Because not all work in academia is interesting. I don't know about your field but academic research is more about doing what your funding bodies want you to do or following the latest trend to get funding. Publishing can be a political game where institution and contacts matter more than merit. Advancement in your career can be the same. I don't want to make a blanket statement for everyone because I am sure there are varying experiences.

If academia is about interesting research, then I would gladly take your perspective. But sadly, from my experience (life sciences), to get anywhere, it is 3/4 bullshit work (admin, politics) and 1/4 interesting work.

I imagine I can find a job in industry that's 1/4 interesting work and get paid a lot more for it.

So it's not about "values". Let's not religion-fy academia and infuse it with a semblance of "virtue" associated with doing research. Scientists shouldn't be monks for science.

I'll echo this. The large majority of PIs I have interacted with (or know of via friends/family) could care less about their research. You get a skewed view from conferences, presentations, TED Talks, etc. They are 'on stage' at those events and are 'selling' their research largely. Get a beer in them and the facade drops quickly (ok, 3 beers for the people that really hate the mess, their tolerance is higher)

Well, that wasn't the claim, that all work in science is interesting. It was that mine is. And it very clearly is about values. Your hypothetical job in industry that's 3/4 uninteresting sounds awful to me. I'd never want that. For any (realistic) amount of money.

What I meant by "values" is some kind of moral superiority that seems to be espoused by a lot of people I've met in academia. That somehow not pursuing academic research is "selling out".

This idea is implicitly ingrained in a lot of graduate students when they enter the program. In my opinion, this is all to justify the shitty treatment. And I find this mentality very similar to organized religions where you are expected to make personal sacrifice in the name of some abstract notion.

Of course, this also exists in industry. Big tech companies sell their "vision" and "culture" in the same way. But at least they pay their employees relatively better.

I am glad you have a rewarding academic career and I hope you continue to enjoy it. I personally didn't find academia that enjoyable. The science was interesting, but academia is not just about science these days.

You know, I get the point you are making, and there is some truth to it. But overblown statements like "academia is just not about science these days" totally undermine the rest of your argument. It's unfortunate that you had a bad experience, but extrapolating that to an indictment of _all of science_ seems like sour grapes. A lot of people, the majority, are doing good work. It's not the caricature you make it out to be.

I think work hours and salary have a bimodal distribution, driven by tenured / non-tenured status. My experience is in theoretical math/physics -- I got my PhD but decided not to stay in academia; there are pros and cons to both options.

IME most tenured professors have to work significantly less than others for the same salary (those who work more mostly do it because they like working with grad students, not because they get financial benefits for it). Quality of life is good, good benefits, few and flexible work hours, sabbaticals, etc. Salary is lower than at the top of the industry, but sufficient for a comfortable life. Those who do good research can escape for the summer to interesting parts of the world to summer schools and visiting colleagues using grant money.

However, non-tenured professors have it much harder. And postdocs are usually the underclass.

I happen to be extremely well acquainted with one tenured professor of biological oceanography, and one tenure track professor of physical oceanography, and I can't say I agree with your observation. My experience has been that tenure or not, the amount of work that these individuals have on their plate is essentially endless. Grants are extremely difficult to come by these days, although its getting better, and it is worth noting both of these individuals must pay a significant chunk of their salaries from grants. Not to mention that the pressure to keep publishing is essentially unending. Also, sabatical is not code for vacation. The system is the same, if you don't publish it's hard to get funding, and if you don't get funding you don't get your full salary.

That said, my experience in this is only with Oceanography professors who are research professors first and teachers a distant second.

> Grants are extremely difficult to come by these days

Only because of competition. It's still vastly better in the U.S. than any other country.

Competition is good.

To a point.

There was a retrospective study looking at grant scores vs. outcomes (citations of the papers produced). The correlation was pretty weak. Reviewers can identify the obvious dreck, but beyond that was a bit of a toss-up.

If you have too much competition, people start rushing sexy, half-baked results out the door, regardless of whether they seem likely to hold up--or even make sense. This selects against the people doing the careful sort of research that we probably intend to encourage.

Yes, competition is good.

But as you say, the incentives are not aligned correctly. And yes, it's very difficult for reviewers to make the best decisions.

So instead, they reject and request preliminary data. Which requires money. But at least this is better than a sexy shot in the dark, which I think private institutions should be funding. Or things like MD Anderson's moonshot program.

