guitarplayer wrote: ↑Sun Mar 14, 2021 7:41 am
Looking at your username, I would guess that you possibly went through the process, which would be great from the insight point of view.
Kind of. I have a PhD in mathematical sciences with a computational focus. So, I always had more optionality and above average pay. But many of the issues were still present.
I'm not going to claim to be an expert on every PhD and I doubt any such person exists. But my impression is a very few fields (economics, business) can be considered reasonable career moves, as they have both private sector demand at the end and a reasonable ratio of new faculty position to new PhDs. In these fields, but not in most, you will probably get a highly paid industry job or a faculty position.
If you don't have good reason to believe your field is one of these, assume it isn't. In a typical field, you learn stuff that no one outside academia is willing to pay for. That has the more obvious but
less important consequence that you are not paid very well. It has the less obvious but
more important consequence that you have little bargaining power against your employer. That doesn't just mean low pay in the future, it means you can be forced into doing stuff you don't like or in ways you don't like or at times that are inconvenient. But studying stuff you found interesting in an autonomous way was the only reason you went into academia (right?) so that's a problem. It's important to understand this from the start because you will never have as much bargaining power again as you do as a PhD
applicant, who is not invested and can easily just get a job. If you're FI, much of this problem disappears.
My PhD was somewhere in between the two because while there was no direct demand for my specific work in industry I did a lot of coding, which is generally applicable to many business problems. My employer was aware that I could probably go and get some well paid coding job if things got too bad.
Would this imply that many candidates pursue it for the fun of it and so remain enthusiasts
No, because very few people are FI.
i.e. the interest is still there? I would hate to find myself surrounded by frustrated people who got themselves into a pickle. I would love to find myself surrounded by enthusiastic people who do it to fulfill other goals from the web of goals than 'financial'.
I once gave a lab tour and one of the guys who asked a lot of questions sat with me for lunch. Bunch of my colleagues joined. I was somewhat embarrassed that it all turned to general office watercooler stuff. Griping about managers, deadlines, funding. Lots of irony and sarcasm. I guess this guy assumed these "genius scientists" would be talking math and solving great problems in their lunch break. Or at worst discussing boring technical issues related to the cool experiments I just showed him. Nah, it's just another bunch of guys who work in an office, have trouble with the boss, and hate Mondays.
What you will find is people get resigned to it figuring they're here now and have to pay the bills, anyway other jobs are worse (they believe), and an element of Stockholm Syndrome sets in. Very few people will be actively considering alternatives. If you are sitting in a trench, you are considering how to dodge the shells and get a warm cup of coffee this evening. Not how nice it might be to be working in a cafe rather than sitting in a trench. Just how people work. Longer you stay in it the older you are and worse placed to switch, plus sunk cost fallacy. Obviously every specific workplace is different and has different people and cultures, but there's an outpouring of material on this theme - someone already posted phdcomics.
Also, remember that
everything is a business, goes for research too. You might think the huge intake of mostly enthusiasts will ensure many enthusiasts are also at the top making decisions. Not so. It's a selection system. Those who are best are getting grants will get the grants and hire everyone else. Many of the very worst persons I've had professional interactions with have been academia bosses, combining many of the stereotypical Machiavellian traits associated with corporate bosses but without the competence (because they're competing with naive enthusiasts and underpaid for the management work they do). That's not to say every prof is bad. But almost all of them are business managers, for better or worse, or they would have never got their job, with a sideline of scholarship.
The Ghostbusters joke is sadly outdated. You must deliver results, meaning increased chance of your prof getting a grant, which work may or may not relate to the stated purpose of the grant or the research field you're in. If you're FI, you can decide what you will and won't do because you are in a position to walk.
Amazing opportunity how? Anything else than ertyu's 2., 3. (although see my question above), 5. (would argue also access to gyms, swimming pools etc), 6., 7. (if desired), 8. and 9. more than welcome.
You don't need a list of a zillion reasons and if you care about that, just DONT do it. The only
good reason to do a PhD is that you love the subject matter. If that isn't enough, no list of reasons is enough.
(I might grant academic library access because it gives you access to subscriptions that an individual cannot usually afford. Enrolling in some random PhD as FI guy to get access to the journals and do research on a totally different topic also sounds hilarious to me.)