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Comment by naterator | Hacker News Reader

These kinds of things are daily discussions in laboratories all over the world. Everyone knows there's no future in academia, and so everyone is looking for an exit plan. I actively discourage people from doing a PhD. Academia is a horrible feudalistic system that doesn't pay well enough to keep the bright minds it attracts. There is no sense in being a post-doc for life. Much better to take that hedge fund job.

The really concerning potential consequence of this is that it could result in a dearth of innovation in cures for diseases, and we won't see the affect of losses until 5 or 10 years down the road. No one will fund a biotech startup that's not backed by MDs or PhDs and academia-approved proof-of-concept results. Good luck getting that when everyone is running for the lifeboats.

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> I actively discourage people from doing a PhD. Academia is a horrible feudalistic system that doesn't pay well enough to keep the bright minds it attracts. There is no sense in being a post-doc for life. Much better to take that hedge fund job.

Underlying your comment is the assumption that every one wants the hedge fund (or other) job. One of the allures of academia is the prospect of doing fundamental research. You ignore that many people derive satisfaction from doing fundamental research that has the potential to be widely used across the research community (and possibly, for product development, e.g. industry labs, some government labs). It is simplistic to dismiss academia as a feudalistic system. There are merits, demerits, and other nuances.

Also, there are, figuratively speaking, thousands of academic fields, each with its own system and culture. For example, academic jobs are plentiful for PhD graduates in these areas (in my experience): information technology/information systems (as opposed to computer science), management, accounting, finance, organizational behavior, etc.

A summary dismissal of academia as 'feudal', especially when such an assessment underlies 'advice' is an unnecessary exaggeration.

One of the allures of academia is the prospect of doing fundamental research

It's also a false allure: the problem is that fundamental research requires funding, and the OP is pointing out that he can't get it. He'll be in essence locked out of research and not make a lot of money at it.

This is like saying, "One of the allures of acting is the prospect of being famous and sleeping with lots of fans." On the one hand it's true; on the other, it's very unlikely.

> the problem is that fundamental research requires funding

In biology, yeah, although I think what a lot of people here are doing is reading stories about high-capital-cost fields (experimental physics, biochem, etc.) and then applying it to their own field, which on HN is mostly computer science. CS research really does not require a lot of funding, outside of specific areas (mostly hardware and robotics stuff). Also, because of a robust industry hiring many people away, the supply/demand situation in CS academia is not as bad, and you can always join them and go to Google/Palantir/Microsoft/whatever if things don't work out. I don't bring in much in the way of grants and I get by just fine, because computers don't cost a lot in 2014, and I don't do the kind of research that requires armies of minions. If I need a 10-computer cluster to run something computationally intensive for a few days, cloud costs are so low nowadays that I can just pay for that out of pocket, never mind trying to figure out how to get it paid by a grant.

Getting a decent job in CS academia where you have some time and freedom to actually pursue research is not at all like winning the lottery. Especially if your focus is not just the top 20 universities and being a famous MIT professor with a big lab. There are many, many places with small to medium-sized CS departments, which will pay you a modest salary and let you do whatever you want.

The financial situation in CS is not at all typical of academia. I'm not sure what your point is. Surely you're not suggesting that all academics should become CS academics?

I'm suggesting that if someone already is in computing, as most HN posters are, then the situation of biology academia isn't really relevant to your own industry vs. academia decision. If you're deciding between academia and a tech startup, you should probably look at conditions in CS academia as the relevant comparison.

Now if you're a biologist, the conditions in biology academia are the relevant comparison. But my impression, based on looking at what YC companies are doing, is that most people deciding between YC and grad school are in either CS or business, not the natural sciences.

The biggest cost of my computational grants are funding for people. They don't go away just because you can pay for AWS on a credit card.