Things aren't perfect, but I think we can both agree that there is no perfect solution to this problem, incremental improvement? Certainly.

Turn the competition knob to 0, everybody slacks. Turn it to 11, everybody cheats.

It's at 10. We're hearing more and more about large cheating scandals. I wonder, what could possibly be wrong with the system?

I don't think slacking in science is a bad thing. Less papers means less noise and if people are not sufficiently motivated by their ideas themselves may be it is best for everyone they are not publishing.

And beyond cheating we have a lot of bad science. * Reproducibility project.

I don't know about theoretical physics, but math professors usually have almost no burden to produce grant money. My observation is the same - they are very relaxed.

In my school, the physics department was part of the College of Engineering. They had the usual 80 hour weeks because their evaluations depended on the amount of grant money they brought in.

This is related to the cost of doing experiments and running a lab. My wife is a bio-physicist and goes through $1k is supplies on a good day. In contrast you could run a math lab on almost nothing.

There's this old joke about math departments being the second cheapest to run, since you only need pen, paper, and a trash can. The cheapest department to run is Philosophy, since you only need pen and paper.

>This is related to the cost of doing experiments and running a lab.

Only tangentially. In my engineering department, the expectations on the professor who ran a lab with heavy and expensive equipment were no greater than the one whose work was all computational and just needed a bunch of PC's to run simulations on.

The biggest cost of running math department is travel costs, but then again, biophysicist probably spend just as much on that.

Interesting. In my school math and physics were part of College of Science and CS was in College of Engineering. Maybe this burden of grant money production is college-based.

Also, many tenured professors double dip into industry as well, leveraging their guaranteed position for minimized exposure if the startup goes poorly.

Depends on field.

> I think work hours and salary have a bimodal distribution, driven by tenured / non-tenured status.

After I got my masters in Anthropology, I had been planning on a career in academia. At the time (early aughts), there was a huge backlash against tenure and there was a big movement trying to do away with it completely and it really turned me off. I subsequently left the field altogether in large part to the idea of having to "prove" my tenure, when, at the time, it was one of the few things which gave professors some stability in their role at a given university.

Was your original plan to become a professor? If so, why did you change course?

Absolutely, for the first 2 years. I suspect 3-6 years of postdoc plus 3-5 years at tenure track before getting tenure was a significant burden. And all that is not a guarantee of success. Maybe I was also tired at being inside academia and wanted to see what life outside was.

I am not sure, but I do know that at some time I knew I did not want to stay in academia. And when I understood this the first thought was "why did not I realize this a year ago"? Nothing wrong with academia, I just chose a different path.

EDIT: On some thought the mentality "if you did not stay in academia you are a loser" probably delayed the above realization. It was very prevalent.

> EDIT: On some thought the mentality "if you did not stay in academia you are a loser" probably delayed the above realization. It was very prevalent.

I see that as a common feeling among some of my friends slaving away on their PhDs. Its hard to not feel this way if all your friends, social circle, basically your entire world, is built around the school/program you are attending (which isn't that unusual since you're likely to be friends with other PhD students).

Additionally, I've noticed some of my peers who did very well academically in undergrad want to continue the "good streak" right through PhD. I know it sounds rather silly, but if you've been killing it with grades and awards and the like, its easy to feel that you are special and if you don't do a PhD, who will?

This is unfortunately what happened with me. Although, I realized my mistake within the first year and decided to leave with a Masters degree.

Yeah, I heard the "loser" bit. Somewhat comforted by the end of my third year in industry, in that my compensation was 2.5x what new profs was making. The postdocs I looked at included a number for which the salary for 60+ hours of real work/week would have been (well) below the poverty level for my family.

This was a bridge too far, coupled with the 1000+ applicants per position. Made it hard to make a case to continue in that field.

When I entered grad school it was. Then the Soviet Union died, and the market, already awash in a large number of Ph.D.s in physics suddenly transformed into something that I could not effectively compete in.

To some degree, you are measured, as a student/postdoc, by the number of highly rated papers in good journals that you produce, as well as citations, invitations to speak, etc. All of this factors into how high in the stack you will rise.

