
Don't Become a Scientist. - aneesh
http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/scientist.html
======
ingenium
I have to agree with this wholeheartedly. I'm just finishing up my undergrad
in molecular biology. I've been working in a lab doing research for the last
year and a half, and it sucks. As an earlier comment had pointed out, the
post-doc I work along side only makes $40,000/year. He's in his 50's and has
at least 30 published papers on everything from cancer research to stuff the
lab is doing now on BK virus. For the last year, he's been trying to find a
different job, preferably in the private sector and that pays more, but hasn't
had any luck. The work is repetitive and boring, yet you must constantly stay
focused. While it may not seem like it, it's very easy to lose track of which
tube you're adding a chemical to, or which chemicals you've already added.

The bureaucracy is ridiculous. My PI doesn't do any of the research along with
us. He just sits and writes/revises papers and applies to grants all day. Most
of the time, he has no idea how the experiments we're doing even work.

From my research experience and from the experience of others around me, I
knew research was not the field to go into. That's why I'm working on a
startup now and possibly going into an MBA program. Science is a great
undergraduate major, just don't expect to be able to do anything with it when
you graduate.

If you want to do research, at least in biology, don't get a PhD, get an MD.

------
michael_nielsen
A dissenting view

It's true that, as the article and many commenters have said,there are lots of
bad places, and bad cultures within academia.

So what? There's also some great groups and great cultures within academia. If
you want to go the academic path, the thing to do is to make sure you end up
in such a place. So far as I can see the way to achieve this is:

(1) Do a lot of research before you join a group. Just because a group looks
great from the outside (brand name University, famous prof) doesn't mean it'll
be a good experience. Interview former members; tour the lab; ask hard
questions about the culture - what do people love about their jobs; what do
they think is the worst thing about the culture; what do they think about
their career prospects? Follow up on these questions in detail - most people
love to talk about their careers, and if they won't, it often means that
they're not happy. If you get defensive responses, or a refusal to respond,
that tells you what you need to know about the culture. Don't look back.

(2) Iterate until you find a group that looks excellent.

(3) Mentally, when you join a group, think of it as being on probation. After
three and then six months, ask yourself "Am I having fun? Is what I'm doing
making a difference? Is the culture here genuinely good?" If the answer to all
these questions isn't yes, get out, and go join another group. This is hard to
do - you'll get a lot of advice to the contrary - but 9 times out of 10 the
results are a major improvement.

I'm leaving academia now, after PhD, postdocs, being a tenured prof, the whole
nine yards. It was tough at times, but overall, it was an asbolute blast.

~~~
mechanical_fish
If the article at the top of the thread is atypical of a tenured professor,
_this_ post is absolutely typical. I've heard this speech a million times. If
you ever need to hear it again, ask any professor to give it to you and
they'll happily oblige.

Undoubtedly, most tenured professors are having an "absolute blast". Why
shouldn't they be? They are the end product of a rigorous system of selection
for their particular set of personality traits. If you're not the kind of
person who adores being a researcher to the exclusion of all other thoughts --
if you are not either a truly _diehard_ optimist, or the most stubborn person
you'll ever know -- you won't make it to where this guy is.

The career advice here is good, solid advice, as far as it goes. But the
parody of this would be fun to write, and might contain equal amounts of
truth. ("(2) Iterate until you find a group that looks excellent, or until you
discover that all the excellent groups have a waiting list, at which point you
need to either quit grad school, apply for a personal fellowship and win it,
or work for whoever has the grant money to pay you.")

No time for extensive parody today, though -- besides, the guy at _Piled
Higher and Deeper_ has covered that ground better than I ever could -- so I'll
leave you with this caveat: Very, very few of the people you interview with in
a research group will ever tell you that your academic career is a waste of
time and that you should just leave, even if it's true. They've got a very
strong incentive to recruit you, so that you can apply your inexpensive
intelligence and energy to their projects. They've got an incentive to be
careful what they say to you, because if word gets back to their colleagues
that they are discouraging prospective students it might derail their careers.
They also have an even bigger incentive to keep fooling themselves.

And, you know, academic scientists really don't like pain. They're not drill
sergeants. Taking starry-eyed optimists, most of whom remind you of yourself,
and kicking them in the chest is not a lot of fun. It's for their own good,
but it feels like euthanizing puppies. It's just so much easier to encourage
them to follow the same path that you did, and to let time and nature and
bureaucracy take care of teaching them the harsh realities of life.