Well in my case it's easy: I don't need people. :)

Or to be more precise, I don't need employees. I do work with other people, but they aren't my staff. I do some collaborative projects with colleagues, work with masters students doing their masters theses if they're interested (usually 3-5/semester are interested in working on either my projects, or projects I'm interested in), and also work with some people in industry.

Some kinds of research require an army of minions, but I don't really need employees to do mine. In fact generally I prefer having a smaller number of collaborators so I can really be a researcher doing research and writing papers myself, not a research manager, the kind of professor who's the last author on papers written by their students and postdocs. The institution I'm at doesn't expect American-R1-style large labs, so I can do that. Fortunately there are a pretty wide range of institutions with CS departments with different expectations, so there is quite a bit of choice.

If your goal is just to producing quality papers, this is perfectly great. If your research involves systems and implementations, it sucks to have to write every bits of code yourself. I don't think CS research is just about theory, at least not the line of research I am doing, I am all about making it readily available to others to use.

Yeah, it certainly varies. I'm in AI, which is a bit different from systems. A lot of the work is based on existing open-source code, since you don't need to (probably shouldn't) be constantly reinventing the wheel. In my case it's usually the modeling, data analysis, and insights gained from the data that's new, not the underlying software (e.g. I wouldn't write an SMT solver myself).

When I do produce code, I produce prototype code myself or working together with masters students. When the goal is to produce robust, end-user-ready software, I prefer one of two approaches: 1) work within an existing open-source codebase, contributing improvements upstream; or 2) collaborate with a company to turn a prototype into something polished and end-user-ready. Even if I had a bunch of funding, I don't think I'm in a good position to produce and maintain polished end-user-ready software. Academic software has a habit of going unmaintained when the PhD student graduates or the NSF/EU project ends, and research funding isn't really aligned with production needs. John Regehr talks a bit about that here: http://blog.regehr.org/archives/1058. So I tend to stick with either one-off prototypes, or find a way to collaborate with someone (open-source community, company) that is better positioned to maintain software.

Other decisions are also perfectly valid, just given resources and interests I don't see maintaining essentially a software-production company within academia, with paid staff, as feasible for me personally.

True, but that's not necessarily the case in biology, where the people are no cheaper, but the experiments are a lot more expensive. Assuming $N of grant is as easy to get in CS as biology (ha!), you'll be able to fund way more people in CS.

Agreed (I'm not a C.S. person, I'm a computational epidemiologist). This was mostly addressing the notion that because you don't need the LHC, or banks of PCR machines, or to enroll a couple thousand patients, that C.S. is somehow cheap, has zero costs, and zero pressure to get grant money.

Postdocs, and computing time, and grad students, and your salary are all things that need to be supported by grant money.

It might be easier, but to assert it's easy is flawed.

I'm curious, what is the job market for computational epidemiologists?

The reason I'm asking is my gf is doing her PhD in that area, and I don't think her job prospects are very clear.

The analogy does not make sense. I know many colleagues who got into academia and were able to find plenty of funding. It wasn't a lucky break that helped them, but hard work and talent. The system is far from perfect, but it is not 'feudal', etc. as the parent comment claims. Systematic hard work can get you results in academia. From what I understand about show-biz, it requires a lot more than just talent and hard work.

Also, your comment ignores the fact that OP is in just one nook of academia. Further, OP is one data point in that one nook of academia. That he is the top institutes doesn't 'weight' his opinion either way, in the grand scheme of things.

I got a PhD in computer science, and I landed a research job in industry where I get to do both research and development. So, half production, half academia.

I consider myself extraordinarily lucky. I can point to many different instances of luck that enabled me to be where I am now. Hard work and talent are a given, but among those that work hard and are talented, there's a lot of blind luck that determines who gets the few positions that are available. I continually remind myself not to fall prey to the narrative fallacy, and think that I was somehow "destined" for my current position, and that I got here entirely because of my own work. I was not, and I did not.

I know people who did not land those academic positions, and are either in industry not doing research, or stuck in the post-doc waiting room.

