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Comment by j7ake | Hacker News Reader

Maybe one difference today is that academia is being increasingly flooded by careerists.

In 1950s, most people did not even go to college, let alone grad school. The people who went into science in 1950s were not in it to “get a job”.

These days, many students see grad school as the simple next step after undergrad, because the job opportunities are not good for many new grads (eg biology bachelors).

We therefore see a huge influx of phds and academics, but they are entering academia for different reasons (careerists) than when people did it in 1950s.

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I wouldn't say that science is flooded by careerists, it's kind of the opposite - the scientific system demands you to be this way.

There are exactly 0 jobs for undergrad BSc in most countries, especially if you want any kind of liveable salary and not be a pipetting robot.

Most interesting jobs require at least a PhD, and these requirements are usually firm - there is a glut of applicants, employers can save some work by deleting those who don't fulfill the requirements and still get good people. You can't get postdocs without a PhD (from my experience, in >95% of cases), and a postdoc is the 'prescribed' way towards a Prof. If you are trying to come in mid-career from a non-academic background, you don't have the papers, you don't have the grants, you're a hiring risk.

The system itself makes careerists, it only very rarely allows outsiders coming in.

>You can't get postdocs without a PhD

My understanding of a postdoc position is that it's "post" (after) "doc" (doctorate/phd)

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this, could you explain a bit?

Yes, that's what it means... but I have on very rare occasion seen people with (money and) industry experience work in a an academic lab with other post docs bringing in the same meager stipend. It's doubtful that they are working towards a professorship, although a PhD isn't actually needed for that either. I've seen a few with only BS or MS degrees working as teaching professors.

yes, after finishing PhD, people who want to become professor should get a postdoc position as soon as they can, and finish work as more as they can during it...

Yes, it's postdoctorate, but it's the only academic job for people in their ~30s. It's the equivalent of an early/mid-career programmer. There's just no other title so they're all called postdocs, even if (rarely) they don't have a PhD.

Re: mid-career, no papers -- does this effectively result in ageism inside the academia? Widespread, but poorly hidden?

It's even worse than that.

You'll find tons of grants--and even jobs--that are time-gated: you must be within k years of your PhD, where k is pretty small (1,2, maybe 5). Annoyingly, these apply to some faculty-level things (e.g., ESI status for NIH grants), so if you start on the back foot, it's hard to catch up.

This is bad for a lot of reasons. It's discriminatory (and arguably illegal, since it must have a "disparate impact" on people over 40). It also shapes the sort of research people do. It encourages trainees to work on established projects in established labs, which promotes orthdoxy and thwarts the idea of training people for careers as independent investigators. It rewards choosing techniques that are "safe" and fast-moving.

> You'll find tons of grants--and even jobs--that are time-gated: you must be within k years of your PhD, where k is pretty small (1, 2, maybe 5).

I finished my PhD in 2020. The research job market was terrible back then, and I'm getting close to the 2 year mark where I'll age out of a lot of opportunities. These rules are going to prevent a lot of people from getting a job in science, and there's nothing they can do about it.

Fortunately, in the case of many jobs, I think the time-since-PhD requirement is often boilerplate that is not enforced.

In many places the time-since-PhD is also relevant to opportunity, so if you are 5 years post-PhD but you were unemployed for 2 years or outside academia, you count as 3 years post-PhD.

Yes, there is lots of ageism. If you don't have a Professorship in your 40s you're out, you'll rarely get a position. I've seen rare cases, but then you'd have to be really successful in your non-academic job - for example, upper levels of NGOs get recruited for highly visible professorships around NGOs, or business people get recruited for 'start up' professorships. These positions are usually 'handcrafted' for the business-person. But there's nothing below that, people won't jump into a mid-level academic career, those positions are full of 'regular' academics.

Not just publications, but other reasons too - someone in their 40s has family and is not willing to work brutal hours and weekends required in many research labs, which someone in their 20s is more likely to accept. Of course it's worse if you're a mother.

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