
The future of the postdoc - denzil_correa
http://www.nature.com/news/the-future-of-the-postdoc-1.17253?WT.mc_id=TWT_NatureNews
======
xb
I was a Life Sciences PhD student for 6 years and started a postdoc, but then
jumped ship and became a software developer for a non-science company. My
salary is more than 2x as high as what I was making as a postdoc, and 3x
greater than what I had been living on as a grad student. The salary thing is
huge. From my point of view, research science was becoming a luxury/hobby
profession of people whose spouses make a lot of money or who are
independently wealthy.

The only two solutions I see are either funding for NIH and basic sciences
drastically increases (my preferred solution), or there is some breakthrough
which makes biotech and life sciences industry more profitable and able to
hire all the entry level PhDs.

Notice how the engineering and physics PhDs make up only a small fraction of
the donut chart? That's because those folks graduate with skills that are
desirable to industry because they can translate into profit. The biotech
industry does not need smart and inexperienced idea people. The biotech
industry prefers very senior level scientists with proven track records of
profitability, and worker drones who have bachelors or masters degrees who are
not on the scientist track.

~~~
will_work4tears
My sister recently finished a postdoc and her and her husband moved to the SF
area (Mountain View), and quickly realized she couldn't do another one (that
limit mentioned in the article I'm gathering). She's not had any luck finding
a job in her niche (Virology), and I suggested she hop on a bootcamp type
training for software development. She's right there where it's hopping, she
could pull it off (she's smarter than I am and I manage).

She's fallen off the face of the earth I guess. I've tried contacting her a
few times over the last month or two and never get a response. Maybe she's
busy doing just that. Hopefully, the way she was talking finding an Industry
job with her PhD is hard.

~~~
xb
I am in Seattle, which does not have the thriving biotech scene of the bay
area or Boston, but thankfully the cost of living is significantly lower than
either.

I had essentially zero chance of landing a biotech position, similarly because
my niche was not in demand by any local company. Even the positions I did see
were not very desirable and the competition from other PhDs and postdocs was
fierce.

I was lucky to have some extra time toward the end of grad school to pick up
some coding skills. The labor market for software developers is ridiculous in
Seattle, and it took me under 2 weeks to find a full time position. I
considered bootcamps also, but decided to give it a shot trying to get hired
with just my existing experience. The though of starting a bootcamp where my 6
years of research experience was all for naught was pretty depressing, so I
really feel for your sister. I have another PhD friend who is in the exact
same boat.

My conclusion was to not fight the tide of the labor market. I think in the
future biotech will be really profitable and there will be a lot more jobs,
but right now all of the jobs are in software, at least around here.

~~~
will_work4tears
Also in the Seattle area (Tacoma, really). There does seem to be a lot of
activity up north there, I get calls from recruiters all the time, but I just
can't swing that commute at this time - or work all of the hours above 40 I'm
assuming I'd have to work. It doesn't surprise me that the labor market is
pretty ridiculous for developers though. It's pretty awesome that you picked
up coding and got a job that fast, it's pretty good news for my sister if she
decides to go that route.

------
simonster
One problem is that being a PI no longer seems to mean what it used to. For a
PI, productivity is writing grants and getting other smart people to do
research and write papers. While it may vary from field to field, I've worked
for several PIs who have fantastic funding and are great at marketing their
research, but don't have the knowledge to reproduce their own labs'
experiments. My impression is that, for many successful scientists, the career
arc goes something like:

\- Get really good at doing science as a graduate student and postdoc.

\- Become a junior PI, spend most of your time selling your science, and train
your graduate students and postdocs for a few years. You need to keep up with
the literature to know what to do next, but you rarely have time to perform
experiments yourself.

\- Become a senior PI. Now your lab is established, and you can hire half a
dozen knowledgeable postdocs to teach the others in your lab. As your field
advances, you need to keep up enough to sell the discoveries your lab has made
to grant review panels, but you don't actually have to know how to do the
science. That's for those below you.

There are some clear exceptions. Some PIs really do know how to do everything.
Some PIs even keep running experiments while also writing grants and running a
lab, although that's not necessarily an easy task. But for most PIs, the arc
above seems to be the way it goes. You take the brightest, most talented
scientists, and once they reach they become really knowledgeable, you turn
them into professional grantwriters.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I feel like there has to be a better
way. To start, maybe we should think about limiting lab size, so that your lab
seeks to maximize the productivity per employed scientist rather than the
total amount of funding that you can obtain. Without so much pressure to
accumulate funds to grow their labs, perhaps PIs could spend less time writing
grants and more time running labs. Also, with smaller labs you can afford to
hire more PIs and give a career path to more of the postdocs that you are
"training."

~~~
bkcooper
I liked your post and agree that this is a really fundamental problem.
However, I disagree with this:

 _Also, with smaller labs you can afford to hire more PIs and give a career
path to more of the postdocs that you are "training."_

That would probably be better for the postdocs, but I think it would have a
negative impact on the overall production of new science. A PI who runs a big
lab with a proven track record of success is going to be a better investment
most of the time. Splitting the labs up also means that even more people are
exposed to the type of grantwriting inefficiencies that you describe above.