~~~
michael_nielsen
"Very, very few of the people you interview with in a research group will ever
tell you that your academic career is a waste of time and that you should just
leave, even if it's true."

It's true that they'll rarely say this explicitly. Ultimately, it's the
potential grad student's responsibility to dig and find out what kind of a
culture a research group has. This is a difficult thing to do, requiring
considerable self-confidence and tenacity. Still, in my opinion, if someone is
not willing to do this, then they really should consider some path other than
academia.

"(2) Iterate until you find a group that looks excellent, or until you
discover that all the excellent groups have a waiting list, at which point you
need to either quit grad school, apply for a personal fellowship and win it,
or work for whoever has the grant money to pay you."

You seem to be implicitly assuming that the world owes you a position in a
good group. It doesn't. If you can't find one, then you shouldn't work for
whoever has grant money to pay you. You should go and do something else - like
start a company.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_You seem to be implicitly assuming that the world owes you a position in a
good group. It doesn't. If you can't find one, then you shouldn't work for
whoever has grant money to pay you. You should go and do something else - like
start a company._

Now we are getting somewhere! :)

------
mechanical_fish
Awesome. Not only does this guy disprove the rule that all tenured profs are
hopeless optimists about becoming a prof, but he's even _more_ of a pessimist
than I am! I mean:

 _I have known more people whose lives have been ruined by getting a Ph.D. in
physics than by drugs._

Um, no. Really, no. Spoken like a guy who hasn't really known many people
whose lives have been ruined by drugs.

The situation is bad -- everything this guy says is true, basically -- but I
don't think it's _that_ bad. In particular, if you have Ph.D.-level skills in
a technical field you can step off the academic treadmill at any point and get
a job. It may not be the kind of job you get to brag about, but you probably
won't starve.

There are people I know who have endured years of continuing depression
because they were unable to become tenured professors. But there are also
people I know who are depressed because they aren't bestselling novelists,
professional musicians, lottery winners, or Bill Gates.

The secret is to be realistic. Study science as an undergrad, then switch to
engineering (this is now my standard advice to young techies.) Get a Ph.D.
only if you really love doing research so badly that you're willing to endure
indentured servitude. Do not plan to become a professor. Make sure to spend
your Ph.D. years drinking as much beer as possible with the smartest people
you know, and enjoy yourself!

~~~
timr
_"There are people I know who have endured years of continuing depression
because they were unable to become tenured professors. But there are also
people I know who are depressed because they aren't bestselling novelists,
professional musicians, lottery winners, or Bill Gates."_

Granted, but science is totally unlike music, writing or gambling, in that
that the best-case payoff is still quite meager. Wanting to become a professor
is a good bit different than wanting to become a rock star or professional
athlete.

Too many smart kids start into grad school thinking that a professorship is a
reasonable, attainable career goal, depending entirely upon your motivation
and intelligence. When they (almost inevitably) fail, it can lead to a crisis
of confidence that goes much deeper than simply failing to become the next
Kanye West. After all, _everyone_ knows that rock stardom depends heavily on
luck...but a professorship depends only on _intelligence_. If you ask me, it's
a cruel game.

