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Comment by s0rce | Hacker News Reader

I published in Science and Nature during my PhD and other than some prestige and help getting a fellowship I never received any sort of direct payout. I don't think my supervisor got anything directly either, definitely helped future grant applications, however.

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When I was in grad school, you were sent to the front of the line when applying for tenure track positions. (If you got a paper or two into those two publications).

However, people still had to like you in the interview and job talk.

I applied, gave up, just didn't feel like it was all worth it in the end and now work in industry.

I'm assuming these were not 1st author publications. If you have a 1st author Nature and a 1st author Science paper during grad school, Universities should be rolling out the red carpet.

They were both first author, details are on my very out of date website link in my profile if you are interested. Definitely no red carpet rolling out, not sure if you are in academia but those days have passed. Could I possibly have done another postdoc and managed a faculty position somewhere in the USA, probably, was it worth it to me, nope. Felt like I failed for a while, its hard to escape from the academia cult.

Whoa. Well first congrats, that is a triumphant feat for a grad student.

I am truly surprised your faculty search wasnt more fruitful, given there is hardly much more you could have done other than maybe secure a K99 grant.

Why do you suspect your cv was not top-tier competetive? I ask because yes, I am in Academia and from my experience (including being on faculty search committees) suggests you would have at least been invited to job talks.

Heh .. I don't want this to turn into an AMA. But yes .. I too have questions. How long have you been away from academia and how do you feel about it? I had success in grad school (papers in top CS conferences). I went the industrial research route which paid well initially. Now, I'm nearly 40 and have no tenure and a gap of a few years in my publication history. I am very tempted to get out of the game but am afraid about it being a 1 way street.

Hah, I don't really enjoying revisiting my decision making but I'll try to answer. I've been away for just over a year and I miss the people and the freedom but I don't miss the politics and the rat race.

Grad school was successful. However, my postdoc was a different story, I got a relatively prestigious fellowship at a DOE lab but my supervisor quit before I started and I tried to do my own stuff but really didn't get much support and it wasn't much fun or productive. I quit after 2 years, about 1 year ago and joined a small biotech company in the bay area. I'm pretty sure I already have too large a gap in my publications to go back, I thought about going back to academia for a bit but that would have entailed doing a 2nd postdoc but I really wasn't interested in moving some random place for 3+ years, then dealing with the whole faculty application process again and 5+ more years before eventually getting tenure.

If you don't hate writing grants maybe academia can be for you.

Good luck.

Do you have any interest in neuroscience? My lab (malinowlab.com) has two postdoc openings right now at UCSD, and we take smart people from any STEM field.

In my opinion, in retrospect, I should have joined well known groups that had a strong history of placing students and postdocs in faculty positions at top schools.

So? The actual career is still not worth it. That what you just said is true is almost the worst part about it!

Not worth it in what regard?

>I published in Science and Nature during my PhD

you have my admiration twice, then.

it doesn't count for much from me to you, i know.

but improving the human body of knowledge is, in a wide sense, its own reward.

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