Leaving tenured academia for government or industry

[Anonymous]

I can't imagine that academia has more stress than other industries.

[Anonymous]

You need to interview, get some competing offers, and leverage your way into a lighter load.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You don’t understand industry. I’m a science PhD in industry. It is a constant cycle of proposal writing to bring in contracts while executing current projects. It would not be downshifting at all.

That sounds just like my job, without the teaching. And I love writing grants and doing research. Can I keep it to 40hrs a week? Please let me know where I sign up.

[Anonymous]

Unless you are willing to take a massive pay and work scope cut, you are not going to make $120+ in (GS 14/15) gov and work 30 hours. Let me guess, you are one of those people who assume everyone in government, including those in seniors positions, just sit around and do nothing?

If you really want to downshift, I recommend taking a government contracting role. With your background, you are a good fit for FFRDC's like Mitre. They super slow and hardly do any impactful work but you will have cozy hours and make close to $120 and more once you get some experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Okay I'm a tenured prof at an R1 school. Not engineering. I do understand you have a lot of funding pressure to support PhD students.

I'm not sure I believe you are really a professor and if you are, it sounds like you have severely, severely not cracked the code of teaching. 20 hours a week of prep for one class? 20 hours is my total prep time for the YEAR for one class, and that includes updating all my materials, revising assignments, posting everything online, etc.

With all that funding it should also be easy to hire a TA to do the grading (I'm surprised your department/school doesn't do this automatically). If you're spending more than 5 hours per week in total on teaching (outside the classroom) as a tenure-track or tenured professor, that's shocking to me.

This! I was not tenured and did not spend as much time as OP on prep, etc., and I was able to hire TAs. I left academia years ago and let me tell you, as far as work hours and pressure, academia was still easier despite the pressure to publish that OP now no longer has. OP, please don't take this the wrong way, but if you are struggling this much as a tenured professor, private sector is not a good fit for you. Please stay where you are and optimize.

[Anonymous]

You just need to start networking in the private and gov't sectors to see what is out there. I'd reach out to folks for "informational interviews". Are you in the DC area? Have you explored policy/think tank type jobs. You are going to have to supervise (like the director of a program) to be over $100,000, but, these jobs are pretty easy to keep at 40ish hours per week (and there are definitely slow times, they feel pseudo-academic). You won't have to deal with teaching/grading. Most universities have really great benefits. Don't expect beltway bandits to provide the same level of benefits.

My mom is a professor, and I think her job is pretty cushy, but I know from our chats dealing with students who have covid (and all the communication around it) has been very time consuming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unless you are willing to take a massive pay and work scope cut, you are not going to make $120+ in (GS 14/15) gov and work 30 hours. Let me guess, you are one of those people who assume everyone in government, including those in seniors positions, just sit around and do nothing?

If you really want to downshift, I recommend taking a government contracting role. With your background, you are a good fit for FFRDC's like Mitre. They super slow and hardly do any impactful work but you will have cozy hours and make close to $120 and more once you get some experience.

+1 to an FFRDC, definitely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You don’t understand industry. I’m a science PhD in industry. It is a constant cycle of proposal writing to bring in contracts while executing current projects. It would not be downshifting at all.

I get it, OP. The constant hamster wheel of getting funding, successfully completing the work, getting more funding, etc is draining. I chose not to go into academia for exactly that reason. You can find jobs in industry that are 40 hours a week, and if you choose a non-manager role, it might be less stress than you feel now. At a senior engineer level, you can probably match that salary depending on your region. 30 hours a week for that salary is a unicorn, though.

Also, it sounds like the problem is your university, not necessarily academia as a whole. Can you look for positions at other schools that provide more TA support and don't keep changing your classes? You won't be the first tenured professor to change schools. And frankly, if you're thinking of leaving altogether, you should make this the hill you die on. When they say "we're revamping Intro 101 again this year," you say "No, I can only redesign one class per academic year. I can do this next year but not this year." What will they do, fire you? You're already about to walk on your own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless you are willing to take a massive pay and work scope cut, you are not going to make $120+ in (GS 14/15) gov and work 30 hours. Let me guess, you are one of those people who assume everyone in government, including those in seniors positions, just sit around and do nothing?

If you really want to downshift, I recommend taking a government contracting role. With your background, you are a good fit for FFRDC's like Mitre. They super slow and hardly do any impactful work but you will have cozy hours and make close to $120 and more once you get some experience.

+1 to an FFRDC, definitely.

What about Aerospace, Noblis? National Labs?

[Anonymous]

Get on the Facebook group The Professor is Out. You can read up on all of your questions and the transition to industry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can’t you just do a mediocre job and not get fired? You have tenure.

No because then they make me teach more classes every term. I could do a worse job with those but there is a limit to how little you can do. Plus I hate teaching. I only took the job for the research. I would rather quit and do almost anything else than teach. I was hired because I am I am an excellent researcher, writer , analyst, programmer, physicist, chemist and project manager and understand how to get things done. Those would be highly useful elsewhere but not if I done away classroom teaching 40 hours a week and doing grading for another 20. Tenure isn’t what it used to be, friends. Even at the “elite” school where I work.

PP tenured professor who you conveniently have not responded to. I have never heard of an "elite" school without TAs for grading, so now this post is extra fishy

PP, your experience is very limited. I am a NP, but at least am a tenured professor myself.

Not all classes have TA's. And not all subject matter/tests lend themselves to someone other than the professor grading. I for one assign papers, not multiple choice tests, and it is on me to grade them.

[Anonymous]

Totally agree with the PPs that say you need to figure out how to spend less time on teaching and grading. Talk to your chair and level with him that it’s too much. Hopefully they don’t hate you and are doing this on purpose to drive you out. Maybe it requires switching schools if yours is that dysfunctional. I’ve only taught 3 unique courses in my 8 years at my institution.

And this comment is not helpful but…I’m not a lab science prof, and you are really making me glad that I don’t have to spend so much time on writing grants for funding… seems on par with or even worse than teaching.

[Anonymous]

Op, I left a Academia (aso engineering) because I loved research but didn’t like teaching. Now doing non-engineering research in the nonprofit sector.

I’m going to be blunt - you need to be a worse teacher and spend much less time prepping for your classes, give out much less homework so there is less grading. I know that seems hard when you are teaching a new course, but think about the absolute minimum you need to teach the students. Give homework but don’t grade it, just note if it’s completed and post solutions for people to check themselves. Don’t make them write long reports or labs, just give a presentation or short report. Honestly, those skills will help them more in the workplace.

And hire more senior post docs or lab managers to make the research easier asker for you to manage. Post docs are the work horses of research. You should be mostly in your office grant writing and managing overall research direction. That being said, if you have a large research portfolio it’s still a lot. Write some senior scientist salaries into your grants.

Federal government would be easier. Try the patent office as a patent examiner. Not part time, but very flexible, and the salary range you are looking for after a couple of years. GL!

[Anonymous]

I’m in academic medicine making $220K for a job that includes call, weekends, and endless unpaid hours of teaching time, travel for conferences, and unpaid clinical follow up. I am leaving for a 9-5 flextime job at a federal agency also paying $218K, no call no weekends.

[Anonymous]

Hi there. I too was a science professor, tenure track and would have gotten tenure easily. I left, went to a federal administrative role, and suddenly I had all this free time. I then went to industry and it was also way less work than my academic job and paid more. I’d say get out—in some cases you’ll exchange job security for career security because with the right sorts of industry experience, even if you get laid off you’ll probably be able to find other jobs.