To some extent, but as someone who made that transition from 25-40K as a grad student/post-doc to even a modest tech salary in those areas (e.g., 100K), the difference is more than compensated for with rent/mortgages being ~10-20K more expensive. Plus, more and more data teams are now allowing remote work (though, let's see how long that lasts post-2020).
Most of the regrets here seem to be about quitting academia or "meaningful" work rather than astrophysics per se.
No reason why as a data scientist he can't pivot from financial services into something more research oriented within industry, or back into academia; the pay will likely be much less in the latter case, but the opportunities for work on a more meaningful track with like-minded people will be there.
As another STEM PhD data scientist who is thinking of pivoting back into academia at some point, do you have specific examples of the kinds of jobs that are available that would welcome and benefit from industry DS experience? Perhaps teaching DS or computer science?
I think that any reputable academic department would welcome industry experience depending on the context; I can't give specific examples without searching (e.g. on portals like academicpositions.com). And certainly teaching with your background sounds like a strong possibility if it appeals.
More generally, I would say that the key would be to target roles and teams that cross the boundary between pure research and software engineering, which could vary from straight research software engineer roles - with say, "machine learning" or tech associated with data science (e.g. "jupyter") as an example of what you might search for in key skills and keyword filters; or by generally investigating the support roles within academic institutions because that can be a backdoor way in. Naturally the closer the research to your specific experience the stronger your application would be.
One way outside of the normal job search platforms you can identify those gaps is to keep an eye on conferences (especially during the present time while they are online) and the communities they serve and (e.g. if you are a coder) the most widely used code libraries as referenced in academic papers; apart from giving you an idea of where your skills might plug a gap they offer scope for networking in the former case.
Sorry to be vague/obvious or responding to a different question, but I don't have specific examples to mind, this is just what I have seen actually working as a strategy into data science-related roles in similar institutions with people without your enhanced qualifications (stem phd and industry data science experience).
There are a few fields in which there is movement academia to industry to academia, that is there is a permeable academia-industry barrier. Say, computer science and adjacent fields, business/economics if we include business schools, medicine, but hospitals can also be research centers.
For the vast majority of other fields, if you move to industry, they (academia) are not interested in you anymore. Yes, there are some exceptions like that flight attendant who survived after falling out of the plane at I don't know how many feet of altitude, but in my research field (one the life sciences) I have yet to see someone moving back to academia after having left to go work in industry. First, they (academia) do not want you anymore, you are simply expired. Second, as one faculty when I was a postdoc said: we would like to ask researchers who moved into the private sector how life is out there, but they never came back to tell us. And, I must add, it is easy to guess why: as soon as one gets some distance from the academic world (and I guess, from most worlds, but let's stay focused on academia), they see that when researchers are not making ground-breaking work, they are just doing some work, not better or worse than many others that requires passion and dedication, pay little, and leave you like snow in the summer sun when you are not needed anymore.
Recently, someone in academia told me: when you are tired of industry, you can try to get back into academia, maybe as a professor of practice. Like, for 1/3 of the money and 3 times the annoyances? I would much prefer to open a pizzeria and I don't eat pizza.
Not too long ago, I interviewed for a ML position for a large oncology organization. I didn’t get the gig, but I find the healthcare field to be a rewarding application of CS/DS skills.
Plus, you rub elbows with a lot of academia if you plan on going back.
Or you can be passionate about giving your family good opportunities (live in a nice area, good education, be able to travel) and having money enables that.
It was interesting to see the author specifically call out the joys of working in a University environment. It is a unique environment, and working with/for some of the smartest people in the world is a nice perk.
> Being at the forefront of figuring things out about the workings of the Universe is amazing, and unparalleled in any business setting.
This is the key attitude to gauging whether it's worth sticking it out in academia. I tell people you really need to be 'obsessed' with science (indeed, obsession is really a key concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riaYwt0gf20). Just being interested in problem-solving isn't close to enough to put up with the low pay and rather tough working conditions. There's lots of interesting problems out there in industry.
This is exactly the conclusion that I came to before I also left astrophysics for industry. In order to outweigh all the cons of working in academia, you really have to have a deep passion or obsession with the particular problem you are researching. In my opinion, being _just_ interested is not enough, and that's where I found myself. I drove myself down the academic career path because I thought I would find meaning and purpose there, but when I didn't find it all of the pressures and toxicity of academia just didn't seem worth it. It's only been two years since I left, and sure there are some things that I miss, but I definitely do not regret leaving.
I think this guy should stop regretting. He used to do astrophysics and there were things he didn't like about that. He's now doing data science and there are things he doesn't like about this, and looking back (with a bit of rose tinted glasses) at his life 7 years ago, he has regrets.
Newsflash: the vast majority of jobs out there are not that fun. That's why you get paid. If they were a lot of fun, you'd be the one who pays, just like you pay when you go to a concert. Some jobs are meaningful. Working for Moderna and making a vaccine that's going to save millions of lives, that's meaningful. Finding a cure for a certain type of cancer, it's meaningful. But saying that astrophysics is meaningful because some internet surveys find it to be "the sexiest job in the world", that's quite shallow. 99.9999% of the jobs out there don't end up with you saving the world. You just do some stuff, get paid for it, and then go home and live your life with your family and friends.
>But saying that astrophysics is meaningful because some internet surveys find it to be "the sexiest job in the world", that's quite shallow.
To the author's credit, I read that sentence the other way around: the internet deigns "Data Scientist" to be the "sexiest job," but he doesn't feel satisfaction that matches that reputation.
>The internet says I have ”the sexiest job of the 21st century”, but I think my previous job was more enjoyable to brag about at birthday parties.
This reminds of a colleague's joke: what do you call a physicist a few years after they get their degree?
A data scientist!
I only completed my undergrad in physics before shifting to tech, but I've seen many instances of people working in software/programming/data science roles after their undergrad/grad studies in physics.
What I found, even by the middle 2000s, was that since there were entire grad programs now dedicated to producing quants, someone trying to switch from physics, etc. was already less attractive unless it was a very special company paying attention to the potential of former scientists.
The days of a physicist being a top hire for quantitative finance based on potential in a new field, are largely over.
Ex-physicists are still welcome. The mathematics involved is similar, and what’s more important, physicists have the right attitude to work as quants. “Hack and approximate until you can solve the seemingly impossible”. Of course, some genuine interest and preliminary exploration of the field are essential for anyone aspiring to work there, physicist or not.
The mind has a way of tricking us into remembering many of the good things and fewer of the bad ones(or sometimes even rationalizing bad things into good ones). Not to say that the regret here isn't valid, but just to be careful how much stock to put into missing the 'good ole days'.
"The people who questioned my decision to become an extronomer were right. I was wrong. It seems too late to get back in."
This mindset irks me because this individual strikes me as being bright, talented, curious, and hard working. You are not wrong because you took a leap in life and it didn't work out perfectly, its a valuable learning experience. It is different if you assess the opportunity costs and risks and rewards with going back to astrophysics and decide that it is not worth it and move on...but to say it is 'too late' is you pouting and trying to let yourself down easy.
> You are not wrong because you took a leap in life and it didn't work out perfectly, its a valuable learning experience.
The author obviously understands this is a learning experience--that's why they wrote the essay in the first place. The challenge is that, on a practical level, starting over will likely take too many years, with too great a risk of not getting a job in academia. This is hardly "pouting and trying to let yourself down easy." It's the disheartening wisdom that sometimes you learn things too late in life to benefit from them.
Starting over? He literally says "I think I have gained skills and experience that can be very valuable to the astronomical community".
