this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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Science Memes

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[–] Sergio@piefed.social 11 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I dunno... getting a PhD just teaches you how to do research. If you want to get a faculty position, there's a whole other set of skills on top of that; in the US for CS at larger universities it's mostly about getting funding and becoming "respected" in your field. But you have to tell people that you want to learn those additional skills. That's the part that's hard to know about beforehand.

[–] TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 7 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Yep, my buddy is finally on a tenure track at a really nice school and it's the accumulation of like 15 years of stressful work that might have never really paid off.

You have to be good at getting published, attending conferences, creating conferences, building relationships with different universities and that's just to keep up with the competition. I think what seals the deal is not only getting funding for yourself, but showing universities how employing you would actually be a sound investment.

its pretty painful, just having to put dozens of publishing research on CV is a huge task on its own.

[–] Sergio@piefed.social 4 points 4 hours ago

The one "secret" I wish I'd known a lot earlier is that you don't have to do it alone. In fact, the more you collaborate the more successful you'll be: more research ideas, more publications, more committee memberships in workshops/conferences, more participating on teams being put together to apply for research funding, more people to reach out to when you're looking for a job, etc. The most successful scientists I've known had huge networks of collaborators.