~~~
ced
> but a professorship depends only on intelligence

Myeah, but personal relationships and contacts play a big role. Along with
where you live. Einstein was kept out of academia before his big year, right?
How close were we from losing him altogether?

~~~
timr
My writing wasn't totally clear. That sentence would be better if it read "a
professorship ostensibly depends only on intelligence."

------
pg
What he really means is not "don't become a scientist" but "don't get a job as
a professor." The two are by no means identical. There were scientists long
before there were research professors (that concept dates from about 1870) and
there are still plenty of scientists who aren't professors.

Like being a writer, being a scientist depends on what you do, not who pays
you.

~~~
npk
How can one do relevant science without the support that comes from a research
institution? Research professor (I clump lab researchers into the professor
term) is certainly a new thing. So is "big money" science (a consequence of
WWII.) As a result of the research prof and "big money" science, the days of
ben franklin and his kite are long dead. (ben franklin was a great scientist.)

Academia is setup to provide support for scientists: it provides smart people
to talk to. It provides money to pay the bills and run research labs. Where
else can I receive this support?

One path is to take a 6 year detour, build a startup that pays me $30M, and
then run my own research program. Honestly, that seems even harder than two
postdocs.

~~~
middle
meh, Einstein worked in a patent office. Galois failed the french public
school teacher's exam. Grassman spent an eternity teaching middle school. The
Wright brothers repaired bicycles. The academy spent most of its time telling
these people they were wrong, and then, maybe, embraced them once they didn't
have any choice.

------
Trep
Eh... I would debate quite a lot of what he said. This is a very field-
oriented problem. For instance, in Psychology, the majority of graduate
degrees go into counseling. Of the more research oriented people left, there
is a vast array of fields available; Neuropsych, Cognitive Psych, Industrial
Organizational, and so on. These are fields with public and private sector
demand... If you're good, and you publish it is quite possible to land in a
tenure track position is 2-3 years. The biological sciences, which my ex went
into, are likewise diverse with high (unless you study ichthyology) demand.
Finally, know that all academia, like startups, is a dice game. Brilliant is
less than half the battle. Being right often counts for nothing. Hardworking,
with force of will and personality, and in the right place at the right time
(which is not always luck) play an awfully big part of every success. Even
when you get in, you can easily end up the flunky of someone with similar
credentials, but more success. But hey, that's life, right?

~~~
menloparkbum
psychology is a science now?

~~~
whacked_new
My feeling is that there are two diverging branches in "psychology"; one that
should promptly rename itself to a sub-branch of neuroscience, and the other
into a mixture of philosophy, history, and sociology. Who disagrees?

I can't wait to see this rebranching happen, but alas, it's the establishment.

------
mdemare
Philip Greenspun had a great article about this as well:
<http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science>

------
ltratt
I can only speak from my own experience. If you're genuinely sure you're not
in it for the money, you really enjoy the area you're working in, and you're
prepared to work in a way you find interesting rather than simply doing what
will bump you quickly up the career ladder - then academia might well be the
best job that anyone will pay you to do. A lot of people find that they don't
really enjoy one aspect of this and / or can't make the necessary compromises
to make it enjoyable - then it becomes just another job, not much better or
worse than most others.

------
andres
From the government's (and the country's) perspective it makes sense to keep
the imbalance between PhD's trained and PhDs hired because graduate students
that don't go into academia go into industry. A lot of great companies have
come out of disgruntled grad students.

I think the thing we need to figure out is how to deal with the period after a
Masters and before a PhD. This is the period where you start doing real
research and you learn to work on your own. This period is what makes grad
school such valuable training. This is also the period in your life where you
are still young and hungry to make an impact. Unfortunately, it's almost
easier to stay in school and finish your degree, but once you finish it you're
30 and the hunger and energy are gone. Also, you've already put so much time
into a PhD that it's too late to turn back from a career in academia.

Maybe we should redefine the Masters to include some research work.

~~~
electric
"you're 30 and the hunger and energy is gone."

If anything you know a lot more in your domain of expertise and are in a
better position to start a co. Plus you're hungrier -- grad students make very
little money. A formula for startup success.

