[alexholehouse]

Sounds like you're doing a very similar PhD to me - good to see other computational researchers here (despite the circumstances, so to speak...)!

I'm also acutely aware that while staying in academia would be great (despite all the bad things like crazy hours, crazy people, etc.) there is simply a very good chance it's not going to be possible, or if it is it'll be crazy competitive.

The litmus test I always think about is a colleague [postdoc] I worked with years ago. He was disgustingly smart and capable, and applied for over 100 tenure track positions before getting one. He also had an educational pedigree and publication record most of us can only dream of, and was a great guy to boot. If it takes someone like that 100+ applications what chance do the rest of us have!?

Because of this, I've taken on the rather larger responsibility of running the labs computing resources, both hardware/software. It's a lot of work (I'd estimate I spend maybe 20 hours a week doing sysadmin related tasks) but it does also give me a totally inappropriate level of responsibility which I hope will be valuable either inside academia, or in industry. I also really enjoy it, which is a nice bonus.

[mratzloff]

I guess it would depend on the kinds of tasks you are doing. Depending on the work involved, you might simply be preparing yourself for a junior sys admin position. There's nothing wrong with that if that's what you want to do, but it certainly doesn't require a PhD (or any degree, really).