Academia vs. private sector jobs after a PhD v. remind me why the real world sucks

[Flambeur]

Working on my PhD right now, ABD stage.. Doing well enough to where I think I will have a decent, well-paying tenture-track job once I am done, and the only question is whether it will be a top or average school. Still, every once in a while, I wonder if I am getting sick of the politics, being constantly watched and not having as much anonymity/privacy as I'd like, being evaluated and judged by too few people in too subjective of a way, with very little as a means of self-defense. I am also not entirely happy with the trajectory of the US university system or its students - there are just so many distractions, regulation, political correctness intertwined with political machinations, etc. I kind of miss being in the industry where I had a relatively relaxed yet meaningful F100 job with a company that treated me exceedingly well, and where I probably had more freedom to protect/defend myself from stupid/bored people. Fallout with a boss? Get in with another department/project. Fallout in the company? If you are good enough you can get a job with another.

Moreover, I feel like in the academic world there is always a competition to be the smartest guy in the room, and there are very few times people will actually openly and sincerely appreciate and value your work, no matter how good it is. Even before the PhD, I felt pretty appreciated and valued in my past jobs. People seem to value novel and interesting ideas more in the corporate world, while in the academia you actually have to conform and strategically aim your research in a much more structured manner (academic research is way more subjective and politically driven than people outside of the schools think, and even though I usually manage to benefit from these things, it's tiring and discouraging). To be fair, sometimes I think that being an academic has the potential to corrupt you in certain ways more than the private sector ever will.

I also miss the shorter project-reward cycles and faster career advancement, especially as I am not getting any younger.. and I actually like academic research.

Anyway, remind me why the corporate world sucks and why I should stay an academic instead of taking my new skills back to industry.

 

[ramuman]

I don't think a PhD should limit you to any particular track. Few examples: My own advisor graduated, served in the military, came back to academia, ended up provost at the university then founded several companies.

6 people in our group graduated together:

I went into management consulting and then started two startups
Another started a company and has military contracts
3 went into rotational programs at engineering companies
Another went into real estate

We're all electrical engineers btw, but people always get confused (first of all they think I'm an electrician) but they don't get it.

A PhD should teach you how to logically think. If it's applied to being a professor or something else, it was worth it.

My main gripe with academia is that there isn't a lot of innovation that comes out of it considering the time and effort involved.

Congrats by the way - it's not an easy road and no one will ever take it away from you.

 

[Onehitwonder]

Im about to start grad school and I think your post just provided a little bit of vaccination against having too much of an optimistic world view on academia. I just hope I won't be stuck in the Ivory Tower and that I can somehow bring out some of the supremely esoteric knowledge to be applied in real workplace settings so that my entire accomplishment will not only be journal publications but also real life stuff.

Anyways, best of luck with your dissertation.

 

[dfagdfsh]

Couple thoughts.

1. It depends on what you want to do in academia. It sounds like you're interested in teaching and research positions, but there are also administrative positions that might be appealing (more 9-to-5, similar to a business setting).

2. A lot of times, at the end of the day academia is a trade off: you are paid worse, but you have untouchable job stability and can have an excellent work/life balance.

Also, you're a Ph.D. student not a professor, experiences will be different when you're in a different context.

 

[Flambeur]



I don't think a PhD should limit you to any particular track. Few examples: My own advisor graduated, served in the military, came back to academia, ended up provost at the university then founded several companies.

6 people in our group graduated together:

I went into management consulting and then started two startups
Another started a company and has military contracts
3 went into rotational programs at engineering companies
Another went into real estate

We're all electrical engineers btw, but people always get confused (first of all they think I'm an electrician) but they don't get it.

A PhD should teach you how to logically think. If it's applied to being a professor or something else, it was worth it.

My main gripe with academia is that there isn't a lot of innovation that comes out of it considering the time and effort involved.

Congrats by the way - it's not an easy road and no one will ever take it away from you.

