain true until someone figures out a way to
profitably fund such things within a market framework. Given the monstrous
challenges involved I'm not holding my breath. Patents would be a poor
mechanism, since they would have the perverse effect of shutting down research
in a whole area for a long time.

~~~
gphil
Wow, I wish I could upvote this comment even more. It's a much more well-
thought out version of what I wanted to say on this topic. Thank you.

I'll just add that it seems to me (in the US at least) that one's compensation
is more proportional to ones's proximity to financial transactions and the
size of those transactions, rather than it is to your overall value creation
for society (contrary to what most libertarians, especially those in Silicon
Valley, like to argue.) This is why financiers and executives make by far the
most money while teachers and scientists make peanuts despite producing great
value for society.

~~~
api
> is more proportional to ones's proximity to financial transactions

Wow! I had precisely the same realization years ago -- compensation is based
in part on proximity to the transaction and the relationship seems
exponential. That's why salespeople quite often make more than inventors,
engineers, etc. and why the final commercializers of tech make orders of
magnitude more than those that develop it (e.g. Zuckerberg vs. Tim Berners-
Lee).

The other factor is equity ownership and other forms of leverage.

There's an old atheist joke: that we should teach the Bible in school so we'd
have more atheists. A similar effect caused me to lose my faith in at least
naive and right-leaning forms of libertarianism. I worked for a while in
business consulting. The only thing that kept me from becoming a full-on
socialist was _then_ working for a while as a government contractor. Both
business and government are sausage factories. You just don't want to know.

In the end I ended up cured of most forms of political fundamentalism. If
there were quick easy sound-bite answers to these things, we would not be
struggling with these same problems over and over again. They would be solved
and we'd be walking around in some kind of sci-fi white toga world.

------
harmonicon
My first college major was biology. I was determined to become a "scientist",
inspired by all the giants I learned about in high school. I immediately found
a job working in a lab after getting to college.

However, I quickly become disillusioned about the career prospect. In the
textbook, it seems like Mendel had a great idea one day after observation of
pea traits. He cultivated some pea plants to test his idea and thus came the
genetic theory of inheritance. Boom, home run. Modern biology research takes a
lot more effort and churning just to get to a intermediate finding. Obviously
I was at the bottom rung with the most menial work but it just did not appeal
to me much.

In addition to that, it is very apparent that everyone in the lab is stressed
out. The professor is always working on a new grant application; post-docs
worried about their future; grad students trying to get their experiment
finished and paper out. People come into the lab on weekends all the time. It
feels like a grind and very few people seem to have the time to slow down and
take delight in their work. I didn't have an idea of how much their respective
salary back then but its obviously they are not rich.

I worked on the job for all four years but am very glad I switched my major to
CS in my sophomore year.

~~~
hudibras
I don't really want to start a "us vs. them" flamewar, but biology is almost
universally recognized as the most stressful lifestyle for grad students and
post-docs, followed closely by chemistry. The lab lifestyles in those
disciplines are insane.

~~~
Retra
It is easy to hate working in a lab...

------
ska
It can even be hard when your career trajectory isn't stuck. I went to grad
school because it was well funded and I could do fun research; I did the same
thing in a post-doc with my own funding (much more than this article suggests,
so I wasn't giving up too much salary compared to industry).

But I got a good look at what the next 10+ years were going to look like if I
wanted to be successful at it. Although I had tenure track offers I decided
the life of a research academic, even at an R1, wasn't for me. The
practicalities of maintaining funding derail a lot of good research ideas and
make people very conservative. Time pressure from the admin and teaching on
top of this leaves little left for actual research. This was topped off with
the difficulty I was having trying to get outside collaborations really
working and transition my research into practice. Maybe if I'd been better at
it I would have had opportunities that changed my mind, I don't know.

So I left, although many of my colleagues thought I was crazy to do so having
"made it" past the post-doc trap.

I can't complain at all, I made a decent salary for several years to just do
research and learn things, which was great. But I couldn't see staying.

