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.
