Ryan White

Salaries in industry are ~ 2x higher than in academia after #PhD. This is a huge gap. Many students ask me what to do about their bad advisors and boring PhD time. They love doing #research but have no idea how to stay in academia. My advice these days is simple: 1. Do your best to get the PhD degree. 2. Try to leave your advisor somewhat happy so that you can ask for a recommendation letter. 3. And then LEAVE academia for industry. DON’T look for a postdoc position, it won’t help you. - Why? Because if you have a difficult advisor and unproductive PhD time, it means your chances of staying in academia are extremely slim (~ 1%). BUT companies don’t care about your advisor as much as academics do. They don’t need your fancy papers in Science and Nature. They need your expertise and skills. And you as a critical thinker. It may feel like a hard transition because you’ve got used to academic work so much. But once you move to a company and see your bank account finally doing well, you will be surprised by how shortsighted you were before. In industry, people solve all sorts of complex problems. Many of them are more challenging than in academia. So, believe me that you WON'T be bored if you find the right company. And if you want to stay in academia because your brain strives for solving complex problems, you will be equally challenged in industry, especially in a tech company. Of course industry also has all sorts of troubles. However, they are usually much easier to solve than in academia, especially when you’re a high-level professional. #AcademicTwitter [ Figure is from NSF ]

Peer reviewing of manuscripts - is it THAT important as everyone thinks? I thought of writing this post later, but Nature has catalyzed me to do it now. Their article mentions the following important points: #science #research #AcademicTwitter