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Comment by slurpmaker | Hacker News Reader

Make it make sense. Offer Postdocs an actual career path not based on broken tenure and disposable adjunct professor roles, with hundreds if not thousands of applicants. Why would someone, with any field of study, be a "scum of the earth" post doc for 1/5th the salary and double the hours required as a junior python developer role? Moreso, post doc'ing for the wrong professor can ruin your career, why risk that either?

If the pay isn't good, the culture and work should be. In academia, that's almost never true. I couldn't support my family, nor ironically pay my families student loan payments as a post-doc, the decision was an easy one to make... But if I were really doing it for the love, the love isn't there.

You might think "oh here's an industry person who doesn't like academia", wrong. I loved research, writing papers, teaching people stuff, forming collaborations, etc. Just can't make it survivable financially or psychologically.

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Very understandable. I worked as a post doc for 8 years, with a paltry salary, I must say I had excellent advisors, so the experience was professionally enjoyable and I had the opportunity to sharpen my skills, travel the world for work, and have fun in general.

But in spite of an excellent CV, with the caveat that I had no affiliations with top schools and was not part of any in-group--I did not know how important both would be for an academic career, I though my many well-cited publications and clear and long-term research plans would have been enough.

Over the years, I applied for at least 70 tenure-track positions for which I felt I had a good chance of making at least the shortlist of 20 viable candidates. I was called for just one preliminary phone interview.

I started applying for industrial positions in Machine Learning and, after receiving a few offers, took a job that paid 5 times my last postdoc salary (my last contract was 6 months, so it would have been 10 times). It has been a fulfilling, very well paid, and fun career so far.

I always recommend that not-too-promising postdocs consider a career in the private sector early on, especially in technology or related fields. They rarely listen, think or led to believe they are different. They aren't.

> But in spite of an excellent CV, with the caveat that I had no affiliations with top schools and was not part of any in-group--I did not know how important both would be for an academic career, I though my many well-cited publications and clear and long-term research plans would have been enough.

Even those are not enough. I had all of those (great undergrad and grad school pedigree, postdoc with a novel laureate, publications...) You need to have a final boss who will go to bat for you, unfortunately the Nobel laureate was 84 and more into playing slots at the Indian casino/fucking around in the lab than he was in advocating for my career.

>You need to have a final boss who will go to bat for you, unfortunately the Nobel laureate was 84 and more into playing slots at the Indian casino/fucking around in the lab than he was in advocating for my career.

This is one of the things I like about industry jobs. Your career at a company might grow or be derailed by one person, but it's just that particular company. If it's a big company, it's just that particular org. In academia a single person can derail your entire career. As you've pointed out, sometimes it's not even malice. They just aren't interested in doing what they need to support you.

At one point my skip-level was a VP at a software company who loved to push people into doing things by saying "Think about your career. If you do things right you will be set for life." Outside of his tiny universe at that company, nobody even knew he existed. I burned some bridges with that person and some of his sycophants, but I just moved on to a different company with zero ramifications.

It's liberating to be able to just say F-it and move on.

That's alluring.

It is true that you can change companies and rapidly leave behind all the problems and conflicts and issues you had in your previous jobs.

In academia, first, it is very challenging to move to another institution after you start your tenure track position (few jobs available, students need to be taken care of, it is at least a 2-year move), second if you have "issues" with other people in the field, and especially when they are more powerful than you (better known, better network, better financing), you have a miserable professional life in front of you. I see many an academic living on the verge of psychological collapse.

Freedom has no price, for all the rest there is money in the bank account.

Absolutely true. I saw this play out in my lab where we had 1-2 PhD students (including myself) and about 12-16 rotating postdocs. They worked insane hours for very little pay, no benefits, and produced 95% of the output of the lab. Our professor was definitely the "wrong" kind of professor, as about 50% of them left academia entirely and not by choice after being wrung dry of all productive output and then discarded. The professor also only hired visa applicants to have extra leverage over them. I know that isn't the case everywhere in American universities, but it was common enough that no one cared or thought it was extraordinary.

> The professor also only hired visa applicants to have extra leverage over them.

For any postdoc that thinks the university has leverage for this reason, if you are able to get a H1B, you can switch employers easily. You are not stuck at whichever company sponsored you.

