Hello all. I need some advice on whether I should consider quitting my postdoc. I finished my PhD early this year in the life sciences and am now about six months into my postdoc. It’s a good position at a prestigious institution, and my biggest issues aren’t with the job itself, but I’m seriously considering quitting. The biggest reason is, frankly, I really dislike the city I’m in, and am not acclimating well. At risk of giving away more info about myself than I’d like, let’s just say I didn’t fully appreciate how loud, crowded, expensive, and socially inhospitable my new city would be. Perhaps it’s just homesickness, but I also think there’s a real possibility that it’d be very difficult for me to be happy here.
On the work side of things: I don’t dislike the research, but my PI’s personality is the diametrical opposite of mine (and of what I’m used to). He’s very knowledgeable and amicable, but is extremely extroverted and kind of “stream of consciousness” in his thinking, rather than organized and systematic. So if I go to him with an issue in my research, he’ll usually have an off the cuff suggestion, “try this,…”, but not with helping to formulate a more thorough ‘game plan.’ I kind of feel like I’m twisting in the wind, possibly wasting my time on wild goose chases, wondering if what is supposed to be a 3 or 4 year postdoc will become 5 or 6 years. I’m also pretty sure (or am hoping at least) I would have decent prospects at finding a job in industry, even if not in my exact field, since, though I’m technically in the life sciences, my education and research has been quantitative, so I have some quantitative skills and am proficient in a couple programming languages. The prospect of immediately making significantly higher salary in a cheaper, more pleasant city vs. spending another 5 or 6 years making postdoc wages here is pretty tempting. I’m trying to take everything into consideration though and make a rational decision.
I guess I should get to the question(s): how bad would it be career-wise if I quit by postdoc early, especially this early? Does it look better (or worse) to wait till I have been here at least a year before jumping ship? Would I likely need a reference letter down the road from my PI? And would asking for a reference from a PI for a postdoc I quit be problematic? How unusual is it for this to happen? If I applied to different jobs, what would I even do for my job talk? Use material from my thesis defense, or from my work in my current lab, or both? I’m struggling with this decision on a lot of levels.
My current plan of action is to make a sort of last ditch effort to make my life work here while also looking for possible positions in a city I used to live in (I liked it there so I can at least avoid the problem of ending up in a city I can’t stand). That of course raises another question: would it be appropriate for me to do in person interviews before even telling them of my intentions? If anyone has made this sort of ‘unplanned transition’ before, any advice on how to do it would be greatly appreciated.