And that is on top of the foundation that he has already built in his earlier years. Unless there is some glitch where you lose all previous experience in life if you decide to backtrack a bit.
I guess ultimately I don't really know what the author's goals would be in academia, and I am not from academia...and that makes it difficult to really explore the situation.
He's also obviously missed out of a lot of new knowledge that's been produced while he wasn't there, as well as loosing some skills that haven't been used.
As for his goals, well most of the article is about the things he's missing so the straightforward guess is to have that back?
This perspective IMO is informed by a slow-burning (like, career-scale) FOMO where if you're not as successful as the person getting $200k+ offers from FAANG right out of university then you are behind and a failure.
This is a persistent sentiment in CS and adjacent circles, I've noticed, and a serious hindrance to finding fulfillment in life and career.
It's not a race, it's an Iron Man, and for the vast majority of people just finishing somewhere they feel proud of is (should be) enough.
There is a real trap in always feeling like you need more career wise or comparing how you are doing to other people.
It's way too easy to shift the goal to being a little bit more successful then you currently are and it makes people miserable even if they are doing well by most people's standards.
Big tech comp numbers that get thrown around--and that are often inflated and have been at least partly driven by stock market gains--lead a lot of people to set them as the bar. And to feel that's what they need to achieve even if they don't especially like the work given that they can't imagine doing something that "only" pays $100K or $150K or whatever.
>they can't imagine doing something that "only" pays $100K or $150K or whatever.
“Comparison is the thief of joy”
I saw research from a few years back that indicated happiness peaked a little over $100k in salary and actually tended downward above that. It’s been my experience that people who are solely focused on salary tend to do so because they don’t know what else to optimize their life around.
The postdocs are generally there to pursue a faculty position or to broaden their skillset and springboard to the next thing. 65k seems high for a postdoc in most fields though. My academic postdoc salary a few years ago was 50k, and that was considered generous.
Staff, research scientists, lab techs, and other non-postdoc, non-faculty technical roles in academia are not generally in the career path to a tenured position, so I’d guess environment/work would be primary motivators.
I work in a group that has about 30-50 students, 2-3 professors, 3 scientists, 2 postdocs, and 5 techs/engineers (depending on how you draw the lines). Professors make $200k. Scientists make $80k. Techs make $60k. Every single person is highly competent and could easily fetch a higher wage for their skillset. Nobody’s here because they think it’s a path to a cushy life. Working among exclusively smart people, having good conversations, not being in a nasty corporate framework, and doing work with purpose are all top reasons to stay in academia. The list of reasons not to is long (and easy to come by).
>Working among exclusively smart people, having good conversations, not being in a nasty corporate framework
This is a really interesting take to me because my experience was quite different. I thought many were smart in a vary narrow field but at times lost outside of it, prone to ego-based biases, and much more concerned with publication and funding than really intellectually curious. There’s definitely pragmatic reasons for the latter but it seemed to water down the pure intentions people have brought up in this thread.
Of course there were wonderful people as well, but I’ve found that in the private sector too. I guess it goes to show mileage may vary and perspective is a key component
I suppose I can't really speak for academia in general. I work in an electrical engineering department that is filled with physics curriculum, problems, and culture. The EE grad students don't know many of the things I learned in EE undergrad, but have hefty physics chops. Most everyone is a combined experimentalist and theorist. The pure theorists are a little less grounded, but everyone else knows where the expertise ends and are content to not discuss things they don't know about. If my colleagues were more of the typical grant-driven hotshot type I probably wouldn't have stuck around for any amount of time.
> but to say it is 'too late' is you pouting and trying to let yourself down easy.
I don't think the author is saying he has been out of the field too long, but rather that hiring committees (even postdoc advisors, or fellowship committees) looking for astrophysics faculty candidates are not going to give a second glance to someone who left academia for several years.
What the author appears to be describing is the experience of being a PhD student/postdoc that he misses. As faculty you are (usually) no longer running experiments and analyzing data, but managing people/projects, writing/reviewing papers, teaching, sitting on committees, and constantly applying for grants. While it is indeed unlikely he can find a faculty position after 7 years of being out of academia, he may in fact be happier looking for a senior scientist position at a university. As long as he is okay with the salary that is.
The thing is if you don't quit then there is going to be another post about regretting not quitting.
I have gone past the age to feel strongly regret to any choice I made. As long as I made a desicive choice without much delay I'm good with it (of course unless something really bad happens), because I know I'd regret if I choose the other way (or not), anyway.
Left a low-paying, stable, very boring non-software engineering job. Working in tech now, good money, but man do I wish for those "boring" days sometimes. It's meetings and craziness every day now, always having to prove myself vs. being a stable cog in a machine. Overall I find that the added money is commensurate with the added stress / life burden.
Let me just say to all those out there who have left academia and went into industry: academia would be happy to have you back!
I went into "academia" (or close to it), doing software engineering for a telescope being built. Astronomers are a great little community out there, and they really need help writing code. A lot of them aren't familiar or have experience with best industry practices that could save them so much time/money/heartache.
Bunches of projects are hiring, and if you have creds, and industry experience, that will only increase your value. I'm sure you could find a job at any of the wonderful facilities wherever you want to be around the world!
Sometimes you have to look at the grass from the other side to realize it's greener, and that's fine. Some day I may go back to industry and get paid again. But it's all good fun anyway.
Very interesting, could you tell me where that is?
At least in the US, tenure is a really big thing. But there are plenty of people who are paid employees at the university and aren't teaching, and I'd also consider that academia.
And I'd love to work assisting cutting-edge research, but I also am not willing to cut my salary that severely. I wonder if there is a way to do this that doesn't presume near-grad-student rates.
My spouse works at the nearby public university as a non tenure track scientist. The work certainly pays better than a grad student stipend. I'm not sure how it compares to entry level "science" jobs that are basically manual factory work such as transferring liquids from one tray to another using a pipette.
The good thing is that public universities tend to post jobs with salary ranges, so you can get an idea of what labs are looking for what, at what pay rate. The pay tends to follow the expectation of having a somewhat less competitive and intensive work environment, more flexible hours, etc.
The US and Canada tend to "squeeze" non-tenure-track people out a few years after they receive their PhD.
A huge number of postdoc fellowships[0] cut off at 12 months (NIH DP-1, various NSF postdocs) to 4-5 years (NIH K99, Simons Foundation BTI, Burroughs Wellcome Career/CASI Awards). You can, of course, hang on for longer by being paid from research grants. However, even that is tricky because the size of a "standard" modular NIH grant hasn't gone up in ages and even a modest salary ($60k + benefits) will now eat up a substantial chunk of it, so you'll spend a lot of time looking for money. Frustratingly, you often can't be the PI on grants either, so it devolves into ghost-writing. It also makes it hard to settle down if you are piecing together a string of 1-2 year contracts.
This is, IMO, stupid. It's not good for doing science and a few studies have shown that not good for training scientists either. A system that funded a few more staff scientists would likely produce more and better research and training.
[0] It's even worse, as many awards for tenure-track profs are ALSO gated on time-since-degree.
I suspect this is what a solution might look like if someone was designing a system to produce tenured professors and attached minimal value to other things.
It is Germany. Yes there are a lot of paid employees at the university that arent teaching, but almost all of them in admin or maintenance/workshop. Historically there was a problem that there were way too many people who were not professors but working as a scientist at university (well it was called a problem, who knows why it was a problem); now it swung the other way.