What I like about the superdoc idea is that right now (modulo some pretty rare
positions) science feels like "PI or bust." I think there are lots of people
who can make useful scientific contributions but probably shouldn't be PIs.
Figuring out something for these people would be good for them and (IMO) good
for the system.

------
kleiba
The Germans have a simple and efficient system: you can only be employed as a
graduate researcher at a University for 6 years. If you get a PhD, the time
increases to a total of 12 years. If you make it to professor (full, not
assistant or associate) in that time, you'll get hired for life. If not:
goodbye.

Oh, you worked as a lab assistant while studying to get a food in the door /
gain some experience / pimp your CV? Tough luck: if you did that for more than
10 hours per week, this time is counted toward your 6 (or 12) years.

This beautiful regulation comes by the beautiful name of the
Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz.

~~~
detaro
Which makes sure that shortly after lecturers have their content fine-tuned
they either

a) become professors and suddenly (have to) care about other things than
teaching

and/or

b) they have to leave (either because they become professor somewhere else or
because they didn't at all)

------
dnautics
Amazing. The solution of "give out less PhDs" is not even broached.

~~~
chriskanan
As someone who had to work really hard to get into a PhD program, but now has
a great job as a research scientist and is going to be starting a
professorship in August, I have to disagree with giving out fewer PhDs as a
solution. People that want to pursue careers in research should be allowed to
get the necessary training. What we need is to have considerably better
mentoring and training in jobs outside of academia _during_ the PhD: science
communication, industry, entrepreneurship, teaching, science policy advising,
and consulting. I think a postdoc's value largely consists in improving one's
credentials for academia, so only the few PhDs with a realistic chance of
getting a professorship after their PhD should spend more than a year or so
doing one.

~~~
bkcooper
_People that want to pursue careers in research should be allowed to get the
necessary training._

Sure, but the argument is that we're training many more people for those sorts
of careers than can realistically have them. Having the filter come at the
beginning rather than the end is way better for people who are going to get
screened out one way or the other.

------
6stringmerc
Article touches on some realities that I've witnessed first-hand, such as a
starting salary of _US$42,840_ , which, let's be honest, doesn't really go up
that much over the course of 3, 5 or 10 years. Maybe $10k more after 10 years.
These are, mostly, people who took out loans to achieve a PhD in a true STEM
field...you know, the EXACT professional area that a great number of political
/ economic / intellectual "leaders" say we need to further support.

Yet there's the persistent decline in NIH funding, money going to "safe"
research topics (as in, no room to grow the field, just backing winners), and
the looming shadow of arrangements where publicly funded research is
channelled into private or otherwise "protected" areas. The glut of post docs
is basically the symptom of this disease that is ruining a professional,
highly skilled field. According to the article, the recommendations put
forward recently are similar to the ones mentioned 15 years ago - so, the
problem was ignored then / kicked down the road - and now we're on the cusp of
a gigantic pile of non-performing student loans because there's no work to be
had to earn an income and repay the loans that were taken out in pursuit of
work.

It's really too bad. This is no easy conundrum, not at all. What's the best
advice? If you're looking into bench science as a career, DON'T. Become a
veterenarian. Go into geriatric nursing. Basically do anything but try to make
a living in science, because it's simply not worth trying anymore.

~~~
searine
> people who took out loans to achieve a PhD in a true STEM field

Most graduate STEM students have tuition reimbursed and are paid a stipend.

There is still a glut of post-docs though, and 42K isn't a living wage for a
30 year old person with that kind of skill.

~~~
6stringmerc
Wait, what?

I understand that there is a stipend to working in a lab while as a student
(akin to being a TA), but while obtaining a PhD in a top program, I highly
doubt tuition is reimbursed, and that still doesn't cover living expenses in a
major metropolitan area. I mean, if you can name a Top 25 university from each
San Fran, Boston, New York, Atlanta, Baltimore, and Dallas that consistently
provide PhD students tuition reimbursement and a stipend that enables a
modestly reasonable quality of life, I'd really be interested. I'm a little
tongue in cheek here but bear with my skepticism.

