>>13930219Really, we need to rip up mega-labs, forced retirement for old-ass hoes, increase the number of tenured positions + better job security and environment
Mainly, double the salary of post-docs to be competitive with industry (industry post-docs are low-paid, but upward mobility is extremely high)
Enforce work-protection rules (no exploitive working 80 hours a week on salary), in industry I arrive at 9 and leave at 5. And I'm much more productive than when I was in grad school working 8am-8pm + weekends.
Tenure positions are impossibly difficult and requires insane amounts of work to get. The current career trajectory is:
>average 6.5 years grad school, 30-45k salary>5+ years postdoc, often requiring moving multiple times every few years, also fairly low pay, ~60k>get professorship, sacrifice ungodly amounts of time on everything but science to make a good impression and navigate the shitty politics of academia>5 years later, you might be rejected from your position and have to move, once again, ensuring you can't settle downOr, you get professorship and then the REAL pain begins, because grants for early-to-mid career transitions are entirely lacking and so damn hard to get.
Meanwhile, I switch to industry for postdoc, within a year was senior scientist I and lead a small team (okay, not typical, but its a small company and I just accelerated a path that would normally take a few years), and now make 6 figures while working 9-5 with 28 days PTO ('merica). I also publish quite a bit, even in industry. So within 2 years of leaving grad school I have the salary and roughly equivalent work title of a PI.
Part of the issue is that professors work until they die at like 95. And their work impact is shit when they are that old.
Second, megalabs get all the money. If you become famous, you soak up grants and end up with 50+ people. Studies show that 1) you can't mentor that many people and 2) small labs > big labs in productively-per-dollar spent.