"Maybe we should redefine the Masters to include some research work."

Actually the Masters does in fact include research work. At least mine did.

~~~
andres
In practice, it's hard to completely change course and take on even more risk
once you are finished with your Ph.D. Often it's the dropouts that start
companies and the PhDs that join them.

In Physics, a Masters typically means 2 years of coursework and passing some
set of exams. Most of us join a research group about 1 year into grad school
but it's hard to do real research until your classes are done.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_Often it's the dropouts that start companies..._

It is probably easier to start a company on the side as a grad student than to
wait until you graduate. Grad student salary sucks, but the flip side is that
it can be a pretty awesome day job. The guy who pointed out that 50% of the
average grad student's 60-hour week is spend playing WoW is pretty much on the
money. You can go months at a time doing only 20 hours of research a week, or
even 10, and still not get fired.

Of course, you're not getting paid much, but you're surrounded by lots of
other smart young people who aren't getting paid much either, so it's kind of
fun. And you certainly aren't going to graduate if you don't do a lot of work
-- but if your preferred exit plan is to found a startup and drop out, who
cares about that?

It's actually rather hard to _fire_ a grad student. The adviser pays the
student very little, but in return (s)he is expected to graduate the student.
A student who is fired by Professor X three or four years into a Ph.D. program
is well and truly screwed. They might sue. They will certainly tell every grad
student they know, and they in turn might tell all the first-year students,
who will avoid working for Professor X like he had the plague. So, once you've
gotten established as a student in a research group, it's not so hard to spend
six months or a year doing only 20 hours worth of work per week. Your adviser
will roll her eyes a lot, but she's not likely to take action until you've
accumulated a really solid, long-term record as a slacker.

~~~
timr
_"It's actually rather hard to fire a grad student. The adviser pays the
student very little, but in return (s)he is expected to graduate the student.
A student who is fired by Professor X three or four years into a Ph.D. program
is well and truly screwed. They might sue."_

...which is why the question rarely arises. The faculty have devious ways of
eliminating students that don't make the grade. Why fire people, when you can
just collude to make their lives so miserable that they choose to quit?

Do it properly, and the other students will just assume that the problem is a
personal issue. If you're a successful researcher, it won't scare anyone away
from your lab.

~~~
asdflkj
Can you elaborate a little on these devious ways?

~~~
timr
The basic principle is that your advisor has control over _everything_ , and
you have control over _nothing_. Need an important collaboration for your next
paper? That won't happen without your advisor's support. The same goes for
access to specialized equipment or supplies (the budget can become very tight
when your PI doesn't like you). At most schools, your PI also controls your
funding; you can expect to TA more often if s/he doesn't like you.

Your PI knows the weaknesses in your research and knowledge better than
anyone, and can use this to your disadvantage. I've witnessed faculty who
aggressively attack their own students during examinations (a truly disastrous
scenario). More often, advisors will simply fail to defend their poor students
from unfair attacks by other faculty. Departmental lectures, defenses, oral
exams, etc. are remarkably subjective affairs, and one bad comment can
snowball into an event that will add _years_ to your time in grad school.

Another very common tactic is for the PI to hand out the best research
projects to favored students. There's nothing so demoralizing as watching a
first-year grad student get an publication in Science or Nature (by being
assigned to an already successful project), when you've worked for years on
failing experiments. I've seen this happen too many times to count.

