Career Chat V: the Common Ruin of the Contending Classes

[Datepalm]

3 hours ago, Madame deVenoge said:

Which do you feel is more compelling, gut feeling?

2 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Congratulations!  That is so awesome.  Where did you feel the most connection to the people you will be working with, and do you think those people will stick around at that school?

1 hour ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

What are we talking here for "Small Town"...? My alma mater was in a small town who's population rose to close to 5000 people when school was in session (with 3000 or so students)...the town had 4 stop lights. It had one bar for college kids and one bar for Townies (there is,  I believe, 5 bars in town now but one is the lobby bar at the hotel the school built). There was a Hardees in town when I went there in the early 90s. Eventually that closed and there was a McDonald's added around the turn of the century. I mean, yeah, the Wilson Football Factory was also there...but if you didn't have a car, you couldn't get to either smaller city that was close to 30 minutes away and the actual "real" cities were about an hour away.

Are you talking that kind of small college town? Because those take some getting used to.

Oh, and a small college town in a Blue state is vastly different than one in a Red state. Just saying...

2 hours ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Depends on what you want out of the postdoc. It is mostly the research, but also whether the advisor can help you land a position, hopefully permanent, at the end of your term. I'd also check to see if the two locations have a good track record of placing folks. From your previous post I gathered you werent looking for an academic position any more, or you could have looked at whether any of the previous postdocs found faculty positions. 

If you arent used to small college towns in the US, it can take a bit getting used to. A car will almost be a necessity, and the social life aspects will probably exhaust themselves close to the 3-year mark.

Oof sorry this got long -

It's all of the above, but especially CyrTesla's point. I am still trying for a tenure track positions, just reminding myself that it's not at any cost, not any TT, and that I'll give up after a few rounds if it's just not happening. It's also a lot about signaling, since I'll be applying for some 2024-25 jobs literally before I'll have started the postdoc.

The town population is 30k, inclusive of 20k students. The state and the county went blue, but every surrounding country is red. The nearest city is about 50 miles away, and it's population is 145,000. It's airport has no international flights. (I could probably just say where this is but the geography pub quiz fiend in me can't.) I will definitely need a car and I will definitely have no social life. It is also a place of Proper Winters.

People-wise, I'm getting better vibes from Small Town. Much clearer expectation, more believable in their claims to their commitment to my overall career development and wellbeing, more collegiate, warmer. The problem is that it's a very weird position for a postdoc, funded through a teaching center. The actual teaching component isn't high - 1 course per year, with a sort of supportive non-instructional role in one other course, basically helping the department up it's quality of pedagogy.

They're trying for 50-50 teaching/research, and the postdoc designation means I can apply for research funding, travel, etc, but - for anyone not in the weirdness of tertiary education - having a lot of teaching on your CV is a bad thing. I'm primarily interested in research intensive academic roles (probably wouldn't consider a SLAC) so doubly a bad thing.

I think the appeal of Small Town is just immediately emotional where it's probably just a more chill gig. I have a lot of teaching experience (so triply a bad thing to get even more) and ome may also remember my marxist commune days where creative pedagogy was the name of the game. I think I'm just picturing this routine of the collegiate town with its autumn leaves and coffee, driving around in my imaginary car, teaching my pet seminar (they want my pet seminar) and catching up on my writing backlog of PhD material and that's kind of that. This may or may not be utter bullshit. They've never had this role before and my field is so small it's hard to point to patterns in people's trajectories. Small Town salary is actually substantially better, but it has high housing costs and with factoring the car that salary erodes a lot.

Big City gig is just intrinsically harder. Its a research manager position that will require wrangling a good dozen people in five or six institutions (I genuinely have lost count) in four countries for work on three cities, most more senior than me. The project is somewhat vaguely defined, with a huge breadth of methods and research designs (this is how you get the big money apparently - just hit all the buzzwords and strategic vagueness on the rest? Also a good skill to learn, probably.)

It leaves less time for my own stuff, but puts me on a new project, with a good expansion scope (I love my PhD work, honestly, but it's niche and outside most US-based researchers' experience) and much more networking and obvious publication opportunities*. But a lot of it is managing up, defining work and timelines which are then out of my control, and ALWAYS run crazy long. ALWAYS. It may well end up being a disaster or just incredibly unproductive.