Research in CS (and math) is 'cheap' compared to research in say, chemistry, physics, or biology.

Pencil, paper, and maybe some Amazon EC2 time as opposed to a bunch of lab equipment and other materials.

And research in the humanities is even cheaper and you see how well their doing.

I'm not sure I follow.

I was just making an offhand remark about how R&D gigs in industry for math/cs might be 'easier' to come by because their salary doesn't necessarily compete with lab costs.

The point is that all of this funding scarcity is artificial. its all agame to make you run like a hamster on a wheel. there is no capex needs for liberal arts, only modest opex. but no matter, none of those guys are "funded" either. they all are pitching projects for grants just like the STEM counterparts. Its basically a sociology experiment at this stage.

This is not about the philosophical debate of luck vs. effort. In my opinion, show-biz vs. academia analogy is not valid (Though there are no Jaden Smith's in academia, I won't use that as a counter-example. Doing so would perpetuate this analogy.). The metrics on which actors are judge are fuzzy and subjective at best, and spurious at worst. Academics, OTOH, (excluding China and a few other offenders) are mostly judged justly- whether in grant applications or in job applications or for tenure.

There are indeed Jaden Smiths in academia. I personally know people who did their first degree in (humanities subject) and got a PhD position in (top 5 world school) doing (in-demand science subject) and followed by a postdoc in a great institution based entirely on their father being very important in the subject.

These people got funded graduate spots in the best departments in the world, beating out others who obtained first-class degrees (4.0 for the North Americans) and worked their entire lives towards this dream.

How does this happen? Do you want to be the guy who refused to supervise the daughter of the nth most important person in your field? A man who has given you important references in the past and may do so again? When this relationship could get you even closer to the Will Smith of your field? This is good old fashioned corrupt nepotism for all the good old fashioned reasons.

Now, these people are both genetically and environmentally predisposed to be much better than average at this work. Sometimes it works out well. It is possible that this is a good outcome for science. But is it fair? It is not.

(Written as a working prof who had no academic connection advantages. I acknowledge that being white, male and having English as a first language was not a a bad place to start from).

> Do you want to be the guy who refused to supervise the daughter of the nth most important person in your field?

I never witnessed literal nepotism where family relations were involved. But, this definitely does happen when it comes to academic "family"- a famous advisor's "son" or "daughter" usually has a significant edge.

I know many colleagues who got into academia and were able to find plenty of funding.

Since the crisis struck in 2009 the quality of candidates that are being interviewed at my second-tier state school is just astounding. They are expected to bring funding in, or else they are out, but they will not manage, and considering the quality of graduate students there, they will not be able to be any productive.

Academia is in a state of transition, and it seems that no one knows what the endgame will look like. University presidents throughout the country are betting on growth as the way out of the crisis, more students means more tuition, and more professors means more grants. It doesn't look sustainable, and personally I see no way forward. It seems wise to stay away.

There's a point beyond which "systematic hard work" becomes allocation by sacrifice, which is one of the most stupidly wasteful and destructive things an institution can do. If society is unwilling to adequately fund science - a very unwise decision - then it should at least allocate by random lottery instead of sacrifice and cut down on the waste of life.

As an individual, if you find yourself in an institution that's using allocation by sacrifice, get out. "I will work harder" a la Boxer from Animal Farm makes things worse not better.

I quite like that term, "allocation by sacrifice". Has someone defined it in more detail?

"Systematic hard work can get you results in academia. From what I understand about show-biz, it requires a lot more than just talent and hard work."

Agree (in that what you are saying makes sense. I don't have unfortunately (or maybe I should say fortunately) have personal experience in those particular job markets.)

In any case they appear to be pyramid type systems of success [1](and for that matter athletics are similar to this, right?) Things which many people strive for but few people actually achieve what they set out to achieve (throw startups into this mix as opposed to lifestyle type businesses).

