This is a computer sci PhD. They rarely even finish their degrees and most bugger off directly to industry if they do. Couldn't have picked a better degree of you want to be a professor.
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2025
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Interestingly enough, I only got my PhD because the job market sucked after Bush's recession and I was promised 5 years of funding. I did get some great data analytic skills out of it, but academic positions are indeed far and few between.
One of the main factors after my graduation a few years ago was that professors just refused to retire, leaving very few faculty positions open; that changed slightly right after my kid was born but by that point I was and am ok with an adjunct part time and homemaker full time situation.
Now it'll mostly be a lack of funding, though, unless I leave the US. Meh.
When I was in college I got a science-related scholarship and as part of it they literally made us all chant together that we would go on to get a PhD.
Thankfully that was obvious enough cult behavior for me to tap out and take my career in a different direction.
Meyerhoff?
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.
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.
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.
I've said it before, but one reason I didn't pursue a PhD is that there appeared to be an element of hazing in the entire thing.
Several of the PhD students I knew were languishing for years trying to get their thesis together, in what can only be described as poverty.
Meanwhile, half of the professors were miserable, and if they made good money, it was because they were very focused on how to make money. The happiest postgrad I knew was a senior lecturer who had given up on becoming a professor.
The best you can hope for is that your personal area of interest happens to have a lot of funding.
Yet these people almost universally seemed to think, "Well, that's just how it is. The nice thing is that if you can get an academic position, it sucks less than being a PhD student."
I have a PhD because I thought I wanted to go into research. And while I loved research, that didn't come close to cancelling out how much I loathed all the non-research shit you need to do for funding and keeping a job.
Then I went from academia into corporate R&D, and realized I basically started to hate doing chemistry in general. Mostly because it reminded me of all the stuff I hated.
Im now super happy as a safety consultant, and my PhD sometimes helps in convincing people that I do in fact know more than them. It also covers an ugly spot in the wallpaper, a purpose it fulfills much more frequently.
I got my current teaching position by essentially volunteer-professoring while doing some grad work. Super exploitative on paper, though that wasn't the intention of anyone involved (tiny college hated by the conservatives so they kinda had to wing it every time legislative fuckery happened). But it's rough, I don't make enough to pay my (incredibly cheap) mortgage so I'm in the awkward position of having been financially unemployed for a year while still working full time. Not to sound too whiny but man, the culture of "Guess I'll starve because I just love my students so much" is absurdly toxic. And that's coming from someone firmly part of that culture.
This is why I dropped the dream of being a French professor. By the end of my first year I realized there were only 2 or 3 on my campus and I'd have to work with them for many years and still not score a job.
Funny story about my first professor: When I would speak French in class the girls would all giggle. WTF?! One night I got invited to an all-girl study group at the dorm next door.
"OK, why do you all giggle when I speak French?"
They got real quiet, looked around at each other. Finally one girl pipes up.
"We're sorry, it's just that your accent is so much better than the professor's, it's embarrassing for him."
And that's the man I would have had to work with for years. :( (BTW, he spoke 5 other languages and his grammar and vocabulary were unmatched. He just couldn't speak worth a shit.)
I find it hard to believe that someone who entered a PhD program wasn't given a heads up immediately about the competition for professor positions.
Itβs a tough dilemma. Takes a PHD to understand the tenure track.
I felt that in the bone. Postdoc life is one foot getting ready to move and the other foot dreading every decision that led to the thought "A PhD is a good idea"
It was a good idea, but holy shit is it all sorts of miserable.