------
harmonicon
Also I feel like this article just reflect a familiar trend across all US
labor market: Winner takes all. The people at the top always take a
disproportionate amount of the overall resources. In manufacturing it's the
CEO vs the assembly line worker; in healthcare it's the hospital administrator
vs the nurse aid; in academics its the university administrator vs the grad
student.

~~~
crpatino
I do not think "winner takes all" reflects what you described. Rather, I'd say
it means: best basketball player plays in NBA and makes millions per year.
Median basketball player trains a pee-wee team on the side while holding a
sales day job.

~~~
DaveWalk
I diagree, and think the OP's point is actually quite prescient: "winner take
all" is exactly how science is rewarded.

The first to a discovery can claim the credit, and will get the merit added to
their score on grant applications, tenure, etc. The second discoverer, or one
who affirms the finding, is considered at best to lack creativity.

------
othmanaba
The argument that PhDs should earn more because their education costed more is
faulty. Salary is a price, you see. It is governed by laws of economics,
supply and demand. Scientists should not earn more, because their value is
unknown. Why would anyone pay $200,000 to someone who "might" create an
amazing paper? Whereas those in investment banking earn much more than that
because they provide much greater value to the employer. One should be
pragmatic about life and not feel entitled just because they incurred high
costs.

~~~
MereInterest
I think that the point is the other way around. Why should anybody go into
science, given how little compensation there is for it? And that is the
problem.

It is easier to pay people for things with short payback periods. That's why
the car salesman gets a bonus for each car sold, but the engineer who designed
the car does not. The engineer was more essential yo the product, but the
connection between the salesman and the money is more obvious.

The scientist is more useful to society, but the investment banker has a more
obvious connection to money, so the banker gets paid more. We should add more
incentive to the scientists, because otherwise the rational choice is to leave
science.

~~~
jschwartzi
And more importantly, we should ask ourselves what kind of society we would
prefer to live in. Would we like to live a life as a used car salesman,
surrounded by other used car salesmen, talking about our weekly sales numbers
with our used car salesmen wives?

------
ergzay
This all comes back to profitable work generation. MUCH of science just isn't
profitable, you're usually doing something that simply shows that something
ISN'T possible. This, to the economy, was a worthless result. The only value
was to stop other's from also spending money on that same worthless result.
That's fundamentally why science doesn't pay well.

~~~
pcrh
Perhaps it isn't that science is unprofitable, it just isn't _immediately_
profitable.

Pretty much the entire modern economy, i.e. those parts that don't depend
primarily on manual labor, politicking or usury, is founded on the work of
scientists and engineers.

------
mason240
So what can actually be done? Simply adding more funding won't change the grad
student -> post doc -> tenured professor system.

~~~
brianwawok
You could create more tenured prof positions with more funding, which would
obviously help right?

~~~
dnautics
so waste taxpayer money on more positions which create more postdocs and grad
students? Just kicks the problem down the road.

What if there's a limited social capacity to do science? As in, at any given
time there's it's only worth it to allow some percentage of people to do
science (and not all of them will be doing science). Throwing more money at
the problem will only muddy the waters by drowning out the good voices with
junk, and what you will see is thousands of journals, and more fraud and bad
science percolating through the upper journals. Hmm...

~~~
craigyk
I might agree with "What if there's a limited social capacity to do science?

but "more fraud and bad science" seems (to me) to be excaerbated by increased
pressure for limited funding, rather than the opposite.

------
hueving
> Don’t we, as a society, want them to have bright little babies who will make
> the future a better place? If we do, we’re really working against ourselves.

This is a common flaw in thinking I see all of the time when it comes to
teachers, scientists, and everyone else that someone says is underpaid. The
fact that they are underpaid represents exactly how the sum of our society
values people in these positions. So the blunt answer is, "no, humans are more
focused on short term goals and reward people that provide something with an
immediate return."

Lots of smart people train to become lawyers as well, and now the market is
saturated with new lawyers resulting in a situation similar to PhD students.
Think about how much interest you have in shelling out extra money to fund
these new lawyers salaries with bring them to parity with the law graduates of
10 years ago. That is how much interest most of society has in ensuring that
someone with a PhD in biology is making six figures.

------
saalweachter
This is trickle up economics at its finest.

