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Careerchat III


S John

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19 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Has anyone ever give their company and management very poor remarks in their year in review survey? I normally just give the socially desired responses, but this time I really let them have it and it sounds like several of my coworkers did the same. The office has been horribly mismanaged. 

Yes, I have been brutally honest when I thought it was needed and wanted to generate some change.  But I first decided that I was unlikely to face specific retaliation for doing so.  Perhaps that would not be true at every company.

Congratulations on your savings to finance your next chapter.  Accumulating $50k after taxes during your 20's is no small achievement.

 

@Triskele  congratulations on positive progress.  I don't know what comp expectations you should have, but it's always good to identify your own "reserve" price for stay/go.

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Concur with Iskaral. I almost always give positive responses to our annual survey, but gave very negative responses to one specific category once. The survey was nominally anonymous, but they asked enough questions about what part of the org you worked for that I'm skeptical of any real anonymity. Definitely need to be sure that either it's anonymous or you won't face retaliation for being honest.

You may also want to evaluate whether your honest response will elicit any changes.

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I also gave some negative responses to one of these surveys once. It was a situation where I was unhappy, toying with the idea of moving on, and confident I would easily find another job.

I found out afterwards that average survey scores across the whole department were way down. A couple of managers got moved sideways shortly afterwards and things improved substantially. I ended up staying for some while longer.

So it can sometimes work ...

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Pure hypothetical:  If your options were entering the private market making six figures to start, but doing something you've always loathed; or doing something you enjoyed, but entering at ~50K, what would you choose?  No attachments, no kids, just you.

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2 hours ago, DMC said:

Pure hypothetical:  If your options were entering the private market making six figures to start, but doing something you've always loathed; or doing something you enjoyed, but entering at ~50K, what would you choose?  No attachments, no kids, just you.

Is the 50k sufficient for you to live the lifestyle you want? If so, that option. Even if not...possibly still that option. It depends just how much i despise the other job

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8 hours ago, DMC said:

Pure hypothetical:  If your options were entering the private market making six figures to start, but doing something you've always loathed; or doing something you enjoyed, but entering at ~50K, what would you choose?  No attachments, no kids, just you.

Also is it 50k forever, or just to start? Sure, its never going to go as high as the private sector job, but so long as there's some sense of financial and professional horizon, I feel like that makes a difference to the decision (like, my current low pay is balanced a little by occasional consulting opportunities, which doesn't so much make a lifestyle consumption difference as an emotional one - "I'm still saving, its ok", "if this goes sideways, I have other skills and networks", etc.) .

But, probably, still the happy-job - I know my checkered employment history well enough to know I just flake out of jobs I hate, and if there's no greater responsibility (like kids) as a motivator, well, its a lost cause and life's too short.

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8 hours ago, DMC said:

Pure hypothetical:  If your options were entering the private market making six figures to start, but doing something you've always loathed; or doing something you enjoyed, but entering at ~50K, what would you choose?  No attachments, no kids, just you.

At this point in my career I would take the money.  I have pursued jobs that paid less and stayed in them for a long time because I liked the work.  After a while though, for me anyway, a job is a job.  Even an enjoyable one comes with bullshit sometimes, and if I’m showing up somewhere and putting up with bullshit, I might as well get fuckin paid.  Obviously there is a line somewhere where the bullshit exceeds being worth the money, but I’d err on the side of the cash.

I stayed in my last job making less than I should have been for too long probably.  If you’re making 20-30k below what you could be, think about how that adds up over time.  In 3-4 years time you’ve earned ~$100,000 less than you could have.  I don’t know about the rest of y’all but I have no financial safety net, neither my wife nor myself can expect parental financial help at any point in our lives.  Without the prospect of an inheritance floating my way one of these days, the older I have gotten, the more Ive realized that taking the 50k job that makes me happy when I could be doing 30% better than that is a luxury that I do not really have in this country where we don’t have much of a social safety net to carry us through times of illness and old age.

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Just had my annual review. Got a 3% raise and the review of my work was basically ”Excellent, mistake free, but slow.”

I wonder why the latter is true. I’m sure it has nothing to do with me screwing around on here all day while listen to podcasts………….

:lmao:

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11 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Is the 50k sufficient for you to live the lifestyle you want?

Yep, and that's a good point.  I'd be perfectly happy living off of (inflation-adjusted) 50k the rest of my life, although retirement would certainly be much more limited.  And if I ever had kids, although that's very doubtful unless, ya know, a mistake happens.

6 hours ago, Datepalm said:

Also is it 50k forever, or just to start?

Just to start, but what I've been told is at most you can about double that in the long run unless you take an administrative position (bleg!)  Plus that would likely entail being a very productive researcher, which I do not anticipate being.  So, let's say 50-80 over the span of the career.

6 hours ago, Datepalm said:

I know my checkered employment history well enough to know I just flake out of jobs I hate

Very good point.

