Ask HN: PhD and Now?

Remember that the specifics of your PhD are probably mostly irrelevant to most commercial organisations; other than the larger ones who maybe have dedicated R&D functions... but you ruled them out.

One thing to keep in mind is that you will face pressure and stress wherever you go - it will just be of different type. Non-academic jobs come with a whole bunch of extra responsibilities which you will also likely feel are beneath you.

I occasionally long for the relative simplicity of academia and the ability to work on genuinely interesting / novel things.

I also find industry to be boring to me but I know people who enjoy it more. Research is stressful, difficult, with high expectations, you often need to find money on your own. In addition to that, universities don't pay as much as the industry.

Software development in the industry is simpler and more relaxing to me. You usually have someone micro-managing/babysitting you. You have a list of tickets, they are boring, a descent solution is always on the first google search page, you implement them, done. Money is good, you can switch job once in a while to not die from boredom.

Over the years this is what people I know that had your question did:

- Switch to a good industry and enjoy a simpler less stressful life.

- Find a government job and enjoy an even less stressful life.

- Become a professor at the university.

- Create an exciting startup.

- Embrace the post-doc lifestyle and benchmark research labs around the world.

- Work in research, but not in an university.

- Simply go to the university.

After switching back and fourth, I'm currently in an independent research organisation. It's not for everyone but I really enjoy the diversity and the challenges.

I have been entirely happy being "just" a sysadmin and a developer at times, and never took them as 9-to-5 minimum thinking jobs.

Please don't assume that all jobs that you haven't done are trivial and non-intellectual and beneath you. You wouldn't be alone in doing it, but it isn't helpful.

It's not clear from what you've written what you offer to prospective employers that suggests that you're capable of a more responsible/critical role. Do you know what you offer that they need? Have you articulated it? How did they react?

For example, your feeling postdoc pressure to be intolerable doesn't suggest to me that you're necessarily prepared for something other than a junior role yet. Of course, I could be completely wrong as I'm basing that on very little. But can you articulate why you believe you're capable of a non-junior role at an employer when you've struggled in a junior role in academia?

I guess another way of saying all this is: have you put yourself in their shoes and seen what you offer to them that others don't have? What is it about you that is sufficiently special that you can skip, say, the first few years of experience and jump into a bigger role? A PhD is nice in that regard, for sure, assuming it has some relevancy. But it isn't a golden ticket.

Source, I don't have a PhD but I employ quite a few.

It might be worth bearing in mind that universities are not ethically pure organisations either.

I'm an EE with strong control systems and computing expertise, ended up doing business analysis, etc (more lucrative). After 20 years of that went back to do a PhD in SE. I'm now running a consulting business focusing on model based software engineering in both business and embedded systems domains.

Doing a PhD makes you the "specialist" in the chosen field. You need to apply that specialist knowledge to solve "important" problems to maximize the value you deliver. For example, many math PhDs have found jobs in banking because they are able to use advanced mathematical principles to model investments and markets. In so doing, they are able to pinpoint profitable trades.