Based on non-profit, cultural heritage center

good news

• there are good jobs out there.
• The PhD doesn't give you very many unique skills for this sector, but it's a ticket, and separates you from other applicants.
• PhD is a strengthening process.
• Pay can be very good.

bad news

• tension between what you think you will do and what you actually will do.
• Expertise doesn't count. What you know - more or less meaningless and/or threatening (nobody likes a know-it all). More of a problem solving approach - and some will like that you are research-oriented, others won't.
• your worldview isn't that important; everything for them is local. "tyranny of the local"
• being yourself doesn't matter in the world of the non-profit sector. It is about fit instead.
• have to want to accomplish things by motivating other people.

advice

• keep writing, keep academic network intact, maintain your reputation so that you can change jobs. Also, if you maintain a strong reputation (with the "right writing"), you have a chance of moving back into academia in a tenured position.
• be aware of the culture of the organization with which you're interviewing. A rational, mature organization that values memo-driven consensus is going to have different expectations than a quick-moving "art of the deal" culture.
• Collaborative style matters. Non-profit sector is often driven by hierarchy. Without your motivational and collaboration capabilities, people will not change. As noted above, leadership means accomplishing things by motivating other people.
  

Industry : academia :: tyranny of local : tyranny of the peer review.

Industry
Didn't go through thought process of academia vs. industry. Just followed adviser to HP Labs. It was fun, lots of freedom (but not true for every group - some very tied to products). Some industry groups require three levels of sign-off to publish a paper---not her experience at PARC and definitely not in academia.

This will depend on group leader's ability to shield you from pressures. "Good boss" will let you get by with only worrying about your research -- less overhead worries than in academia.

But almost too good - no day to day challenges & accomplishments. Happy, but if tenure doesn't work out, would be happy going back to a company.

Doctoral Student

Currently deciding where to go after graduating. Has had internships at Google User Experience Research and IBM CUE. If you are going to a summer experience, you should negotiate this ahead of time - make sure your managers & mentors know you want to publish based on the summer. If you're headed into a very engineering oriented environment, such as Google, you may find it more difficult to find a way to link your research to your internship.

Challenges of publishing interdisciplinarily when starting starting in the job market -- whether you are looking at industry or academia. If the group you are applying to isn't as interdisciplinary, you need to be going to their conferences and publishing in their venues so they know you. You don't have to be an expert in each area with which you work, your work is at the boundary with the other disciplines.
Some techniques for managing interdisciplinarity (as discussed by the group):

• first: is your work interesting, then worry about communicating it (remember, editorial boards and search committees aren't dumb)...
  
• communicating: know how to communicate your work to broader audiences. Talk the language that community uses in their publications.
  
• rebranding: know how to take work that you've done and make it fit for the related fields to which it applies
  

----------- NOTES FROM Daniel ----------------

Notes:

The pay is good in non-profit, and PhD is competitive.

Don't be the change agency, because organization hated it.

While working in the industry, keep publishing papers and doing research and keeping contact with the academic community, so that you'll have the chance to come back to academia.

Work in research labs in HP/Yahoo/Google is almost the perfect research setting one can imagine. Work in academia has to take into account many administrative concerns, such as applying for funding, get office space, etc.

rebranding research

Passion/Interests in a research area is more important than fitting into the research community.

Sometimes paper got rejected because you didn't cite some important papers in the research area.

Don't change your style fundamentally in order to fit the job. Find a job that fits you.

Sometimes you'll discover the job is more interesting than you thought. You can't tell!

Working in Labs is really fun. But there's uncertainty, because your whole group might be laid off.

Options: government labs (San Diego Labs, etc): the pay is better than post-doc, but not as good as higher education.

-----------------

NOTES FROM Ayse:

What skills can you bring to the non-academic market?
Good news: PhD’s are highly employable in the non-profit sector and this setting can be interestingly close to academia. Genuine ticket to top job positions in this sector. The PhD is a private, personal accomplishment that strengthens you at difficult times – self-sufficiency. Also pay can be very good.

Bad news: Tension between what you think you might find and what you do find. You may think that expertise makes a difference but personal expertise counts for nothing. Expertise is actually threatening in an organizational setting – people don’t like know-it-all type people in a hierarchical organizational setting. Problem-solving skills become more important. Some places are more social and some places like to just get things done. The local scene is important, your worldview may not matter at all. The ‘tyranny of the local’ can be oppressive to innovation/creativity. In the world of non-profits it’s not about being yourself but about ‘fitting’, so need to be realistic (this seems to be more important in non-profit than in academia). Collaboration is extremely important. The non-profit sector is driven by hierarchical organization. If you are successful that is also because other people get things done – notion of leaders & followers in the non-profit sector. In academia all are leaders. Leadership is extremely important – you need to be able to motivate people in the non-profit sector. If your leadership skills are good, that’s great, you have 30 people working for you. Being a change-agent sucks! Most organizations hate change with a passion. So you need to be smart about how to bring about change.