Thanks for the response. The intellectual payoff has been absolutely ******* worth it so far. Career payoff? Probably, and maybe having options is always good. I agree with you on innovation, but that's pretty typical - we search for truth instead of chasing fads, right?

One of the issues in my field is that the movement between academic and private sector is pretty limited for research faculty. Unlike many other disciplines (Economics, Engineering, etc.) people don't typically spend a few years in the field and come back to tenure track. So that makes it a little more complicated.

Im about to start grad school and I think your post just provided a little bit of vaccination against having too much of an optimistic world view on academia. I just hope I won't be stuck in the Ivory Tower and that I can somehow bring out some of the supremely esoteric knowledge to be applied in real workplace settings so that my entire accomplishment will not only be journal publications but also real life stuff.

Anyways, best of luck with your dissertation.

Best of luck. It seriously is totally worth it, but you really have to experience and understand it on your own. It will all makes sense eventually, but it's definitely not nearly as amazing as people think.

Couple thoughts.

1. It depends on what you want to do in academia. It sounds like you're interested in teaching and research positions, but there are also administrative positions that might be appealing (more 9-to-5, similar to a business setting).

2. A lot of times, at the end of the day academia is a trade off: you are paid worse, but you have untouchable job stability and can have an excellent work/life balance.

Also, you're a Ph.D. student not a professor, experiences will be different when you're in a different context.

Good response.

Administrative stuff does not appeal to me at all, if I wanted to do something similar I'd be in the industry doing something way more interesting and engaging.

What makes the choice a little more difficult is that the pay in my field is actually generally on par with or higher than the industry.. and in some cases, if you take advantage of all of the extracurricular opportunities you can make decent change. The main differences are in equity opportunities and top tier pay - if you really are a star in the industry you can make significantly more than in the academia, but I mean like executive rank at a top firm.

As far as the student thing, fair enough. Again, it's a little different in my context because in my field we are not all lab bitches and get to do 90% of what faculty do - we publish with them as well-treated coauthors, we teach full classes sometimes, we go to same conferences and present our research as full-fledged researchers, etc. If anything, we have a bit more freedom and anonymity in exchange for not making any money.. But I've made money before so I fail to see how that would make a significant difference in my case.

Still, I understand, and I am sure there are many more things that go into that.

 

[AldenPyle]

The main appeal, to me, of being a professor (beyond the intellectual satisfaction, I mean focusing on the working conditions alone) is the unique blend of independence and security. In both teaching and research, nobody is looking over my shoulder on a day to day or even year to year basis offering guidance/supervision of the basic work product. Ultimately, if the students complain too much you might have a hard time and you don't get raises or promotions if your research doesn't get external recognition, but as long as you deliver, you are left alone to do what you want for very long stretches of your working life. That independence is even physical. We work alone in offices, no open plan floor space. And you can just get up and leave, any time you don't have to be in class (lecture time, maybe adds up to 120 hours per year). Leave the office, leave the campus, leave town, leave the country, its up to you. At the same time, you pretty much have a lifetime job contract in which neither your performance nor your employers lack of need for your services is grounds for dismissal.

There's downsides to all of that independence, of course, and probably most ambitious people wouldn't find it that satisfying, but that is why I love the job (in addition to love of the subject, love of thinking about something nobody has thought about before, the many hours spent with incredibly smart and civilized people).

The OP is right though about the marketplace for research output as being very much a niche market governed by a very small number of gatekeepers. This is the worst part about it.

 

[Flambeur]



The main appeal, to me, of being a professor (beyond the intellectual satisfaction, I mean focusing on the working conditions alone) is the unique blend of independence and security. In both teaching and research, nobody is looking over my shoulder on a day to day or even year to year basis offering guidance/supervision of the basic work product. Ultimately, if the students complain too much you might have a hard time and you don't get raises or promotions if your research doesn't get external recognition, but as long as you deliver, you are left alone to do what you want for very long stretches of your working life. That independence is even physical. We work alone in offices, no open plan floor space. And you can just get up and leave, any time you don't have to be in class (lecture time, maybe adds up to 120 hours per year). Leave the office, leave the campus, leave town, leave the country, its up to you. At the same time, you pretty much have a lifetime job contract in which neither your performance nor your employers lack of need for your services is grounds for dismissal.