The share of income going to labor has been declining for decades. 2000 hours
a year at minimum wage is $15k before taxes. Why should universities pay their
grad students any better when $15-20k is the realistic best alternative? If
you want to increase grad student stipends, a $15/hr minimum wage is the way
to do it.

~~~
tdaltonc
I would expect that most grad students have plan-B options that can beat
minimum wage.

~~~
saalweachter
The problem is that there's also a very large pool of people who _could_ be
grad students who are currently unemployed or underemployed. If some grad
students get tired of the conditions and decide to seek higher wages in
private industry, the universities can easily recruit more grad students in
short order for the exact same wages as they were paying before. Therefore,
there is no incentive to improve the conditions to retain their existing grad
students (or post-docs, or assistant professors...).

------
dluan
It's posts like these that show just how ripe for innovation academia has
become.

It's no surprise that there are now so many science tech startups popping up.
Founded primarily by scientists.

[https://hackpad.com/Science-Tech-Startups-
zSZ0KdT6Zk1](https://hackpad.com/Science-Tech-Startups-zSZ0KdT6Zk1)

------
AznHisoka
Replace science with medicine, or law, and the same still applies.

~~~
declan
>Replace science with medicine, or law, and the same still applies.

I don't think that's true with law. The linked essay talks about "the 20 years
of your adult life that a scientist typically spends proving they deserve a
career."

You can be a newly minted, bar-passed, practicing lawyer after spending 7
years of your adult life, and 6 years if you diligently optimize your course
selections (typically 4 years undergrad, 3 years law school, plus a few months
studying for the bar exam). That's a heck of lot less than 20 years, and
matters a _lot_ in terms of female fertility, the topic of the essay.

And about 20% of new law school graduates will be making six figures in their
new job. There's a sharp peak in the distribution of full-time salaries for
new lawyers centered around $185K because of big law, with a larger, flatter
peak centered around $60K thanks to small firms, nonprofits, and work that
doesn't actually require a law degree. Those figures come from NALP data, and
reflect the situation even _during_ the lawyer/law school bubble the U.S. is
in today.

Note I'm not saying law is a necessarily a wiser choice; I know one big law
associate who slept overnight on a partner's couch so much I helped her with
the transport of a small refrigerator so she could keep meals at work. That's
even though she lived within about four blocks of the office. She eventually
quit to write novels.

~~~
aetherson
Passing the bar does not "prove you deserve a career" in law to more or less
the same degree that getting a PhD does not "prove you deserve a career" in
academics. Plenty of lawyers who pass the bar (these days) ultimately are not
successful as lawyers, and the low levels of attorneys at big law firms are a
grind designed to weed people out in much the same way that tenure tracks are.

Ditto finance.

That's not to say that either law or finance take AS long as academics do to
get to the point where you're secure in your position, but neither get it
right out of their degrees.

~~~
declan
I think I largely agree with you; one major difference is the opportunity cost
of science postdocs vs. other careers. Philip Greenspun's linked article
elsewhere in the discussion is probably the best treatment I've ever read.

But I would disagree with your concept of being "secure in your position." I'm
not sure that happens nowadays outside of tenured academia, government
bureaucracies, and union jobs.

Perhaps you're "secure in your position" at a law firm if you're at the top of
your game in terms of expertise, if the firm overall is well-managed, if
you're responsible for a multi-million dollar book of business that's some
multiple of your take as a partner, and if you're assured that your clients
won't go elsewhere (or hire your associates to work as staff attorneys at a
fraction of what you're charging). Meeting all those boolean AND requirements
strikes me as a rather rare situation relative to the overall population of
attorneys out there.

~~~
aetherson
Sure. I was hand-waving "secure in your career." In a big law firm, my
understanding is that partners are much MORE secure in their careers than
associates, in as much as the system seems designed to winnow out associates,
whereas it's much less designed to winnow out partners.

But of course it's not like old-style for-life-employment job security. It's
not even close.

------
mudetroit
I wonder if this doesn't point to a market inefficiency that someone could
take advantage of. A company that focused on research specifically, patenting
and marketing relevant discoveries or spinning of subsidiary companies to
exploit research they are doing.