Is that a realistic scenario?

* My understanding is that universities prefer J-1 visas in almost all cases [1][2], and such visas are not portable.

* H-1B is more flexible than J-1, but still not as flexible compared to a green card. In particular, the new employer has to fill out a new application, pay the fees, etc. Also, universities are exempt from the H-1B cap, but other employers may not be.

[1] https://internationaloffice.berkeley.edu/ucb_departments/h-1...

[2] https://postdocs.stanford.edu/postdoc-admins/how-quick-links...

False. H1B visas given to work for a university are "cap exempt." They allow to work for universities and other nonprofits only. H1B visas to work for a for-profit company can only be obtained through a lottery.

There's more nuance here. There're ways to "port" your H1B to another company (incl. while working part-time with one leg at a non-profit and another at a startup), but few want to go that route because of all the other bullshit we already had to go through.

I don't think we are in disagreement here. My main point is that many feel "pressure" from their employer. Knowing and keeping your options open and ready to act on them, even at other universities, empower all workers.

I think every single person in my lab was on a J-1. This was in the 2006-2010 timeframe, the H1B process for post-docs may be different now. I can think of one case where a researcher burned out on 80 hour weeks, got divorced, and was asked to leave after their productivity dropped. They didn't have much choice other than to go home to their home country immediately.

We also had an untenured research scientist who did all of the PI's work and grant writing. After two 110+ hour weeks getting three grants written for several million dollars they went home to enjoy the weekend and dropped dead of a heart attack at 42. I miss him.

>If the pay isn't good, the culture and work should be. In academia, that's almost never true

When I think back to my thought process when I was applying for academic and research jobs after my PhD, there's one thing I remember that always keeps me from ever second guessing my decision to move to the private sector.

At least in my field, so many people in academia and research had big egos and were a-holes. Some of them were brilliant, many of them just thought they were. It was so easy to end up in a toxic mess. You know that interviewer who makes you feel small because they knew some random minutiae that you didn't know? There are plenty of those in academia and you'll be answerable to them.

I've worked for a bunch of big companies and there's less acceptance of a-holes. If nothing else, your colleagues will acknowledge they are a-holes and validate how you feel. Even if somebody is a brilliant 10X a-hole, a decent management layer will put walls around them to minimize their damage. And if you find yourself stuck working with or for an a-hole, you have more options to switch because there are more jobs.

My friend who is a professor at a university aiming for tenure put it succinctly: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law

The stakes are in fact very high for the academics themselves. There’s night and day difference between getting tenure, and not.

As whymauri has illustrated, there's a ton of pettiness that goes on between tenured professors and outside of anything to do with the tenure process. It's nothing but people with big egos being a small fish in a small pond and then stomping around like toddlers to make sure everybody knows they are there.

I still have memories of wanting to tell some of my tenured professors that they needed to grow up and find bigger things to cry about. I was in my 20s, they were all 40+.

At least IME, the younger non-tenured professors were less likely to engage in this pettiness because they had, as you have pointed out, a lot more to lose.

I mean the perceived viciousness mostly stems from power imbalance (when it’s between tenured and untenured) and having a lot to lose. Two tenured assholes clashing is at best unpleasant.

No: the will to power is greatest because you have (supposedly) power over the creme of the creme.

As silly as that but Nietzsche had it right: the will to power is one of the primordial forces.

the creme of the creme are all working for big companies making big dollars. But I could imagine people in academia thinking they are the a big deal.

That's not really fair either. There are plenty of brilliant people in academia who don't care for big paychecks from corporations.

The ones I talk to all complain about the poor pay, relative to how much people make in industry. A few make the jump, especially those whose discipline allow them to transition easily to industry.

But try to be a tenure-track professor in biology at a mid academic institution. You are fed up, you want more money, money you think you deserve. Where do you go at, say, fifty years old?

What is that based on?

AFIAK, the leaders in almost every field are in academia, where they have the independence to do research, not earn profits, and where their research has the greatest impact because their employer doesn't hide it from the world as long as possible.

Speaking from experience, the "not earn profits" part isn't actually true anymore in many places.

Are you saying that there is pressure on academic researchers to earn profits?

