Comment by Al-Khwarizmi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Al-Khwarizmi | Hacker News Reader

> One point that was raised again and again was the fact of competition: (...) But at the same time, a lot of my friends in industry do not seem to feel the same guilt when taking the weekend off. (...) So there has to be something deeper going on here, since competition is not an exclusive feature of academia.

Come on, maybe not "exclusive" in an absolute sense, but the level of competition isn't even remotely similar. As an academic, I'm directly competing for something literally dozens of times a year (in each grant application, promotion application, evaluation application, salary complement application, grant/project request, paper submission). Each of these has an acceptance rate, we are competing directly among other academics. And each of these directly affects our career. Even when we are tenured professors we can't get away from it, because we have postdocs and students whose own careers depend directly on us and we can't let them down.

My friends in industry don't have an even remotely similar experience, of course competition exists in industry but it's not a constant pressure that you feel every day from several different sources.

The post makes an effort to argue that competition is just one factor among many, but I think it explains like 90% of the overwork phenomenon.

> (in each grant application, promotion application, evaluation application, salary complement application, grant/project request, paper submission). Each of these has an acceptance rate, we are competing directly among other academics

I mean they're often very high acceptance rates though. The funding agency we use has a 90% acceptance rate. Basically you have to have some idea of what you are doing and they will accept you. It isn't as extreme as you are making out. There are many opportunities.

The main problem is that the opportunities are geographically constrained. I don't think there's a huge amount of competition for a given role, but the fact that it often requires uprooting your life (I moved from UK to Germany) is really bad

> The funding agency we use has a 90% acceptance rate.

What? Wow. Please share?

DFG

What funding programme are you thinking about? The most common type of project proposal is funded at much lower rates: https://www.dfg.de/en/dfg_profile/facts_figures/statistics/p...

> I mean they're often very high acceptance rates though. The funding agency we use has a 90% acceptance rate. Basically you have to have some idea of what you are doing and they will accept you. It isn't as extreme as you are making out. There are many opportunities.

Not at all. You definitely aren't in the US.

Success rates are low! The stated funding rates by the NSF are around 25%. Depending on the program, rates for NIH tend to be a lot lower. R01 success rates are below 20%. Keep in mind, you're competing with the best and most recognizable names every time. This skews success rates, as a new or average researcher (I mean average as in, the mean person, not as in "mediocre") your rates will be lower.

In my country the best grants tend to have acceptance rates in the 10%-20% range. There are other grants with around 50% rate but they are barely enough to not outright close a lab (you're lucky if you can get 30K/year from those, per research group, not per person). There are no grants that I know of with a 90% acceptance rate.

And even if you compete for a 50% acceptance rate, which is relatively "easy", you are competing with another academics and the majority of them work on weekends.

The competition might be more akin to humanities careers like writer, musician, or artist rather than industry.

But stability and money on average is still better in academia than being a musician.

> But stability and money on average is still better in academia than being a musician.

That's just not true.

The average person in academia is a grad student. Their stability is low, they generally depend on one person who can easily take advantage of this. And unfortunately this often happens. And their pay is extremely low, below a living wage.

The next most common position are itinerant teachers of various kinds, adjuncts, course support staff, etc. These positions are also paid very poorly and have no stability. Also if you're fired, for any reason, even if your department is abolished (which happens!), that's it. Now you need to move maybe across the country. So not only is your pay abysmal, at any moment you could lose your family, friends, etc.

Even if you are tenured. Yeah, you have a job for life nominally. But, what if one of your fellow tenured professors turns out to be a verbally or even sexually abusive creep? Well, your options for moving are slim, and again, it means losing all of your connections and local life, for some unknown location at a roll of the dice. If you're lucky. Also, at the average university, in say, the average humanities department, a tenured professor after 20 years makes less than an entry-level CS grad at Google.

No. Academia is neither stable nor well paid, with only some exceptions.

I am comparing the stability and pay to a musician. You seem to be comparing with industry.

A PhD has 4-6 years of guaranteed employment. Most entry-level musicians would love to have 4-6 years of guaranteed income.

It's only guaranteed employment in certain countries.

I completed my PhD in the UK, and I got funding that just about covered living expenses, and this is normally only for 3 years (13.500 pounds a year). The 4th and last year, normally reserved for write up, you normally get nothing (I managed to get 1/2 year extra funding). Even worse, any month longer than the 4 years and you start paying fines to the university if you still want to finish.

Also, my status was that of a student, not employment. No pension or other benefits.

I’m convinced that there is no western country worse for doing a PhD than in the UK.

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