5 hours ago, S John said:

After a while though, for me anyway, a job is a job.  Even an enjoyable one comes with bullshit sometimes, and if I’m showing up somewhere and putting up with bullshit, I might as well get fuckin paid.  Obviously there is a line somewhere where the bullshit exceeds being worth the money, but I’d err on the side of the cash.

This is true - a job always sucks.  But there's still a scale, and that line you referred to.  I guess if the private sector job was at a firm that can be interesting sometimes, like a pollster or one of those data journalism sites, the difference is not as big as if I'm doing, say, data analysis for a health insurance company (one of my friends' actual jobs).

Thanks for the thoughtful responses!

4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Just had my annual review. Got a 3% raise and the review of my work was basically ”Excellent, mistake free, but slow.”

:cheers:

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18 minutes ago, DMC said:

:cheers:

The weird thing is I've been behaving like Ron Livingston's character in Office Space after he checked out. I fully expected to get a terrible review. I wouldn't have even been shocked if they had fired me. But excellent? That was quite the surprise.

Regarding your hypothetical, there are two additional areas that need to be addressed. First, can you switch between the two when life necessitates a higher income? Second, are we assuming our life styles will remain static over the course of out careers?

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1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

First, can you switch between the two when life necessitates a higher income? Second, are we assume our life styles will remain static over the course of out careers?

It's very rare for someone in my field to start out in the private sector and then go back into academia.  Mainly because most departments would make you start right at the bottom again - in the rare event they'd be interested in such an applicant rather than someone coming straight out of a program.  However, the other way around there is always the option to leave academia for something more lucrative.  In fact the higher up in academia you get the better the opportunities.  So that's another point for academia.

As for lifestyles, yeah pretty much static.  Like I said I don't plan on having kids, and if my salary is a problem for anyone I'd potentially marry, well then we probably wouldn't get married anyway.  I don't anticipate developing more expensive tastes.

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9 minutes ago, DMC said:

It's very rare for someone in my field to start out in the private sector and then go back into academia.  Mainly because most departments would make you start right at the bottom again - in the rare event they'd be interested in such an applicant rather than someone coming straight out of a program.  However, the other way around there is always the option to leave academia for something more lucrative.  In fact the higher up in academia you get the better the opportunities.  So that's another point for academia.

As for lifestyles, yeah pretty much static.  Like I said I don't plan on having kids, and if my salary is a problem for anyone I'd potentially marry, well then we probably wouldn't get married anyway.  I don't anticipate developing more expensive tastes.

I think you just answered the question then, assuming you're talking about yourself. Happiness is more important than wealth, and if you're not the type to burn through money, stick with academia. 

And like you said, you can always take what you've learned in academia and go into the private sector later in life to save more for retirement. 

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2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think you just answered the question then, assuming you're talking about yourself. Happiness is more important than wealth, and if you're not the type to burn through money, stick with academia. 

And like you said, you can always take what you've learned in academia and go into the private sector later in life to save more for retirement. 

Yeah, I thought I answered this question years ago.  But now that I'm actually starting to be recruited by private firms, and it's real, the allure is enough it seems prudent to stop and at least reconsider things again.

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9 minutes ago, DMC said:

Yeah, I thought I answered this question years ago.  But now that I'm actually starting to be recruited by private firms, and it's real, the allure is enough it seems prudent to stop and at least reconsider things again.

What kind of firms?

At the end of the day you have to assess just how much you'll hate the private job. If you would be truly miserable, skip it. If it could be tolerable, keep an open mind.

You also need to really think about the end goal. Do you want to be a professor that regularly gets their work published, leading to the possibility of becoming a prominent academic, or do you want the highest quality of life possible? Also, what doors could the firm route open that the academic one couldn't and vice versa. 

Not wanting kids also removes the burden of wanting to establish inter-generational wealth, which maters to some and not to others (I think you can see why Tywin is my guy ;))

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3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

What kind of firms?

Not gonna get into specifics on a public forum.

3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Do you want to be a professor that regularly gets their work published, leading to the possibility of becoming a prominent academic

No, and that's important.  It's why I said "enjoyed" rather than "loved" or a stronger adjective.  I would not describe teaching and/or doing esoteric research as my "passion," at all.  But I'm good at it and it's an easy way to make a living.  Further, I have absolutely no interest in trying to rise in prominence within my field.  Academia, or at least my discipline, is 90% dick-swinging and 10% actual work, and I'm already sick of the dick-swinging less than a decade in.  Of course, it's not like the alternative is any better in that regard - and probably worse, generally.

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Not wanting kids also removes the burden of wanting to establish inter-generational wealth, which maters to some and not to others (I think you can see why Tywin is my guy ;))

Oh god I was already frightened enough for the future. :P

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16 hours ago, DMC said:

It's very rare for someone in my field to start out in the private sector and then go back into academia.  Mainly because most departments would make you start right at the bottom again - in the rare event they'd be interested in such an applicant rather than someone coming straight out of a program.  However, the other way around there is always the option to leave academia for something more lucrative.  In fact the higher up in academia you get the better the opportunities.  So that's another point for academia.