I read it as being difficult to go back to the same type of work they were doing before they left. Marcel's expertise was in simulations and theory. As you note it's (relatively) easy to get a job in telescope software development coming from industry, but it's much harder on the theoretical (and probably experimental) side where it's less about technical skills and more about being up-to-date on the literature and advocating for your ideas. You would have to essentially start over at the thesis stage of grad school to regain the domain knowledge and build up a body of work. You'd probably work faster than you were the first time just because of the additional knowledge and wisdom, but I doubt many professors would be willing to hire you at even a Postdoc salary without a second thesis-like investment.
This is all highly field dependent but I doubt a thesis-like investment is required. Maybe being involved in a publication or two somehow without pay but not a thesis.
Having been a tenured professor who left (sort of, not completely), these issues are really salient to me. I was surprised when I left how many stories I heard of others doing the same. They just aren't mentioned for many reasons, including institutional ego.
Academics in many fields is in a crisis from my perspective. It's not obvious because there's always amazing advancements like the new mRNA vaccine, but it comes at a huge human cost that is rarely covered (pieces like the recent Atlantic article notwithstanding, and some stuff in places like STAT). Also, those advancements are often misleading, because the volumes of stuff that are more typical (like the hydroxychloroquine story) you don't hear about, without the skeptical eye of the world waiting for a much-needed and very-real product.
At least in my field, I suspect the author would have problems returning only because they don't fit the narrative that's required for positions. Again, this depends on field, but a lot of academic hiring, at least at the level of faculty, is about branding of sorts, of building up a story of them being on a meteoric trajectory of genius so brilliant it can't be contained by fate or circumstances of any sort. I've read it referred to as the madonna-whore complex, which is quite accurate. It's hard to explain unless you've been on the side of faculty hiring, but it's very much about looking like the next super-Einstein-Nobel Winner in a room full of people who will never attain anywhere near that much fame (but who think they have), in a scientific process that is really about incremental contributions anyway.
It's all heavily location-dependent too. The author talks about nomadic lifestyles which is accurate, but there's also an element of that which is important to keep in mind: if your nomadic wanderings leads you to a great place, it's great, but if that place is dysfunctional, it's horrible. It's hard for me to say it's a case of grass-is-greener only because it really depends on all sorts of things, including that individual, their connections, and a lot of luck.
I think the pathology of modern academics only increases as you go up the ladder, to be honest, unless you're in a good place. I can't stress enough how much of an oversupply there is at the moment of extremely talented labor, and dysfunctional, corrupt systems that are broken and outdated. There's plenty of academics that is cutting edge and open-minded, but there's also a lot of it that is supremely dated and behind the times, years behind industry due to narrow-mindedness, reinforced by distorted incentive systems.
I keep thinking something has to give but so far there's no end in sight, at least in the US.
Again, this depends on field, but a lot of academic hiring, at least at the level of faculty, is about branding of sorts, of building up a story of them being on a meteoric trajectory of genius so brilliant it can't be contained by fate or circumstances of any sort. I've read it referred to as the madonna-whore complex, which is quite accurate. It's hard to explain unless you've been on the side of faculty hiring, but it's very much about looking like the next super-Einstein-Nobel Winner in a room full of people who will never attain anywhere near that much fame (but who think they have), in a scientific process that is really about incremental contributions anyway.
What a brilliant way to describe it. But I must add that industry has the same problems. I work in big tech and we have people who are brought into leadership coming from a hot startup because they are perceived to be John Galt figures, and they turn out to be unqualified status seekers.
Agree with you - but I think the author of the article wants to get back in as a tenure-track professor rather than a programmer or data scientist on a scientific project. They would probably see coming back in as “staff” as an unacceptable loss of status and prestige in their field. (I think that status distinction is a terrible and stupid feature of academic research but it is very deeply-ingrained as folks are socialized in PhD programs to believe that the tenure track is the only route to happiness and academic success).
I wish more people thought like you and very much agree that academia could benefit from an influx for folks with industry experience and programming best practices!
I have a PhD in math but I often dream about how nice it would be to get paid to write simulations for big shot mathematicians. Usually this work goes to undergrad/grad students. Maybe it’s just not worth paying for professional code.
I suspect it may also be hard to swallow the idea that a professional engineer's skills are needed when such a person costs more than the researcher's salary.
I actually don’t think that is the problem. In addition to the shortage of funds, there’s often a culture of doing most things yourself. When I was a PhD student, I did everything from vacuum systems, electronics, high current equipment, plumbing for cooling water, setting up a real time control system for all the equipment, data collection and analysis, and programmed quantum Monte Carlo simulation that was run on a high performance cluster (on top of writing papers and a thesis). Each of these tasks would have probably been done better by someone specialising in it, but there was certainly no money for that. (I had almost forgotten how much fun I had.)
Doing it yourself is certainly very important to be sure you get at least some understanding of what's going on, and often you are doing things nobody else knows how to do anyway.
But it sure would have been nice to have some professional support programmer around for advice on design and help out with the gnarlier bits.
Programming was actually what I did best. I had been programming since I was eleven and also took some computer science courses at the university. In addition, the kind of programming that most physicists do isn’t really helped by the skill many so called engineers have. It’s not about organising large multitude of systems and their interaction (which is usually the hard parts today) as much as knowing things about efficient numerical packages and making sure that the computer’s finite precision don’t overwhelm your statistical uncertainties. And of course, to understand the model, with its limitations, of the system we are trying to simulate and efficient algorithms for that.
Yep, and even then they don't get paid super well.
A typical "small" NSF grant is for $500K over 3 years, and the university takes 45-65% of that, so with one award a PI has ~$83K to spread on their annual summer salary and ~2 PhD students at a stipend of around $30K per year each (with the remainder on conferences, publication fees, equipment, etc.).
It's not about status and prestige, it's about scientific freedom and possibilities. Of course, someone who was on tenure-track or had an otherwise promising career before they left will not want to get back as a staff member, and, by the way, these people also cannot get hired as such. Sometimes there are even explicit restrictions such as "maximum of X years since Ph.D." or maximum age for lower-level positions.
I don't think this essentially different in business, it is not uncommon not to get hired when you're overqualified or considered too old for the job. The reasonableness of such restrictions can be discussed but they also exist in academia in most countries. In my country, for instance, none of the national funding schemes accept "having been in business" as an excuse in the CV (only medical reasons and pregnancy), so you're expected to be fully comparable to anyone who has worked the same number of years since the Ph.D. in academia. It sounds ridiculous but that's the rule. So you will compete with someone who has 40 publications as someone with 20 publications, for instance.
> it's not about status and prestige, it's about scientific freedom and possibilities
Status and prestige confer power. Power brings resources. How one uses those resources is separate.
That said, status and prestige are only correlated to title. An essential staffer will get what they need to do the work they want to do the way they want to do it.
Coming back as staff really is a big loss in status and prestige. It's fun to lament the terrible and stupid feature of status distinction but it's very real in terms of socializing, how people see you, how you see yourself, the resources available to you, the freedom to do what you want, how much you get paid, etc.
I applied for some academic-related software development positions a couple of times. In the interviews they never asked a single software development question and each time revealed they had decided to “just let IT handle the software details.” I am not certain that much of academia understands the complexity of the systems they want to build except from the viewpoint of their research
I'm a new-isly minted biophysics PhD. The reason I got into physics was because it felt fulfilling and my opinion of industry was shaped by a high-school internship at a defense contractor which was a total slog.
During my PhD, I got the full experience, drumming up new ideas, grant/proposal writing, managing and setting project goals, maintaining collaborations and doing the actual work. It was fulfilling and fun especially working with great group of people that are 100% dedicated but, boy, was really, really hard.
The long hours, terrible pay, and watching people stuck in the post-doc treadmill got to me. Plus, I saw quite a few 2-body problems fall apart (mine included). I also watched my advisor go through the tenure process, it seemed like he never slept.
