Electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago So you went and got yourself a PhD… © Jason Leigh, Andy Johnson 10/21/2007 Version

electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago

So you went and got yourself a PhD…

© Jason Leigh, Andy Johnson

10/21/2007 Version


WARNING:

Due to the distressing nature of the following material,

viewer discretion is advised


… now what?

• The moment you graduate, your career clock starts ticking.• You need to be self-motivated and self-directed or you won’t make it.

You have to be the one to come up with new ideas and new solutions. No one is going to hand them to you any more.

• Expect to be working almost all the time.• You should try to work on a minimum of 2 projects at the same time.

– a short term goal as well as a long term goal.– Many small successes are more useful to your career, than one big

success at the end that may or may not work out.• 4 most important things you need to be able to do:

1.Get Money– Do good and useful research– Publicize yourself and your research– Work with collaborators


Collect ‘em All

• This talk is part of a series of talks that Jason and I give to the PhD students in EVL

• How to do a thesis / dissertation• This talk• Talk on how to get tenure• Talk on how grants are written


Where do you go with your PhD?(hopefully not the unemployment line)

• 3 main choices:– Postdoc or Assistant Professor in a university– Junior researcher in a national lab– Junior researcher in a company

– In 2006• 50% to industry (up from 40% and 30%)• 30% to CS academia (down from 60% and 43%)• 20% to other departments in academia


University Career

• After 0-5 years as a post-doc (in CS it tends to be 0-2) you should have done enough good research to become an assistant professor.

• As a postdoc your salary comes from grants (what we call soft-money) which can be volatile.

• As an assistant professor, your salary comes from the university- so it is usually more stable.

• After 5 years as an assistant professor you are evaluated for tenure.• If you get tenure you are permanent faculty starting as an associate

professor. This means you are guaranteed a salary till you retire - or do something very embarrassing for the university

• If you do not get tenure you have to leave and find somewhere else to go. Typically you apply at a lower ranking school who will take you as a tenured professor, but that may also a provisional position for N-years while they evaluate your ability to get grants.

• After N years as associate professor you decide when you want to apply for full professor.

• Full professorship usually means more prestige and salary.


Life as a Postdoc

• You will ‘work for’ an older PhD and will likely be in charge of a bunch of PhD students or staff members

• Your need to do research and write papers and go to conferences. You also need journal publications.

• You need to try and carve out a research area that is unique from your advisor.

• You need to participate in writing grants whenever you can so you get the experience, and because grants buy food and grad students that do the actual work of the research.

• Your salary is usually pieced together from several grants so you will likely have to be able to work on at least 3 projects at the same time.

• You need to volunteer to review papers for conferences, organize conference meetings to build up your public image and credentials.


Life as an Assistant Professor

• Assuming you get a tenure track job at a research university rather than a teaching university …

• You need to teach 1-2 courses per term.• You need to write grants.• You need to do research that separates yourself from your

former adviser.• You need to write papers and go to conferences and

publish several papers in journals.• You need to mentor new MS and PhD students• ALL AT THE SAME TIME.• You need to land yourself what is called an NSF Career

Award- a 5 year grant specifically for junior faculty. This usually guarantees you safe passage to tenure.


Life after Tenure

• Incessant committees for conferences, journals, funding agencies.

• Going to meetings so you can discover where future funding will be.

• Looking for collaborators on future projects.

• Writing grants.

• Dealing with budgets.

• Trying to understand the “system” so you can optimize the allocation of budgets.

• Politics grow exponentially.

• The more successful you are at bringing in grants, the less time you will have with your students. That’s what postdocs are for.

• You will still have to teach but if you have enough grant money you can buy out of teaching - but it can be expensive.

• You will not have time to understand research at the level of detail your students do.

• You mainly give general indications of where research should go and hope you have good postdocs and PhD students to turn it into reality.

• Your responsibility is to create the funds to make that possible.


A National Lab Career(e.g. DOE, DOD, NASA)

• Have similar promotional tracks as universities: postdoc (0-3 yrs) -> assistant scientist (5 yrs) -> scientist

• Post-doc position renewed annually• Another career path is to be hired as staff programmer (code

monkey.) This pays better at first (post-doc $70K, prog. $90K), but scientist track better in the long run.

• Post-doc has more varied work (grant writing, traveling, paper writing, collaborating, meeting government people), more like jobs of the scientist you will become

• You spend more time on research and do not have to teach.• Your job is based entirely on available funds from grants and what

the Department of X allocates every year. That amount is determined by Congress. Congress determines this by looking to see if what the lab does is useful to society. This is all highly political- rather than logical.


More on a National Lab Career

• Work on 3-4 projects at one time, so when one inevitably gets stuck you can work on one of the others

• Collaborations are very important - you should be working with 5 close collaborators and be able to name 30 other people that you routinely have lunch with or talk to

• Self motivation is important - your supervisor will be away on travel most of the time. You can’t wait for them to come back and tell you what to do.

• It is possible to get an adjunct position in a university but without tenure.