When I was looking at applying for tenure track positions, I was hampered to a degree, by being in a group that didn't publish often (and of course, as a student, I couldn't push my advisor to publish more ... she had tenure already). So I had a couple of good papers, but nothing compared to these senior folks from FSU, with 20+ years experience, many Phys. Rev. Letters, and other top journals. And hey, to make it even more fun, they were willing to work for less than the newly minted Ph.D.s.

I don't blame them. Would have done the same thing in their shoes. We are better off for them having come here and advanced physics.

But to the younger me, thinking ... damn ... this ain't fair ... it wasn't so obvious at the time.

I made a conscious decision to go into industry, knowing full well that it ended my hopes of landing a job as a prof. I've had a few side research associate prof gigs to teach HPC programming or work in a CS group (not bad for an ex-physics guy), and for the most part, they were fulfilling.

This is a hard choice to make though. All grad students and post docs need to know what awaits them in the world. Don't, as in never, believe anyone ever telling you about shortages. Assume that they have an agenda.

I was part of a cohort to whom the NSF exhorted the looming shortage of scientists for staffing physics positions (mid 80s). I was both naive enough to believe them, and foolish enough not to do my own research.

I would have gone in a different direction, had I known what I learned later. One more pragmatic. Likely Math or CS.

My recommendation to younger versions of me, my wife (also an ex-physicist, now a math/physics teacher in a local high school) would be to look carefully at how the world is moving toward some things and away from others. Estimate where we will be in N years when you finish up, and try see if something you think you would like to do aligns with something people are willing to pay for. Make sure you are flexible enough to change, and you can adapt as needed. Learn how to learn, learn how to think, learn how to move beyond your comfort zones. Learn how to communicate, how to sell (not necessarily things, but ideas). Learn what value is.

Then when you get to be an older fart, responding, slightly wistfully, to posts on HN, you can pass along your own experiences, thereby, hopefully, helping someone to optimize their own journey.

> My recommendation to younger versions of me, my wife (also an ex-physicist, now a math/physics teacher in a local high school) would be to look carefully at how the world is moving toward some things and away from others. Estimate where we will be in N years when you finish up, and try see if something you think you would like to do aligns with something people are willing to pay for. Make sure you are flexible enough to change, and you can adapt as needed.

That's great advice, but how do you translate it into practice? Should someone considering grad school do a PhD in AI or in biomedical engineering or in finance or what?

Pursue what you are passionate about, but be realistic about how you are going to work and handle the real issues that come with being an adult and having a family (if this is your goal).

My daughter is pursuing a degree in Art at a good university. I gave her the same talk. As she seems to have some genetic predisposition to computers and science (and math, though if you ask her she'll claim that the tests lie), she looks like she'll be mixing computer science and/or engineering into this.

My wife and I struggled to find a solution to the two body problem [1], which is part of what informed our collective decision. As much as I wanted (at the time) to be a physics prof, I saw my contemporaries struggle for years afterwards, with low pay, long hours, while having to put up with a spouse in a different city (and often a different state/coast), as their solution to this problem. That didn't appear to me to be a solution. And in the language of theoretical physics/mathematics, this problem did not appear to admit a general closed form, simple solution.

The FSU collapsing was a large part of my (really our) choice (we got married in grad school). The lack of "secure" job until early 40s (tenure track starting around 35, decision around 40-42) caused us to rethink what was important to us.

The trajectory you take is one you should undertake with eyes clearly open, aware of all the pitfalls on the path you take to the end point. And have a few concepts in mind for plans B and C in case plan A's endpoint becomes out of reach for any reason.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-body_problem_(career)

Great advice. For someone regretting not taking the particle physics path that sometimes dreams 'what if...' you've offered some solace.

I met an amateur comedian recently who mentioned he's almost done with his PhD, but will never make back the lost earnings from the time he's invested. Whilst he talked, part of me was thinking 'man, if only your PhD were in machine learning'. I didn't say it out loud, though.

It turned out he's about to complete a PhD in machine learning, but doesn't want to work in Silicon Valley, or for a big company, or in finance (he lives in a financial capital).

Different people have different motivations, but I find it hard to imagine myself choosing the same constraints were I in the same situation.

Maybe a better advisor would have helped them find a research topic that engaged them? I really didn't care much about traffic. I cared about Chaos Theory and MDOT had free traffic data and DEC was willing to loan me some hardware. That's it.

I mean, I like traffic now. Back then? I was just meh... But it was something I could bite into and really see where Chaos Theory techniques could apply to understanding traffic. Which is to say, quite well - actually. But, I digress...