Small Town is a somewhat more prestigious university, which does tend to matter, but Big City has a very large and prolific department in my field. The job itself is actually at a well connected interdisciplinary research center at this very large research university, which is likely better than being tied into a department for this role. It is a very large city and I would not need a car, and they did not vote for anyone because they're in Canada. (There are also Proper Winters). The visa would also hold fewer possible mines - J-1s suck.

I think I'm still getting over a bit of burnout, and I've had a lot of different issues lately with kafkaesque bureaucracy, lack of accountability, boundaries and clear relationships with managers, exploitative work dynamics, etc, at both my current school - another huge research university - and at the VLO (see above) and minimizing all that suddenly seems like a great life choice. Probably not the basis for a 2-3 year decision with major life and possibly career-long implications.

* academic weeds: I've already opened the conversation on building in single- or first-author publication strategies for the juniors on the project (including me) from the get-go.

 

ETA - Small Town has a Trader Joe's, which Canada - all of it - does not.

Edited June 13 by Datepalm

[Jaxom 1974]

Okay. I had a guess, but then I realized I wasn't close...no idea where you're talking about! Yet.

[Starkess]

Sounds to me like you want to take the Small Town gig!

[Datepalm]

29 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Okay. I had a guess, but then I realized I wasn't close...no idea where you're talking about! Yet.

Lol we can play hot/cold?

@Starkess I'm actually leaning Big City, I think I just needed the one day of entertaining the bucolic wonder of the quintessential college town (this place is the first hit when I google "quintessential college town") given that I spent the rest of the day on the phone with VLO being condescended to by an IT guy.

I'm also wary of low-key depressive/mental health issues which I'm not sure a lot of alone time and a limited social life (it will probably consist of nodding politely to married colleagues' kid photos and politely being nodded to by 20-something grad students in turn) will be great for, however quaint the setting. The dating pool is also probably microscopic and I think I'm over that, after years of small, eccentric expat settings.

[Kalbear]

Just now, Datepalm said:

I'm also wary of low-key depressive/mental health issues which I'm not sure a lot of alone time and a limited social life (it will probably consist of nodding politely to married colleagues' kid photos and politely being nodded to by 20-something grad students in turn) will be great for, however quaint the setting. The dating pool is also probably microscopic and I think I'm over that, after years of small, eccentric expat settings.

There's a gold mine of hot professor/young coed stuff right there, and you can supplement the income via onlyfans

[Datepalm]

3 minutes ago, Kalnak the Magnificent said:

There's a gold mine of hot professor/young coed stuff right there, and you can supplement the income via onlyfans

Definitely what I need is confusingly charged and sublimated relationships with clearly tortured yet never quite formally unethical power dynamics and boundaries wrt academic hierarchies.

[Madame deVenoge]

18 minutes ago, Datepalm said:

Definitely what I need is confusingly charged and sublimated relationships with clearly tortured yet never quite formally unethical power dynamics and boundaries wrt academic hierarchies.

Because you did so well with Econ Guy

(just had to add to your self-deprecating humor list)

[Kalbear]

22 minutes ago, Datepalm said:

Definitely what I need is confusingly charged and sublimated relationships with clearly tortured yet never quite formally unethical power dynamics and boundaries wrt academic hierarchies.

Well, duh

[Mlle. Zabzie]

If the small town is Ithaca, go with your gut and keep going further north, eh?

[Datepalm]

Huh. Advisor was very strongly pro-Small Town - more money for less work, leaving more scope for own research, which he thinks I should be focusing on. So I got back to Big City, who told me I'm in a great spot to negotiate and said they'll get back to me on a salary match and a 60/40 instead of 80/20 split on project/my stuff. I also got more info and the project budget, and it's actually smaller and probably more manageable than I expected. On the one hand, there's less money, but on the other, fewer people are actually directly getting paid and most of the budget is for research students. IE, I can tell these ones what to do. There is also a dedicated travel budget and expectation that I would do most of that, which is actually a plus as far as I'm concerned.

[Madame deVenoge]

2 hours ago, Datepalm said:

Huh. Advisor was very strongly pro-Small Town - more money for less work, leaving more scope for own research, which he thinks I should be focusing on. So I got back to Big City, who told me I'm in a great spot to negotiate and said they'll get back to me on a salary match and a 60/40 instead of 80/20 split on project/my stuff. I also got more info and the project budget, and it's actually smaller and probably more manageable than I expected. On the one hand, there's less money, but on the other, fewer people are actually directly getting paid and most of the budget is for research students. IE, I can tell these ones what to do. There is also a dedicated travel budget and expectation that I would do most of that, which is actually a plus as far as I'm concerned.