One thing that these pursuits have in common is that money really isn't the primarily motivator in that while becoming a rock star may give you money (or an athlete or a top academic) I always thought that it was more the sense of accomplishment and fame that was much more important. Joe Dimaggio made quite a bit of money in his day but nowhere near what athletes today make but yet many people wanted to play baseball back then.

[1] Perhaps someone could point out the right phrase for this concept. I'm looking for the word that describes professions where people are generally driven to work hard believing they will be the ones that become famous or well known or "the best".

It's called the tournament model. Big law firms are the classic example.

A related theory is that technology and globalization has, and will, make more and more industries 'winner take all'.

I wonder if there are high-profile areas that don't follow that model currently? Given that we're on HN, startups are another example that comes to mind, with the entire VC industry based around trying to hit those rare 100x (or 1000x) exits, and plenty of people happily willing to work towards the small odds of being the one.

Doctors are a counterexample. While there are certainly richer and more prestigious specialties than others, once you hit medical school there's not much attrition. Then once you make MD even the lower paid specialties are pretty well paid, and have great job security. It's not like BigLaw where getting in the door is only the first step and there's a long way to fall.

Perhaps the free software movement and wisdom of the crowds phenomena such as wikipedia are a counterpoint? While both have big players with more influence, it's not a zero sum game as there is room for people to work on long tail stuff.

any inelastic demand markets will not follow that model. tournament-systems rely on incredible elasticity of demand so any small change will cause ripple of larger magnitude (i.e. if a new VC joined in the supply of VCs, it will cause 1000x more startups to be funded in order of magnitude)

Equity/stock traders is one of them because of legislation that fixes the commission price per lot (so the banks cannot really use information asymmetry as an advantage) Not all banking is as profitable as people think it is

>I know many colleagues who got into academia and were able to find plenty of funding.

If I parse correctly that you're in academia, you should really make more effort to understand potential sources of bias.

They got into academia because they were able to find plenty of funding. This does not imply that people who offer hard work and talent will typically find funding.

You are reading too much into my remark. I have seen cases where senior faculty members (within or without the department) with experience in finding funding have mentored junior ones and helped them with their peer networks. The bottom-line when it comes to academia and funding is this: You have to play the game or opt out of it. The funding system is far from perfect, but you can work it. In some ways, it is similar to the importance of 'soft skills' in an industry setting. Your best work will not always get you promoted because there are several other considerations that matter to your bosses. Some times, the skills required to get promoted (especially for advanced stages of promotion) are different from those required to be innovative/build a great product/service.

I am in electrical engineering. DoD is by far the largest source of funds. Admittedly, hunting for research funds involves a different set of skills than 'doing great research'. But these skills are learn-able and can go a long way in helping one's career.

> Systematic hard work can get you results in academia.

This is not necessarily true. At least in life sciences, there is a big element of pure, dumb luck. Biological systems are inherently noisy, and no matter how diligent we try to be about our processes and protocols, there is always luck.

I spent nearly two years of my life performing a single protocol (an endocytic receptor internallization assay) and the line between "good results" and "wasted a week" was incredibly thin. Some things just require luck to work out, no matter how careful you are.

I left academic biology because I didn't want luck playing into my career. In academic biology you must be incredibly smart, incredibly dedicated, willing to work long hours with little pay, AND be incredibly lucky.

I looked around at the post-docs in my department (at MIT, mind you) and saw brilliant people who would never produce a top-tier article, who had spent so long in their post-doc that they had no chance of ever becoming a professor. They would probably wash out to some industry job at Merck testing cholesterol drugs after wasting 10 years of their life pursuing some fictitious dream.

Truth be told, I wasn't as brilliant as most of the people around me, so I made a judgment call and left. It was the right decision, I'm happier than ever (and actually make money too).

