As I am drinking a beer on this Saturday night,
another piece of experience pops into my head: Plan B!
About two thirds of you are postdocs according to the results of
our survey. In this day and age, a postdoc is pretty much required to
land a faculty job (unless you are the next Albert Einstein or someone else).
But at the same time, holding too many postdoctoral assistantships is
actually undesirable!
(The rule of thumb is that the postdoc's desirability rises linearly to the
fourth year and then drops like a step function even the granting agencies put
a four to five year limit since graduation on various "transitional
grants", so that is a clear signal that you shouldn't spend too long in the
pipeline).
PROFESSOR'S VIEW OF THE POSTDOC:
First, what is a postdoc? From the point of view of a professor, a
postdoc is basically underpaid, overqualified, labor who looks for another position
the minute they get hired. As such, professors are both in love with and weary
of, postdocs.
GRANTING AGENCIES’ VIEW OF THE POSTDOC:
NSF doesn't like to fund postdocs because their mission is to educate
students, while NIH is more open (it basically doesn't care about how the job
gets done, as long as it does.... for example, in the biomedical field, it is
common to get gray hair before you finish a postdoctoral assistantship LOL).
So, unless you are doing bio-research and have a big name, it is actually
hard to get money to fund a postdoc.
SELF VIEW OF THE POSTDOC (Obviously
this depends on individual experience, but mine was good): I loved my
postdoctoral assistantship! It felt like graduate school, except with less responsibility and more
money! I was lucky enough to be in a top school and live in
down town Philadelphia (great city!). My group was doing cool research
that I loved and my boss was too busy to micro-manage me (whew!).
Moreover, once I wrote my own grant and got it funded (btw, you should
definitely write grants as a postdoc!), I was afforded complete freedom about
work direction, etc (and believe me, it is important to be able to develop an
independent direction, and not be your boss' appendage for the rest of your
life).
But there IS a dark side: your contract is yearly, your
undergraduate class-mates often make triple (perhaps quadruple) what you make;
opposite sex might not view well such an unstable financial situation, and what
sucks the most is that you do not even know if it will pay off in the end...if
you will even get a real job after all the nonsense!
Now, getting an academic position is insanely hard, so this is a
very real concern and naturally you should look at alternative career paths, as
I did (just in case)!
What else is out there?
INDUSTRY VIEW OF THE POSTDOC: Now this makes
the whole postdoc experience kind of...well... a black hole... Here is what I
mean. I went to a seminar given by some representatives of big pharma
companies. And given the bad economy, the audience was about two thirds
postdocs (they probably expected PhD students). Naturally, the question
arose as to whether they were interested in postdocs, and this was the reply:
“NO”.
"Why?", someone asked. The logic kind of makes sense, I
guess... pretty much, why invest *more money* (for some reason they view
postdocs as more qualified, so they have to pay more) into labor that is
over-qualified AND is not truly interested in being there, when they can just
hire a PhD student and train them all the same? It appears they felt that
a postdoc looking for an industry job either a) wants to enter academia, but
didn't make it (so you will not be happy in industry and quit their company at
the first opportunity), or b) wants to enter industry after the PhD, but also
didn't make it, so the postdoc was the back-up plan (so pretty much you aren't
that great to begin with). For case (b), the advice was "do not go
for the postdoc position if you really want to be in industry... get a job at McDonalds
if you have to, tough it out, but do get that industrial job directly out of
the PhD program!"
Also, get this: they ARE interested in you AFTER the postdoc period! :D If you become a professor and suddenly you want to go into industry, some companies who do research actually do need group leaders, etc. So this is what I mean when I say that the postdoc is a "black hole" to industry. You are desirable to the outside world before and after, but not during.
PROOF THAT DOING A POSTDOC HURTS YOUR CAREER: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/
Also, get this: they ARE interested in you AFTER the postdoc period! :D If you become a professor and suddenly you want to go into industry, some companies who do research actually do need group leaders, etc. So this is what I mean when I say that the postdoc is a "black hole" to industry. You are desirable to the outside world before and after, but not during.
