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Comment by mo_42 | Hacker News Reader

> What’s so essential about moving?

When I was doing my PhD, my supervisor always told me that scientists need to move around. It's somewhat of a tradition in academia even if few people understand the reason behind it fully (e.g., my supervisor did not I suspect).

Academia is a really old institution and has evolved mechanisms to ensure its future. This is one of them I guess.

I experienced the people there as a close-knit community. So, moving might counter this effect. The other reason that comes to my mind is signalling. If you're willing to move with your family, it's a strong signal that you take academia seriously. I guess every institution likes to have such people.

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I am kind of sad such smart people on here are missing the forest for the trees.

Moving institutions, historically, is about cross pollination of ideas. In physics this has been important because different institutions provide variations of how to 'think like a physicist'. On top of that, it allows for a mixing pot of lab culture and best practices.

They even did a good job of pointing at this in the movie Oppenheimer, where he visits Germany and has a formative experience which changes the trajectory of his focus.

It's very easy to 'do it by the numbers' and be repetitive in your work when you stay in the same institution. This is also the reason why 'sabbaticals' are still a thing, so professors will visit for a 0.5-1yr another institution or research hub for their field, which in theory happens every 7-10 years if the professor takes advantage of it.

> If you're willing to move with your family, it's a strong signal that you take academia seriously.

Not really. It only signals that you consider your career and interests as more important than the ones of your entire family. Because this increases the selective advantages of narcissistic people, this is a pretty toxic signal to look for.

Moving means often that your wife or husband must sacrifice their own career. If your partner earns more than you is not a really smart strategy. In any case can be a very selfish move.

Claiming that you must travel to be able to talk with other people in order to "complete yourself" (whatever it means) or to be exposed to the world is simply moronic in the age of internet.

Just a fossil requirement of the old times where scientists were supposed to entertain their noble sponsors with the tales of their travels in the longer European winter, or to report them as part-time spies in different kingdoms.

This means than the closer you live to the frontier, the better scientist you will be. Could find work at 2Km of home and earn some extra points in the checkbox of "had being humbled by the exposure to other cultures" that can be decisive later.

But me... nope. The problem that I was interested in didn't required to cross a stupid frontier (that in fact does exist only in paper currently). I'm not the kind of good scientist that "travels"; I just worked at 1000 Km of home

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