Heed my warning young ones.
Just got my engineering PhD from a top 3 school.
I was originally interested in academia because I love scientific research. Eventually, however, I learned that it's a joke for a career.
I joined a research group that focused on very scientifically "sexy" and esoteric research.
I thought it'd be a sure path to academia.
Throughout my PhD, however, I realized that my advisor was only pursuing these esoteric projects to be considered "unique" for tenure.
I saw my advisor and other young professors literally lie about their research to make it seems sexier than it is, because tenure.
I saw these professors ruin the lives of colleagues who believed them and worked on these esoteric projects.
Years later, these students are hopping around as postdocs with zero desirable skills.
Thankfully, I saw what happened to my predecessors and forced myself to learn useful skills during my PhD.
Robotics, machine learning, hands-on engineering and practical skills on top of my esoteric computational thesis.
This paid off - I got an extremely high paying job in industry.
"Just do a postdoc, anon! Stay in academia!" Said my advisor.
Who in their right mind would forego a $300k+ high tech industry job for a fucking $60k postdoc?
And then spend 5+ years as an Assistant Professor making $100k competing for tenure against other lying professors?
Meanwhile, in industry, we're doing stuff that academic labs can't even dream of.
We have nearly unlimited funding, space, and equipment.
We don't care about publishing papers because they don't make money.
Instead we file many patents per year.
And I'm STILL publishing cool scientific papers on the side - I kept my thesis work and still do cool physics simulations for fun on weekends.
Anyways, science is a fucking hobby, please don't take it seriously as a career.
If you're a PhD student, make sure you learn practical skills and don't let your advisor fool you into thinking that his interests are useful.