A great advisor really, really helps.

Doing a phd in machine learning and working at a high paying tech company is still a money losing competition due to the opportunity cost. Getting a masters and then working for 5 years gives you at least a half million dollar head start.

I like where your head is at. This is the type of math we should be doing.

On the other hand, someone has to do the PhDs in order to invent things like machine learning. That is also math we should be doing.

There is this notion (that I find quite convincing) that people tend to be overly optimistic as to their prospects (to become a successful entrepreneur/professor/etc.), and that leads them to decisions that are suboptimal for themselves (as they overestimate the likelihood of a big exit/tenure/etc.), but are good (optimal?) for society, because it encourages more people to take these huge risks, some of which do pay off.

> That is also math we should be doing.

There are things that should not only be seen in narrow economic terms, though. If someone wants to run their own business, or increase the stock of knowledge, or seek enlightenment in meditation retreats, that's perfectly ok, even if they don't strictly optimise their expected monetary payoff.

Lots of other areas where people are interested in machine learning and willing to pay good money. Biotech, pharma and medical, and oil/geology are just a few areas off the top of my head.

>I've read so many comments like yours, on HN and elsewhere, and invariably the argument hinges on some variation of the above sentiment. I've come to believe I just have fundamentally different values than the vast majority of people who work in industry.

Indeed! Why is the assumption always, "We all value money, so just switch to industry!"? It's like telling a public servant that if they wanted a living wage they'd learn Node.js. Not everyone wants to do industrial web-dev, and not everyone should have to. There are high-skill, high-impact contributions to society that don't involve corporate life, shouldn't involve corporate life, and instead need an institutional space for people to pursue them without the pressures and incentives of corporate life.

"Just switch to industry" is turning into the scholarly equivalent of, "just learn to code". Instead of all giving up on some people making the best impact they can, the impact they work desperately hard for, maybe we should just fix the academic labor system.

I don't think asking a researcher in AI why they couldn't work in industry that is willing to pay them tons more $$ is a bad question to ask. Its certainly not the same as asking a public servant to learn coding.

Living in the CS bubble, a lot of us forget that outsiders think of programming as some kind of black magic that they could never figure out ever. And are baffled that those who know it are not milking it as much as they can.

> "Just switch to industry" is turning into the scholarly equivalent of, "just learn to code". Instead of all giving up on some people making the best impact they can, the impact they work desperately hard for, maybe we should just fix the academic labor system.

And unfortunately we have pundits here in the HN community and refinforeced by YC, that this should be the case. Oh and btw, those same people think the solution for "just fix the academic labor system" is "well let's just write some code".

https://twitter.com/sama/status/641281287660007424

Youch, that is pretty bad 'Valley Think'.

I am going to re-read your post until I have thoroughly have it committed to memory. Yours is the verbiage that I have wanted to use in conversations so many times when the end discussion equals 'we'll all be web devs at some point'. The end product of these conversations always made my brain itch; I knew why, just couldn't formulate a reasonably worded response. I will adopt yours gladly.

Very insightful! I agree that many people are tone deaf when it comes to the fact that other people may value something other than money, consumption, etc.

Think of it as running a small startup, if the time doesn't make sense. My time is split between teaching and preparing teaching, raising funding, mentoring (on the job training), and lastly trying to figure out the next big thing.

The rewards are getting to be your own boss, advancing the knowledge of humanity, and cultivating the next generation of scientists. It is hard work and time intensive, but most things worth doing are.

Indeed, many of us can get paid more in industry. (Computational applied mathematician here.) But (i) professor pay isn't terrible in the grand scheme of things, and (ii) I view my salary as paying for the things I wouldn't want to do for free, e.g., grading exams, serving on committees, etc., and I'm reasonably well-compensated in having my own time to do the things I love enough to do for free: my own research, work with grad students, learning about things I find interesting and teaching a course on it, etc.

But getting here wasn't easy, took equal measures of hard work and luck.

Well this is true, but it’s certianly a far cry from the high employment prospects i was brought up believe STEM fields offered.

My sister is on her second post doc; while the money is perfectly adequate, if she ever burned out she would be stuck up the creek without a paddle.

Personally, it’s the precipitous drop in tenured positions that scared me away. Too risky of a time investment!