I know it isn't the tenure track positions that are mentioned in the articles.
But a company like this could potentially pay substantially more than the
academic institutions,and give them a more immediate opportunity to publish as
a primary investigator.

Those additional publishing opportunities may allow them to even return to the
academic field if they chose to later on.

Just something I was mulling over while reading the article.

~~~
Chronic30
Go make that mobile app then.

------
chris_wot
Or a career in science may save your firstborn, or someone else's. Just
saying.

------
veryluckyxyz
If that is all a career in science will cost you, you are one of the lucky
few. For many others, it costs a lot more. If your significant other is also
in science, bonus costs for you! If you came to US on a student visa and want
to continue living in US and you spent your OPT working as a post-doc, more
bonus costs for you! If after many years of postdoc, you have not been able to
get a tenure-track position, even more bonus costs for you!

One has to try though.

------
padobson
If you're smart enough to copy DNA with a polymerase chain reaction, then
you're probably smart enough to figure out the logistics of building a highly
efficient janitorial services company that undercuts the local competition.

On that career path, you'll be making six figures before your scientist
doppleganger gets their graduate degree.

The point is, most career paths don't put money as the top priority. Count up
the costs before you start down it.

------
rthomas6
What is the economics of this? I never understood why this is the case now in
academia but it apparently didn't used to be. What changed?

~~~
haihaibye
[https://biomickwatson.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/nbt-2706-f...](https://biomickwatson.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/nbt-2706-f1.jpg)

------
mikhailfranco
If a situation doesn't make any logical sense, you are not seeing it from the
right perspective. If you look around and can't see the sucker, it's probably
you.

Higher education is not designed to produce happy productive affluent
scientists, it's designed to make money for the education industry
(administrators) and churn out debt slaves for the finance industry.

------
sosuke
I remember watching Prince of Darkness, the students were in science.

    
    
      [Walter is studying quantum physics]
      Walter: Why do I want a Ph.D. in this?
      Catherine: Particle beam weapons, research grants...
      Walter: A millionaire when I'm forty! Now I remember!
    

That is what I thought as well, I guess science doesn't pay.

------
Balgair
Ask HN: Ok, well, im in my first year of a neuro PhD. I returned to school to
beat the credential creep and partly to change careers. I have burning
questions, but the funding is just not there at my uni. Also, as it is a
career change, my grades aren't the best, as I lack the foundation in neuro
(was EE before). What now?

~~~
dnautics
"beating the credential creep" is just about the worst reason to get a PhD, so
I'm going to be a jerk and start by saying "you're part of the problem". But
thank you for considering changing careers. What you have identified is
exactly correct. If your institution is unable to raise funds _in neuro_ that
is a BAD SIGN since Obama promised a heap of money for neuro, and it is one of
the few areas that is modestly well-funded (of course a lot of 'other players'
jumped in to try to capture that money too so there's now, surprise surprise,
more competition for that grant pool).

If you were an EE, even with bad grades, you should be able to find a startup
that will want you, that is, if you're young and want to play the startup
lottery. Another thing to consider is to get a master's in EE or a related
engineering discipline if you want a 'second chance' to bring your grades up.
Sure, it costs money, but it's only one or two years and masters are very
highly valued in the Engineering disciplines.

------
cafard
In the cultural historian Burkhardt's letters, I saw one to a young friend
saying, in essence, What do you want to be a university professor for? Become
a high school teacher, and you'll earn enough to marry and start a family.
This was 19th-Century Switzerland (or possibly Germany, I forget).

------
tezzer
I've contracted for several government agencies and research firms, and I've
noticed only PhD's get to run laboratories. Without one, you hit a glass
ceiling rather quickly (by which I mean you don't make the leap from 100Kish
to 200Kish salaries)

------
known
Why you should not go to medical school?

[http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/abinazir/2005/05/23/why-you-
sho...](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/abinazir/2005/05/23/why-you-should-not-
go-to-medical-school-a-gleefully-biased-rant/)

------
drdrey
"It didn’t really occur to me that most employed twenty-somethings weren’t
scavenging free food from lecture halls."

I used to do the same thing as a postdoc at UC Berkeley, while trying to
provide for a wife and kid. Actually finding leftover sandwiches was a big
deal.

------
superdude264
So the university get a portion of each grant someone brings in? This may be
naive, but I thought grant money was given to a person/project and that
tuition paid for university stuff.