I noticed a major university announcing some new center to nurture businesses to monetize IP. I remember when universities tried to generate knowledge and value for society.

That's just for very, very specific fields.

For instance, for something very practical, market-ready, basically Engineering I'd say you're correct. For basic research, not at all.

Well ya know, industry solved Fermat’s Last theorem numerous times but only managed to scribble it in the corner of their performance review.

Industry solved it as many times as the academics have

Fermat's last theorem has been solved back in the 90s. But it's obviously just one example to illustrate the main point, it's not about whether it specifically has been solved or not.

And also what industry would pay someone to solve that problem. Super hard problem of little industrial value.

Ehh, I’m old enough now that I can LinkedIn/Facebook search my old classmates and see how the crème of my crop turned out. Everyone was smart but the genuine honest-to-god genius from our class is a research chemist at MIT. The richest is a former childrens’ toy maker (STEM-education startup exit).

The closer I got to my PIs and their friends/enemies in various academic departments, the more I realized that university departmental politics are more stereotypically 'high school drama' than anything I actually experienced in high school! My god, professors can be so petty.

Don't consult a self-perceived expert on a field on a project you're considering? Uninvited from their July 4th BBQ.

Standing up for a junior tenure-track faculty who a senior person doesn't like? Have fun getting work done while scheduled to teach the 800 person remedial chemistry class, disparagingly called 'chemistry for artists.'

Need some equipment but you forgot to wish me happy birthday? Sorry, unforeseen maintenance lol. Oh please.

So true, lol. Stoner by John Williams does a good job of showing this.

Great novel.

As has been attributed to Sayre: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low."

A professor who had also worked in the private sector told me: In academia, everyone is smart and some of them are nice. In the private sector, everyone is nice and some of them are smart.

> In the private sector, everyone is nice

This doesn't really square with the horror stories I see from the private sector.

I don't think they meant it literally, but more in the sense of different places on the trade-off continuum: E.g., academia is willing to tolerate more bad behavior but less lack-of-smarts.

Everyone in the informal hyperbolic sense. Like 90%.

The remaining 10% are more than enough to account for the horror stories

"There's a shortage of Lamborghinis!"

"Oh? At which price point?"

"At the $4000 price point! It's a travesty!"

That is a perverse misreading of the original comment.

Calling a livable wage and fair working conditions a Lamborghini is not applicable.

I think the comment was comparing good post-doc researchers to Lamborghinis. Makes sense as the academic are not offering enough ($4000) for it to make sense.

In this metaphor, the postdoc is the Lamborghini, the speaker is the employer bemoaning the difficulty of acquiring a postdoc/Lamborghini for an unreasonable price point, and the $4000 is the unreasonable price point.

Good CS researches are in some sense the Lamborghinis of developers.

There's some nuance here because the reason this logic works is that labor is special (to me at least) because measures to forcibly reduce the cost of labor increase human suffering. But for basically every other good prices being driven well beyond the norm (during normalish market conditions) is basically the definition of a shortage. It doesn't really matter if it's a "luxary" good or not (since that category is ill-defined anyway grumble grumble tampons).

If the price of milk shot up from $2/gal to $20/gal that's a shortage.

> If the price of milk shot up from $2/gal to $20/gal that's a shortage.

Erm, exactly?

If there were a real shortage, salaries would be going up. The fact that salaries aren't going up to counteract that "shortage" tells me that there really isn't one.

Both my parents went to graduate school. One of them loved the academic setting and went through with the postdoc and then found a tenure track job, the other decided it wasn't for them. I talked to them recently and the one still teaching said they would never choose that path if they were coming out of college now.

It can take 5-10 years to find a tenure track job now because professors don't retire. I've seen 90+ year olds walking around departments, and 70 year olds are common. All the low hanging fruit is gone, so projects and problems take longer and longer. Together, it means that whatever semblance of academic integrity and honor is gone. There's too much pressure to produce something big that you'll hide data or even steal it. Even collaborations don't mean you'll see your name on a paper. My partner got their research scooped by former collaborators!! And your recourse for blatant plagiarism? Nothing! No institution will fight for you because your career doesn't matter to them. There's a huge pool of postdocs they can pick from if you give up. Most of the professors still pretend that they can talk things out and share data, or blame you for not anticipating the issues.

