alt Hacker NewsPostdocs always seemed like a scam to me.
Almost by definition, if you're doing a Postdoc in a STEM field, you're probably qualified for a relatively well-paying job in industry [1].
And it's not like universities don't know this, people have been complaining about it for forever. They know if they were to just hire a person with a relevant PhD to do work, they'd ask for a good wage, so instead they dangle this "maybe you'll qualify for a tenured professor job eventually if you do underpaid labor for us for N years..."
------
My relationship with academia is...complicated. I dropped out of college in 2012, worked as an engineer for awhile, did a brief stint as a researchey-person at NYU, got laid-off from there, worked in industry for another several years, tried school again in 2018 and dropped out again in 2019, finally finished my degree in 2021, and started a PhD in 2022, and did an adjunct lecturer thing from second-half of 2022 to first-half 2023.
Since I was working full time (and couldn't pay my mortgage on academic wages), I was doing a PhD at University of York part-time remotely. It was fun, but I wasn't just paid poorly, I had to pay them! About $15,000-$16,000/year American [2]! Even though I was doing work for the school, writing code for them that's not categorically different than the code I got paid yuppie engineer salary for, I was losing money in this prospect (and not just the normal opportunity cost kind).
I did it for two years, but I dropped it in November of last year because it was an expensive thing that I wasn't convinced was actually going to pay off for me. The PhD was already pretty self-guided, I could still research the topics I was interested in for free, academia's pace is glacial-at-best, and I didn't burn any bridges so I could go back later if I really wanted.
I might still publish a paper with my advisor in this next year (that's still pending), but of course since I'm not enrolled-in and paying-money-to the school, it won't count towards any credential. I think I'm ok with that.
[1] There might be exception to this but I can't think of many.
[2] depending on the dollar->pound exchange rate.
Replies
At least in computer science, postdocs have other benefits:
1) they can be well paid, like high five to very low six figures;
2) they can be an extra year or two to figure out your own research direction with some help but not much oversight;
3) they can be much easier to get than industry positions -- sometimes requiring little more than a solid publication record and advisor recommendation;
4) if you've been in a university environment for ~a decades and liked it, it might strike you as an easy path to keep doing that (this is probably the worst reason, though).
This is skewed by computer science postdocs at highly ranked schools, though. Yes, people taking these positions face opportunity costs, but the actual experience can be pretty nice.
Stanford School of Medicine has a FOOD BANK for Postdocs because they literally can't afford groceries lol
> Almost by definition, if you're doing a Postdoc in a STEM field, you're probably qualified for a relatively well-paying job in industry
Be careful: many people who are great postdocs are rather overqualified (and thus rather not suitable) for many jobs in industry.
Getting well-payed in industry requires in my opinion skills that are opposite to those that make you a great postdoc:
In industry you must not be a truth-seeker who can deeply absorb himself in problems. Being a truth-seeker makes you an insanely fit in the brutal office politics.
Also, while I do insist that in graduate school you actually learn a lot about leadership (in the sense of being able to push people to do great things), the abrasive and highly demanding leadership style in graduate school and academia is commonly very undesired in industry (but in my opinion not bad: a very particular kind of people (who will love graduate school) flourishes in such an environment).