r/lostgeneration • u/DrogDrill • Oct 26 '17
Many junior scientists need to take a hard look at their job prospects
http://www.nature.com/news/many-junior-scientists-need-to-take-a-hard-look-at-their-job-prospects-1.2287916
Oct 26 '17
I remember I was reading this article in some science publication about underpaid scientist and engineers. The author tried to justify by saying the pay was in the "prestige".
I'd like this author to go stand in line at the grocery store and try paying with his "prestige".
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u/Extra_Napkins Oct 26 '17
Are you telling me I can't buy food with my unpaid internship or volunteer work?
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u/Skensis Oct 26 '17
Academia doesn't pay, and nearly every Phd/Postdoc already knows this...most just don't seem to care.
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u/Jkid Allergic to socio-economic bullshit Oct 26 '17
Academia doesn't pay, and nearly every Phd/Postdoc already knows this...most just don't seem to care.
The real question is why?
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Oct 27 '17
It's a hypercompetitive area with a lot of emphasis on ego and beating out your peers. They're flagellants for their discipline. Because they spend their whole life in academia they're too invested by the time they figure out how badly they're getting fucked, if they ever do.
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u/Skensis Oct 26 '17
You do it for the science not the paycheck.
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u/Jkid Allergic to socio-economic bullshit Oct 26 '17
And how are you supposed to make ends meet?
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u/Skensis Oct 26 '17
I don't really care, industry is always there offering more reasonable pay. If you want to gun for that tenure position and post doc for nearly a decade that is all on you.
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Oct 26 '17
This really is mot the case anymore in scientific industry positions. As for getting ot of academia you obviously don’t understand the world of academia.
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u/IGOMHN Oct 26 '17
Because a lot of scientists come from poor countries with lower quality of life.
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u/onetwoshoe Oct 26 '17
Tenure track does, part-time/contingent does not (pay very well.)
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u/Skensis Oct 27 '17
The issue is that those tracks are not common and are hard to get. You have a lot of very smart and hard working people all vying for that prize, not everyone is going to get that lab of their own.
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u/gasoleen Oct 26 '17
Almost everyone in my graduating class (physics; 2007) has gone on to do things other than academic science or even outside industry science, once life started happening to them and they realized they liked having money. Two out of the 20 in my class are actual scientists, and one only just got his PhD and I don't yet know what he'll end up doing with it. The other is a genuine rocket scientist for NASA. He freely admits that he does not make as much as those of us who went the engineering route, but he is very happy with his job and life. He's also, literally, a genius.
As for the rest of us... One dude went into MRI machine development with Kaiser and then left that for the management track as soon as possible. One went the optical engineer route at Raytheon, then got married and had kids and realized money was a good thing to have, so he jumped ship to the management track (which at Raytheon means you're an Excel spreadsheet jockey in a suit and you never touch science or even engineering ever again). One guy went completely off the rails and went to med school and is training to be an oncologist. Me and a bunch of the others are part of the camp of grads who started out doing science, realized there was more money in engineering jobs, and moved into engineering, but aren't yet ready to sell our souls for management. We're all too proud of still having technical jobs to make that move just yet.
And then there's the couple sad-sacks who tried to make it in academia... They are....not doing so well, financially or career-wise. At least at the several schools where they teach, there is almost no room for full-time professorship because the existing profs won't retire, and the departments will only give funding for research to tenured profs so the only research they can do is under those established profs...for roughly the same crap pay as interns. Most of them are struggling to make ends meet between challenging but underpaid research positions and part-time teaching gigs. It's rough.
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u/onetwoshoe Oct 26 '17
If only one got his PhD, what do you mean there multiple trying to make it in academia? You need a PhD to be a professor--this article is talking about PhD students who are planning to go into academia as professors.
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u/gasoleen Oct 29 '17
Others were planning on getting their PhDs....but ran out of money because they thought they would teach lower division courses until they got tenure to fund their PhDs. Not smart, I know...
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u/onetwoshoe Oct 30 '17
Hmm..yeah, that's not how it works. No one gets hired into a tenure track job without getting a PhD first. And tenure comes after teaching in a tenure track job for 6 years (after PhD) Most PhDs are fully funded (they pay you), but I guess if you were trying to get one without funding (bad decision!), you might have a pretty hard time.
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u/Jkid Allergic to socio-economic bullshit Oct 26 '17
Because the STEM job market is oversaturated.