It's been challenging getting into industry (I'm still looking :) ), but, if I make it, I'll write a blog post to see if there are any regrets in 5 years. But, like the author, I'm already missing the culture, going to seminars (the terrible seminar coffee), and nerding out with friends in other disciplines.
There will always be regrets, but at least you'll sleep better and rub your tears with Benjamins if you leave academia and regret that :)
Academia will always look like the grass is greener "I can do whatever I want" type. But we shouldn't forget actually you can't, you can only do what others think you're good at, and what the grant review panels think you can feasibly do.
My plan is to just use the extra money from a tech job to open my garage lab. It's getting easier by the day. A fancy deltavision microscope costs less than a cheap boat, so it's not even an expensive hobby if you think about it. You really can do whatever you want, you'll just be limited by money than by other people :)
I have researched it and it used to be 100-200k range. It's also possible they don't sell them anymore. Depends on the stage, camera and enclosure. Might have changed though. However you can build your own decent non confocal microscope for that price range with individual parts.
You can rent time if you just need it for a bit here and there, or if the economics make sense that way for sure. But then, I'm saying I can also buy or build my own and still do it with just regular tech salaries on the side!
Good point. The admin and teaching parts of a tenure-track position would likely take way more than your normal working time, so you might end up with more time for doing research.
You need a real cushy job to get enough time and energy for the second job that would be the research.
And a tenure-track position usually comes with some workforce or at the very least a good network of experts to refer to. There are of course really shit academic positions, but you'll anyway not have time for research if you have a really shit job, so that objections seems to cancel.
> You really can do whatever you want, you'll just be limited by money than by other people :)
I think that your idea is the practical one and you'll get a lot of mileage out of it, but may I add one more limiting constraint, one I've had to learn to respect from experience? That constraint is mental energy.
Your job in tech has constraints that mean if you're doing it right and are working in a role that's pushing you to your full potential, you won't have enough mental energy at the end of the day to work on your side projects. While that might be disappointing, it's often a lot better than the alternative: if you select for a cushy job which has great WLB, you may experience a level of disillusionment from stasis that can also make it hard to want to work on things outside of work.
I wish I had an easy answer to this stuff but I don't. Long-term, if you have a stable career in tech, it makes it a lot easier to take time off for sabbaticals or periods of startup work (yours or others) because you can return to a well-compensated career that's pleasant and will give you enormous surplus lifetime earnings -- a perfect match for scientific work on the side, as you put it! But it's still a career.
To get growth you'll be happy with, it will take the lion's share of your mental energy and strategic planning, over a long period of time. Good fortune aside, there's often no way around that.
You can definitely go back -- academia loves people with industry experience. Few people go back because they typically earn less money in academic jobs. So you now have something academia loves, and there is little competition of other people having that kind of experience.
I think what trips people up is that the opportunities to return are not necessarily the same as the ones that you would look for if you were still on the direct path.
To start with, if you're tied to an area, you have to start your search with the area and get creative finding the right job title instead of the other way around.
He left in 2013, most postdocs positions have a 5 year cutoff for eligibility. It's been 7 years since he got the degree so a lot of doors have already closed for postdoc opportunities. Professors will find reasons to not hire him such as being out of the game for too long and thus he's not caught up in the literature or whatever. He could try to go in as a data scientist. It is true though that usually that job goes to students because they're cheap and capable, they just take longer. So yeah it's kind of hard to compete against cheap, passionate labor that students provide.
There's a line from a show I like: "I figure there are always going to be reasons not to do something. If you really want to do it, then you have to do it."
It sound simplistic but honestly, this happens in life. I feel for the author as someone in the same situation (left academia for industry). But at some point it is what it is. You can't change reality. You can't reverse time. So in every moment you just have to decide, "Given the world is this way, what do I want to do?" The world is going to continue on day after day and is not going to stop or fundamentally alter itself to align with your preferences and well-being. All you get is the choice.
> I think I have gained skills and experience that can be very valuable to the astronomical community, but I know that that is simply not what candidates for academic positions are selected on.
t seems pretty damning to suggest that a community selects its members based on something other than having "skills and experience that can be very valuable" to that same community. Is that really true? Hopefully we're putting the best people in place for these academic jobs, and not simply the well-connected people who happened to go to the fanciest schools.
You get hired permanently if you excel (or promise to excel) in three categories: 1.) Getting grants 2.) Productive science 3.) Teaching. All the skills that the author has gained might help with #2, but he hasn't actually published in the last years to prove that. And he has nothing to show for #1 and #3. All the while he is much older than other candidates, i.e. the university will get much less use (in particular of the service duties that are fulfilled later in the career) out of him. So why exactly should they hire him over somebody that has gotten a similar amount of experience while doing a postdoc or two and maybe a junior university position, while ALSO improving on grant writing experience and gaining teaching experience?
Just to make an example, politicians are certainly not the best political/organizational minds that one can find in this world. When the results of an activity are nuanced, that is the results are not clearly measurable (revenue, profit, distance, weight, etc. are clear, measurable metrics), the skills of the members of the community are unlikely to be the best one can find. Since most of the research work is inevitably useless, there are reasons for hiring that are other than skills and experience and quality.
You learned something really important about what you don't like. That's not worth regretting.
Get back into academia with newfound commitment. This time you won't be looking over your shoulder wondering if you're missing something in "the real world."
I wanted to do Astronomy or Astrophysics as a degree/career choice when I was growing up. What changed my mind was every single astronomer or astrophysicist I spoke to about pursuing the career literally told me not to. No jobs, no money, don't do it. Being young and unfamiliar I listened to their advice and went to university for a different career. Academia research seems like a lot of politics and bs to put up with however I think I would have enjoyed that career much more than software development I am in now.
I've found if you look closely at any job there are huge amounts of negative points of view. Even in software, well paying jobs on here, people dread their work, they work on adtech, don't learn anything, constantly deal with churn and ageism, hate their manager...etc.
The fact is everything has its downsides. Industry has just as much politics.
The key is to find a balance of what you like doing and your livelihood - sway too far one way, sure, you'll have money, but you'll hate yourself. The other, you won't be able to have an adequate lifestyle, and also hate yourself.
Do people really go into industry because they’re expecting to enjoy it? I thought it was to get paid.
Academics are supposed to like their work more than us industry stiffs, aren’t they? Because if that’s not the case........ what exactly would be the draw?
> On top of that, being geographically bound doesn’t help.
I can absolutely believe that this is still an issue, but it's also highly disappointing that's still the case.
All your data analysis is done on a computer, and I'd bet that every telescope or instrument you have to interact with is computer controlled and can be worked with remotely with little modification.
Yes, astrophysical datasets can be absolutely enormous, and bandwidth can become a serious constraint, but we have solutions to those problems too - that's one of the reason terminal sessions (in their various modern guises) are so powerful.
You would think or hope that by the end of 2020 when a global pandemic has taught many of us that, for much of the time, for those of us whose working lives are mostly spent "in computers", we would have learned that geography is not a significant barrier. At least not with decent enough internet connectivity.
Again, sadly, I'm not surprised to see that in certain circles it is still an issue. It's a cultural change, and those can take an awfully long time to work themselves out.
Uh, the point is that currently all the people, and students, and facilities of a university is physically located at a certain spot, not about where the telescopes or data centres lie (telescopes that lie on campus aren't very useful anyway due to all the light pollution and bad weather).
As another former astrophysicist-turned-datascientist (though with only 2 years after the transition instead of Marcel's 7), this hits close to home, but my experience in both worlds I think is a bit different.
