>>12391413PhD in biophysics, now onto post-doc in structural biology.
>>12391965Those tenured professors at R-1s you see? With the endowed professorships and having founded multiple successful companies and seats on journal editorial boards and flying around as keynote speakers at conferences and symposiums? They're the lottery winners. The 1%, at least. Likely the 1% of the 1%. They were both extremely good, and extremely lucky. For every one of them, there are easily 100, if not a 1000, PhD-postdoc-trained scientists who ran out of steam for personal reasons (couldn't afford to do that second postdoc) or professional reasons (got scooped, hiring committee went with another option), and moved on. I'd rather know when it's time to move on, then make the exit and better position myself for the rest of my career then be in my late-30s or early-40s as a second postdoc or research assistant professor making a third of what I could be making in the private sector and deluding myself into a tenuous grasp on the feasibility of me as a PI. That next hiring cycle? Yup, that'll be the one!
>>12392233Go back to get your PhD, that's what I did after being tech for a couple years. Great decision, loved my PhD.