My vote is Big City

[Zorral]

In my experience the most pleasant place to live is a small town/city with a college.  But we weren't in our 20's and 30's, when we did it.  From other friends in the situation we have heard how lonesome such a situation can be for someone starting out, single and without a family in place. A person needs more than research to have a full life, even when likes ones colleagues, the school and the place.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

You are on the horns of a dilemma, but this is what an old partner of mine called a “high class problem”. I think you have two great choices.  Once you make up your mind, never look back because whatever you choose is right for you at that moment

[Tywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

You are on the horns of a dilemma, but this is what an old partner of mine called a “high class problem”. I think you have two great choices.  Once you make up your mind, never look back because whatever you choose is right for you at that moment

More evidence why I would have MZ run my fictional government. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

As others have mentioned, whatever you choose will be the best for you. If you do go to Big City University, I'd suggest looking around Big City (its never just 1 university, you know....I think when I lived in Boston there were ~10-15 decent schools around). You can make connections, go to seminars in neighboring schools, expand your network etc. etc. Its this sort of 'soft skill' BS that does seem to make a difference when it comes to academic hiring. It also gives you options for 'outs' if BCU isnt all its made out to be.

[Datepalm]

Thanks all! I got the counter-offer from Big City and they did the salary match and the 40/60 split, so I said yes. There's even a bit extra conference travel money tossed in, as they couldn't do relocation benefits, which I didn't even ask for, since I would maybe have been able to take advantage of 30% of that at most, and only by really coming up with the most expensive and probably inconvenient (to me!) way imaginable of moving two suitcases.

@IheartIheartTesla point about being in much more of an ecosystem than Small Town, however large the university itself definitely also played a part. I also had a nice candid chat with a friend-of-a-friend there who described it as "frozen hell if you're single" and "get a dog, or a robot dog if you're not a dog person" right as I got the Big City email (also, damn, this is nice networking - I may have an invitation to come do a talk there out of that chat. That should do it for this bit of curiosity for the small town Americana thing. Should have dragged it out - there were a few more interesting people on the list.)

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

2 hours ago, Datepalm said:

Thanks all! I got the counter-offer from Big City and they did the salary match and the 40/60 split, so I said yes. There's even a bit extra conference travel money tossed in, as they couldn't do relocation benefits, which I didn't even ask for, since I would maybe have been able to take advantage of 30% of that at most, and only by really coming up with the most expensive and probably inconvenient (to me!) way imaginable of moving two suitcases.

@IheartIheartTesla point about being in much more of an ecosystem than Small Town, however large the university itself definitely also played a part. I also had a nice candid chat with a friend-of-a-friend there who described it as "frozen hell if you're single" and "get a dog, or a robot dog if you're not a dog person" right as I got the Big City email (also, damn, this is nice networking - I may have an invitation to come do a talk there out of that chat. That should do it for this bit of curiosity for the small town Americana thing. Should have dragged it out - there were a few more interesting people on the list.)

 

CONGRATULATIONS!

That sounds amazing, and wishing you the very best of luck.

I got a pretty decent size promotion yesterday.  It does not (currently) come with more money.  It does come with a lot more work, a lot more responsibility, and a lot more visibility.  I somewhat idiotically said yes.  But what else was I going to say - chairman called me directly....

[Madame deVenoge]

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

CONGRATULATIONS!

That sounds amazing, and wishing you the very best of luck.

I got a pretty decent size promotion yesterday.  It does not (currently) come with more money.  It does come with a lot more work, a lot more responsibility, and a lot more visibility.  I somewhat idiotically said yes.  But what else was I going to say - chairman called me directly....

@Mlle. Zabzie - YASSS!!!! Way to go. You shall someday soonish be Chairperson!!!!

And MAJOR CONGRATS to @Datepalm!!!! I am glad you got that under the table advice, and I can only imagine what a frozen hell a small town can be if one is a single adult. I grew up in a small town and haaaaated it, though the only bonus was the fact that in high school, literally everyone is single, lol.

Edited June 15 by Madame deVenoge

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Not sure, but doesn't come name partner first, or has zabz already passed that step.

[Madame deVenoge]

9 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Not sure, but doesn't come name partner first, or has zabz already passed that step.

This is a huge, huge firm. In the accounting world, no one is re-naming PwC no matter how high up you get.