>Underlying your comment is the assumption that every one wants the hedge fund (or other) job. One of the allures of academia is the prospect of doing fundamental research. You ignore that many people derive satisfaction from doing fundamental research that has the potential to be widely used across the research community (and possibly, for product development, e.g. industry labs, some government labs).

I assume that those people are unlikely to be discouraged, especially those that are stubborn and motivated enough to complete the degree. So I also actively discourage people from doing a PhD, even though I like my job.

>Underlying your comment is the assumption that every one wants the hedge fund (or other) job.

That's not at all what he's saying. He's advising people to take the hedge fund job even though they want to work in academia.

After my Ph.D., I went to a startup doing biofuels (Joule Unlimited), and then came back to academia to do a postdoc, and again it was difficult to decide between industry and academia. In the end, I chose to stay in academia because many of my goals in biotech will require a lot of fundamental research before they are able to attract angel/venture funding.

As a new assistant professor (as of two months ago), I do have to apply for lots of grants, but in the end, the funding is not so bleak that it's hopeless (got our first grant last week). It does however require me to pick and choose only the most promising projects that can produce results in the near-ish term (2-3 years) and apply technologies we are developing for the larger end-goals to problems in human health and disease. I think that's a fair tradeoff for now. I think we will be able to do the longer-term projects more slowly on the side as well as interface with startups and companies to attack commercial problems where it makes sense.

The problems we face today are because we hit a steady-state in funding, rather than continuing to grow as we've done over previous decades. One can argue we should continue to grow, but at some point we are going to hit a steady-state again and the situation will be the same. There are many interesting proposals on how best to reach a better structure for steady-state funding, but in the end, hard decisions like the one the OP made are going to continue being just that; hard decisions. I think the positive of the whole thing is that there are other options that grad students/post-docs can now consider in biology that aren't a tenure-track position, and that overall is a good thing.

I wanted to give you kudos for stating the level-headed answer that isn't brought up often in these doom and gloom articles:

>...funding is not so bleak that it's hopeless. [It] does however require me to pick and choose only the most promising projects

I feel part of the reason for the anger shown in this conversation is the definition of "academic freedom." Academia is more free than other avenues of research, but it isn't completely free; your grants have to be convincing enough to get funded, and this is how the system was built. This distinction can be subtle, but can only be seen with a certain degree of level-headedness.

Absolutely correct. The beauty of capitalism is that it is a blind mouse running through a maze. We won't know what the impacts of a decline in research funding will be, but there's only one way to find out! Will it be another Dark Age? Or will it be Galt's Gluch? Stay tuned!

Inspected rationally, this sort of national gamble is the definition of insanity. It wasn't "American Exceptionalism" that made the U.S.A what it is, but an unprecedented leve of concerted investment by the state into science and technology over the past century.

Let's see where this grand experiment leads us.

Relevant HN post from earlier, where I elaborate on this issue further:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7321660

i wish it was just the money. when i went into the university i was hoping to find people like me. it attracts bright minds, but it doesn't encourage them in any sort of way. a bright mind in that system is worth "almost" the same as the average joe who studied enough to pass through the system. so we're there, scattered, with no means to find each other. some of them do so anyway, it's what keeps them put up with the rest of the bs. some of them end up like me, pretty much alone, and then eventually lose interest.

i'm not saying the average joe shouldn't get into the university, i'm not even saying the others should get preferential treatment, but what benefit is it to be packed in basics classes that you don't need to anyway? you don't get to skip classes you already know, you have to sit through them, and waste your time. you take away time that could be used to teach the less gifted. you fill a spot which is valuable in the beginning, at the end not so much, because most will have dropped out by then.

i believe that we need to get away from the notion that everyone should study exactly the same. i don't see how it makes sense at all. and the same goes for phd's. which is essentially a pretty static period of underpaid work.

but that would take effort wouldn't it?

but what benefit is it to be packed in basics classes that you don't need to anyone? you don't get to skip classes you already know, you have to sit through them, and waste your time

When I chose where to study (for undergrad), a major factor in the decision was minimizing the amount of coursework I would have to repeat.