• It is possible to leave a lab to join a university as a tenured professor. This seems to be the more popular route because you can focus on research without the burdens of what an assistant professor has to do.


More on a National Lab Career

• Expect to spend an average of 1 week per month traveling

• Choose a lab that has support for you both technologically and in things like grant writing

• Want lots of smart people around who can also be your mentor (remember, your supervisor is off traveling all the time)


A Corporate Career

• Similar path: Junior to senior researcher positions.• You are already overqualified for many employers.• There are no real guarantees. If company folds you are out

of a job. But they pay you more. They will also tend to fire the junior people first.

• Until you reach a senior level, the company will dictate your research agenda.

• At a small company (<250) try for an SBIR. It gives you grant writing experience and can fund your own projects

• Research projects tend to have to be narrowly focused with useful outcome to the company in a few years- even at cushy Microsoft, but you may see your work turned into a product that millions of people use


More on a Corporate Career

• Be careful about the contracts you sign - your research is not your own work. When you move from company to company you may not be allowed to work in the same field.

• Outside consulting may be considered a conflict of interest (true for University and Lab jobs as well)

• You write very few papers - you will need to push to publish and probably go through an internal security review so you do not tell any corporate secrets

• Very hard to go from a company back into academia because you will not have the track record of research papers and grants because companies will want you to patent your ideas, not publish them.


The Purpose of Grants

• To ensure you get tenure/promotion• To buy equipment, supplies (paper, pens), and pay

for long distance phone bills.• To pay for travel for you and your students and

shipping of equipment to conferences.• To pay for graduate students as RAs.• To pay for your salary during the remaining 3

months of the year.• To buy out courses so you teach less and

concentrate more on your research (and grant writing)


Grants and your salary

• Professors in general are paid 9 out of 12 months a year - but the 9 month salary is spread across 12 months.

• They expect you to fill in the remaining from grants.

• NSF only lets you fill in two of those months, NASA or corporate money can be used for the third

• The remaining needs to be covered by grants from other agencies or corporations.

• Grants also determine how much of a yearly raise your department head gives you. No grants -> very small raise


What are the possible funding agencies?

• NSF, DOE, DOD, NASA, NIH• Corporations• Government funding tends to be larger (3-5 years),

longer term, and more stable.• Corporate funding is usually small and short term-

e.g. $50,000 for one year.• Some grants only let you pay for equipment.• Some only pay for faculty and students.• Some do not allow you to pay for staff members• Almost all agencies now use electronic

submissions (e.g. nsf fastlane or grants.gov)


What happens after you’ve written the grant?

• It takes about 6 months to hear an answer.• You don’t wait to hear the answer, hopefully you

are working on the first year of the grant already.• If you weren’t, chances are you probably would not

have been able to write a convincing grant.• You can’t submit the same grant to 2 different

solicitations. The grant should be 70% different.


What if the grant is rejected?

• You swear a lot and then try again.• Most programs have a 10-15% success rate• Reviews will (might) help you tune the grant and

resubit it next year (if the program still exists.)• You can usually pick apart the pieces and reuse

them in other grants.• Why do you get rejected?

– Sometimes technical reasons.– Sometimes political reasons- i.e. the program manager

has some other priorities in mind. – Knowing the program manager helps. Meeting them at

conferences and over casual conference dinner receptions helps.


What if your grant gets accepted?

• You may or may not get the full amount. If not you need to state of how you will change your proposed work.

• You have to file a yearly report so they will release next year’s funds.• Some grants require site visits (especially large ones.)• So you need to prepare good demo experiences and talk about all the

papers (in good conferences and journals) and graduated students this grant has produced. You need to talk about how the work has had a broad impact on society.

• You need to send regular bits of news to your program manager of your successes - especially publicity in the press like the New York Times.

• A grant is really a program manager “banking” on your talents. If you don’t pay off, you probably won’t get another grant from him/her.

• You will also very likely be asked to review other grant submissions to this program in the coming years.


Where does the Money Go?

• Lets say you go for a 3-year $300,000 grant• That sounds like a lot of money. What does

it buy you?– 1 month summer for you– yearly support for 2 grad students– $1000 in travel per year

– At least 1/3 of the money goes to the University / Lab as indirect costs (keeps the university / lab running)


Things you can do to help you become more hire-able as a newly graduated PhD

• Long list of papers and demonstrations at good conferences (one per year of the time you spent as a PhD student) that have a similar focus.

• Journal articles are more respected by conference papers show you are an active cutting edge researcher out there meeting people and making connections.

• Take as many classes as you might remotely be interested in NOW. Read more papers now. There will be no time later.

• Deploy software or systems that a community of users actually use.

• Make sure your community knows you and your research from your presentations and demos at conferences.

• Your advisor will encourage you to collaborate with outside groups. This is your best opportunity to let other people know how good you are so that once you graduate, you can ask them for a job.

• Diversity in your resume is good. e.g. work on projects with artists.