Like I said, there's no way to list all of the different ways that your PI can
make your life painful. It's just an extremely unbalanced, unregulated power
relationship, and with any creativity at all, an advisor can use that power to
destroy you.

~~~
mechanical_fish
This is true. While PI's can't always fire you gracefully, they have many ways
to make you _wish_ they had fired you.

So, ultimately, if your startup-company moonlighting starts to eat too much
into graduate research time, you're going to have to fish or cut bait: Either
keep your adviser happy, or take the necessary leave of absence.

Note that (most) graduate advisers are not evil people. I suspect that many of
them will quite happily grant you six months off to pursue your startup-
company dreams... _if_ the timing is right (hint: don't ask until just _after_
the _Nature_ article is submitted) and after they explain to you that your
publication record and your graduation time will be set back by a year or
more. Oh, and you probably won't be given the plum projects ever again, since
your adviser knows that you have one eye on the door... those are the breaks
of the game.

One very special caution: Your adviser may try to enlist your help in _his_
startup company. _Be very wary of this situation,_ or of any potential adviser
with a history of this. You want your adviser to be unambiguously focused on
helping you graduate and get a better-paying job... or as unambiguously as
possible, anyway.

------
amichail
Don't be misled by the promise of freedom in academia. It's not like that at
all.

~~~
aswanson
What is wrong with it?

~~~
amichail
Unless you get a faculty position at a stellar university (highly unlikely
nowadays), the teaching will be depressing. And your research will suffer as a
result since you will be in no mood to do it.

Also, unless you plan to do everything yourself for research, you will need to
get some funding. But whether you get that funding depends on whether your
peers -- competitors actually -- like what you plan to do.

Finally, the fact that computer science tries to be a science severely limits
your creativity -- at least if you want to publish in respectable conferences
and journals.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Actually, the teaching is depressing even at stellar universities. I'm a
postdoc at such a place. Last semester, I taught "Calculus for kids who don't
care." This semester, I'm teaching "Poker and craps for kids who don't care."

I suspect the only way to avoid this is to work at an engineering school (not
necessarily a top one).

------
electric
"I became a scientist in order to have the freedom to work on problems which
interest me."

I thought a more reasonable path to this would be to join a startup or three,
get rich and then spend the rest of your life getting a PhD, working on
interesting problems, etc. No? ;)

~~~
anewaccountname
Since one out of ten fail, that wouldn't be the best strategy.

~~~
nostrademons
Assuming you meant "9 out of 10 fail", and that the average failure takes a
year, including recovery time at a real job to replenish your finances and
find a new idea...

That means you've had 6 chances just by the time your colleagues have finished
grad school. 0.9^6 = 0.53, so you have a 47% chance of being a multi-
millionaire by the time your academic friends are even entering the rat race.
Compare that to the article's "If you're 95th-percentile lucky you might get a
post-doc position, then you have a 50-50 chance of getting a tenure _track_
position." Your odds are about 10 times better with the tech startup.

Then consider that at a minimum, you should expect 2 years of postdoc and
another 6 years before getting tenure. That's now 14 years of training before
you can actually work on what you want. 14 startup attempts with a 90% failure
rate gives you a roughly 80% chance of success. The startup path is starting
to look mighty good...

~~~
aneesh
and plus, having started and failed at 5 startups, you learn a lot! your
chances for the 6th one will definitely be higher than 10%.

------
anewaccountname
>[... in contrast] a lawyer [begins working] at 25 and makes partner at 31

