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Comment by einpoklum | Hacker News Reader

I believe you're partially mistaken.

That is, indeed, there is no such thing as a "post-doc". But in most academic institutions, there are non-tenured researcher positions - fixed-period or otherwise - which have a Ph.D. as a requirement. They may called something like "Researcher", "Research Engineer" or "Research Staff Member" (as opposed to "Academic Staff Member").

Of course, my knowledge is as anecdotal as yours.

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>I believe you're partially mistaken.

In my field (math) and country (USA) there are many postdocs.

Maybe you are in a different field or country?

(If you really don't believe me try search "postdoc" on math jobs https://www.mathjobs.org/jobs?joblist-0-0------

I see those positions as "Researcher", "Research Fellow", "Associate"(-member of the academic staff) etc.

They add the term "post-doctoral" to indicate that you need to have completed a Doctorate. Or if you wish - to indicate that the conditions will be poor :-(

The titles for these roles are not "postdoc" though, that's his point no? The role "postdoc" doesn't exist, at least in any institutions I know. Of course there are postdocs in the world, but the actual payscale that you're on may be one that a person without a PhD can be hired on, e.g. research assistant. They then call this a "postdoc" position to indicate that you need a PhD to be hired, but the contracts and conditions do not specifically cater towards people pursuing careers in academia.

Not too long ago, my official title was postdoctoral scholar and I was at UC Berkeley. A little while before that, I was a PhD student working with a couple of "postdocs" whose title was postdoctoral research associate. I submit that I do exist as did my co-authors (who have since stopped being postdocs, but continue to exist as researchers.)

This was at another well-known US school. Perhaps thing are different in Britain, but I am not aware of any R1 university in the US where postdocs "do not exist."

I don't know about those places in particular, but it's quite common (especially in Europe) to see people described as "postdoctoral researcher" or "postdoc research associate" on their staff pages, website, email sig etc, while in the official HR scheme and on payroll those titles only exist without the word "postdoctoral".

Even so, why does the specific title matter ? Ultimately, all these are non tenured positions. I don't see how creating an official title would solve any problems. As others mentioned, some places also have official post-doc titles.

> why does the specific title matter?

My view is that there is a problem in academia where people in non tenured positions are being taken advantage of. However, most of these people do not actually have "postdoc" in their title. Positions with postdoc in the title are typically reserved for people who just received their PhD. It is fairly difficult to get a tenure track position directly from a PhD program, so (most) professors were (formally) a postdoc at some point in their career, and it is an important training step for applying for tenure track. (I hope this clarifies my above point, sorry if it was unclear).

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