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Comment by yodsanklai | Hacker News Reader

> because the grass looks greener

I also left academia to work for a company. I agree it's not all black and white. But one important thing to take into account is salary. I earn now twice as much. I'm not materialistic but it makes a big difference. It's something I didn't care about when I chose to work in academia but I'm increasingly worried about future pensions, health system and social safety net in my country. It seems to go downward and my salary as a professor wasn't enough for me to plan adequately.

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Meh... even if you disregard the second half of your post, if you have a shitty job A or a shitty job B, it's still better to have a shitty job that pays 2x the money than the other one.

Plus, in industry, if you're good, you can always go higher, earn more, move to other industries, and earn even more. In academia, you can pretty much just choose the (almost) same job in a different institution, which probably pays nearly the same salary (especially in europe... even if you change countries, in the developed ones, pay (adjusted to cost of living) is nearly the same everywhere).

Very important point, academia is zero sum in a way that industry isn’t, however if you’ve got tenure you’re one of the winners.

I left academia to work for a company. I am not on a "rolling" 3 year contract anymore. I get paid more. Getting a professorship was nearly impossible.

A rolling 3 year contract renewed each year would be a huge improvement compared to the constant nagging feeling of being throwed out anytime the contracts end.

I worked as a research engineer for 2 years at an uni but since I was not full time employee for real I left. They would have needed way more full time engineers than zero. You can't run serious labs with grad students or short term engineers. The churn is way to big when you work on a per project basis.

The advantage state officials usually have is a safe paycheck with worse pay but unis offer the same numbers on it without the safety ...

In Europe (he was in France, no?) I would expect a professor to earn something similar to a senior engineer.

No, a junior researcher / assistant professor would earn about 2000 euros per month. After 10-15 years, they can expect 3000 euros but it'll stop there unless they get a full professor position (which are hard to get). I'd say a qualified engineer should be able to earn twice as much.

I find that hard to believe as I got more than that working as a technician ten years ago in an academic institute in Spain, and it isn't well paid here.

https://sgenplus.cfdt.fr/article/remunerations-et-grilles-in...

Sorry, it's in French: starting salary for an assistant professor 1727.49 euros. It's similar for a CNRS/INRIA researcher. In practice it's a little higher. After about 15 years, you'll get 3000 euros. Many people get stuck there but it's possible to get a full professor / director of research position.

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