If you are an astrophysicist curious about moving into the datascience profession, I would just like to point out that satisfaction with a move like that depends on a large number of factors, and that you should consider not only Marcel's experiences (which I think are important and shared by many) but your own personal circumstances. There are pro's and con's for every person.
Let me offer another datapoint:
* I left after my PhD, which ended absolutely terribly. I knew years before finishing that I was just not cut out for a life in academia, and positioned myself in the best way I knew how for a life in industry, but I did not anticipate just how truly painful the experience would be. I stayed to finish my PhD out of a nagging obligation to follow through with a lifelong dream of mine. I thought I would deeply regret leaving after receiving my masters degree. Whether or not that is true, I really don't (and will never) know. But I was not happy.
* My personal reasons for unhappiness are not uncommon but are definitely not universal. I did not excel at the entrepreneurial and social aspects of astrophysics that are crucial for success. Without strong social and professional ties to close collaborators within the community, and without an innate ability to thrive in an environment with very little structure, add to that a predisposition for mental health problems, I burnt out quickly. I found myself withdrawing from social settings as burnout set in, and the hill was steeply downward from there. When I don't socialize, my ideas stagnate, my work suffers, and my perspective warps until it's easy to submit to delusions like "I am doing great" when really I was (obviously, in retrospect) not doing great at all.
* The transition to datascience was on one hand fantastic. I have a structure that (1) forces me to socialize daily, (2) forces me to confront my productivity levels frequently. Even when completely remote these past 9-10 months, I find my productivity is far more consistent than it was in graduate school, and my life is far more sane. I have a true work-life balance that I could only fantasize about before.
* The stress is much lower (in my current role). My work no longer defines who I am as a person. Doing what you love sounds great on paper but really what it means are higher highs and lower lows with each small success and failure. While in the beginning of my graduate school experience, I was reasonably well-rounded and rational, as I dived deeper into my own thesis work, I started noticing that I became far less receptive to criticism. My thesis work was so integral to my identity that it became harder and harder to be objective about it.
* Financially I am far more secure, and that is incredibly important to me. I'm not earning anywhere near as much as a $500k AI/ML researcher at FAANG, but I'm also not earning a $30k grad student salary or a $50-60k postdoc salary. I can live extremely comfortably while still building a savings (and am no longer in credit card debt). I also can find a job in the location I want. I don't need to write 20 detailed applications (all during "application season") for roles around the world, wait months to hear replies, and then pack my bags to go wherever I'm accepted. That's a hell of a perk.
* Like Marcel, however, I do find myself missing many aspects of the world of astrophysics. I miss a community completely made up of people at the top of their professional game, making groundbreaking contributions on existentially important things, where everyone seems to share the same "datascience" mindset. I miss symposiums and lunch talks and people with deep passion for what they do. However I have found it incredibly satisfying to work alongside people wit...
Unfortunately right now its `localhost` but once I finish a couple of posts (tomorrow? a year from now?) I'll put it online. Thanks for asking though :)
It's a tough one. The problem we haven't solved as a society is what do we do with all these smart people? They need money so they go get a high paying job in finance or tech or consulting and then all that scientific training was kind of left aside right? So what was the point of the PhD?
A job with meaning is hard to find, maybe we should encourage and support all these smart people to start a business/research venture? Because it feels wasteful to generate so many PhDs and nothing comes out of it.
This is a fundamental issue with how our society allocates resources.
Companies like Google or Morgan Stanley can hire those people and use those skills to generate something like 1 million dollars per year (look at how much money per employee those companies generate). We don't value academic work anywhere near that much.
>Because it feels wasteful to generate so many PhDs and nothing comes out of it.
Well, some research presumably came out of it and the experience of planning and executing that research is presumably at least somewhat transferable to a lot of others tasks. The reality is that a lot of people don't directly use a significant portion of what they learn in school. Even if they got a CS degree and become a developer, there's probably a lot of theoretical CS most won't use outside of interview questions. And many of us have shifted our careers multiple times even if we've stayed loosely adjacent to prior roles.
From the author's post, I get the feeling basic research and the research environment are what he misses. There is something powerful about contributing to the universal body of knowledge vs say finding patterns in data to help better understand customers. That said, I'm sure there are industries where being a skilled data scientist can augment fundamental r&d work and feel a lot closer to being in academia.
One thing he said though I think applies more universally than he thinks: "There is strong competition and people typically experience quite some pressure to achieve." One could say that about positions in sales, trading and even programming. It is hard to stand still these days and not be run out of a job.
I'm another astrophysicist who left academia for industry and this post definitely speaks to me. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I regret my decision to leave academia, but I will admit to wondering what could have been if I had stayed. After getting my PhD I had a postdoc position lined up with a professor I was excited to work with and had won the NSF astronomy & astrophysics postdoctoral fellowship. (It's not the most prestigious fellowship in astronomy, but it's not too far down the list, depending on your sub-field.)
My feeling at the time was that I was a good enough researcher that getting postdoc positions probably wouldn't be a problem, so I could stay in the field for another ~6--8 years if I wanted to. And if my research had gone well in those jobs there was a reasonable chance (say, 50-50) that I could get a tenure-track job somewhere. But I wasn't super comfortable with that risk along with having very little freedom as to where I would live. (Having a two-body problem didn't help either.) I also factored in the opportunity cost of staying, say, ~8 years in postdoc roles before switching to industry and figured that if there was a good chance that I was going to leave academia eventually, I should do it sooner rather than later. Part of this was motivated by some researchers I interacted with who were really smart, did great research, but just kept jumping from postdoc to postdoc and couldn't land anything permanent.
While I do miss the astro research, I have learned a lot from industry that I would never have even known existed had I stayed in astronomy. (This may be more a function of working at a startup than industry work in general.) I'm not sure what work OP is doing specifically, but the industry work I've been doing has been pretty fulfilling. It helps that I've mostly been working on applying ML to health technology. Industry is a big place! There is a lot of fulfilling work out there even if it can take time to find it.
I studied atomic physics, graduated in the early 90s. I was extremely fortunate that both of my parents are industrial scientists (now retired), so I had good role models, and working in industry wasn't a foreign idea for me.
I've been in industry for 25+ years, with no regrets. I've told people that there's a good living to be made doing things that other people hate. In my case, I solve hard multidisciplinary problems, usually involving math and sometimes physics. Persuading people to hire me can be tricky, but persuading them to keep me is easy.
Sounds fascinating! (I have a background in theoretical physics)
How do you go about finding the right kind of projects to work on, or the right kind of environment that appreciates what you bring to the table? And how often do you come across like-minded people? In my (short) experience, apart from occasional threads like these, it’s very difficult to spot kindred spirits.
PS: If you’re up to interacting by email/Zoom, I would love to get some perspective based on your experience. (Email in my profile)
This reminds me of a semi-recent Freakanomics podcast where Steve Levitt voiced his disillusionment with academia where you could spend years working on a paper that only gets read by a handful of people. It was contrasted to business applications that can help hundreds or thousands of people. In his words, he had “gotten tired of academic research and decided I should try to do something useful for a while.”
Maybe grass is always greener on the other side of the fence or maybe we should be focused on a more balanced approach to our careers.
I went to work in tech from academia, but I wanted to publish a paper I had started working on during my last months as a researchers. I worked on it during weekends, sometimes snatching hours from work. I sent it out for peer-review and it was published. One year after publication, it collected the astounding number of exactly zero citations.
usually you need to give talks about and more generally publicize your work; if it's interesting people will pick it up, but they need to be aware of it first. Number of citations also depend on the publication venue: better venue => more visibility => more citations.
