| I think you have a couple of common misconceptions. I'm not saying they necessarily change your conclusions, but they should be pointed out nonetheless. >- The reward of a job is, for the most part, the monthly paycheck. A PhD is a long-term investment that must be completed in order to have value. An employee that quits a job after one year is not an issue, and it is considered "experience", but quitting a PhD half way through can be perceived as a failure. Several people already mentioned "you can just quit your job". I think this is with a limited view of software developers. Yes, if you are a software developer the job market is such that you can easily quit. The situation might be completely different in some other fields, and loosing the job can be a much more existential threat. >- Professors in academia have almost unlimited decision power in how they manage their budget and their reports. It can almost feels like an absolute monarchy. I don't know the situation in the US, but I can tell you that in the countries I know about this is simply not the case. The amount of bureaucracy that you have to jump through to spend money as a professor (often money that you brought into the university through grants) is mindboggling. I know junior staff in industry who have more power to make buying decisions than professors. I know at one university every purchase over $50000 had to be signed off by the dean of the faculty (this was maybe 500-1000 staff and 30 000 students) over $150000 it had to go to the president. For anything bought by a professor, even low dollar amounts, it had to be signed off by the head of department. Hiring (PhD students, or even interns) needs to be approved by HR ... >All of these points, combined with a bad supervisor, are fantastic fuel for anxiety and unhappiness. There is no worse thing that, after so much work, feeling that you have no control over your situation and you have no margin to improve it, without significant additional sacrifices. While bad supervisors are definitely a thing, generally the PhD is a situation which can be fantastic fuel for anxiety and unhappiness. You work on something that you are responsible for, which is not guaranteed to work and coming to the end of your time, you might realise you don't have enough to show. In many way it can be very similar to starting a business, there can be incredible highs, but also incredible lows. |
You're right about the bureaucracy, which can be crazy in the US and Canada too. However, it really only extends to spending money; there's much less oversight when it comes to running the lab (e.g., working hours, productivity expectations, conduct, etc). You might think that firing has as much oversight as hiring, but postdocs are often structured as short, renewable contracts and you can just....not renew them.