The pay is secondary for most people who made it through grad school. They generally _want_ to do research. But when the pay is less for a more toxic environment, it's a no brainer. And somehow the professors are confused why no one wants to stay...

> All the low hanging fruit is gone, so projects and problems take longer and longer.

That is survivorship bias. There are low-hanging fruit in newer fields, or fields with recent major shifts.

> a "scum of the earth" post doc for 1/5th the salary and double the hours required as a junior python developer role

Where do you get these numbers from? This is not at all like that in Europe. A postdoc gets (say, in France) 30k per year, doing a calm, interesting job and paid travel to a couple of conferences per year, with almost total freedom to choose their daily schedule. This is not a high salary, but it is certainly livable and quite above the median of the country. A 150k salary is nearly out of reach for even quite senior developers, and nonsensical for "junior python developer roles".

I think this is very much a uniquely American article and comment. I believe in many other nations the situation is different on both sides. Postdocs are treated different and get more pay, junior developers get paid less.

I agree with you. I don't know why but the most disfunctional labs I know about are all in the US (Prof putting meetings on sat morning so everyone comes in to work on weekends...), although I know of some pretty bad places in Switzerland as well. You're also correct postdoc salaries higher in Europe (and developer ones are lower). However, there is definitely a problem finding postdocs also here. I should say that this seems to be not just academia, all my industry colleagues are desperate for applicants.

The economics of higher education are different in the US and elsewhere, especially Europe. The culture is as well in my experience.

It's probably in the US. A friend of mine was physical chemist and was paid in the 20k range per year several years ago and it was barely livable. It's not surprising that a junior developer getting paid 5 times of that.

In the US, a postdoc at a top CS school makes like $60-80k and works 60-80hrs a week, whereas a new grad of the same caliber with just a bachelors (think top 10% of graduating class) can reasonably expect to make >$200k working 40 hours a week at a FAANG. Meanwhile, Research Scientist roles (the common alternative to doing a postdoc in CS) recently cracked $400k starting. These are numbers I have personally experienced. (Verifiable on aipaygrad.es and levels.fyi).

CS is certainly an outlier in terms of salaries, but ANY person capable of landing a postdoc in a STEM field at a competitive school in the US is capable of figuring out a way to get a job as a software engineer in Big Tech (the grind of leet code is nothing compared to the grind of doing a PhD, full stop). This is why >60% of PhD grads in CS across top schools are ending up in industry, and I knew a TON of PhDs from physics, math, chemistry, etc. who left research immediately after graduating and are now SWE.

In the US (at least for now) it's fairly easy for a Senior Engineer to get 250k TC, and if income is your goal and you want put the energy towards a FAANG, not that hard to get up to 400-500k. In 2019 the median postdoc salary in the US was ~50k [0].

The work/life balance part is a bit trickier to quantify. Anecdotally US postdocs work pretty hard, but my experience is that highly paid engineers at FAANG-style companies also work pretty hard. If you don't want work to be your life as a SWE $250k seems to be the easiest achievable comp while meeting those requirements.

0. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00587-y

My experience as a senior engineer at G was that most of my peers and I were working about 20-30 hours/week and collecting 300-500k TC. Some senior SWEs worked long hours, but they weren't rewarded for it, and many quickly adopt the ~30 hour/week lifestyle.

Well, that sounds OK ;)

I did my last postdoc in another European country more or less 8 years ago and my salary was 1700 euros per month (after taxes). Very limited funds for traveling or going to conferences. That was barely livable, considering it is temporary money, you cannot ask for any mortgage, cannot plan any future and you are often starting to have gray hair (or a full head of gray hair).

Postdoc in Germany sees around 2400± after tax per month

For how long? That is the question.

Mine was in Spain, where I am from. And I also had kids at the time, which made the lack of life planning even more dangerous.

Is that correct? I am a postdoc at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and I'm at the TV-L 13 level, Stufe 3, which is ~3300 post tax.

I'm a PhD student in CS in the USA. At my school in Boston, we are paid a ~40K USD/yr stipend. My friends in industry make a _minimum_ of 120k/yr, and some make considerably more than that (think 200k+), in junior / "entry-level" positions.