Don’t feel bad. There’s some research that indicates roughly 70%-80% of publications are either derivative (i.e., not really novel) or only have auto-citations (cited by its own authors)
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 210 ms ] threadNo reason why as a data scientist he can't pivot from financial services into something more research oriented within industry, or back into academia; the pay will likely be much less in the latter case, but the opportunities for work on a more meaningful track with like-minded people will be there.
More generally, I would say that the key would be to target roles and teams that cross the boundary between pure research and software engineering, which could vary from straight research software engineer roles - with say, "machine learning" or tech associated with data science (e.g. "jupyter") as an example of what you might search for in key skills and keyword filters; or by generally investigating the support roles within academic institutions because that can be a backdoor way in. Naturally the closer the research to your specific experience the stronger your application would be.
One way outside of the normal job search platforms you can identify those gaps is to keep an eye on conferences (especially during the present time while they are online) and the communities they serve and (e.g. if you are a coder) the most widely used code libraries as referenced in academic papers; apart from giving you an idea of where your skills might plug a gap they offer scope for networking in the former case.
Sorry to be vague/obvious or responding to a different question, but I don't have specific examples to mind, this is just what I have seen actually working as a strategy into data science-related roles in similar institutions with people without your enhanced qualifications (stem phd and industry data science experience).
For the vast majority of other fields, if you move to industry, they (academia) are not interested in you anymore. Yes, there are some exceptions like that flight attendant who survived after falling out of the plane at I don't know how many feet of altitude, but in my research field (one the life sciences) I have yet to see someone moving back to academia after having left to go work in industry. First, they (academia) do not want you anymore, you are simply expired. Second, as one faculty when I was a postdoc said: we would like to ask researchers who moved into the private sector how life is out there, but they never came back to tell us. And, I must add, it is easy to guess why: as soon as one gets some distance from the academic world (and I guess, from most worlds, but let's stay focused on academia), they see that when researchers are not making ground-breaking work, they are just doing some work, not better or worse than many others that requires passion and dedication, pay little, and leave you like snow in the summer sun when you are not needed anymore.
Recently, someone in academia told me: when you are tired of industry, you can try to get back into academia, maybe as a professor of practice. Like, for 1/3 of the money and 3 times the annoyances? I would much prefer to open a pizzeria and I don't eat pizza.
Plus, you rub elbows with a lot of academia if you plan on going back.
This is the key attitude to gauging whether it's worth sticking it out in academia. I tell people you really need to be 'obsessed' with science (indeed, obsession is really a key concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riaYwt0gf20). Just being interested in problem-solving isn't close to enough to put up with the low pay and rather tough working conditions. There's lots of interesting problems out there in industry.
Newsflash: the vast majority of jobs out there are not that fun. That's why you get paid. If they were a lot of fun, you'd be the one who pays, just like you pay when you go to a concert. Some jobs are meaningful. Working for Moderna and making a vaccine that's going to save millions of lives, that's meaningful. Finding a cure for a certain type of cancer, it's meaningful. But saying that astrophysics is meaningful because some internet surveys find it to be "the sexiest job in the world", that's quite shallow. 99.9999% of the jobs out there don't end up with you saving the world. You just do some stuff, get paid for it, and then go home and live your life with your family and friends.
To the author's credit, I read that sentence the other way around: the internet deigns "Data Scientist" to be the "sexiest job," but he doesn't feel satisfaction that matches that reputation.
>The internet says I have ”the sexiest job of the 21st century”, but I think my previous job was more enjoyable to brag about at birthday parties.
A data scientist!
I only completed my undergrad in physics before shifting to tech, but I've seen many instances of people working in software/programming/data science roles after their undergrad/grad studies in physics.
The days of a physicist being a top hire for quantitative finance based on potential in a new field, are largely over.
"The people who questioned my decision to become an extronomer were right. I was wrong. It seems too late to get back in."
This mindset irks me because this individual strikes me as being bright, talented, curious, and hard working. You are not wrong because you took a leap in life and it didn't work out perfectly, its a valuable learning experience. It is different if you assess the opportunity costs and risks and rewards with going back to astrophysics and decide that it is not worth it and move on...but to say it is 'too late' is you pouting and trying to let yourself down easy.
The author obviously understands this is a learning experience--that's why they wrote the essay in the first place. The challenge is that, on a practical level, starting over will likely take too many years, with too great a risk of not getting a job in academia. This is hardly "pouting and trying to let yourself down easy." It's the disheartening wisdom that sometimes you learn things too late in life to benefit from them.
And that is on top of the foundation that he has already built in his earlier years. Unless there is some glitch where you lose all previous experience in life if you decide to backtrack a bit.
I guess ultimately I don't really know what the author's goals would be in academia, and I am not from academia...and that makes it difficult to really explore the situation.
As for his goals, well most of the article is about the things he's missing so the straightforward guess is to have that back?
This is a persistent sentiment in CS and adjacent circles, I've noticed, and a serious hindrance to finding fulfillment in life and career.
It's not a race, it's an Iron Man, and for the vast majority of people just finishing somewhere they feel proud of is (should be) enough.
It's way too easy to shift the goal to being a little bit more successful then you currently are and it makes people miserable even if they are doing well by most people's standards.
“Comparison is the thief of joy”
I saw research from a few years back that indicated happiness peaked a little over $100k in salary and actually tended downward above that. It’s been my experience that people who are solely focused on salary tend to do so because they don’t know what else to optimize their life around.
Would you say most of the people there are hustling for the chance at a professorship, early career, or just love the environment/work?
The postdocs are generally there to pursue a faculty position or to broaden their skillset and springboard to the next thing. 65k seems high for a postdoc in most fields though. My academic postdoc salary a few years ago was 50k, and that was considered generous.
Staff, research scientists, lab techs, and other non-postdoc, non-faculty technical roles in academia are not generally in the career path to a tenured position, so I’d guess environment/work would be primary motivators.
I work in a group that has about 30-50 students, 2-3 professors, 3 scientists, 2 postdocs, and 5 techs/engineers (depending on how you draw the lines). Professors make $200k. Scientists make $80k. Techs make $60k. Every single person is highly competent and could easily fetch a higher wage for their skillset. Nobody’s here because they think it’s a path to a cushy life. Working among exclusively smart people, having good conversations, not being in a nasty corporate framework, and doing work with purpose are all top reasons to stay in academia. The list of reasons not to is long (and easy to come by).
This is a really interesting take to me because my experience was quite different. I thought many were smart in a vary narrow field but at times lost outside of it, prone to ego-based biases, and much more concerned with publication and funding than really intellectually curious. There’s definitely pragmatic reasons for the latter but it seemed to water down the pure intentions people have brought up in this thread.
Of course there were wonderful people as well, but I’ve found that in the private sector too. I guess it goes to show mileage may vary and perspective is a key component
I don't think the author is saying he has been out of the field too long, but rather that hiring committees (even postdoc advisors, or fellowship committees) looking for astrophysics faculty candidates are not going to give a second glance to someone who left academia for several years.
I have gone past the age to feel strongly regret to any choice I made. As long as I made a desicive choice without much delay I'm good with it (of course unless something really bad happens), because I know I'd regret if I choose the other way (or not), anyway.
I went into "academia" (or close to it), doing software engineering for a telescope being built. Astronomers are a great little community out there, and they really need help writing code. A lot of them aren't familiar or have experience with best industry practices that could save them so much time/money/heartache.
Bunches of projects are hiring, and if you have creds, and industry experience, that will only increase your value. I'm sure you could find a job at any of the wonderful facilities wherever you want to be around the world!