This is exactly what I'm doing now for my electrical engineering degree (following on from a Masters in Chemistry).

The big advantage is pretty much all of what I'm doing now is new and relevant material, and its great!

The underpaid work is different for each PhD candidate

Are you sure it's feudalism? It seems to me that the problem is in the modern management methods and always expecting results and publications, and tying finance to that, which is very shortsighted. But maybe you could explain better what you mean and what's more feudal about current system than what it always had been.

Here's the open question... If people are really forced to work on 2 year time horizons, should this investment really be happening in the private sector rather than the government? I get the idea of funding basic science with 20+ year time horizons to benefit humanity, but tactical solutions?

Separately - is this an issue with just new scientists, or existing ones too? The useful data would be "Total NIH funding" and "Per scientist funding." My anecdotal (and quite possibly unrepresentative!) data is that the total pie is staying the same size, but going to a set of existing researchers in a "Winner Takes All" manner. It's not conducive to new independent researchers, but perhaps we are creating too many for a fixed pie of research money.

Alternatively, should tuition be funding research if we are now in the business of producing researchers for the private sector?

It just seems to me that long term science as a group of scientists begging for government funding is no longer sustainable.

This may be a stupid question, but is the unintended consequence of too many Phds not enough MDs?

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2014/03/04/americas-pa...

It sounds like when the free market competes with the NIH for talent, the NIH wins. Perhaps the slowdown in NIH growth can incent folks with that skillset to go into medicine.

The need for innovation exists regardless of whether there are researchers working in the publicly-funded sector. And, let's face it, much of the research coming out is the result of 'publish or perish' rather than genuine curiosity.

Many great things in the past came from private research. Today's technology companies will probably be forced to invest more in their in-house research rather than acquiring competitors at sky-high prices.

I think you completely miss the point of why a lot of people do a PHD. The love of the subject.

Also, the pay after gaining a PHD in a certain field is most certainly worth it.

People say this kind of thing when they don't have experience of what it's actually like.

A PhD is not a continuation of undergraduate or independent study in a subject. It is a career with the tedium of other careers, and then some because so many other people are trying to do the same thing you are. You may love the subject now, but that doesn't mean you are going to be able to do the research you want. At various points in your career you have to do what your adviser wants, manage departmental politics, get funding and crank out publications. Maybe love of the subject helps you stick to it, but more likely it doesn't make a lot of practical difference once it's a tedious job you do every day.

The pay after spending an equal amount of time in any other career with the same background is likely to be better.

I wish we would stop referring to doing a PhD as "school" and the people doing it as "students". Call it what it is. They're junior researchers. I get that doing a PhD is also meant to be a training process, but working in industry also involves training and learning.

Kind of like "student" athletes, with presumably the same outcomes?

This. If you love a subject, go and spend a lot of time at a library. Fondness for a subject is a prerequisite for getting a PhD, but is very, very far from being sufficient.

The love of the subject is a given. The article states as much. The whole point of the article is that the rewards of an academic life are not presently commensurate with the risks and sacrificies it entails.

The pay "in a certain field" is irrelevant; the article is about pay and working conditions in academia.

The medical / pharma industry is not interested in cures for diseases; they only want lifelong treatments. True capitalists, seeking maximum profit.

What's the distinction? Whether they sell a thousand symptom suppression pills over a lifetime at $20 or 1 cure pill at $20,000 what does it matter? Are you saying people literally pay by pill count? Patents are monopolies, they don't charge the marignal production cost of one pill while they hold a patent, they charge what the market will pay.

It makes it easier to price discriminate between rich and poor customers.

Do you have any evidence for this whatsoever, or is this just casual slander?

"Much better to take that hedge fund job."

Unfortunately, not every PhD student can expect to get a well-paid job outside academia.

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