Never Tell Me the Odds
Sene sovya caba'donde ain dovienya.
There was a tweet over the weekend that clicked enough with me that I flagged it to mention here, and I think it works as a basis for a short post:
Gilestro’s response to the original thread is slightly hyperbolic, but I think it gets at something that has often bugged me about many online discussions of academic careers.
To answer the original question, I don’t think I ever did have a frank conversation about the odds of securing a good academic job when I was an undergrad. I distinctly remember a conversation with my advisor when I was a junior where he asked “What do you plan to do with your life?” and I replied “Well, how do I get your job?” But I don’t recall him being particularly discouraging about the odds involved— he explained that I would need to get a Ph.D., and do research for a bit, and then take my chances with the job market, and I said “OK, I’ll do that.”
(As is often the case in stuff I write about academia, this probably at least partially reflects a disciplinary difference: then as now, there are a lot of good non-academic options for someone with a Ph.D. in physics, so it’s not a super risky proposition (other than forgoing some income for several years to be a grad student). The original tweet is from a philosopher, where the odds are much worse. And, for that matter, the response that caught my eye is from a neurobiologist…)
At the same time, though, I’m not sure that I would’ve done anything differently had he explained that even in physics it’s not unusual to get something in the neighborhood of 150 applicants for an open tenure-track faculty position. I didn’t have a lot of other things going on at the time that seemed more attractive— I graduated in 1993, so there was a recession on, and the general job market wasn’t great. To the extent that I had any back-up plan if grad school didn’t work out, it probably would’ve involved trying to get a job teaching physics in a high school somewhere. A couple of classmates at one point suggested that my STEM background would probably let me get a job in finance, but that holds no real appeal for me (and still doesn’t).
But the most important thing is that what I was interested in at the time was doing physics research, with a long-term eye toward trying to land a faculty job at a small liberal arts college. That was an attractive idea, so I decided to give it a shot. And while, again, the comparison to princes of the Church is maybe a little over the top, at some level, I think the quote-tweet is right that you don’t really need any more justification than that.
But then, this may be a “There are two kinds of people…” thing— that is, you don’t need any further justification if you have the right kind of personality. Which means a willingness to go all in on whatever you’re doing, and to not dwell on the fact that things might not work out.
This is, of course, somewhat more easily said when looking back on a career where the dice have mostly come up in favorable configurations. I’ve been very fortunate, both in academia and outside, and where I’ve done things that were potentially risky, they’ve generally worked out.
At the same time, though, I’m not sure that smooth path is necessarily essential. I thought recently about one of our former students, who graduated twenty-ish years ago with an extremely detailed plan for what he was going to study in grad school en route to an academic career. Only once he got there, he found there were absolutely no opportunities in the subfield he had planned to work in at the university he attended. But he found a different advisor in a different field, and when he was close to his Ph.D., he came back for a visit and gave a talk where he said “I thought I wanted to do that but I ended up doing this, and it’s awesome!” Then he spent six or so years doing some post-docs and discovered that the academic job market was incredibly dire for someone in his area, so he left academia. And a year or so after he did, he came back to visit and gave a talk where he said “I thought I wanted to be a professor, but now I’m in industry, and it’s awesome!”
(Note to self: See what he’s up to these days, and if he’d be willing to come give another talk…)
I’m pretty sure that guy was going to be fine no matter what the odds associated with his chosen path were, just because that was his personality— when he wanted to do a thing, he was all in on that thing, and if it didn’t work out, he’d find something else. And while I don’t have quite as effusive a personality as him— I’m more noted for being able to find something to bitch about anywhere than finding everything awesome— I do at least share the attitude of “If I’m doing this thing, I’m committing to it fully.” And a big part of that is deciding that the risks and consequences are something to be dealt with later.
If anything, I feel like thinking too much about it would be an active impediment to doing anything cool, in any kind of career. If you’re only willing to try something when all the downside risks are properly accounted for and hedged against, you’re probably going to end up someplace pretty boring. And possibly looking back with regret on chances that you passed up.
There’s a tricky balance to be struck, in talking about this stuff (and I’m probably not striking it), between celebrating success and acknowledging the role of luck. But I feel like a lot of the #discourse around this too often goes a bit too far in the other direction— risks that didn’t pay off are discussed as lingering trauma, and what writing you do get from those who were successful is suffused with survivor’s guilt. There’s a kind of ambient belief that anyone who did decide to roll the dice on an academic career was wrong to do so, and shouldn’t encourage anyone else to take that chance.
But to repurpose a famous sports cliche, the chances of success for risks you don’t take are identically zero. The odds of academic career success are long, but they’re better than that. Sometimes it’s worth just tossing the dice.
I intended this to be a real fast post last night, but ended up dithering about it for much too long, then letting it sit overnight. I’m still not sure I got it right, but this version isn’t getting drastically better. If you want to be first in line if I revisit the topic, here’s a button:
If you want to argue with me, or want to brag that you recognized the subhead without Googling, the comments will be open:
What I see here is the difference between "star system" jobs and others.
A "star system" job is one where only a limited number are needed, and only the "best" get paid decently - but oh my, they do get paid well. Generally one person's output can serve as many people as want or need it. Athletes and entertainers would be classic examples.
Other jobs have practical limits; you need one worker per n consumers. Examples include home health aide, school teacher, doctor. They rarely have large numbers of aspirants, hoping to become stars, and meanwhile living on a "money job" separate from their career. They may be very badly paid, but they have excellent chances of "making it" to a steady job with an income within 20% of the median for their field.
Sometimes jobs move between categories, over decades. When I became a "computer programmer", the field desperately needed anyone capable of doing the work. By the time I retired as a "software engineer" there was an internal hierarchy of subfields, and it could be very hard to break into the more lucrative ones. And the income range within the overall field had become quite large. It's still not really "star system", but it's moving that way. Academic jobs have moved in the same direction -- but there it's probably overproduction of would be professors, combined with extensive use of adjuncts. And academic jobs were already more-or-less star system even in my youth.
I suspect individual's willingness to take on star system careers varies. Some who do take them on have a passion for the field regardless of working conditions or salary. Others have high estimates of their own abilities. (Sometimes those estimates are even justified.) But plenty of others look at the intense competition, suspect that success depends in large measure on luck, or prejudice, or simply being more talented than they believe themselves to be - and find something else to do with their lives.