Sometimes you have to look at the grass from the other side to realize it's greener, and that's fine. Some day I may go back to industry and get paid again. But it's all good fun anyway.
At least in the US, tenure is a really big thing. But there are plenty of people who are paid employees at the university and aren't teaching, and I'd also consider that academia.
The good thing is that public universities tend to post jobs with salary ranges, so you can get an idea of what labs are looking for what, at what pay rate. The pay tends to follow the expectation of having a somewhat less competitive and intensive work environment, more flexible hours, etc.
A huge number of postdoc fellowships[0] cut off at 12 months (NIH DP-1, various NSF postdocs) to 4-5 years (NIH K99, Simons Foundation BTI, Burroughs Wellcome Career/CASI Awards). You can, of course, hang on for longer by being paid from research grants. However, even that is tricky because the size of a "standard" modular NIH grant hasn't gone up in ages and even a modest salary ($60k + benefits) will now eat up a substantial chunk of it, so you'll spend a lot of time looking for money. Frustratingly, you often can't be the PI on grants either, so it devolves into ghost-writing. It also makes it hard to settle down if you are piecing together a string of 1-2 year contracts.
This is, IMO, stupid. It's not good for doing science and a few studies have shown that not good for training scientists either. A system that funded a few more staff scientists would likely produce more and better research and training.
[0] It's even worse, as many awards for tenure-track profs are ALSO gated on time-since-degree.
Having been a tenured professor who left (sort of, not completely), these issues are really salient to me. I was surprised when I left how many stories I heard of others doing the same. They just aren't mentioned for many reasons, including institutional ego.
Academics in many fields is in a crisis from my perspective. It's not obvious because there's always amazing advancements like the new mRNA vaccine, but it comes at a huge human cost that is rarely covered (pieces like the recent Atlantic article notwithstanding, and some stuff in places like STAT). Also, those advancements are often misleading, because the volumes of stuff that are more typical (like the hydroxychloroquine story) you don't hear about, without the skeptical eye of the world waiting for a much-needed and very-real product.
At least in my field, I suspect the author would have problems returning only because they don't fit the narrative that's required for positions. Again, this depends on field, but a lot of academic hiring, at least at the level of faculty, is about branding of sorts, of building up a story of them being on a meteoric trajectory of genius so brilliant it can't be contained by fate or circumstances of any sort. I've read it referred to as the madonna-whore complex, which is quite accurate. It's hard to explain unless you've been on the side of faculty hiring, but it's very much about looking like the next super-Einstein-Nobel Winner in a room full of people who will never attain anywhere near that much fame (but who think they have), in a scientific process that is really about incremental contributions anyway.
It's all heavily location-dependent too. The author talks about nomadic lifestyles which is accurate, but there's also an element of that which is important to keep in mind: if your nomadic wanderings leads you to a great place, it's great, but if that place is dysfunctional, it's horrible. It's hard for me to say it's a case of grass-is-greener only because it really depends on all sorts of things, including that individual, their connections, and a lot of luck.
I think the pathology of modern academics only increases as you go up the ladder, to be honest, unless you're in a good place. I can't stress enough how much of an oversupply there is at the moment of extremely talented labor, and dysfunctional, corrupt systems that are broken and outdated. There's plenty of academics that is cutting edge and open-minded, but there's also a lot of it that is supremely dated and behind the times, years behind industry due to narrow-mindedness, reinforced by distorted incentive systems.
I keep thinking something has to give but so far there's no end in sight, at least in the US.
What a brilliant way to describe it. But I must add that industry has the same problems. I work in big tech and we have people who are brought into leadership coming from a hot startup because they are perceived to be John Galt figures, and they turn out to be unqualified status seekers.
I wish more people thought like you and very much agree that academia could benefit from an influx for folks with industry experience and programming best practices!
But it sure would have been nice to have some professional support programmer around for advice on design and help out with the gnarlier bits.
I don't think this essentially different in business, it is not uncommon not to get hired when you're overqualified or considered too old for the job. The reasonableness of such restrictions can be discussed but they also exist in academia in most countries. In my country, for instance, none of the national funding schemes accept "having been in business" as an excuse in the CV (only medical reasons and pregnancy), so you're expected to be fully comparable to anyone who has worked the same number of years since the Ph.D. in academia. It sounds ridiculous but that's the rule. So you will compete with someone who has 40 publications as someone with 20 publications, for instance.
Status and prestige confer power. Power brings resources. How one uses those resources is separate.
That said, status and prestige are only correlated to title. An essential staffer will get what they need to do the work they want to do the way they want to do it.
During my PhD, I got the full experience, drumming up new ideas, grant/proposal writing, managing and setting project goals, maintaining collaborations and doing the actual work. It was fulfilling and fun especially working with great group of people that are 100% dedicated but, boy, was really, really hard.
The long hours, terrible pay, and watching people stuck in the post-doc treadmill got to me. Plus, I saw quite a few 2-body problems fall apart (mine included). I also watched my advisor go through the tenure process, it seemed like he never slept.
It's been challenging getting into industry (I'm still looking :) ), but, if I make it, I'll write a blog post to see if there are any regrets in 5 years. But, like the author, I'm already missing the culture, going to seminars (the terrible seminar coffee), and nerding out with friends in other disciplines.
Academia will always look like the grass is greener "I can do whatever I want" type. But we shouldn't forget actually you can't, you can only do what others think you're good at, and what the grant review panels think you can feasibly do.
My plan is to just use the extra money from a tech job to open my garage lab. It's getting easier by the day. A fancy deltavision microscope costs less than a cheap boat, so it's not even an expensive hobby if you think about it. You really can do whatever you want, you'll just be limited by money than by other people :)
And why not rent time on one? Apparently the University of Arizona (and a number of other universities) rent time on theirs for $25/hr (https://microscopy.arizona.edu/equipment/deltavision-rt-deco...)
You can rent time if you just need it for a bit here and there, or if the economics make sense that way for sure. But then, I'm saying I can also buy or build my own and still do it with just regular tech salaries on the side!
Yeah, that's a lot more than a cheap boat. You can get a lot of boat for 50k - like a Boston Whaler 190 Montauk. Not yacht, but boat.
And not sure what you're making, but that's a pretty damn expensive hobby for most of us.
And a tenure-track position usually comes with some workforce or at the very least a good network of experts to refer to. There are of course really shit academic positions, but you'll anyway not have time for research if you have a really shit job, so that objections seems to cancel.
I think that your idea is the practical one and you'll get a lot of mileage out of it, but may I add one more limiting constraint, one I've had to learn to respect from experience? That constraint is mental energy.
Your job in tech has constraints that mean if you're doing it right and are working in a role that's pushing you to your full potential, you won't have enough mental energy at the end of the day to work on your side projects. While that might be disappointing, it's often a lot better than the alternative: if you select for a cushy job which has great WLB, you may experience a level of disillusionment from stasis that can also make it hard to want to work on things outside of work.
I wish I had an easy answer to this stuff but I don't. Long-term, if you have a stable career in tech, it makes it a lot easier to take time off for sabbaticals or periods of startup work (yours or others) because you can return to a well-compensated career that's pleasant and will give you enormous surplus lifetime earnings -- a perfect match for scientific work on the side, as you put it! But it's still a career.
To get growth you'll be happy with, it will take the lion's share of your mental energy and strategic planning, over a long period of time. Good fortune aside, there's often no way around that.
But referring to a relationship, and the difficulty of finding a location that works for both people in a relationship. See:
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=two-body%20p...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-body_problem_(career)
To start with, if you're tied to an area, you have to start your search with the area and get creative finding the right job title instead of the other way around.
