Is a Postdoc Worth it? 233
Jim_Austin writes "In a very funny column, Adam Ruben reviews the disadvantages and, well, the disadvantages of doing a postdoc, noting that 'The term "postdoc" refers both to the position and to the person who occupies it. (In this sense, it's much like the term "bar mitzvah.") So you can be a postdoc, but you can also do a postdoc.'"
My experience (Score:5, Interesting)
Now I'm left wondering if tenure is even worth the struggle at the end. Bear in mind, tenure in Australia is not a "secure job for life" as people in the US seem to think it is. We're actually having a lot of difficulty convincing newly minted grads to come and do PhDs when they see all the junior faculty are deeply bitter, cynical and exhausted. But hey, I build robots for a living, so I tell myself when I see those same grads getting jobs that pay more than mine does with zero years experience..
Low-salary 95K/year postdoc was well worth it (Score:0, Interesting)
Post docs (Score:3, Interesting)
My Dad Said No (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes it is. (Score:5, Interesting)
There was an interesting editorial in Nature back in 2005 commenting on how postdocs earn barely more than a janitor at Harvard.
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v37/n7/full/ng0705-653.html
With the economy having gone south and the inevitable funding cuts that has brought about, the situation is even worse now.
I moved halfway around the world for my postdoc (from Australia to the US), for a job that pays approximately half what I'd get in Australia. (Postdocs in the US are paid far less than Postdocs in Australia. Maybe that's why there are so many Postdocs in the US. They can hire more of them for the same amount of money.)
Sometimes, I do wonder what I'm doing here. And then I remember how I have a job that I absolutely love. That I can go home every evening looking forward to going to work the next day. And when I am reminded of that, I think how incredibly lucky I am to be doing what I'm doing. And if I have to accept lower pay and the lack of job stability as a trade-off, I am perfectly willing to do so.
This doesn't mean that I think Postdocs are getting a great deal, of course. We know we aren't. But we never got into this profession for the money anyway.
Knowing all that I know now, would I still have gone through all those years of grad school and gotten my PhD and moved halfway around the planet for a postdoc? Was it all worth it? I believe I'd say yes.
Be a Gentleman Scientist (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently finished a book where the author analyzes the entire process of getting a PhD in physics. For various reasons, it's not at all worthwhile. You will never be in a position to realize your dream of doing interesting research or becoming a professor. I'll let others describe the various problems, but they're fairly self-evident.
So let's think out of the box. Is there a way to do interesting research without the PhD?
It turns out there's a ton of interesting things being done by home experimentation nowadays. Actually, this used to be common - a gentleman scientist [wikipedia.org] was someone with an independent income who tinkered with home research. Many had quite elaborate laboratories [wikipedia.org] and discovered useful things.
If you want to be a researcher, you could approach the problem intellectually. Establish a steady income from which you can support yourself and family, allocate some time and money to setting up a lab, and do your own research.
Ben Krasnow [blogspot.com] built an electron microscope (!), and is experimenting with vapor-phase deposition of conductive traces. Robert Murray Smith [youtube.com] makes graphene and conductive ink, Brad Graham [lucidscience.com] built a rock disaggregator (which is, incidentally, totally frightening), Lindsay Wilson [imajeenyus.com] built an untrasonic drill, Timothy Ferriss [fourhourbody.com] is scientifically studying of nutrition, I am trying to detect dark matter (no link - sorry)
Lots of people are doing interesting research at home with a modest budget. If you can give up the big questions (Higgs Boson, Penicillin replacement, Egyptian archaeology), there's a wide swath of interesting areas just waiting to be explored.
Re:Uncertainty is the killer (Score:5, Interesting)
The career progression for early career researchers is crap at best. Governments and funding bodies have come up with all sorts of ways of making it sound like a good thing (e.g. the EU likes to have "Human Resources Mobility") but that doesn't make up for the gnawing "I don't know how we are going to pay the bills in a couple of months time" feeling.
It's even worse if you have a partner who is also playing the same game. If your contracts don't end at the same time, moving to a new country to take up the next position is really difficult. If they do end at the same time then the financial uncertainty is multiplied. Data show that the partners of male academics have a fairly typical spread of occupations, while female researchers have a disporportionately high representation of academics for partners. It appears that this is one of the significant contributors to female researchers giving up on this for the bad joke it is (they are obviously brighter and see that it's more sensible to get out) and why there can have been quite good gender balance at PhD level for many years but there is still poor gender balance at academic level including amongst recent appointees.
I can understand the "bitter" feeling. Been there, done that. Now I have a permanent position, I'm starting to shed that... I'm actually thinking about doing science again rather than just writing job applications about the projects that I'd love to do but can't. I'm starting to relax, I'm certainly a lot less stressed and as a result I'm being much more creative and doing much better science too. At some stage, I'll realise that I've replaced the job application treadmill with the grant writing treadmill... but one step at a time.
