TT position vs industry job

[escalation]

I am a final-year PhD student at a decent, but not stellar, university in Europe. My field is strategy and innovation management. I don't know what kind of career I would like to pursue.

I entered my PhD full of gratitude for being accepted, considering that my previous studies were rather unfocused and would not have gotten me into many PhD programs, let alone elite ones. I have always been a good student and a very quick learner, but I never received much guidance about what education I should strive for, and which programs I should apply to. I kind of drifted between small research projects, internships, and volunteer work, trying to figure out what I should do next in order to feel one step closer to the life I thought I wanted. Among other things, I was completely oblivious to the reputational mechanisms and self-reinforcing privileges inherent in academia, which are now taking a toll on me because I am not at a top institution, yet I compete with people who are, and I cannot count on supervisors who are very knowledgeable in my topic, or have a vast and useful network, yet I compete with people who do.

The PhD has gone pretty well, all things considered. I went to the major conferences in my field, I elicited interest from well-known scholars, and received praise for my work. Unfortunately, this praise has not translated into acceptance at top journals yet. I collected three first round rejections so far, and the only thing that has gotten close to publication is a small side project related to my master thesis that I managed to sell to a B-level journal (now third round, minor revisions). This gave me a lot of satisfaction and some positive reinforcement, but it is hardly the level at which I am expected to perform. I understand that I have to be persistent and keep trying for top journals. I find at least some solace in the fact that the reviews I receive get a little bit more positive every time. Yet this is not enough to make me feel secure, and when I see other people getting the acceptances that I can't, I feel disheartened. I've tried rationalizing this: they come from better institutions, they have better supervisors, they are smarter than I am, maybe they sacrifice more of their private lives.

I am currently at a crossroads because I am working on my application for a tenure-track position at a neighboring university where I have great contacts and (I'm told) a reasonable shot. The position is teaching-intensive, however, and I am very concerned about the fact that I will have six years to produce better research than I have so far, with 50-percent of the time I am used to. But it is tenure-track, and considering that better people than I normally struggle to have these, I should be happy about it. I am also looking into industry jobs and landed an interview with a consultancy firm that does business analytics. I have been teaching myself quant skills from the moment I started the PhD and did courses in methods that I was especially interested in. Data science jobs sound very attractive to me, but I struggle seeing myself in the industry after being socialized into an environment that considers academic research the only worthwhile pursuit. Then I remember that a scientific career was hardly in my cards four years ago, so I should probably be grateful for the opportunities and quit whining.

Sorry for the rant. If anyone is or has been through a similar situation, please share your experience. I'd appreciate it a lot.

[TakeruK]

I think you should go for the TT position because I think you should go for every position you have a shot at and have some interest in. It's the committee's job to decide whether or not you can make it, so you don't need to reject yourself.

I also think you should continue to pursue your interests in industry. I think you should read some blogs by data scientists who were PhD graduates and maybe reach out to some people you might know in order to conduct "informational interviews". Learn more about what data science really is like. I've been looking into this field a bit and I actually find that it's a lot more like academic research than I had originally thought. Obviously, it's not the same, but for me, personally, most of the aspects that excite me about academic research are still present in a data science position. The one thing I notice that is common across almost every single person I talk to who got a PhD and went into data science: they don't regret it at all and are very happy with their choice.

[juilletmercredi]

I agree with TakeruK. Apply for every position that interests you and leave the deciding until you actually have an offer in hand. That's when you can dither about whether or not to leave.

I left academia for industry in 2015, after six years doing my PhD and one year completing a postdoc. My PhD is in social psychology and public health; I went into user experience research in technology at a large technology company. I've posted elsewhere in greater detail about why I left, but the bottom line is that I love my job and I have exactly zero regrets about leaving academia. The academic lifestyle and job duties did not suit me - but I still do love research. Now I just get to do research all the time and apply that to strategic decision-making and product design in technology.

You get over the socialization that academia is the only worthwhile pursuit after a while. Initially I was concerned about what my faculty mentors would think; I thought they would disdain me for throwing away a promising start to an academic career to go into industry. Then I realized it was my life and I didn't care what they thought. (And honestly, the vast majority of them were pretty positive, or at least neutral, about the career change.)

I wouldn't say that my work environment is anything like academia, and I actually work on a team of PhDs who all came from academia (mostly postdocs, a few straight from grad school, one or two from faculty positions). But I do agree that most of the aspects that excited me about academic research are still present in my industry research position. I just have to work a lot faster, write a lot more concisely, and spend most of my time convincing developers with no background in social science rather than other PhDs (which, quite frankly, is far more fun). Also meetings. So many meetings. But faculty members have lots of those too. And I don't have to write scientific journal articles, which is more than enough for me.