There's downsides to all of that independence, of course, and probably most ambitious people wouldn't find it that satisfying, but that is why I love the job (in addition to love of the subject, love of thinking about something nobody has thought about before, the many hours spent with incredibly smart and civilized people).

The OP is right though about the marketplace for research output as being very much a niche market governed by a very small number of gatekeepers. This is the worst part about it.

Pretty spot on. Do you mind sharing which field you're in?

I thought long stretches of independence would be amazing, but to be honest, the constant pressure to publish and to remain competitive and relevant among your peers combined with lack of structure add up to making it less pleasant than one might think.

I also enjoy my anonymity, but that can be tough when 100s of students know you and you keep running into them everywhere, or worse yet, get into a tough situation with someone. My friend was kind of a hardass when it came to teaching his first class, and now whenever you google his name, you see his highly negative and nasty reviews on rate my professors right away. All it takes is a couple of entitled kids or just a general bad fit of personality/structure.

 

[AldenPyle]

Unfortunately, many young people get the idea that the corporate world must be an "Office Space" dystopia and go into academia as the only available refuge. This mistake leads to a lot of unhappy people. I think people should get a job in the private sector or government before they get a Ph.D. because they often discover the many rewarding things you can do. It seems like you have your eyes open.


W/o being too specific, I work in a non-science, kind of business/professional school-ish area. My understanding is working conditions in many areas of science and the humanities where competition is heated are very different and not necessarily better. YMMV as they say.

PS Never look at Rate Your Professor or that stuff. Don't tell anyone, but about 5 years ago I even stopped reading my teaching evaluations. I am much the happier for it.

 

[dfagdfsh]

Someone gave me an evaluation this year that said "eh it's whatever..."

I want to frame it.

 

[Flambeur]



Unfortunately, many young people get the idea that the corporate world must be an "Office Space" dystopia and go into academia as the only available refuge. This mistake leads to a lot of unhappy people. I think people should get a job in the private sector or government before they get a Ph.D. because they often discover the many rewarding things you can do. It seems like you have your eyes open.


W/o being too specific, I work in a non-science, kind of business/professional school-ish area. My understanding is working conditions in many areas of science and the humanities where competition is heated are very different and not necessarily better. YMMV as they say.

PS Never look at Rate Your Professor or that stuff. Don't tell anyone, but about 5 years ago I even stopped reading my teaching evaluations. I am much the happier for it.

I agree. I've had plenty of corporate experience before going for my PhD, so I am completely there with you. I'm lucky, and it motivates much of my research work with anecdotal/qualitative evidence.
To be fair, I honestly don't know which one is objectively better in my case, mostly because the future is so unpredictable, but also because trade-offs and benefits of each are so different.

Don't get me wrong, I don't give a **** about rate my professors either, but lay people and your students do.. Plus if you are consistently getting horrible ratings with a high number of responses, that still tells you something, right?

Someone gave me an evaluation this year that said "eh it's whatever..."

I want to frame it.

Bwahahaha.. But really, it's those responses that aren't positive that make you take notice, right? There is an interesting relationship there, I think we tend to discount positive evaluations and get really bothered by even slightly negative or questionable ones.

 

[ramuman]

I think a fun thing would be to teach an introductory class. I've mused about asking to teach the first electrical engineering, biology, chemistry, or physics class at my alma mater. One of my friends in our research group taught the introductory electrical engineering class for his last two semesters of grad school. It was really cool to see him boil down what was etched in our brains over the better part of a decade into something meaningful for an 18 or 19 year old, despite us being 8 years removed from it.

His best review was from a girl in his class asking if he would go out on a date with her.