The author appears to be alive, and astrophysics still seems to exist. So, what exactly is the problem? I expect wrong answers only.
I have no idea how that blatant age discrimination is legal but....
It sound simplistic but honestly, this happens in life. I feel for the author as someone in the same situation (left academia for industry). But at some point it is what it is. You can't change reality. You can't reverse time. So in every moment you just have to decide, "Given the world is this way, what do I want to do?" The world is going to continue on day after day and is not going to stop or fundamentally alter itself to align with your preferences and well-being. All you get is the choice.
t seems pretty damning to suggest that a community selects its members based on something other than having "skills and experience that can be very valuable" to that same community. Is that really true? Hopefully we're putting the best people in place for these academic jobs, and not simply the well-connected people who happened to go to the fanciest schools.
Get back into academia with newfound commitment. This time you won't be looking over your shoulder wondering if you're missing something in "the real world."
I'm just happy I get to see a terminal screen for a living.
The fact is everything has its downsides. Industry has just as much politics.
The key is to find a balance of what you like doing and your livelihood - sway too far one way, sure, you'll have money, but you'll hate yourself. The other, you won't be able to have an adequate lifestyle, and also hate yourself.
Academics are supposed to like their work more than us industry stiffs, aren’t they? Because if that’s not the case........ what exactly would be the draw?
I can absolutely believe that this is still an issue, but it's also highly disappointing that's still the case.
All your data analysis is done on a computer, and I'd bet that every telescope or instrument you have to interact with is computer controlled and can be worked with remotely with little modification.
Yes, astrophysical datasets can be absolutely enormous, and bandwidth can become a serious constraint, but we have solutions to those problems too - that's one of the reason terminal sessions (in their various modern guises) are so powerful.
You would think or hope that by the end of 2020 when a global pandemic has taught many of us that, for much of the time, for those of us whose working lives are mostly spent "in computers", we would have learned that geography is not a significant barrier. At least not with decent enough internet connectivity.
Again, sadly, I'm not surprised to see that in certain circles it is still an issue. It's a cultural change, and those can take an awfully long time to work themselves out.
If you are an astrophysicist curious about moving into the datascience profession, I would just like to point out that satisfaction with a move like that depends on a large number of factors, and that you should consider not only Marcel's experiences (which I think are important and shared by many) but your own personal circumstances. There are pro's and con's for every person.
Let me offer another datapoint:
* I left after my PhD, which ended absolutely terribly. I knew years before finishing that I was just not cut out for a life in academia, and positioned myself in the best way I knew how for a life in industry, but I did not anticipate just how truly painful the experience would be. I stayed to finish my PhD out of a nagging obligation to follow through with a lifelong dream of mine. I thought I would deeply regret leaving after receiving my masters degree. Whether or not that is true, I really don't (and will never) know. But I was not happy.
* My personal reasons for unhappiness are not uncommon but are definitely not universal. I did not excel at the entrepreneurial and social aspects of astrophysics that are crucial for success. Without strong social and professional ties to close collaborators within the community, and without an innate ability to thrive in an environment with very little structure, add to that a predisposition for mental health problems, I burnt out quickly. I found myself withdrawing from social settings as burnout set in, and the hill was steeply downward from there. When I don't socialize, my ideas stagnate, my work suffers, and my perspective warps until it's easy to submit to delusions like "I am doing great" when really I was (obviously, in retrospect) not doing great at all.
* The transition to datascience was on one hand fantastic. I have a structure that (1) forces me to socialize daily, (2) forces me to confront my productivity levels frequently. Even when completely remote these past 9-10 months, I find my productivity is far more consistent than it was in graduate school, and my life is far more sane. I have a true work-life balance that I could only fantasize about before.
* The stress is much lower (in my current role). My work no longer defines who I am as a person. Doing what you love sounds great on paper but really what it means are higher highs and lower lows with each small success and failure. While in the beginning of my graduate school experience, I was reasonably well-rounded and rational, as I dived deeper into my own thesis work, I started noticing that I became far less receptive to criticism. My thesis work was so integral to my identity that it became harder and harder to be objective about it.
* Financially I am far more secure, and that is incredibly important to me. I'm not earning anywhere near as much as a $500k AI/ML researcher at FAANG, but I'm also not earning a $30k grad student salary or a $50-60k postdoc salary. I can live extremely comfortably while still building a savings (and am no longer in credit card debt). I also can find a job in the location I want. I don't need to write 20 detailed applications (all during "application season") for roles around the world, wait months to hear replies, and then pack my bags to go wherever I'm accepted. That's a hell of a perk.
* Like Marcel, however, I do find myself missing many aspects of the world of astrophysics. I miss a community completely made up of people at the top of their professional game, making groundbreaking contributions on existentially important things, where everyone seems to share the same "datascience" mindset. I miss symposiums and lunch talks and people with deep passion for what they do. However I have found it incredibly satisfying to work alongside people wit...
A job with meaning is hard to find, maybe we should encourage and support all these smart people to start a business/research venture? Because it feels wasteful to generate so many PhDs and nothing comes out of it.
Companies like Google or Morgan Stanley can hire those people and use those skills to generate something like 1 million dollars per year (look at how much money per employee those companies generate). We don't value academic work anywhere near that much.
Well, some research presumably came out of it and the experience of planning and executing that research is presumably at least somewhat transferable to a lot of others tasks. The reality is that a lot of people don't directly use a significant portion of what they learn in school. Even if they got a CS degree and become a developer, there's probably a lot of theoretical CS most won't use outside of interview questions. And many of us have shifted our careers multiple times even if we've stayed loosely adjacent to prior roles.
I miss the money, of course, but doing research makes me much happier.
One thing he said though I think applies more universally than he thinks: "There is strong competition and people typically experience quite some pressure to achieve." One could say that about positions in sales, trading and even programming. It is hard to stand still these days and not be run out of a job.
My feeling at the time was that I was a good enough researcher that getting postdoc positions probably wouldn't be a problem, so I could stay in the field for another ~6--8 years if I wanted to. And if my research had gone well in those jobs there was a reasonable chance (say, 50-50) that I could get a tenure-track job somewhere. But I wasn't super comfortable with that risk along with having very little freedom as to where I would live. (Having a two-body problem didn't help either.) I also factored in the opportunity cost of staying, say, ~8 years in postdoc roles before switching to industry and figured that if there was a good chance that I was going to leave academia eventually, I should do it sooner rather than later. Part of this was motivated by some researchers I interacted with who were really smart, did great research, but just kept jumping from postdoc to postdoc and couldn't land anything permanent.
While I do miss the astro research, I have learned a lot from industry that I would never have even known existed had I stayed in astronomy. (This may be more a function of working at a startup than industry work in general.) I'm not sure what work OP is doing specifically, but the industry work I've been doing has been pretty fulfilling. It helps that I've mostly been working on applying ML to health technology. Industry is a big place! There is a lot of fulfilling work out there even if it can take time to find it.
I've been in industry for 25+ years, with no regrets. I've told people that there's a good living to be made doing things that other people hate. In my case, I solve hard multidisciplinary problems, usually involving math and sometimes physics. Persuading people to hire me can be tricky, but persuading them to keep me is easy.
How do you go about finding the right kind of projects to work on, or the right kind of environment that appreciates what you bring to the table? And how often do you come across like-minded people? In my (short) experience, apart from occasional threads like these, it’s very difficult to spot kindred spirits.
PS: If you’re up to interacting by email/Zoom, I would love to get some perspective based on your experience. (Email in my profile)
Maybe grass is always greener on the other side of the fence or maybe we should be focused on a more balanced approach to our careers.