Should I stay or should I go? Staying in academia vs. going into industry.

There's a lot of chatter among ECRs about The Big Choice we all have to make: academia or private industry. Having worked in both sectors, I feel somewhat qualified to speak on the topic. First of all, it's not really The Big Choice that many early-career researchers think it is. The transition to industry is not in reality the one-way street many imagine it to be. I worked as a postdoc and then as an R&D scientist for a private company and then transitioned back to academia. Each time, it was the right choice. I don't regret taking a postdoc straight after my PhD. I don't regret going into industry for a few years and I don't regret coming back to academia. Some people's research careers are linear; my is more like a winding mountain path. Sometimes, the path seems to lead further away from my goal before turning a corner, sometimes the path slopes downward, away from the summit, and sometimes I stop on the path and just enjoy where I am.

The second consideration is the goals of academia and private industry. In private industry, the goal is, usually, profit. Your research must profit the company or, in the eyes of the company, it's not worth doing. The good thing about this is that if you can make a convincing business case for a new R&D venture, then you'll probably be allowed to do it.

The third consideration is money, both in terms of your own salary and funding available for research. I've often heard my US colleagues say that industry pays far better than academia. Clearly, that is generally true in the US. However, in my own experience in Australia was the reverse. My salary increased ~20 % when I returned to academia from industry (even more when you consider the increase in retirement contributions; Australian universities contribute 17.5 % on top of your base salary to your retirement savings). In terms of funding for research, it is much tighter in academia compared to industry, in my experience. You'll also have to fight harder for it in academia; there are so many academics out there with good ideas and outstanding track records and only a limited pot of money to fund research.

The fourth and, I think, the most important consideration is what you value. If you value increasing the world's stock of knowledge with a vague idea that somewhere down the track someone might find a practical use for the knowledge you've generated, then academia is probably the place for you. Conversely, if you value doing research that leads to direct tangible benefits (for your company or society more broadly), then private industry is probably right for you. I say probably because in the right academic institution or private company, you can build a career that has a nice balance of basic and applied research.

So, there you go. Four things to consider when making The Big Choice - even if it turns out to be only a Mid-Sized Choice.

Productivity Tips: Knowing How You Spend Your Time

In research, productivity has become increasingly important. Our time is precious because when it comes to getting new positions or promotions, the main thing we'll be judged on is our research output. To be sure, our teaching and service contributions will also be considered, but research is still king in most institutions. Something that has bothered me for several years is that I never have a good understanding of where my time is actually spent. At the end of each day, I have a vague idea that I have spent a few hours on this project and a couple of hours on that, but never any concrete way of keeping track of how my time is spent over a week or a month. For me, this often created an anxious background feeling that I should probably be working on something other than the project on which I was currently working! Not a nice way to spend my working hours. The other problem that this lack of accurately tracking my time caused was that I was never sure how long particular activities would take. For example, even after doing protein extraction in the lab multiple times, I still found myself unable to predict how long it would take me to perform the next batch of protein extractions and I would often find myself in the lab way later than I intended.

I wanted to solve these two problems that stemmed from a lack of accurately tracking the time it took for my work activities. For me, the solution came in the form of an app, which allows me to track how much time I'm spending on different projects. The particular app I use currently is Toggl Track. I am really enjoying it so far. It's nice to know that 33 % of my work time this week has been devoted to writing grant applications. I'm looking forward to seeing how my time is spent over the course of this month and this year and then adjusting my work habits if anything seems off. 

How about you? Do you find it difficult the predict how long tasks are going to take? Or do you have a vague feeling that you're not spending enough time on some projects? How do you manage these things?

Putting my blog on ice until 2022

 Just a short update to let you all know that I haven't forgotten my blog. I've been reflecting on the sorts of things I post and I've decided that I want to expand. I intend to reboot this blog next year. In 2022 and beyond, I plan to keep offering advice to early-career academic and industry researchers but I want to start sharing a bit more of my current work too. I want this blog to be a place for all my ideas and theories that are perhaps too 'out there' for publication at this point! I hope you all come back and enjoy the new content. I'm planning to post more regularly, probably around the 15th of each month. I'm writing that here so you can hold me accountable!