A very low percentage make partner, lower than the tenure percentage.

~~~
wallflower
Becoming a partner: Work 80 to 100-hr weeks for 5-10 years (M-F,S-S 10-10)
Sacrifice balance in your life Lose your friends If you're good enough,
they'll ask you if you want to (take a loan) and _buy_ into partnership

------
menloparkbum
Science is disillusioning. I used to have a 2nd job doing programming work for
bioinformatics researchers. I did this off and on for about 4 years:
2000-2004. I had two reasons for doing this - I harbored a desire to do
'science' and contribute to the grand body of human knowledge. I hoped the
contacts I made would help me get into a good graduate program. The other
reason was money - I worked in my spare time and made an extra 70 grand a year
doing this. Note to hackers: if you want a really easy job that pays pretty
well, makes you appear smart on your resume, and gives you a lot of free time
to work on side projects, I highly recommend befriending the PI of a well-
funded university research group that needs a programmer.

The reason I was brought in was because in addition to the research paperwork,
the grants I worked on required some software artifact to be produced. The
grad students and post-docs working on the project were unable to write
software, so I was the hired gun. What I produced was crap, but I'm not sure
that mattered. It just had to survive a demo at the end of the year and get to
the grant renewal stage (in startup speak, 'next funding round.')

I'm not sure if the other researchers were actually unable to write software,
or if they were just uninterested in doing so. It was strange to me, since the
department I worked for was pretty much 'bioinformatics' - the point of which
was to design software tools for biological research. It seemed like people
should want to know how to make software, since it was...uh... kind of
important to what they were doing.

The day to day environment was much like "The Office", only it was in a "lab",
and it was seldom funny. The lab had a laboratory area, with test tubes and
fume hoods and whatnot. The main workspace, however, was essentially a cube
farm, except instead of out in an office park somewhere, it was above the
university hospital's food court.

Most of the people working there were like people working at any big, lame
bureaucratic institution, only they had or were obtaining PhDs. Most of their
time was spent surfing the web, sending email, and attending meetings. I have
never worked anywhere else where people attended so many meetings. I once
worked at a giant megacorp for a year, and would lose my mind when I had to go
to three meetings a week. At the research lab, they had on average three
meetings per day. Journal club, data sharing, data club, journal sharing,
guest lecture, team status report meeting, department status report meeting,
grant status report meeting, etc. I'm familiar with the horror stories about
post-docs working 100 hours a week, but if other programs are similar to the
one I worked for, 40 of those hours are spent in meetings, 20 hours are spent
wasting time on the internet, 10 hours are typical office chatting, 15 hours
of going to classes and lectures, and then maybe 15 hours of actual work...
but I'm skeptical that anyone spent 15 additional hours doing work. Normally
everything was queued up until the very last moment, then people would spend a
couple feverish days slapping something together before a presentation.

I shuffled around between a few different projects and was able to do most of
my work offsite. I learned about some cool ideas, but didn't really feel like
I was contributing to much of anything. On the last project I spent more time
at the lab, simply because I was tired of working at home. Aside from a couple
strange aspergy maniacs, most of the people seemed very depressed. One woman
finished up her PhD and was planning on moving back to Europe to run her
parent's bed and breakfast. Two others were really hoping to get into dental
school.

I'm not sure what the people were being trained to do. The wet lab work was
supposed to be done by PhDs, but could have easily been handled by
undergraduates. Indeed, anything that required advanced knowledge actually WAS
done by a young indian female undergraduate who seemed quite harried after
being stuck in the lab while her post-doc and grad-student peers were off at
another journal sharing. The software work simply wasn't done by anyone in the
lab at all - it was all done by hired contractors like myself. It seemed that
the only practical training that people received was in reading journals and
applying for grants. The most 'successful' guy in the program was hired for
$90,000 by a pharmaceutical firm where his job was to read and organize
various journal articles...

I could go on and on about this, but the longwinded 'point' I wanted to make
was that I agree with the article. I worked in a hot field at the time with a
lot of grant money, and it was very bleak and depressing. And, before I get
the chorus of people telling me that things are different at good
universities, all of this work was done at that other university in Cambridge,
the one down the street from MIT with a square named after it.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Remember that some labs _are_ more dysfunctional than others. Yours sounds
pretty bad. My own experience at the same big crimson-colored university was
considerably less bureaucratic -- we lost only about half a day per week to
meetings, although there was still plenty of paper to be shuffled, between the
grants and the articles and the manuscripts and the review manuscripts and the
_insane_ procurement process. And morale was rather higher, though perhaps not
an order of magnitude higher.

The "wasting time on the Internet" factor should not be underestimated.
Remember, the only reason we're all here is that Tim Berners-Lee spent a lot
of his time fiddling around with the Internet instead of doing his physics
research.