~~~
dekhn
Yes, universities get an extra amount over the requested amount; it's
negotiated between the U and the funding agency and is called "overhead". It
goes into Dean's funds and stuff, part of which supports departmental-level
services, as well as many other places.

------
papul1993
This makes me so sad. I am currently studying Chemistry in a joint
undergraduate+postgraduate program. And reading all of this makes me so sad.
Here in India, the situation is even worse.

------
xanmas
Assuming 7% returns, and 6% employee match of a graduate student's salary in
my programme (32k), graduate school costs ~288k in lost retirement savings, as
well.

------
fergie
As a well paid software consultant, I totally envy my friends and family who
get to work in academia. I would love to do a PhD no matter how poor it made
me.

------
vph
All this person is focusing on is $, $, $, and more $. If you want money, get
a MS degree. PhD's don't get you high-salary jobs.

------
kirk21
Guess it depends on your location. In Belgium they pay quite a lot to compete
with the private sector. In Germany not so much...

------
facepalm
On the other hand, getting tenure is like winning the lottery, so maybe 8% is
not that bad a probability.

------
niche
The issue here is that you are focused on: something vague (a PhD) and a
quantitative psuedo paycheck. Money is bound by numbers, a primal abstraction
of the mind. Focus on what is most meaningful to you, get it, chew it, digest
it, vomit it out, study your vomit and repeat. Everything else will fall into
place. You are limitless.

------
rrtwo
ok, so I have done the 'mistake'* and now an epsilon away from getting my PhD
in CS.

What would be the best came coming out of it financial?

* I did enjoy the process very much, and learned a lot, but like the gist of the article - you can't feed on science.

------
abvdasker
relevant:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovEghdXC4tE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovEghdXC4tE)

------
lambdafunc
go do an mba instead of a phd if you really want to spend more time in
university.

------
geebee
My guess is that none of this is surprising to people on HN, we're well aware
of it.

But the message is important. Our government still operates on an almost
unquestioned assumption that there is a critical shortage of people going into
science and engineering.

A discussion from the chronicle of higher education is here - along with a
link to the very specific legislation that is voted on.

[http://chronicle.com/article/Immigration-Overhaul-
Hailed/140...](http://chronicle.com/article/Immigration-Overhaul-
Hailed/140055/)

"The real game changer in the bill for universities is in the green-card
section, where advanced-degree graduates for STEM fields have green cards
stapled to their diplomas," said Craig Lindwarm, assistant director for
international issues and Congressional and governmental affairs at the
Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities."

Notice that this is specifically STEM. Many legislators in government truly
believe that there is a shortage of STEM workers, especially at the grad
degree level (they are almost never holders of these degrees).

Meanwhile, a report from the RAND institute finds the aversion to STEM
graduate degrees among US citizens (ie., people who already have the freedom
to work and live in the US regardless of what degree they hold) is rational
considering the better prospects in other fields.

[http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html](http://www.rand.org/pubs/issue_papers/IP241.html)

Keep in mind that a dental hygienist in San Francisco makes a median salary of
109k a year, a registered nurse in San Jose 122k a year (see us news best jobs
for sources).

The whole system is due for a correction, and truth is, the market would bring
about this reckoning on its own if it weren't for the interference of
government. To get people into STEM graduate programs, especially at the elite
level, you'd need to make those graduate programs as attractive as MBA,
dentistry, medicine, elite law, and so forth. What would happen? Perhaps
universities would do something about the 50%+ PhD attrition rates, realizing
that elite law and med schools typically have attrition rates of below .5%
(yes, half of one percent). Perhaps they'd make completion times shorter and
more predictable. Perhaps salaries and work conditions would improve.

