Good read. "One who got away" is a nice subtitle ... it exemplifies the strange relationships we have in academia.
The examples given highlight the three sucky things about academic jobs: (i) less money than top-tier alternatives, (ii) insane competition at the start of your career, and (iii) difficulty maintaining work-life balance if you want to be successful.
I had heard about (i) before I started my PhD. That didn't seem like a big deal since grad school was mostly paid for. I'd get annoyed when people assumed being a scientist meant that you'd never get rich. (ii) was a surprise at graduation time (around 2007). At that time, it was said to be the economy's fault. Almost a decade later, it is clear that there were structural changes going on in my field. If you were in CS, it was far easier to get a professor job during the first dot-com gold rush since CS enrollments were increasing like there was no tomorrow. Regarding (iii), I think this happens in every field. It matters who your spouse is and how supportive they are. Sometimes you learn to throw in the towel and get a good night's sleep. You also need to learn to be efficient. I admit I was not the most efficient graduate student. After working at industry research labs for many years, I am amazed by how much I've changed. I still spend too much time on irrelevant things like writing this comment or reading the article but hey .. no one's perfect.
Regarding the fields picked by the first two examples, I want to bang my head against a wall for my lack of timing. I missed the dot-com days and the app-rush. Also, before 2007, it was obvious that a finance job paid very well - it was hard work but so is everything worth doing. Today, it isn't clear if there are any paths to surefire financial success. In some places I've lived in (outside the US), it seems one of the highest compensating careers was flipping condos. The lesson I learn is to be constantly vigilant of potential opportunities and to strike as soon as possible.
The examples given highlight the three sucky things about academic jobs: (i) less money than top-tier alternatives, (ii) insane competition at the start of your career, and (iii) difficulty maintaining work-life balance if you want to be successful.
ii and iii are the big issues for me (and obviously interwoven.) While it's not an original observation, one aspect of ii) that is especially bad is that most people probably have a distorted perspective on how good they are when they are starting out. The pool you will actually be competing with is probably much stronger than you realized.
In discussing some of these issues with a friend of mine, he said that he thought a good solution would be to substantially cut graduate enrollment and fill the labor gap with an increase in staff scientist positions. I think there's a lot to recommend that, but I can't say I see it realistically happening.
It is impossible for Universities to cut down graduate enrollment.
Professor productivity is defined primarily in terms of two measures: how many papers you authored (notice I avoided using the word wrote) and how many advanced degree students you graduate. Having a big pipeline of graduate students to help you achieve both goals is fundamental for success.
Also, Professors are tasked with multiple responsibilities that add little, if anything, to their perceived productivity as measured by the University. The most time consuming of those is usually lecturing undergraduate classes. Having an even bigger pool of graduate students where to offload time consuming activities associated with the class (primarily T.A.s and L.A.s but also people never met by the class doing support work like slide preparation, library searches, capture of results in brain-dead software platforms purchased by Uni's managers not doing any teaching themselves, etc) will allow you to concentrate in your research and do things that really matter (a.k.a. athoring papers and advising future PhDs).
Consider that the most important facet of your early career is getting published, which depends on the peer review process. You may have heard recently of a number of things getting published in major journals that didn't pass a sniff test---peer reviews are usually only single-blind; the reviewers know who and where the authors are, but not vice-versa. And who the authors advisers are, and so on.
(Once upon a time a grad student was given the task of reviewing a paper submitted by a senior, important researcher at another institution. The paper was completely unreadable---it had apparently never been seen by an English speaker, and the researcher was well known for writing obtusely. The student told his advisor, "I have no idea if this is any good or not. I'd like to reject it." The answer, of course, was, "Oh, no, we can't do that. Ask the best questions you can and send it back for another round. Maybe it'll get better.")
Don't forget, academic jobs are driven by tenure, and the club thereof. Do not under any circumstances piss off the faculty you work with. They will hold it against you.
And then there was the case of a senior, famous researcher who left to start a company; when the company wrapped up, he came back to professor-hood and became the department chairman, because (a) he wanted to raise the visibility of the department, and (b) no one wants to be chairman. For (a), he got the faculty to agree to create a new external liaison position which was half-time PR and half-time tenured faculty. Then he hired his student and friend from his company into the position, said student having previously been so successful at teaching that after one class he was never asked to teach again.
Oh, and before you say, "the politics are bad everywhere," consider that academic jobs are based on tenure. I've worked in industry most of my career, and when things get bad I pack up my camels and move on. You don't have that option in the five years before you get tenure---it's a one-strike-and-you're-out game.
I have seen both academics, small and large corporations. I think startups are the worst, but other than that, the rest is pretty much the same. Of course if you are only in one or the other, it may seem that your particular situation is the worst...
The examples given highlight the three sucky things about academic jobs: (i) less money than top-tier alternatives, (ii) insane competition at the start of your career, and (iii) difficulty maintaining work-life balance if you want to be successful.
I had heard about (i) before I started my PhD. That didn't seem like a big deal since grad school was mostly paid for. I'd get annoyed when people assumed being a scientist meant that you'd never get rich. (ii) was a surprise at graduation time (around 2007). At that time, it was said to be the economy's fault. Almost a decade later, it is clear that there were structural changes going on in my field. If you were in CS, it was far easier to get a professor job during the first dot-com gold rush since CS enrollments were increasing like there was no tomorrow. Regarding (iii), I think this happens in every field. It matters who your spouse is and how supportive they are. Sometimes you learn to throw in the towel and get a good night's sleep. You also need to learn to be efficient. I admit I was not the most efficient graduate student. After working at industry research labs for many years, I am amazed by how much I've changed. I still spend too much time on irrelevant things like writing this comment or reading the article but hey .. no one's perfect.
Regarding the fields picked by the first two examples, I want to bang my head against a wall for my lack of timing. I missed the dot-com days and the app-rush. Also, before 2007, it was obvious that a finance job paid very well - it was hard work but so is everything worth doing. Today, it isn't clear if there are any paths to surefire financial success. In some places I've lived in (outside the US), it seems one of the highest compensating careers was flipping condos. The lesson I learn is to be constantly vigilant of potential opportunities and to strike as soon as possible.