More things you can do

• It is always easier to get the job if you already have an advocate at the place you are applying.

• Get glowing letters of recommendation from major people in the field, remember you talked to them at conferences ...

• Presenting yourself effectively - What do you say when someone asks you at a conference: “So what do you?”

• Never be shy to tell them what you do. In fact tell them with enthusiasm what you do. You are enthusiastic about your work aren’t you?

• Prepare several responses ahead of time. – Short one for when you meet someone in an elevator– Longer 1 minute version for a conference dinner.

• Jason suggests taking up a martial arts form to help you with your confidence, your stamina, and your focus.


Beyond the PhD

• Try to strike a balance between research and “life.”

• Understand that the early years of your career will tend to take more of your time and you will have less time for “life.”

• Having children while a junior faculty is difficult.

• Having children while you are a PhD student is very difficult.

• Most departments will extend your tenure evaluation deadline if you have a newborn (applis to men and women)

• Take care of your body. You only have one and BestBuy doesn’t sell replacement parts.


What are job interviews like?(Applies to most cases including corporations)

• Do your homework on the web. Find out about the department / college / unit and the city / region / state before you go there. What are the topics in the local news that relate to the university / lab / company

• There will usually be one person / group who is interested in hiring you - usually you meet them first at breakfast and they will give you some ’inside information’ on the department / group.

• You meet with the head of the department / unit.

• Faculty searches typically conducted by a search committee of 4-6 faculty who will cull over 100 applicants down to 4-5 to bring in and interview. Resumes tell you something about a person but the in-person interview tells you much more.


More on Job Interviews

• You give an hour long presentation. It probably should cover 2 projects in reasonable depth to show that you are diverse as well as deep. It should be accessible to people in other disciplines but rigorous enough for people in your discipline.

• This can not suck. You are being judged on how you present yourself and your work. This matters a lot. Most people who will be polled about hiring you will ONLY attend this talk. It is your ONLY chance to make an impression.

• Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Rehearse multiple times in front of people who will be honest with you.

• Make sure your slides are very well done

• Videotape your presentation, play it back and learn from it• Learn from going to every other talk you can go to


More on the Job Interview

• You will meet with several of the faculty/staff for about half an hour each, and some of them will take you to breakfast / lunch / dinner

• This is where you try to learn about what they do - to see if you really want to be part of the department, and to show them that you could be a potential collaborator that can help them.

• Figure out what things that you have done that might relate to what your interviewer does. This is where having taken a broader range of classes in the past and worked on a number of different projects helps.

• This is also your chance to find out what the department is like from different points of view.

• The meetings over food are important - that’s where they find out what kind of person you are and you find out what kind of people they are.

• Have 3-6 month plans and 1-2 year plans figured out - you are expected to hit the ground running.

• Are you being hired to expand an existing group or to start your own group? There are advantages and disadvantages to both.


More on the Job Interview

• It might turn out that you don’t want to go there. You are interviewing them. They will always try to present the best picture possible too.

• Sometimes you will be told that you will receive an offer letter in a few weeks. Don’t talk about salary until they talk about it. The salary they offer will come in the offer letter.

• Be prepared for the Q: “Where do you see yourself 10 years from now.”

• Departments will usually provide a “startup package” to get your research off the ground. You need to figure out if that amount is enough to get your research going until you have grants of your own. The department will rarely have equipment already there for you to do research.

• It is OK to ask the Department head what that package is, and the department head might ask you what you need. Be prepared to answer.

• When you go home, send a “thank you” card to the head of the department.


Some Final Remarks

• Yes this all sounds really scary.• People don’t just get smart and confident magically.

• If you are smart enough to get a PhD you are smart enough to deal with what comes after.

• The corporate world is the same - just with more money and less security.

• You will be given responsibilities exceeding what you feel comfortable with and you have to rise to the occasion.

• You will screw up several times and have self-doubt. Just tell yourself: “Oh well, I learned something…” and then keep trying.

• You are never going to be at a position where you will always succeed.• The most confident PhDs are the ones who have persisted and tried

enough things to figure out what works and what doesn’t.


For More Information

• For more thoughts read a PhD is not Enough by Peter Feibelman

• The PhD Job Hunt - Helping Students Find the Right Positions by Edward Lazowska - http://www.evl.uic.edu/spiff/fear/jobs.pdf

• Data in the annual CRA Taulbee report - http://www.cra.org/statistics/


So why is this still worth doing?

• You determine to a greater degree what you do. Not someone else.

• You don’t have strict 9-5 hours, M-F.• Once you get tenure, you are pretty much guaranteed a job

until you retire.• You are becoming a world leader in a particular field and

ultimately it’s your vision that shapes the world. • As you grow older you won’t be able to directly do the work,

or do the work as quickly as you were younger.• This is where your experience comes into play and the pay

off is in seeing your ideas materialize through your grad students’ work.

Documents

Electronic visualization laboratory, university of illinois at chicago So you went and got yourself a PhD… © Jason Leigh, Andy Johnson 10/21/2007 Version