Chin up, old chap... you'll get there.
For Fun/Experience? Yes! For Money? No! (Score:5, Interesting)
I did 4 years of Postdoc (in Japan). It was fun, in Japan the payment for Postdocs is ok, and i worked in a field i liked to work in since i was 16years old. I contributed to some publications (10 Impact points per year) and did some really nice experiments. To me it felt like playing with the most expensive lego bricks which i ever was allowed to play with. I had the priviledge to see parts of the world which i would not have dramt about when before my masters thesis. I met some interesting, peculiar, and exceptional people (coauthors from ~12 nationalities).
OTOH, it was hard work (>80h per week average, in critical times >400h/month), strange habits, uncertainity, and a lack of decent positions after it.
I got out of it, to a technical consulting company. I earn less than the people who started 10 years younger, but somehow doing a phd/postdoc kept me young and agile. I am now more or less resistant to stress (did not feel it since i started the job), am used to pick up new things at a high pace.
I can only say: i did it, it was fun and broadened my view. My PhD and postdoc thought me that persistence in following something you want to do leads to success. I managed to get rid of my attenton span problems. I quit as postdoc when it stopped being fun and when i did not see decent positions around, i left science. I dont regret having done my postdoc, i did not regret for a single day leaving it.There was a time when a very different path in my life would have been very possible. I proably also would not have regret it.
Remarks: you have to have a compatible partner or risk a series of relationships. IMHO the only point where i really seen from behind could have spent some attention on. I also saw people not being able to handle the pressure. I saw people doing postdocs until they where older than 40 because they became too anxious or to incompetent in other things to leave. I saw people fuckign up their lifes for good. People not good enough to get any decend publicaitons, but valuable in the lab, hoping that the professor who kept them forever in a dependent relationship would give them the life-long position as assitant. I habe seen people growing old faster than they should and people breaking down. I have heard of people becoming so fristrated that they sabbotaged the co-workers experiments.
So my advice is: do it als long as you do it for fun. Dont get addicted.
Re:Horse already left the barn (Score:5, Interesting)
A stint in Aerospace removed a heck of a lot of drive out of me. Applying modern management methods to artistic types burns them out damn fast.
Currently, I am working in another little startup. If I had any significant bills to pay or had a family to support, I would be in dire financial straits. I would earn more spendable money being a greeter in Wal-Mart, but I would not enjoy standing eight hours a day robotically saying "Welcome to Wal-Mart" to everyone as well as inspecting every shopping cart that tripped their Sensormatic EAS system.
Sitting in a cubicle trying to implement my designs is not my idea of fun. I am a lab rat. I hate cubicles. I hate ties and dress codes. I hate meetings - if you have anything to say, drop by for a chat - but this thing of requiring me to drop everything and show up somewhere at a fixed time is ridiculous. Its a bad design. Kinda like me memory-mapping I/O ports right in the middle of a memory space currently used by a memory chip.
That was my greatest disappointment when the new wave of management overran the small business I used to work for. Thank goodness I was paid well there before the management coup because we had a lot of successful products to sell. I do not know a single one of the creative types that were able to stand up to the modern management methods. But the stockholders seemed to love them. Pure case of "tragedy of the commons" if you ask me. Destruction of our future product stream for a short term benefit of hyping the sales and profit of our existing line. It seems only people overly concerned with profit, and not design quality, rank that as being so damned important.
I would say if someone else is paying for your study, go for it. A lot of corporations - especially in the Military-Industrial Complex - justify their bid on the amount of credentialed and degreed personnel they are placing on the customer project. Whether or not these people are internally driven to do the technical part of the job seems to be of little importance to the management team. They want certs to sell.
If you are thinking of getting into debt for this, please oh please think twice. My own experience shows there is a terrific glut of very highly qualified "do-ers" out there already. The de-industrialization of America has left cadres of engineering types left over from the hey-days of the 60's on the streets.
As America, banker to the world, transitions from a manufacturing based economy to a service based economy, it seems to me the best jobs are to be found in services catering to helping others comply with government mandates. Every new law passed mandating compliance with some government requirement is a gold-mine for those prepared to assist existing businesses in complying with it. Legalized extortion. While the government holds the gun on the business, you go for their wallet.
Re:Be a Gentleman Scientist (Score:4, Interesting)
And, if you think publishing "has no benefit," why are you doing this anyway?
a) The original reason people become scientists is to do interesting research. Publishing isn't as interesting as doing. (And scientific publishing has it's own style of nonsense.)
b) I'm working with a professional magician who's interested in effects that are based on science, but uncommon enough that people wouldn't recognize them as such (unrelated example [youtube.com]).
c) If I can find a measurable effect, it can be used to make products. This is more likely beneficial than publishing.