As for lifestyles, yeah pretty much static.  Like I said I don't plan on having kids, and if my salary is a problem for anyone I'd potentially marry, well then we probably wouldn't get married anyway.  I don't anticipate developing more expensive tastes.

Ah, you're talking about academic here, not a non-profit...that has a bunch of pro and cons particular to itself, like a lot of flexibility about your work and deciding a lot of your own big picture, vs idiotic stress and competitiveness vs the general koolaid of academic research over anything vs the actuality of a lot of it really being about teaching vs...well, you know how it goes. Plus, there's the one-directionality of it - you can always drop out, nearly impossible to go back once you have.

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22 hours ago, DMC said:

It's very rare for someone in my field to start out in the private sector and then go back into academia.  Mainly because most departments would make you start right at the bottom again - in the rare event they'd be interested in such an applicant rather than someone coming straight out of a program.  However, the other way around there is always the option to leave academia for something more lucrative.  In fact the higher up in academia you get the better the opportunities.  So that's another point for academia.

As for lifestyles, yeah pretty much static.  Like I said I don't plan on having kids, and if my salary is a problem for anyone I'd potentially marry, well then we probably wouldn't get married anyway.  I don't anticipate developing more expensive tastes.

I really don't know how things are elsewhere, but in the UK some academics have both roles - with a part-time academic job and some consultancy or professional practice on the side - if they complement each other this is highly valued e.g. if you teach while also having one foot in a relevant industry, you can give students real-life advice and experiences to learn from, and you can be doing research with practical importance.

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1 hour ago, Sophelia said:

I really don't know how things are elsewhere, but in the UK some academics have both roles - with a part-time academic job and some consultancy or professional practice on the side - if they complement each other this is highly valued e.g. if you teach while also having one foot in a relevant industry, you can give students real-life advice and experiences to learn from, and you can be doing research with practical importance.

That's rare at least in my discipline, particularly if you're just starting.  Although it does remind me to clarify that right now I'm looking for what's referred to as an "R2" position, which is a mix of teaching responsibilities and research requirements.  At "R1" universities technically you teach but no one really cares (and it you're teaching an intro course you'll probably get a TA) and it's a much lighter load.  But the pressures of publishing are too great.  I don't have the CV to really be competitive at an R1 position anyway (well, meaning the good ones), but even if I did I wouldn't want it.  The other option, of course, it to get a position at a liberal arts school with no research requirement.  One of my closest friends from grad school is in the second year of doing this and he couldn't be happier.  But I wonder if I'd be bored with just teaching.

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23 hours ago, DMC said:

Not gonna get into specifics on a public forum.

No, and that's important.  It's why I said "enjoyed" rather than "loved" or a stronger adjective.  I would not describe teaching and/or doing esoteric research as my "passion," at all.  But I'm good at it and it's an easy way to make a living.  Further, I have absolutely no interest in trying to rise in prominence within my field.  Academia, or at least my discipline, is 90% dick-swinging and 10% actual work, and I'm already sick of the dick-swinging less than a decade in.  Of course, it's not like the alternative is any better in that regard - and probably worse, generally.

Well that does muddy the waters a bit. I'd say take the interviews and see how you feel afterwards. Idk where you want to be in 10/20 years, but I'd just go with whichever path is more likely to take you there.

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14 hours ago, Triskele said:

I have a question related to this.  Did you get a 3% raise on top of an annual cost-of-living or keep-up-with-inflation increase or do people are your place quite possibly go years without any increase whatsoever?  

I've felt somewhat fortunate that for years now my institution has given 3% or 3.5% annually to anyone who isn't getting bad reviews, so as long as you're just OK it's a given that you're getting that small bump.  So much so that it feels like people don't really talk about it as a "raise" per se at all.  

Reading your post made me realize that since I've been at one institution for the bulk of my career that I'm fairly clueless about how common or uncommon this situation is.  

In the US, non-bargained (non-union) people generally don't get an automatic inflation/cost-of-living adjustment.  So whatever raise you get reflects inflation, productivity, seniority, etc.  And lots of people have seen raises well behind inflation cumulatively since the GFC.  Most corporations have improved their operating margins a lot in the past several years by keeping their growth in labor cost well below the growth in revenue.  And you have to keep in mind that most health insurance has seen enormous inflation in the past decade, and so a lot of people get an invisible compensation inflation as their employer absorbs some or most of the increase in health care premiums but then they consequently get less of a direct wage increase.

Bargained (union) employees get whatever increase in hourly wages was agreed in the three-year collective bargaining contract.  That usually covers only broad inflation/cost-of-living that is the same for everyone and there is no individual "merit" raise unless you move upward into a new job category. 

Some non-profit employers, like hospitals and universities, have a large orientation toward union-like behavior because all the nurses and teachers/lecturers are usually unionized, so they might apply cost-of-living increases universally even to the non-bargained employees.

European workers would be more likely to have inflation/cost-of-living adjustments written into their employment contracts.  But I would guess that varies by country, worker type, etc.

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