An ever-growing series of tutorials (with detailed notes) filled with practical, experience-driven tips and tricks for being effective, happy and successful in modern day academia and related careers.
These are two of the questions that I get the most often, and also one of the most requested #HackingAcademia questions.
As anyone who has seen my videos or talks knows, I'm all about individualization of advice to your circumstances.
So I can't really answer the first question directly, especially in a short online video - and hence I've resisted doing this video for a while now.
But I realized (after more requests in the past few weeks) what I can do - from a very large data sample!!! - is talk though a few of the considerations that come up the most when discussing this.
Things like positive indicators a postdoc may be for you, financial considerations, faculty versus postdoc decisions and types of postdoc roles and responsibilities. This is, of course, just scratching the surface, and what a more detailed one-on-one conversation would go into in much more depth.
And I can answer the second question as well - which is, "yes" - but with one very deliberate change in my mindset about Plan Bs...
Should I do a postdoc? This would have to be one of the questions I get asked the most at talks about mentoring and career advice, and also one of the most requested topics for my hacking academia series. I've resisted doing a video on this because this topic in particular is one of those where it's very hard to give general advice because it really depends so much on your particular circumstances and your particular goals. But I've decided to do a video on it because I've had so many conversations over the years with potential postdocs thinking about this decision, hundreds and hundreds of conversations. And so what I thought I'd do is I would share some of the key concepts that come up time and time again that people are thinking about and considering in making this decision, and also answer that question which I also get asked a lot, which is if you were just getting started out today, would you still consider doing a postdoc? I should also mention that to somewhat reduce the vast scope of this question, I'm going to be talking about a fairly common scenario, which is someone who is relatively early in their career, has just finished a PhD, is looking at going immediately into a postdoc, and someone probably working in more of the computer sciences, so AI, computer vision, robotics, and so forth. Some of the concepts will probably apply more generally, but perhaps not as closely to other disciplines and people coming from very different backgrounds. Firstly, what are some of the key concepts that are important or positive indicators that doing a postdoc might be worthwhile? The first one is someone has done the PhD, they've really, for the first time in their life, immersed themselves deep in fundamental research and they've caught the bug, so to speak. So they've really excited about the work they're doing, they've really come to love doing research, and it's something that they feel like it's an itch that they want to scratch some more in terms of doing a postdoc. That is usually a pretty positive sign. The second indicator is a little bit more pragmatic. A certain fraction of people, after coming out of their PhDs, will strongly be interested in having some sort of career in academic in academia, so becoming an academic, a lecturer, an assistant professor, and so forth. Usually the conversation then splits into two. One part of the conversation is checking that they actually understand what modern-day academia is really like rather than some romantic ideal. Assuming they have done their research, they've talked to some people, they know some professors, and then the conversation moves on to how a postdoc is likely a good pathway to having a go at that goal. There's a significant financial consideration. Different people pay varying degrees of attention to the financial implications of career choices. Often, when people are considering doing a postdoc, they're at the stage in their life where they are perhaps considering settling down a little bit more, perhaps raising a family, perhaps having a property that they can live in. And so financial impacts of doing a postdoc become more significant. Postdocs vary hugely around the world and also depending on role in terms of their financial impact. So some postdocs, including quite affluent countries, basically put you not far above the poverty line or even below the poverty line in effect, whilst other countries have very well remunerated postdocs, sometimes in high cost of living areas, and basically pay you as much as a junior member of faculty. So there's a huge variation, a large factor difference between salaries across different countries, but also even within different types of postdoc roles within the same country that can really affect your decision. In determining how attractive a postdoc role is to you, another key thing to consider is that the nature and type of postdocs can vary hugely. So some postdocs are essentially just like a glorified PhD. So you're essentially just continuing on the research you're doing as an individual contributor mostly at the end of your PhD. And there might be a little bit of extra responsibilities, you're probably expected to be a little bit more effective and prolific, but that's basically what that type of role would involve. At the other end of the spectrum, there are postdoc roles, often senior postdoc roles, where you are basically acting like an in-effect pseudo-member of faculty. So you're supervising PhD students, undergraduates, you're representing the lab of your PI in a bunch of different public situations. You're probably applying for various grant fundings and doing some public engagement and maybe even some teaching. That is worlds apart from that role where you're just an individual contributor. Beyond the responsibilities you'll have in your postdoc role, it's also interesting thinking about different categories of postdoc. So two of the most common categories are an independent postdoc, a self-funded postdoc, so to speak, and a postdoc attached to a specific project. So the first independent one is where you've landed a fellowship or walked into some sort of fellowship position. It could be funded by the university, it could be funded by an external granting agency, where you basically have free reign to choose the topic and how you go about solving it. These are very hard to get, obviously, they're pretty rare, but they can be an amazing opportunity. The second, probably most common type of postdoc role is one that's attached to a specific grant or a specific project or initiative. Now, the degree of freedom you have will still vary. Sometimes you'll have to stick very closely to the details of what that grant is proposing, and sometimes it will be more a broad mandate to do impactful research in topic X. But these are again things that will affect how attractive a postdoc is to you. In some situations, if you're in a good situation, you'll have the choice to come out of your PhD and enter a faculty role straight away, but you may also have some postdoc options. Now, in today's academic climate, I would be loath to suggest that you turn down a faculty role if it's offered and if that's what you want to do, because they are becoming increasingly precious and hard to get. At the same time, one of the considerations you may think about is especially if you come out of a short PhD and haven't really got up to full speed with the research, is whether you want to do quite a few more years of more hands-on research. Because once you take that faculty role, although there may be some considerations for a bit of teaching relief and other support, you will have a broad mandate of activities that you have to do. You will no longer be as much hands-on the tools just doing individual research from day to day. In talking to lots of people who are considering a postdoc or even are doing a postdoc, one of the points I try to really hammer home without it being too depressing is that they can do everything possible to improve their track record, their skill sets, their attractiveness to potential postdoc roles. But timing still has a huge role and is mostly outside of your control. You cannot control if a global pandemic comes along and rips the job market apart and means there's almost no postdoc positions, or at least in the countries that you want to go to for several years. If you are restricted to a certain geographic location, the organizations that you can get postdocs at will go through cycles of hiring. They will go through years where they don't hire anyone, and then they'll go through cycles where everyone is getting grants and there's a lot of internal postdoc schemes. So one of the things I try and remind people is that you should do everything you can to make yourself as as to increase the chances of you having the sort of career that you want to, but timing and sort of factors outside of your control are always going to have a significant effect. Finally, to answer the question I get asked all the time, if I was just starting out and had just finished my PhD, would I consider doing a postdoc now? The answer to that, as best I can determine, hypotheticals are always hard to answer, is that yes, I would, but there would be one key change in my attitude, which relates to the previous point I made, which is simply that even if I feel like I'm doing really well and setting myself really well for a career in academia, to really keep in the back of my mind that despite all of my best efforts, I could just get screwed by random circumstances and volatility. And so, whilst I should push hard for the career that I think I want, that I should always keep in the back of my mind. There are lots of other ways I can make a contribution and have a fulfilling career that don't necessarily involve doing the sort of typical postdoc to academic career progression. As I said, it's really impossible to answer the should I do a postdoc question for your individual circumstances. That will always require an intimate sort of one on one conversation where you talk about sort of some of your goals and your constraints and what you do and don't want to do. But nevertheless, there are some general principles and concepts that apply in most situations. I hope I've covered some of them in this video. And best wishes for your career decisions ahead of you.