~~~
timr
I'll add that the bureaucracy depends heavily on the size of the group.
Biological research (in particular, anything that includes the word "systems"
or "-omics" in the grant title) has been succumbing to an empire-building
mentality for a long time. These programs tend to be large, highly
bureaucratic, and well-funded (they're also, not incidentally, the groups most
likely to have the resources to pay a staff programmer).

Small groups are much more dependent on the productivity of each researcher.
For example, it's not uncommon to see labs of 10 people publishing at roughly
the same rate as groups of double or triple the size. Just like startups vs.
big companies, the communication overhead of a small laboratory is much lower,
and responsibility of each member, correspondingly higher.

~~~
menloparkbum
the research group had both "systems" and "-omics" in its title!

~~~
timr
What can I say? I'm psychic. ;-)

------
timr
Although I agree with nearly everything he says in this essay, it's worth
pointing out that he has written several other pieces that would make most
normal people question his grip on sanity. At the very least, this guy is
_eccentric._ Also, the numbers he cited are from 1999, and are getting a bit
dated. NIH post-doc stipends are now roughly $40k/year (including in the most
expensive cities, like San Francisco); grad-student stipends are around $25k
per year.

Everything else is true, in my experience. If you start a PhD in the physical
or biological sciences this year, you'll spend 5-10 years in grad school,
barely making ends meet at $25k a year. Then, if you're incredibly lucky
(think 95th-percentile lucky), you'll get a stellar paper that will set you up
for a post-doc in a superstar lab, which will give you a roughly 50/50 shot at
a tenure track position _somewhere_ (don't count on living in a city, or even
a place where your significant other can find a job, however, because you're
now living at the whims of the academic system.)

Your post-doc will take 3-4 years, and will pay you less than you could have
made right out of an undergraduate CS program, in exchange for more risk and
longer hours. You'll be expected to work nights and weekends, and in case you
lack the drive to do it, there will be some guy from China with a J-1 visa
sitting next to you. He's probably living in a boarding house right next to
the university with ten other post-docs, and he's willing to work 100-hour
weeks for a shot at a job in this country. That's your baseline.

If you're astronomically lucky, you'll get a faculty position -- hopefully not
at Podunk U -- where you'll be paid significantly less than that undergrad CS
major (who is now probably making over $100k/year, buying a home, getting
married, etc.) You'll be competing for grant money in an insanely tight market
(the funding rate for NIH research grants is well below 5% now), and evaluated
by established faculty who will torpedo your proposals if it helps their own
chances. At the end of six years of insane work, you'll get a shot at keeping
your job. If you get tenure, you can settle down to a lifetime of below-market
wages, while working relaxing 50-60 hour weeks.

Of course, if you choose to leave academia after grad school, the prospects
are equally dismal. The rare position that requires research experience is
essentially set aside for friends (you hear a lot about "networking" on the
science job boards, but little practical advice on how to actually do it), or
for people who have been poached from other companies by recruiters.
Meanwhile, once you have a PhD, you're untouchable by most employers --
considered too theoretical and expensive for "practical" work. Ultimately,
most people with advanced degrees in the sciences spend _years_ teaching
courses on contract, or jumping between dead-end, low-paying jobs, hoping to
start something that resembles a career.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_At the very least, this guy is_ eccentric.

He'd have to be. Nobody gets anywhere in academia by rocking the boat. It's an
_intensely_ political business; even after you have tenure, you can still lose
your research funding (which kills your "summer salary", lowering your take-
home pay by 25% or more), your lab space, your future publications in
prestigious journals (which can be anonymously torpedoed by your peers) and,
most important of all, the services of the talented grad students and postdocs
who actually do all your work for you.

 _Meanwhile, once you have a PhD, you're untouchable by most employers --
considered too theoretical and expensive for "practical" work._

This depends a great deal on what your Ph.D. is in and how you treat it. I've
never had this problem, but I got my Ph.D. in EE, with a focus on
semiconductor device fabrication. Nobody ever accused me of being "too
theoretical" and there are actually quite a few industry employers that
specifically look for such Ph.D.s.

