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<p>Well, let me provide a partial defense of an academic career. It is undoubtedly true that a lot of political jockeying occurs in academia and it is probably one of the least attractive parts of such a career. On the other hand, as others have pointed out, there is plenty of political jockeying that occurs in any career. Hence, I would argue that, at least in that respect, academia is no worse than any other career.</p>
<p>In fact, I would argue that academia may actually be better than the private sector in this sense. An academic career is characterized by a series of ‘review checkpoints’, with the tenure review being obviously the most prominent of those checkpoints, and some schools also using the time of promotion from assistant prof to associate as another review checkpoint before the tenure review checkpoint (and hence some schools have associate profs without tenure and also associate profs with tenure). Your job is relatively safe up until that checkpoint. Granted, if you are clearly doing poorly, you may be asked to leave before you reach your next review checkpoint, but as long as you are making visible progress, your job is safe up and until your next checkpoint, which essentially gives you a breather of several years before you have to really worry about whether you are going to be fired. Contrast that with the private sector where you can lose your job at any time and for any reason, or no reason at all. For example, I know some people who went to industry and within a few months were already laid off, either because the company went through a merger (hence making their jobs redundant), or the company decided to cancel the project that they were hired to work on, etc. Heck, I know a few people who got laid off literally before they had even started the job, as they had already signed their job offer letters but hadn’t actually started the job, and the company then decided to rescind those offers, which clearly put those people in quite a bind as they had already turned down offers from other employers. Numerous tech companies and consulting firms became notorious for this during the dotcom bust. </p>
<p>Furthermore, even if you do get fired from your academic job, your firing doesn’t occur immediately, as almost all schools will provide you with continuing employment for at least the next semester, and usually for the remainder of the academic year, the purpose of which is to allow you to transition to finding another job. Many universities may also allow you to continue your employment even beyond that ‘grace period’ as an untenured lecturer, depending on how valuable they consider your teaching to be. How many private sector employers will do the same? Most of them will expel you from their premises the moment they lay you off, and heck, some won’t even allow you to return to your desk to retrieve your personal effects (instead, they mail them to you). Even those among those rare companies that do allow for a transition ‘grace period’ for you to stay at the company while looking for another job, rarely does it last longer than a couple of months. I suppose it makes economic sense - as companies don’t want disgruntled employees wreaking havoc in the office - but it’s also highly jarring to one day have a job and the next day be laid off. </p>
<p>I think the right psychological way to approach an academic career is to recognize that there is a high chance that you won’t get tenure and hence will have to find another employer after 5-10 years (whenever your tenure review is). Sure, there is a chance that you will get tenure and hence be able to work for that university forever, but there is a high chance that you won’t get tenure. I don’t think this is such a difficult concept to wrap one’s head around. After all, if you take a job in the private sector employer, frankly, you probably aren’t going to be working for that employer for more than a few years anyway, as that’s the time that most people will switch employers, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Furthermore, I think we all recognize that lifetime employment within one company in the private sector is a relic of the past that our parents and grandparents may have enjoyed but we almost certainly won’t. I don’t think anybody in our generation seriously thinks that they are going to join one firm thinking that they are actually going to be allowed to work there until they retire. I think most of us expect that we will have to move from employer to employer, often times not voluntarily. If those pursuing academic careers have the same expectations, then they will be in good shape psychologically. </p>
<p>So if you get an assistant professor job at Harvard, MIT, Yale, Stanford, or schools like that, you should know full well that you probably won’t get tenure. So why worry about it? Instead, just use your time to pursue the research that you want to do, learn as much as you can, and build the connections that you want to build such that when the time comes, you’re ready to move onto the next employer. This is no different from a guy joining Microsoft or Google knowing that he’s probably not going to be there for more than a few years, and so he’s just going to use his time to build his experience and knowledge to transition to whoever his next employer will be.</p>