Or, alternatively, universities wanting students and tech companies wanting
workers can lobby for special consideration in the immigration system, where
immigrants are allowed into the US only on the condition that they either have
immediate family or spend a huge chunk of their lives studying science and
engineering, getting PhD degrees that only make sense if you don't have the
same choices as full and free citizens, and working in this field under
limiting visa conditions for an extended period of time, after which your life
options may be more limited.

So far, the second choice appears to be the path the US has chosen, but by
delaying the market correction, the US may truly harm itself in the long run.
I don't think it's wise to allow the career path for science to deteriorate to
the point where the only people who would pursue it are ones who don't have
the freedom to chose their profession in the US.

------
nosferatus
low cost high reward, from my view

------
PaulHoule
I think that's the right way to put it.

------
pvaldes
This is totally true.

------
comrade1
This is nothing new.

I planned on being scientist in genetics/cell bio starting around 10th grade.
I worked in laboratories throughout my undergrad years and then got into a
prestigious human genetics phd program around 1993.

I first started to see that something was wrong while still an undergrad while
working with people smarter than myself that were on their second or third
post-doc. I had no desire to be into my career 12 years (phd + 3 2-year post-
docs) and still not have a real job.

In graduate school I saw this continued and I also began to see just how much
of a crap-shoot having a successful science career in academia was. The young
professors on tenure track all had some amazing research during their phd or
post-doc(s) but most often it based on something unexpected or novel that they
couldn't have predicted.

Finally, when the head of the NIH testified in front of congress that there is
a glut of scientists and that he couldn't recommend to anyone to go into
science I decided to drop out.

I've had a great career since then outside of science but there are times when
I miss it. I especially miss being around people much smarter than myself and
driven purely by curiosity and the desire for knowledge. And I miss doing
original research solving a fundamental question about life that is completely
unknown and that can't just be googled.

And there are times when I get tired of the software industry and its man-
children and its lack of seriousness... I know that everything we do isn't
pointless and I've worked on some interesting cutting edge government/military
projects that had mixed academic/industry teams, but it saddens me that so
many of the smartest people in the software industry are working on
essentially marketing/advertising projects. Google has become the blackhole
for researchers that Microsoft Research used to be in the late-90s.

I'm not as negative as my post probably comes across as. I do like what I do
and I have made friends with people in the software industry that are closer
to my mindset than the norm. But it would have been nice to have been able to
stay in science and have a better chance at being able to support myself and a
family.

~~~
DaveWalk
>This is nothing new.

Thank you for bringing up this point (and speaking to it personally from 20+
years ago!). I have been beating this drum for years since I've read Paula
Stephan's research[1] on "How Economics Shapes Science." The overproduction of
PhDs, the delaying of retirement by professors, and the addition of
institutions to grant funding have been known since the 1980s, and the trend
has been linear since then.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Shapes-Science-Paula-
Stephan...](http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Shapes-Science-Paula-
Stephan/dp/0674049713)

------
MichaelCrawford
Why do scientists regard academia as necessary?

Out of my own education, the science class that I regard as the very-most
valuable with Caltech's "Physics X", taught by Richard Feynman. There were no
grades, no homework, no tests. One did not register for the class ahead of
time, one could come and go as one pleased.

One could ask any question one wanted, provided Dr. Feynman was not required
to work out any math. It's not like he didn't know how to, rather that he felt
conceptual understanding was far more important than the understanding that
comes from following derivations.

Pierre Fermat totally stymied more than three hundred years of the world's
very finest mathematicians with his famous Last Theorem - while serving as a
magistrate of the French Court.

We've had universities since medieval times, however it is only recently that
universities have served science.

It is also only recently that one attended a university to prepare for a
career. Consider that I have a degree in Physics, despite that I work as a
coder. In my actual experience I am often able to do work that those with
Computer Science degrees are unable to.

(I expect that some CS graduates could perform Physics research that I myself
would be unable to, were they only to try.)

Would you like to do research? To publish? Win the Nobel Prize? Score with
graduate students?

Just carry around a notebook.

If you see something that you don't fully understand, write it down. You might
forget, or if you remember the phenomenon, you might not remember it
accurately.

If you find a phenomenon that you can't explain, try to find some way to
explain it. perhaps it's in wikipedia. Or if not, perhaps it's in scientific
american magazine. or if not, perhaps it's in the astrophysical journal.

Maybe you've discovered something totally new, or if not, you are the very
first to take interest in any otherwise unnoticed phenomenon, or perhaps the
first to explain it.

If you can explain it, publish your explanation.

Don't gripe about the peer-reviewed journals - publish it on your website. If
you have a Sitemaps Protocol file -
[http://www.sitemaps.org/](http://www.sitemaps.org/) \- then The Wayback
Machine will eventually pick it up.

"Peer Review", for me, consists of mentioning something I'm working on at
Kuro5hin, then getting flamed mercilessly for it. The way I see my colleagues
at Kuro5hin, is much like the reason Inspector Clouseau requested that Kato
attack him with sophisticated martial arts whenever he entered his apartment.

"Citation" is getting linked.

"What about research grants?" you may reasonably ask.

When I was at the Institute, there was an Astronomy Professor who had never
been awarded a grant in her entire career - no doubt due to sexism, as the
grants are awarded by anonymous committee members.

She was real pissed off about this, but didn't let her lack of funding get her
down; she paid for her research by operating a recycling center on the side.

I'm good enough at Physics that I figure I could get tenure were I to complete
my doctorate.

But I don't want to be part of the system. It was pointed out to me in 1993
that there were too many postdocs, and not enough professorial seats.

I'd like to publish, but really, I don't see the point of completing my PhD or
even applying for a postdoc fellowship.

However, I do carry a laboratory notebook around with me.

And I do publish - on my own website.

(BTW - I didn't decide to be a scientist when I was sixteen; I decided to be a
Chemist at first, when I was but eight years old.)

