Proof That Doing A Postdoc Hurts Your Career
Academia has perpetuated the myth that doing a postdoc increases your chances of getting hired in industry and other non-academic career tracks.
But this simply isn't true.
The truth is that doing or staying in a postdoc hurts your chances of being hired.
Doing or staying in a postdoc reduces your career trajectory. Doing or staying in a postdoc reduces your lifetime salary gains substantial.
Look at Chart "C" below (Nature Biotechnology).
Those who do a postdoc and then go into industry NEVER catch up to those who transition directly into industry after receiving a PhD.
NEVER.
Even in Government/nonprofit and Academic non-TT research (Charts "B" and "D"), those who do a postdoc only catch up to those who don't do a postdoc after 14-15 years.
That's right ...14-15 years.
The academic postdoc system is a scheme to keep YOU in academia as cheap labor to prop up the few remaining tenure and full-time professorships that exist.
The system is so broken that cheap postdoc labor isn't enough to sustain it anymore.
Now "adjunct" and "part-time" and "contract" professorships are being created at an accelerated rate because these positions pay much less than full-time professorships.
It gets worse.
Academic institutions are now trying to hide how many postdocs they have by re-labeling them as "staff scientists" or similar.
No pay raise is included in the name change.
Don't let some lifetime academic or industry outlier convince you that you need a postdoc to thrive in industry or any non-academic career.
You don't.
It doesn't matter who told you that company's "prefer" postdoc experience.
Whether it was your PI, or a friend of a friend, or one lonely recruiter you talked to once, or some entry-level employee ...they were wrong.
The data doesn't lie.
If you're doing a postdoc, it's time to plan your transition out of academia.
If you haven't done a postdoc yet, don't start because you don't need one and it will hurt your career.
Industry employers in particular don't want PhDs to gain even more academic experience.
They want PhDs to gain on-the-job training.
Further reading:
- Nature Biotechnology. Shulamit Kahn & Donna K Ginther. The impact of postdoctoral training on early careers in biomedicine.
- Science. Devin Powell. The price of doing a postdoc.
To learn more on transitioning out of the cult of academia and taking your career into your own hands, including instant access to our exclusive training videos, case studies, industry insider documents, transition plan, and private online network, get on the wait list for the Cheeky Scientist Association.
Mechanics of Materials | Modeling and Simulation | Finite Element Analysis | Glass | Composites
3 å¹´Terrible article full of inaccuracies. Everything from starting salaries to the statement that says academic institutions may change your title but pay you the same.
Manager at Sandia National Laboratories
3 å¹´I have PhD in Mechanical Engineering, did a post-doc myself, have 20+ years professional experience, and am a hiring manager (including post-docs). I assure you that the plots in Figure 5 are nonsense, at least for hard science and engineering. The listed starting salaries for post-docs are way low. Plus, even if the post-doc salaries were really that low, the plots should show a big step up when an individual finishes a post-doc and takes a permanent position. If you earn a PhD in computer science, engineering, or similar, and complete a 2-year post-doc, your starting salary will be roughly double what the charts show.
The Hubbard Variant
4 å¹´If you want to do new science go for Ph.D? and post docs. If only industry and salary is your motive then even a masters is too much!
Certified IT Product Manager, Marketer & Data Master
4 å¹´The analysis is not applicable in all fields of study, even given the concession of 2013 dollars. Materials science postdocs (and a number of engineering fields) with a focus on electronic and magnetic materials at DOE national laboratories like Livermore, Los Alamos, or Sandia can start at well over $90K. Also if you plan it right, you can start ahead of the pack by pursuing an internship at a lab for $35 hour (plus travel expenses) while still an undergrad. Once established at a lab for a summer,the opportunity for PhD students to split their thesis research between their school and a national lab can nearly double the amount of the typical high-end stipend or fellowship at the school alone. DOE labs have funding and equipment most of industry could never justify spending. The labs also spin off their IP to collocated or nearby start ups and partner with very large companies to share the cost of industrialization of new processes. You can jump from a national lab into industry at the senior scientist or even CTO level, or back into academia that also partners with DOE national labs.
Research | Teaching | DBT-RA Awardee (2023) HRD-PMU | Energy & Water | Renewables | Sustainability | Assistant Professor | Internationalization
4 å¹´Nicely written