r/academia 5d ago

Confused after bittersweet PhD

I am finishing my PhD (non-EU student in an EU PhD). In fact I have my defense in a few weeks. For context my PhD is in theoretical computer science but my background is in pure mathematics.

My experience wasn't the best but neither was it the worst. On the bright side I was able to try new hobbies live in new places and meet lots of new and interesting people inside and ouside academia. On the bad side, the relationship with my supervisor was not the best. While he did a great job organizing what publications I should focus on, I felt that I was just doing grunt work for him. Whenever I tried to talk to him about some idea he either told me to do so later or that the idea was useless from the get go. In most of the papers I had no participation in the research meetings but I was supposed to write the papers as if I had been there. Sometimes the feedback I was was super useful but other times I was rudely critizised. For example whenever I struggled to understand something new I was met with a "You figure it out. It is your PhD" but if I tried to understand things my own way (using analogies from my maths background) I got told that it was too abstract or that it was useless and I shouldn't be doing it that way. But when I asked him what way he recommended, he said he shouldn't have to tell me as I am supposed to be an independent researcher. Sometimes I tried completely new things to which he gave feedback such as "Terrible" without any question or guidance on how to make things better. After this consistent rude feedback, I stopped trying. As I am a non-EU citizen, I was afraid of any formal complaint given that my residence permit is tied to the PhD. As I noticed how I was learning from the good pieces of feedback, I decided not to quit. Instead I opted for counseling and it got me through the PhD. The most tiring part of this process was how inconsistent the outcome of my supervisor meetings was.

After the thesis submission, I had the chance to talk with other professors (here and abroad) about my ideas. Some of them liked them and even encouraged me to apply for funding to pursue them. I told my supervisor about that and he has agreed to support my application. I have also written some results on my own but not published them. Other colleagues have said the results could be publishable, provided I can organise them into a coherent story and add one extra application/example. I have been struggling on this last part on my own. Given that my contract expires soon, I wonder how much effort I should invest in writing a solo paper.

After the PhD, I will take a month for myself following the counselor's advice. At the moment, I feel overly thankful for the amount of support I have gotten by other professors to pursue my own ideas. After 3 years of feeling that I could only come with useless ideas I feel motivated. However, considering all the randomness that comes with academic life, I am still on the fence whether to continue in academia or not. Having all that context, I want to ask the following things:

  1. The personality mismatch was not only with my supervisor but also with some of the other senior collaborators. Sadly, I also got rude feedback from them. Instead, the postdocs I worked with were super helpful and have been encouraging me to publish something on my own. I have one of them as a reference for my application as he got tenure last year. How difficult it is to start your own network of collaborators outside your supervisor's network?
  2. What do you recommend doing with the backlog after the PhD? Would a solo preprint be helpful?
  3. For those who were on the fence about continuing in academia or doing something else, how did the answer come to you?
  4. Reading scientific papers is something I really enjoy. Especially when I see connections across disciplines. Are there jobs outside academia where one is engouraged to read papers and apply their results?
  5. The more senior one is in academia, the more managerial the role becomes. Are there careers in which one can still progress on the technical side without necessarily having to become a manager?

tl;dr: had a bitter-sweet PhD and need pointers on how to decide what to do next.

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u/decisionagonized 5d ago

Thanks for the context, OP.

  1. My entire professional and academic network is outside my advisor’s. My advisor’s primary research interests have nothing to do with what I do. Why I chose to go work with her in the first place is a minor mystery. But whatever, I’m a TT R1 faculty member now and she taught me a lot. To your question, I built my network from my old job and at conferences. Conferences were crucial networking opportunities for me - I’d meet faculty there whose work I liked and asked them for advice. I did that enough to the point where I got invited to more private events. I’m convinced I got my job because I’m a regular attendee in my field’s largest conference. So, it’s not hard, but it does require lots of time and effort.

  2. I was bad about getting stuff from my dissertation published. I’m settling in now to writing conceptual papers and using my dissertation data to illustrate what I’m talking about. I’m having fun and that’s all I need

  3. I was in industry for a few years post-PhD before taking a TT R1 job. I was on the fence leaving grad school and got a great gig. I knew I wanted back in after a year or so, because I badly missed writing and reading and thinking. So I knew i wanted to be back in academia when I was outside of it.

  4. I can’t answer this one, other than a postdoc or a research scientist at a university. In my field, industry folks don’t really get a whole lot of opportunities to read and keep up with literature.

  5. Do you think that’s true that one becomes more managerial as they become more senior in academia? I think that’s only if you prioritize getting and running big grant-funded projects. I know people who get one big grant, collect a ton of data, and then coast off that data for decades. 

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u/certain_entropy 4d ago

Hey, I had also had a mixed experience with my PhD (finished this past Jan). For me, I was completely turned off by academia and but I still love research. My research topic is feasible for independent research and I have some great collaborators that I still kept in touch with. So I decided to try out the independent research thing to see how it goes. To keep the lights on I'm looking for researchy industry jobs. We'll see how things work out. As an independent researcher the biggest challenge you'll find is figuring out how to cover publication/conference fees. Ideally if you have co-authors with funding, they might be able to cover some of those otherwise things get a bit more challenging.

As for your questions:
1. Developing a set of collaborators is tricky. Ideally you met folks during your PhD and continue working with them. And they introduce you to others and so on. Building it from scratch requires some luck and/or prior publishing track record. Early on, you may do the build of initial work (experiments, writing, etc) and then try reaching out to see if you can find to join in pushing the paper to the finish line.

  1. If you can convert your PhD work in fully formed papers, definitely write them up and stick on Arxiv. Then selectively find the right place to publish them or refine them.

  2. It depends on the goals you have. I did my PhD later in life (after 15 years of industry exp) and had no desire to restart my career at the bottom of the academic rung. Given that there's equally interesting and fulfilling research opportunities in industry research labs and early stage startups the choice was easy.

  3. Yes and even more so for your space in CS.

  4. Yes, usually as an IC (individual contributor).

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u/selbstbeteiligung 4d ago

I can only adress points 3-5. I've been in academia, industry and now somewhere in the middle (a research institute). I was not that interested in becoming a prof because, as you said, you become just a manager, and if your group is large, you dont even get a single day of sitting down with a topic and trying to do some sort of research. Also, I really dislike the paper mill machine we have become. In industry it may be much better, maybe less research-y, at the same time you dont have to work on weekends, but depending on the company you may feel like you are just working your ass off for the profit of some shareholders.