When I complete the PhD, if I go to industry in the USA, my income will probably be similar to that of my friends who will have been in industry the entire time (and gotten steady wage increases throughout).

It's important to note also cost of living. 40k/yr might sound like a lot, but in Boston, rent is >1k/month even with roommates, we don't have dental care, our health insurance is imperfect, groceries are expensive, etc. etc. Meanwhile in Tucson Arizona or Bloomington Indiana the stipend is something like 22-28K/yr, as cost of living is lower.

Generally speaking it's reasonable to say that completing a PhD in computer science is not a financial investment, but rather, something I am doing because I want to do it. I am very unlikely to literally "profit" (compared to, if I had gone straight to industry instead).

I hope this information is useful/interesting!

Getting hired as a PHD is usually a +1 in level compared to a junior.

Yes, but in the time it takes to complete a PhD, the junior engineer can usually get promoted at least once. So you both end up in the same place, but the guy who went straight to industry was making 3x more than the PhD in the meantime.

Don't forget that a PhD makes it more difficult to get some kinds of jobs. An intermediate or low level developer job may pay more, but if you have a PhD the interviewers are going to question why you are applying for a low level job and be worried how long you will stay. So in some respects a PhD reduces your employability (though you can always lie and say you never got the PhD, though it is kind of hard to hide on a resume without leaving a time gap, which makes you seem even less employable.)

... this sounds like you're in my exact department, actually.

A friend of mine got a phd and he told me the main benefit was that he had lots more opportunities. He was always called back for job interviews and had lots more positions available. His wife, a nurse, basically supported him while he was getting the degree.

This is still an opportunity cost scenario. Would your friend get called back for job interviews if he had just spent that time in industry and had ~3yr experience on their resume (My experience is yes).

When I was a postdoc 10 years ago in the US I brought home about $2200/month. My health insurance deductible was $5000/year. I paid $1800/month in student loans. My family had to move into my parent's basement, and every credit card was maxed, every bank account overdrawn, major food anxiety, etc.

It is astonishing how poorly academia pays the people who actually do the research; extreme financial stress is a nightmare that can really wreck your life.

Yep, for exactly two or three years tops.

What do you mean? The university will be happy to have you around for such a cheap price as long as you want.

I was an industry person who wanted to transition to academia. I just decided against it obviously. I liked all the aspects you pointed out above. The one thing that is missed is that most places are publishing sweatshops where the pay and work conditions are horrible. The “boss” or the PI has unlimited control and can destroy your career.

The problems are also way out of the ordinary. I’d like to draw a parallel with medicine. Most researchers are doctors who interact and treat patients. In contrast - I think a lot of engineering post docs or phds may not be working on stuff the industry cares about.

Is the whole patent clerk discovering stuff in their free time still possible? I know people say do what you love etc but I’ve found something I kinda like as a day job but I’d rather be doing astronomy.

Particularly in the case of astronomy, citizen science is important. It probably won't give you an Annus Mirabilis, but might be satisfying.

> I just decided against it obviously.

Why is it obvious? There might be some groupthink on HN (and bias toward our career paths), but plenty of people go into academia.

> pay and work conditions are horrible

It's not like bosses and businesses in the private sector are Nirvana. You can see plenty of stories about them on HN.

Private sector pay is much better and working conditions are also on average much better. You have professional management and HR functions and one manager can’t destroy your career. More importantly the exit options are better. The relative power imbalances lead to people being treated differently.

Those are advantages, there also are disadvantages. That doesn't explain why it's obvious (nor address the HN bias/groupthink).

I was responding purely to your point about working conditions. Obviously if you come from money, have a partner who does, come from a country that’s substantially poorer than most of the first world or want to do science more than you want to have a non long distance relationship or make a professional class income doing a PhD/postdoc looks great.

For all the sarcasm, there is more to it and many people choose and and have chosen it. My point it, just because you see it that way doesn't make it "obvious"; it's just your point of view.

yup. deeply regret my time as a postdoc. especially the last few years in the pandemic have been the absolute worst work experience in terms of culture and job satisfaction. it's killed the passion for research i had at the start.

the worst part is that i think this experience has completely tanked my confidence.

now id take a jr python dev job in a second.

Postdocs in Europe are pretty comfortable and labs often have more stable/core funding.