A very smart friend of mine studied theoretical solid state physics, but then
got a job right out of school as a process development guy at Intel. Voila,
his "theoretical" reputation was instantly laundered away!

Of course, if you spend the five years after getting your Ph.D. "teaching
courses on contract, or jumping between dead-end, low-paying jobs" people will
begin to conclude that you're hopelessly in love with the academic lifestyle.
And that's too bad. The academic lifestyle is fun in many ways -- for example,
your ambitious and hard-working colleagues from China and India are often
really nice, really smart people! -- but it's a terribly one-sided romance.

~~~
timr
_"This depends a great deal on what your Ph.D. is in and how you treat it.
I've never had this problem, but I got my Ph.D. in EE, with a focus on
semiconductor device fabrication."_

Agree. I was trying to be careful to speak only of the physical and biological
sciences, because I know from experience that job market for engineering and
CS is different.

I don't think that anyone _tries_ to spend their post-doctoral years hopping
between contract jobs; the problem comes when you simply _can't_ get that
first job in your field, and you have to do these things to make ends meet.
Before you know it, you're stuck in a cycle, and people start to believe that
you're _"in love with the academic lifestyle"_. This happens to scientists
more often than most people think.

------
aswanson
Are the prospects this bad in math as well?

~~~
pixcavator
Yes.

The only difference (but a big one in my view) is that you are an independent
researcher from the very beginning.

~~~
hhm
Why independent?

~~~
pixcavator
I don't understand the question.

~~~
hhm
Sorry, my question is: why are math researchers more independent than others?

~~~
pixcavator
What I meant is that as early as in grad school you start working entirely on
your own and your advisor is just that, advisor. He is not going to prove your
theorems for you. As far as I know in other fields it takes a while to reach
this level of independence.

~~~
hhm
Thanks a lot for your reply; I'm starting studies on maths and I was very
interested on this.

------
aswanson
Why is this post dated 1999 with a May 2001 reference?

~~~
icky
Nobody respects the lone, eccentric time-travel researcher...

~~~
aswanson
That's what I was thinking...this physics prof is doing better than he thinks.
He's just so bogged down in bureauacracy that he has been unable to publish on
it yet...

------
yters
If I most value learning and research, what do I lose if I do not become a
member of academia?

------
limeade
But science is so much fun! It's kind of like going to college for free--I get
to take interesting classes. And work on startups on the side.

------
swaroop
There are other professors who recommend research and are actively pitching
people to join:

[http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/braman/cut-
edge-2005/slides/...](http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/braman/cut-
edge-2005/slides/join-research.pdf)

------
kinkydarkbird
Money isn't everything

~~~
KayJayKay
I think that one of the things this article was getting at was that it feels
like one is not captain of their own ship when they do science as a career.
Ie, no matter how hard or much you work you won't get your due rewards.

------
rw
What a disgustingly bourgeois article; check out this quote:

"I have known more people whose lives have been ruined by getting a Ph.D. in
physics than by drugs."

~~~
sudeepjuvekar
Interesting indeed!... The post was made in 1999 and a few things have changed
since then

The author writes that the conditions in India and China are "worse", which
might have been true in 1999, but certainly not today! See
<http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/feb/20apac.htm> Interestingly, academic jobs
are on the rise as well with burgeoning of new grad schools/research
institutes. The demand-supply curve in India is skewed in other direction.
Finally, (this is an information gathered from a few senior professors,
haven't found any web resource yet!), the success of grant proposals in India
is of the order of 60-70%, much higher than that in the U.S.

Though, it's still a fact that academia is not looked as a 'lucrative' career
option yet.

(Well, as a supplement to an earlier post, there are a bunch of hilarious
webpages by Philip Greenspun. See <http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/>)

