> Most of them ended up with postdocs at equally or more prestigious institutions than the one we graduated from.
And then another postdoc.
And then another postdoc.
And then another postdoc.
This is not an example of doing OK.
To give you context, in the 80's, the math department at my (average) undergrad routinely hired faculty members straight out of their PhD. Postdocs were only for people aiming for a faculty position at a top school.
I just checked all the new faculty members there since 2010. Most had 2 postdocs before they got in. A few had only one postdoc. And this much trouble for a no name school.
I don't know if it's different in the US, but here in Europe I know lots of career academics that consider their postdoc(s) as one the favorite parts of their career. Decent enough pay, very little teaching or management responsibility, and more time than they'll have again to just focus on a single research question. In fact I have a couple of friends who kind of wish they could have spent their entire career hopping from postdoc to postdoc.
> I don't know if it's different in the US, but here in Europe I know lots of career academics that consider their postdoc(s) as one the favorite parts of their career.
How well do they get paid? What kinds of benefits do they get? In the US, the annual salary is $40-50K/year - roughly half that of a tenure track faculty member. I just checked one university and picked a random post doc and a random assistant professor. Postdoc is getting $51K/year, assistant professor is getting $110K/year.
It's fine if you do one stint, but a lot of people need to do multiple of them. It's not all that unusual seeing someone approaching 40 before they get a tenure track position.
I think my wife's salary went up around 15-20% when she went from her final post doc position to her first associate professor position. Benefits didn't change since both post docs and associate professors are considered full employees of the university.
There is some hindsight bias there--_during_ the postdoc, most postdocs are worried about securing a permanent position. That memory fades once a permanent job is secured.
Fuck. Are we already up to when everybody does 3-4 postdocs? What's next, the "ten-year'ed" postdoc?
Yeah, I 'member when postdocs were not a thing for math. I 'member internships for math majors weren't really a thing, either. I think internships were barely a thing, but, I'm not sure.
I've seen it claimed now several times in this thread that in the post-war period it was typical for mathematicians to get hired into tenure-track, or even tenured, positions directly after graduating. I don't see any evidence that this was true. Checking the cvs of three randomly chosen very famous mathematicians who graduated in this period (Stein, Atiyah, Mumford), it looks like they all did postdocs.
> I don't see any evidence that this was true. Checking the cvs of three randomly chosen very famous mathematicians who graduated in this period (Stein, Atiyah, Mumford), it looks like they all did postdocs.
This was addressed in my comment:
> Postdocs were only for people aiming for a faculty position at a top school.
Don't look at people who are outliers. Pick a random university in Oklahoma, Kansas, etc. Find someone who joined in the 80's or earlier. Check their CV. Did they do a postdoc?
Only one I could find at OU of that age with either a bio or cv online was Andy Magid, who graduated in 1969 and did a postdoc before taking a tenure-track position there. Seriously, if you have evidence that this was common, provide it.
I think you just showed that such evidence is not likely to be available at a casual Google search. Older professors who probably didn't have to do postdocs are probably less likely to post their CVs online.
And then another postdoc.
And then another postdoc.
And then another postdoc.
This is not an example of doing OK.
To give you context, in the 80's, the math department at my (average) undergrad routinely hired faculty members straight out of their PhD. Postdocs were only for people aiming for a faculty position at a top school.
I just checked all the new faculty members there since 2010. Most had 2 postdocs before they got in. A few had only one postdoc. And this much trouble for a no name school.