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nextostoday at 12:40 PM1 replyview on HN

True, also very precarious and unstable. It is now common not to get a long-term contract until your 40s.

Given the massive pay gap with industry and scarce funding, it's natural lots of innovation has shifted to industrial labs.


Replies

oerstedtoday at 2:13 PM

In EU there are laws that force universities to give researchers a permanent contract after a couple years. The result? Everyone gets fired every couple of years. In certain fields, this implies changing country every couple of years.

Not that the university is paying much anyway, often the opposite: the researcher gets their own grant and they are forced to pay a cut to the host university, or to their group leader. It can get rather feudal.