Work can be pretty good postdocing in some labs in Europe.

But the end of the road is still that after the postdoc you’re expected to either be a rockstar or a nobody. So anxiety is always there.

I think the core problem is lack of a intermediate default path, besides rockstar or nobody. In some places being a high school teacher was a reasonable, and even quite prestigious intermediate path. Some researchers even did significant contributions to science while in such roles, like Hermann Grassmann. But today being a teacher is a ugly duckling between professions that require higher education, overworked and with worse pay nearly everywhere. In some places they even have to worry about shootouts at work.

I've posted on this before but I make twice as much, more, as an industry pro than in my work as a non-tenured academic. I've been offered tenure and turned it down, because if I took it, my family would starve. It needs to change.

But imagine the displacement of those ivory-tower academic greybeards who will suddenly have to compete with actual professionals? They're still teaching HTML/CSS in my university, for example; cloud is largely pooh-poohed; AI and ML are barely on the curriculum, and sub-par at that; more interesting subjects, like e.g. computational neuroscience, or any software engineering that isn't Python, simply doesn't feature. They'll be out on their ear.

Careful. Not every PhD is STEM. There are lots of humanities PhDs.

In addition, most of my EE professors were from industry and would smoke their contemporaries. They knew their shit cold and then some.

Just my personal observations:

Plain HTML/CSS is still relevant today. Not everything needs to be an SPA. I also don't understand how one would write SPAs with React/Vue/whatever other framework without first having at least some understanding of HTML and CSS.

Agree with the cloud being poo-pooed.

Don't agree with barely any classes in ML. Grant money in ML has been hot, which means academic hiring in ML has been hot, and a good number of those hires are teaching classes. Basically every major CS department has a broad selection of ML courses or even ML concentrations and minors. Most smaller departments seem to have at least one or two courses to choose from.

I've never seen Python used to teach software engineering. Java is the classic language for that, even today. Although I suspect that we may have different definitions of software engineering.

I would even say this goes down further - the motivation to even finish a PhD program may disappear entirely after hearing piles and piles of such stories in the first few years. The lack of sufficient funding from above combined with oversaturation of the industry with PhDs has a long-lasting and chilling effect on the entire academia, and possibly the industry itself too.

Who needs a PhD for a "junior python developer role". Is it really necessary. This "python developer" idea sounds like it only applies to a small slice of PhD programs, notably the ones focused solely on computers. For example, what percentage of PhDs in molecular biology choose to become "junior python developer". When someone who believes a computer performing pattern recognition equates to a child having feelings and sensations^1 can become a "senior software engineer" at Google,^2 why is a PhD needed.

1. https://cajundiscordian.medium.com/is-lamda-sentient-an-inte...

2. https://research.google/people/106471/ (Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20220612100903if_/https://resear... )

People get PHD’s because they love the subject matter and can get loans etc. But they then have a PHD that might not actually be worth anything and still need to eat.

Assuming just because you have a PHD means you need to use it is a sunk cost fallacy. Starting over can be a completely rational choice.

Does sunk cost fallacy apply to an assumption that because one has an ability to program a computer one must use it, i.e., demand pay for time spent on programming, e.g., with the end goal of coercing people to surrender personal data and/or click on ads.

Perhaps the value of a PhD is not limited to its "market value". I hope that part of the intrinsic value of a degree is an ability to think critically, unlike the "senior software engineer" example I cited, for which the "market value" is probably quite high. Sometimes markets are not rational. Myself, I do not care what any job market suggests. To me, education has value, both for the individual and for society at large.

"Tech" companies are not well-known for fostering crtitical thinking ability. Most of the world is eating, and feeding families, without knowing how to program computers. It has been that way since the dawn of humankind.

The majority of programmers work outside of the personal data collection and or clicking on ads sides of things. Advertising supported businesses are a fairly trivial slice of the economy, as should be obvious because it’s ultimately dependent on advertising spend from other companies.

Computer Science PhD candidate quits to join Google.

https://computing.louisiana.edu/meet-blake-lemoine-computer-...

nobody needs it, but if you have it learning to code is a viable alternative to academia

Are there other postdoc countries/systems which work well, that we could use as examples?

Why would someone, with any field of study, be a "scum of the earth" post doc

Access to coeds.

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