23 years of post-doc with 5 first-authors? That's really all you need to know: that's a terrible publication record for someone looking at tenure-track.
A decent target is an average of one first/last author paper a year. Two one year and zero the next isn't a problem, but one every five years certainly is. This doesn't even get into the 'careerism' of picking safe but dependable projects; anyone making reasonable choices about what to investigate and how to go about it can hit that kind of rate. It takes a lot of work, but that's very much the state of the field.
This guy isn't a PI.
He's not leading a research group, nor does it seem like he's all that interested in doing so. It sounds like he's interested in performing research in someone's lab, a staff scientist.
There's nothing wrong that; it would be quite nice if there were more long-term career opportunities for people like this. They tend to be the people that develop the highest skill in actually performing experiments. They are useful, not just for their own productivity, but for the expertise and continuity they can bring to a lab. They are incredibly valuable for graduate student mentorship. They occupy a wonderful space that is otherwise vacant due to the demands placed on other lab members.
Generally only larger labs can afford such positions, and the competition of cheap post-doc labor means that many are stuck in eternal post-docs where they are underpaid, underappreciated, and given inappropriate expectations.
I don’t know the norm of the author’s specific field but I had the same reaction: His publication record is not even in the ballpark of where it probably should be for tenure.
I feel so sad that the scientific industry is set up such that guys like this can plod on two decades or more past the point they should have realized they weren’t on a tenure trajectory. Now he’s 40-something and has to start over in something else (data science?), probably with very little saved for retirement and possibly having missed out or significantly delayed other aspects of life (marriage, kids, house). Why didn’t anybody tell this guy to start his career in private industry 15 years ago? Every PI in every lab he touched should have seen this coming.
>Every PI in every lab he touched should have seen this coming.
People are surprisingly willing to let you accidentally pour your life in to something that only marginally benefits them, that's why you have to be ever-vigilant against the many opportunities you'll have to do that. Some people are prone to slipping into the mentality of the ideal feudal peasant: "life is bad here, but the lord of the estate isn't going to grant me any freedom, so I'm just going to focus on making the best of it." A mentality like that would be great for someone who had no freedom, and indeed it would make the best of an immutable bad situation, but I see a lot of people slip in to it even when they do actually have the ability to jump to a different life track. Scientists are especially prone to this because they're pre-selected for high levels of tenacity and low levels of impulsiveness.
The really bizarre thing about this article is that the headline is about failing to get tenure, but the content is about failing to get a tenure-track job. These are really different things. I would think the author's publication record would maybe put them in the ballpark for a tenure-track job (though maybe not over 12 years, and certainty in a lower-ranked department), but absolutely not for tenure in the sciences.
I might be a bit too cynical about this topic, but it really should be obvious to anyone in the field that you're not on track to become a PI this way.
If you want to pursue the academic career, you need to focus on that from the start of your PhD. And you really need to be on some position on a track towards full professor after one or at most two PostDocs.
I'm quite confused by the timeline here, though. A PostDoc is usually something around 2 years, maybe 3. Four PostDocs in 23 years is unusual, and indicates positions that are closer to something like a staff scientists usually done by people with permanent positions.
Dating takes time, weddings cost money, and its hard to drag partner/spouse/family around the globe for each new short-term position. I once worked in a lab that joked about a “celibate for science” lifestyle. I think the PI really actually wanted that for his grad students.
My sister and BIL are both academics, and didn't "live together" for probably around 10 years, 6+ of which were after marriage. They bought a house together in the city my sister taught in, and my BIL commuted on the weekends sometimes, and they spent summers together, but it took the better part of a decade for them to both land jobs in the same city. It's incredibly common.
The logistical stuff is difficult as a postdoc. A traditional wedding is fairly expensive and time-consuming to plan, and many postdocs are cash and time poor. People often like to have the ceremony near family—-isn’t the bride’s hometown traditional?—-but people move, often very far, to find good positions. Traveling back and forth is also tricky if you have experimental time points or lab animals to take care of, as we did.
More psychologically, being a postdoc is a weird transitional state. I felt odd promising life-long commitment and support to one person, while not knowing if my own job was still going to support me next year. (I was on one-year renewable contracts).
Finally, we were a little concerned that being married could make things more difficult for my wife. Although they shouldn’t, a surprising number of profs are reluctant to take on a postdoc who might be ‘distracted’ with a spouse or kids. Furthermore, if you have a kid as a professor, you often get an extension in the tenure clock, help with daycare, etc. As a postdoc, you can maybe get a little more time on these time-limited fellowships, but that’s about it.
We eventually did get married though (and it’s been great) but waiting was not totally irrational.
No, 12 years of post-doc with 5 first authors: “after working in several postdoctoral positions over the course of 12 years, I started applying for tenure-track and other permanent positions. At this point, I had 19 peer-reviewed publications, including 5 as first author”
> Why didn’t anybody tell this guy to start his career in private industry 15 years ago?
He did start trying that no later than 11 years before you seem to think, since at the same 12 years point referenced is when “[i]n the next 3 years, I sent out more than 100 applications to academic institutions, to the private sector and to government agencies (predominantly in the United States, where I was living at the time).” [emphasis added]
That's still pretty low. In the us at a top tier, which you'll need for most tenure track positions you're expected to have about 5 first authors in five years as a trainee and moving forward into a postdoc a pace of about 1.5 to 2 would be good. Strategic timing by having a really high profile paper come out from grad school around when you're finishing your postdoc probably also helps.
But as I indicate in a direct response I don't think any of that really matters either
Everyone's talking about publication count. Is the quality (influence, number of citations, any other relevant metric) of those publications really so irrelevant?
No, and yes in a way. The quality of the venue matters a lot, and many people seem to obsess over h-index values, which quantify the citation count and journal impact factor. But in my opinion these things are useful but flawed heuristics for the actual importance or impact of research work.
Imagine you are on the professor search committee. You get inundated with 500 applications, many from jokers with no chance from a diploma mill who just spam every search committee. How do you filter so many applications?
I find number of papers published to be a questionable metric for measuring qualification. It feels similar to judging a software engineer by number of commits. Is this really a key measurement used to determine tenure track?
I think peer-reviewed publications measure something closer to "sprint points closed" or "major releases shipped" than commits (because you can break commits nearly arbitrarily small, where a too insignificant paper will fail peer-review).
A primary purpose of an academic researcher is to contribute to the field via research, largely measured by accepted publications where they are the first (did most of the work and writing) or last (group leader/principal investigator) author.
A decent target is an average of one first/last author paper a year. Two one year and zero the next isn't a problem, but one every five years certainly is. This doesn't even get into the 'careerism' of picking safe but dependable projects; anyone making reasonable choices about what to investigate and how to go about it can hit that kind of rate. It takes a lot of work, but that's very much the state of the field.
This guy isn't a PI.
He's not leading a research group, nor does it seem like he's all that interested in doing so. It sounds like he's interested in performing research in someone's lab, a staff scientist.
There's nothing wrong that; it would be quite nice if there were more long-term career opportunities for people like this. They tend to be the people that develop the highest skill in actually performing experiments. They are useful, not just for their own productivity, but for the expertise and continuity they can bring to a lab. They are incredibly valuable for graduate student mentorship. They occupy a wonderful space that is otherwise vacant due to the demands placed on other lab members.
Generally only larger labs can afford such positions, and the competition of cheap post-doc labor means that many are stuck in eternal post-docs where they are underpaid, underappreciated, and given inappropriate expectations.