Advice: Keep writing and keep your academic ties intact. Keep your network and reputation going so that you can switch to academia if you want to and not get trapped in the corporate ladder - because then you will want to go back. So keep your academic work, publications etc, going while you are working.

In industry if you have a very good boss you can get by with really worrying just about your research. In academia you may need to worry about managerial stuff – find grants, think about space etc. Found that academic career is much more difficult than previous job. Likes the challenge of academia though. Likes both environments about equally – would be equally happy.

It can be difficult to engineer your research interests to the company’s goals. Technically you can publish your work while in industry as well. With industry research, if you’d like to get publications over the summer it’s a good idea to negotiate that with the company early on – need to talk with your mentor about this early. Your research needs to line up with company interests. Social, organizational, personal factors are all important in deciding where you would fit in best – academia or industry.

Q: What brought you back to academia at UM?
Dream of faculty research. The highly effective recruiting by UM. Academic and personal fit. After 30 years of work in 5 different positions in the cultural heritage community, found that the problems that are faced are not solvable through local efforts – there is need for research. Don’t lose the academic connections and reputation if you go out into the industry. The community has to want you back, otherwise if you want to switch this will be more challenging.

Q: Academia or non-profit more stressful?
At the top in the cultural heritage sector it’s very tough. l believe both have their challenges. Writing is very very important. Tyranny of the local in non-profit vs tyranny of the peer-review in academia. It’s challenging to get tenure in a very interdisciplinary place like SI because of the peer-review. So right writing is important, not just writing.

It’s difficult to get publications in the industry. Patents more valued. No one prevents you from publishing, but it is not easy, e.g. need to get many signatures to approve the publication. Some companies may not want certain things published because of different incentives.

If you are an interdisciplinary person and try to go somewhere that is not interdisciplinary then that can be a challenge too. For example, if where you would like to go is more organizational studies stuff then it would help that you have gone to more academic conferences in that field. The place may not know the conferences that you went to or places that you published. If you haven’t turned up in places that they normally think to recruit from this can be a challenge.

Communication with other communities is important. Re-branding your research so that it would apply to different settings. Who is your audience? Talk to your audience.

What is important is that you are passionate about your research. Don’t think too much about fitting into the crowd. As long as you’re doing a good job it works out ok. Editorial boards and search committees are not dumb – even if they are not too familiar with what you do they find out about stuff by asking the right people and understand that you are good in your area.

You’ll ‘know’ if you’ll fit somewhere well. It’s a vibe that you get.
Trusting your gut works in terms of whether or not you’ll fit. In a hierarchical organization though, it’s also important to know how to get things done. Your style needs to fit their ways. It’s at the job negotiation stage that you need to figure these out. Once you’re offered the job use your one moment of power to learn if it’s the right fit or not before making your decision. Think about what they want you to do and about what you need to do to get these done.

Also developing some mentor relationship may help too.

It was noted that Erik's opinion during his job search was that no matter how good a package that is offered may be, if it requires you to change fundamentally then it’s not a good one to take.

Also need to consider “research vs. business balance” in an organizational setting. You need to quantify the business value and return. How much do you care about the business aspect? If more time is spent on the business aspect in the environment how much do you care for this?

But ‘development’ can be a lot of fun in the industry. You learn new skills and you may love them. So even though research is now on the pedestal for you (us), you may like other stuff as well as you go along. You can be happy doing stuff other than research.

Working on 3-4 projects on different things can also be rewarding. He really ended up enjoying some of the things other people told him to do. So it doesn’t mean that you won’t like other aspects. So other people may set your agenda but it doesn’t mean you are not going to like it. In academia you come up with your own interests/agenda.

It’s also very gratifying to see your work in a product that a lot of people use. So you may not publish but your work is visible and used by a lot of people.

Found that industry is much more supportive than academia in terms of mentoring. It’s very difficult to get hold of someone in academia. Everyone here is super-busy.

Has found SI is good in this respect – senior faculty supportive of junior faculty.

Academia more immediate sense of accomplishment – teaching. In industry other stresses include uncertainties, lay-offs etc. You just don’t know the way tides are going turn in industry. What’s next, what’s cool can change from time to time. Who loses their job? But of course in industry it’s also about having a good time.

Your mentor in academia: Mentoring vs. friendship.

Leadership, peer-group very rewarding in academic settings.

Also 3rd option – government labs. Great job security. In some groups a fair bit of freedom in research. Experience in pulling in money – grants, workshops etc. You can try a gov research lab or post-doc position if you are not sure whether you want industry or academia.