Dear USA, I love you but you are weird

Since leaving the USA in 2015, I have maintained a bank account there. It seemed like a good idea. I thought I would probably be travelling there for conferences and such and perhaps I would even end up moving back there. I never considered the dreaded dormant account fee.

I was hit with the dormant account fee after some period of inactivity and this fee eventually whittled down my checking account to -$30, at which point the bank (mercifully) closed my account. When I discovered I was 'in the red', I also discovered that I still had $50 in my savings, so all I wanted to do was transfer $30 to cover the my debt to the bank and then transfer the remaining $20 to my bank in Australia. To do this simple transaction, here's what I have to do: I have to mail the bank a letter requesting that $30 be taken from my savings to cover the debt and the only way for me to get the remaining $20 is for them to mail out a physical check. But, get this, it can't be mailed outside the US! I'm just going to get them to mail it to our friends in the US and they can keep it as a thank you for letting us list their address on our US bank account.

This highlights something I find fascinating about the US. It is technologically advanced in so many ways. Their technologies are used all around the world every day and largely make our day-to-day lives better and more hassle-free. But there are certain things, where development seems to have just stopped. Banking is a good example. The country that put people on the moon has a banking system that belongs in the 20th century.

Coping with laboratory mistakes

If you've just made a mistake in the lab and are wondering if you're really cut out to be a researcher, then this post is for you. I just want to gently and kindly remind you (and myself!) that talented and proficient people make mistakes. Pro golfers hit bad shots. Pro basketballers miss baskets. And pro scientists sometimes add the wrong reagent. Mistakes don't make you a failure as a researcher. Being a pro does not mean that you'll never make an error; but as a pro, you'll know what to do when you do make an error. As Kevin Kelly once quipped in an article entitled 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice: Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes." (If you haven't read the whole article, you really should; it's excellent). I think this is really good advice. As a researcher, you're bound to make mistakes occasionally, but you can recover from them. And sometimes, you might even discover something you would never have discovered otherwise (like my friend and colleague who added ¹/₁₀ of the required amount of a reagent to reaction that we did routinely in our lab and found that it worked just fine; it would have been a real money-saver to make this a permanent change to the protocol, but I don't think it was ever updated).

So, next time you're in the lab and add K₂HPO₄ instead of KH₂PO₄ to your buffer, don't question your ability to be a researcher. Instead, calmly think of the most graceful way you can recover from this, and then do that.

Charting a course through the Desert of Failure

Researchers are smart. They know stuff and they know how to generate new knowledge. But that's not enough to make a great scientist, because great science often takes a long time. There are precious few dopamine hits in science. A few that I can think of are:

• Making a breakthrough discovery
• Getting a paper accepted into a prestigious journal
• Giving a conference presentation and getting positive feedback
• Seeing students really understand a concept for the first time
• Sharing science with the public in a way that they obviously appreciate
• Applying basic research to solve a real-world problem and seeing tangible benefits

But, these things are not frequent. I'm sure many of you are painfully aware of how infrequent they are. But these are the tings that keep us going, as scientists. These occurrences are like oases in the 'Desert of Failure', which is where much of a researcher's life is spent. This desert is filled with dead-ends, rejected manuscripts, limited or no feedback on presentations (leaving you wondering if you actually made any sense), students who don't seem to 'get it' (or, at least, don't appreciate fully the thing you are trying to teach them), lack of understanding from the public and attempts to apply research that don't end up benefitting as many people as you'd hoped.

To be a great scientist, you have to be able to navigate from oasis to oasis in the Desert of Failure; being intelligent and knowledgeable is not enough; you also have to have the persistence to keep pushing toward the next oasis, even when you are not sure where it might be or when you might get there.

Seven observations that will change the way you see doctoral education

It's been nearly 12 years since I started my PhD. That makes it sound like I'm still doing it! Don't worry; I'm not. Reflecting upon my time as a PhD candidate and subsequent time as a researcher in academia and private industry led me to thinking about things that I wish I had known before I started my PhD. These are not necessarily negatives or positives of doctoral education; they are just things I have observed that no one really talks about much. Well, I'm going to talk about them here. Most of these things can be seen as positives or negatives, depending upon your viewpoint. Hopefully this post helps aspirant doctoral students go into their PhD programs with their eyes wide open. So, without further ado, here they are: seven observations that will change the way you see doctoral education.