~~~
selimthegrim
These days she probably wouldn't make tenure. Certainly you're not talking
about Olga Taussky-Todd?

Did you start a PhD?

------
michaelochurch
Academia and VC-funded startups in this "M&A has replaced R&D" era seem
radically different but are actually similar in structure.

You have a massive wealth of mostly passive capital with vague desires behind
it. For the VCs, it's "invest in small businesses and get me a high return",
the passive capitalists being administrators of teachers' pension funds in
Ohio who delegate the small-business investment decisions to a bunch of well-
connected "experts" and kingmakers in California. From the government, it's
"invest in research that benefits the national interest". You have talent that
wants to do the research and exploration. And you have politically-adept
middlemen who manage to leverage the principal-agent problem native to passive
capital for personal gain.

In technology, those are the venture capitalists, the well-connected people
who can be founders whenever they want by placing phone calls, and the buy-
side executives at Hooli-type companies who have the authority to acq-hire
mediocre "talent" at $10 million per head.

In academia, they're the bureaucrats who administer grants and the most
successful academics who transfer out of an IC role into a professorship that
is mostly a management role with a high degree of credit. (That's what the
OP's discussing when he talks about the people doing the work getting the
least credit, having it taken by advisors and full-timers.) Power goes not
necessarily to the best scientists, but to those who are most able to direct
the flow of passive investment capital (from the government) in a direction
they find favorable.

It's upsetting and perverse, but it also shouldn't be surprising. People sell
their votes for pennies and wonder why they don't have power. Ohio pension
funds invest their wealth in Silicon Valley VCs and wonder why none of the
jobs being created are within 500 miles of them. Academics and startup
engineers who work based on "idealism" or "changing the world" are likewise
selling their votes by taking jobs that underdeliver in compensation and
career support. And, of course, people pay taxes into the federal grants that
keep universities afloat (let's be honest: even "private" universities breathe
on taxpayer oxygen) and tuition to get their kids stamped as "approved for
admission into the middle class" and that's the biggest bit of cut-price vote-
selling in all of this.

Part of me says "fuck this noise" and the other part of me doesn't know what
the solution is, for startups or for academia. I think the end goal of all
societies should be (just as political vote-selling is illegal) to make
passive capital a bit less passive, so that the salesmen who make careers of
buying and selling cheap votes at a profit are (what is the word?)
disintermediated.

