Have you ever had your academic job talk become the inspiration for a tweet-thread on how not to give job talks? IIII haaaave. I also butchered basic stats terminology, wrote off the board onto a wall during a teaching talk, and badly miscalibrated my talk at two unis. (1/n)
But this thread isn't about my mistakes. It's about how our current academic job selection process favors white men and may reduce scientific productivity. It's about how postdoc positions exploit ECRs, especially scientists of color and non-male scientists. (2/n)
But to get there, I want to tell you a little about my experience, if you have the time to listen. I applied to over 80 academic jobs over several years. I think there is a common misconception that the hardest part of this is hearing no over and over. (3/n)
But it isn't. The hard part is putting your life on hold to spend all this time NOT doing what you love (research and teaching) to try to impress others enough such that you get to do what you love (research and teaching and honestly probably mostly begging for money) (4/n)
Academic job searches take an immense amount of time away from everything else in your life. It's nearly impossible to be productive while you are submitting applications. If you don't believe me read what others have written about it (h/t @Dr_KatieG1 5/n) molecularecologist.com/2020/05/applyi…
I want to dwell for a second on how strange this is. When you are finishing a postdoc, the expectation is that you will spend most of your time NOT doing your job, and instead applying for a different job. How weird is that!? What other job lets you do that. (6/n)
This is where we get to the differential costs for white men and everyone else. It's hard to get an academic job on your first go around. Other candidates who have done longer postdocs may have more papers and more polish. It often takes multiple attempts. (7/n)
To get multiple attempts, you have to decide to persist as a postdoc, with all the low pay and uncertainty. You have to be able to buffer these economic costs. You have to justify the fact that you will always earn less in academia, if you ever even get there (8/n)
And who can justify this? It's much easier to repeatedly invest in the interview-prep arms race if you have intergenerational wealth, or a high-earning spouse/partner, or fewer childcare duties. These attributes are associated with white people and/or men. (9/n)
These economic challenges are compounded if the funding for your first postdoc runs out. You could jump to a new postdoc, but then you will be 1) still earning peanuts, 2) might have to move, and 3) immediately spending much of your time looking for another new job. (10/n)
So how did I get my position? Well, I hope I did some interesting work that made me a competitive applicant. But I think equally important was that I had the opportunity to fail and learn. And I have a higher-earning spouse, which made it OK for me to earn less. (11/n)
I also had amazing mentors (@NoahARosenberg @rdhernand @morde @BootsLab @frogsicles and others not on twitter) who bent over backwards to support my search. (12/n)
But if we want academic job searches to be equitable, we can't rely on individual generosity. I want a system that acknowledges and combats privilege. I want us to reduce the time burden that job searches impose on applicants so they can actually do science. (13/n)
I think there are multiple ways we could get there. With academia currently getting 2020-ed I think there is no time like the present for this conversation. I would love to hear what you think, especially if you are a postdoc or #newPI. Thanks for reading. (14/14)