1. A PhD is the beginning of life-long learning, not the end of your training. It took me a while to realise this one. Chances are in your postdoctoral career you'll end up switching fields once or twice and this will involve learning a many new techniques. You can't learn everything you need to know for your research career before you become 'Dr', so prepare yourself for a life of learning new things.
   Negative: learning new things can be daunting, frustrating and time-consuming.
   Positive: learning new things can be fun, if you approach it with a 'growth mindset'.
2. Academia is one of the most competitive work environments I can imagine. Because there is only a limited pot of money available to fund research, everyone is trying to outcompete everyone else to get it. I think this system hampers collaboration, which is a shame, but we haven't devised a better system yet. One of the worst things about this competitiveness is that even your friends are your competitors. While you're doing your PhD, hopefully you'll form a tight network of friends who are also getting PhDs. It is a very strange feeling when your friends become competitors for grants and employment opportunities.
   Negative: competitiveness can be stressful and sour friendships if you let it.
   Positive: competitiveness brings out the best in all of us if we let it.
3. As a postdoctoral employee, you will spend a large portion of your early (and perhaps mid) career on short-term contracts. This was something that hit me like a ton of bricks in the 3rd year of my PhD. Until then I had been under the blissful delusion that spending eight years of my life getting a degree would lead to stable employment. Boy, was I wrong. Since graduating, I have been on short-term contracts (2-3 years) in academia. I was able to secure an ongoing position in private industry but I had to leave that role to further my career.
   Negative: lack of ongoing employment can be stressful.
   Positive: you'll most likely get to work in a bunch of different labs and build your professional network before settling into an ongoing position.
4. Publications are currency. There is an old adage among academics: "Publish or perish". I can confirm, it's absolutely true. If you want to stay an academic, you'll have to be churning out research and review papers at a pretty high rate. From my understanding, a junior 100 % research tenure-track faculty member is expected to produce about four papers per year. So to be a successful academic scientist, you not only have to love research and be good at that, but you also have to love writing about it or find yourself postdocs who love writing about it!
   Negative: the pressure to constantly publish research to continue in academia can be extremely stressful. Also, sadly, this pressure can lead to the publication of 'bite-sized chunks' of research, rather than complete stories.
   Positive: the pressure to publish forces you to sharpen your critical thinking, research, writing and time-management skills.
5. The salaries are comparatively low, considering the amount of training. It's going to be hard to find a positive for this one. If you complete a PhD you will have spent 8-10 years at university and you might be tempted to think that this will lead to an attractive salary package. Eventually it might, but as a postdoc you'll be making something like 85-95k per year in Australia and 55-65k in the USA. People should never get into this business for the money!
   Negative: after a long time getting trained, entry level postdocs make less than average librarians, mail-carriers and garbage collectors.
   Positive: this serves as somewhat of a filter so that people get into this game for reasons other than money.
6. A career in research for many of us will mean being an immigrant. The intense specialisation of a doctorate means that to continue research in your chosen field you will most likely have to move cities or even countries (unless you were fortunate enough to have already lived in a city with a research university that has a position open in your field when you graduate). This separation from the family you love and culture you understand can be very difficult, as I know from first-hand experience.
   Negative: close relationships may suffer and you may have to live your life in an alien culture as a result of pursuing an academic career.
   Positive: new close relationships can be formed and you'll get to see different parts of the world and experience and embrace new cultures.
7. Once you taste the freedom of academia, nothing else will satisfy. I know this from first-hand experience. My research career has been a mixture of academic and private industry. I loved the stability of private industry and the chance to do research that provided tangible benefits, but I missed the freedom of academia. The chance to do things that no one has ever done. The freedom to explore the world and make it better. The privilege of training the next generation of scientists and thinkers. The opportunity to let your brain run free; I don't think that can be found anywhere else. I certainly wasn't satisfied outside academia. Many will be. But for some, like me, job satisfaction can only be found here in the academy. It's like buying high thread-count bedsheets; once you try it, you can't go back to the old, harsh, scratchy ones.
   Negative: a taste of academia may limit the satisfaction you get from any other type of employment.
   Positive: a job in academia could be the most satisfying work you'll ever have.