~~~
eddotman
That sounds strange. Pretty much all the top STEM PhD programs (MIT, Harvard,
Stanford, etc.) offer a liveable stipend and full tuition reimbursement with
medical insurance. e.g. MIT gives like $30k/yr, which is reasonable to live on
in Boston, and we never pay a cent of tuition.

~~~
simonster
Yes, at least at the top tiers, you get paid enough to live on without an
additional funding source. OTOH, $30K/year is usually several times less than
a good graduate student could make in industry. While the pay is livable, it's
difficult to argue that it's market rate. Or to put it another way, academic
institutions don't value their employees in a way that's commensurate with
their skill set.

------
noipv4
I have finished my 5 year postdoc in bioinformatics, writing mainly 10K lines
of C/C++, setting up big-data servers with commodity hardware, for two
projects. 1 got published in Nature Methods, one in Nucleic Acids Res. I have
no intention to continue in this system in a deeply financially distressed
state and am looking for good ideas going forward. Opening a lab and writing
grants is out of question for me.

------
untilHellbanned
You shouldn't need to be doing a Master's, PhD, postdoc, or have tenure to do
science and succeed. The problem is the credentialing. The impossible task is
to get rid of all the fuddy-duddy decision makers (including the vast majority
of postdocs themselves!) who buy into the system because... "I suffered and
made it, so that's what these whipper-snappers should do too!".

 _note:_ I have PhD from a top tier university and will soon be a professor at
another top tier university. And yes, I badly want things to change and to be
to able to hire high school kids or soccer moms but won't be able to under the
current system.

------
drethemadrapper
I am perplexed by the so-called postgraduate studies and their reward systems.
I completed my PhD (in my last 20s) in a second world country about few years
ago and continued working as a faculty at a neighbouring university in the
same country. I pulled out (or technically resigned) as a senior lecturer,
when I couldn't endure being bullied any longer by my senior academics, who
had only earned their "DTech" in their 50+ yrs of age.

I am now working with a pretty new institution in a first world country and
will be starting a Postdoc soon. Taking a look at the salary for the Postdoc,
it's like I am back to the same rat race as a PhD student years ago. And I now
have a family! The new job, though a permanent position, isn't a full-time;
so, all employees are advised to look elsewhere. All effort to get into the
industry proved abortive; and I saw that a number of my folks in the industry
are earning 10-20k more than me (i.e. senior dev. vs senior faculty). Yet they
don't have those fanciful postgraduate degrees.

The postdoc opportunity, as for now, seems to be an avenue to get into a top-
tier or well-established institution in the first world country though. The
long and the short of it is that academics don't get rewarded like their peers
in the industry. In addition, postdoc offers are just another way of being a
student - call it a professional student. But I will console myself be calling
it a consultant. The postdoc offer isn't that bad compared to others that I
had. It includes travelling to another first world country for a year or more
to complete the other part of my research.

~~~
asmicom
I like the word "consultant".

------
ylem
I would support the "superdoc" idea--but I also think that in some fields, we
need to allow graduate students (and postdocs) a certain amount of time for
career development. If someone wants to do a PhD in physics because they love
it, but wants to pick up some CS or finance courses along the way to hedge
their bets, we should encourage that...

------
DanAndersen
Given the state of affairs for postdocs, how should we interpret claims of a
"STEM shortage"?

~~~
noobiemcfoob
On one hand, it appears this article is talking about it trying to keep these
postdocs in academia (noting the statement in the article of equal numbers of
NYU postdocs leaving academia following the position cutting).

Ignoring that, as someone involved in a group with 4 open positions that have
been open for the better part of a year, the shortage is there. It's not so
much that there is a shortage of people capable of applying who "kind of" meet
the requirements, but truly capable engineers in this field who could pick up
the work required are definitely in short supply, PhDs or no.

~~~
tjradcliffe
This is not a shortage of people, it's an unwillingness or inability to raise
salaries to the point where your group is attracting the people it wants.

I appreciate that the ability to pay people enough to attract them is a
problem that is very difficult for institutions and organizations to solve,
but living on a sub-standard salary with no job security and few career
prospects (how many tenure-track opportunities are expected to open up in the
next five years for the people who would fill those positions?) is a difficult
problem for highly skilled post-doctoral candidates to solve, too.

~~~
noobiemcfoob
I definitely recognize the point of few career prospects making potential
applicants hesitant. That's a point I hadn't considered before.

As to the price point, I'm not convinced. Raising the potential salaries for
these positions would attract people, obviously, but the price point would
attract them away from their current jobs, leaving a vacancy at another
company. If this is the situation, raising the salary doesn't suddenly
generate new engineers with the necessary skills. The problem is the existing
engineers with the necessary skills are already hired and fulfilled leaving
only the option of headhunting.

At a more practical level, yes, if we hired these positions, our capabilities
would be extended greatly. Hell, hiring one would be enough. However, there is
not enough value in that new hire to justify raising the salary above it's
current position.

And lastly, no one has been offered the position and then rejected it because
of the pay. The last 3 offers given out were immediately accepted. We just
haven't found anyone worth giving an offer for these remaining 4.

~~~
mcmancini
> And lastly, no one has been offered the position and then rejected it
> because of the pay. The last 3 offers given out were immediately accepted.

Why would they when there's no meaningful difference in pay between postdoc
positions? What would happen if they tried to negotiate for something
approaching an industry equivalent salary/benefits?

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mcmancini
At what point did the system go awry? When did postdoc go from being a
training position to cheap labor? Was it with the doubling of the NIH budget?