PROOF THAT DOING A POSTDOC HURTS YOUR CAREER: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/
So that was pretty disappointing to hear, though true, as I
really did not have a desire to work in industry. So here are some
alternative avenues that I explored while looking for the academic job:
a) Faculty jobs abroad: Bad idea if you ever want
to re-enter US academia (perhaps I will write another blog about this), but
they are there... China, Middle East, etc
b) Teaching Institutions: These are actually
the first ones who will interview you. They are basically small colleges (e.g.
liberal arts colleges) with no PhD program, expect you to mostly teach, but
maybe also do some small-scale research. The pay is probably just
as good, but to me it wasn't as interesting. Yet, I still talked to these
guys just not to burn any bridges or anything.
c) Financial Sector: Yes, you read that
right. Business wants to make money, and they look for anyone with more
than half a brain (you qualify). In fact, I do computer modeling, so I
even tried with high frequency trading companies on Wall Street... :) But
the one I liked the most consults (McKinsey, BCG, Bain & Company).
That reminded me of science, kind of, because you could work on different
projects, in various industries, so it’s still kind of interesting
(unless you have to consult the dollar store about how to sell more
toilet paper - true story from a BCG info session). You can also travel
internationally, and even work with biotech. Anyway, money is always a
magnet, isn’t it?
d) National lab: Well, these pay even more than
academia, but projects tend to be kind of dry (whatever is in the interest of
the nation is what you do), locations are pretty limited (I wanted big city
life), and again, there is little stability as far as the job contract. The
way I understand it, you can get the boot any time funding depletes on the research
strand on which you are working.
e) Research professor (non-tenure): Weird
animal. Basically, you do mostly research (you can bet they will still
ask you to teach a little). Your salary mostly comes from grants (i.e.
you have to be amazing at pulling in money); AND the very most are not on
the tenure track line! So who would even do a thing like that?
Well, I know a guy who is just very good at bringing in money... but most
of them, in my experience, are postdocs who have been at one place for a very
long time. They are given this title so they could be principal investigators
on grants. (By the way, faculty search committees realize this fact very
well, so, research professors don't make the most desirable candidate; beware).
f) Start-ups!
Well, if you thought academic life is stressful, try selling your house
and investing it into a business. It’s exhilarating yet insane. Maybe one
in a hundred succeed. If you don't want to make on your own, you can
probably get hired by someone else. The pay will be lower, but, you will
have less structure at work and more room for creativity. I guess if it
works out, you could shoot up the career ladder quicker and maybe get rich on
those stock options they offer instead of real money... but chances are it will
probably turn into worthless paper by the time you are done. Actually,
you might not realize it, but the start-up is analogous to academia (idea for
another blog!).
So these are your choices. In my case, I made myself a
promise that I wouldn't be a postdoc a second time despite how much I enjoyed
the first. Although some are okay with the bohemian life-style of a
perpetual postdoc, I wanted to draw the line and make some changes in my life.
The rest is up to you.
UPDATE: I've received several PhD applications from people who already have a PhD, but can't find a postdoc or job. This sounds like the wrong reasons to apply for PhD. You should be going into PhD because you are interested in it, and not because you can't find a job. Imagine that you get a job offer some time down the road, what will happen then? You will leave the PhD. I don't want any chance of that happening.
Also, I think your idea could be accomplished with a MS, given that its sufficient for most industrial jobs. So you are selecting the PhD because its free. Which is again the wrong reason.
Then you have to consider that you already have a degree, but your presence in the PhD would be preventing someone who does not have it from obtaining it. That's somewhat unethical, considering that you aren't even doing it to change specialization or some other legitimate reason.
Finally, even if I wanted to take you, I don't know if the university would allow it. So, please don't go down this route...
