The Poor Postdoc

On postdoc salaries, industry guilt, and the expectation that scientists should be satisfied with low pay.

When I finished my PhD, I interviewed for postdoc positions that paid less than what I made as an intern in industry.

I had already started to imagine that I would probably leave academia, but I still applied for a few postdocs because it felt irresponsible not to. After spending so many years on the academic path, completely closing that door before I had even defended felt too final. A postdoc was the obvious next step, and even though I didn’t think I wanted it, there was a part of me that still felt like I should at least see what was available.

So I applied. I prepared for the interviews, spoke to people about the projects, tried to picture myself in those labs. Then I heard the salaries.

I wasn’t expecting to be impressed. I knew academia didn’t pay like industry, and by that point I had spent enough time around universities to know that low pay is to be expected. People complain about it, joke about it, rearrange their lives around it, and then somehow continue on because the work matters, the next opportunity might be better, or leaving feels too much like giving up.

But I remember being genuinely surprised because every postdoc position I interviewed for paid less than what I had made during my industry internship. I knew postdocs would pay less than a full-time industry job. But I was shocked to see that I would be paid less than what I had made while I was still a PhD student, working temporarily in industry for a few months.

And it really bothered me. Part of it was practical, obviously. It’s hard to hear a salary and not immediately think about rent, savings, bills, travel, and moving costs. But it also just made me feel sad.

A postdoc isn’t a simple extension of being a student. In many fields, it’s a demanding research job that comes after years of specialization, failed experiments, papers, presentations, teaching, mentoring, technical work, and a level of persistence that most people outside academia will never fully see.

Postdocs do a huge amount of the work that keeps research moving. They manage projects, train students, write papers, analyze data, keep collaborations alive, apply for funding, give talks, and often become the person in the lab who knows how everything actually works.

And yet the pay still leaves a lot to be desired. For a while though, I felt almost embarrassed that the salary bothered me so much.

I wanted to be the kind of person who could look at the work alone and decide that was enough. I wanted to believe I was above caring too much about money, because there is something in academic culture that makes financial concern feel slightly vulgar. Curiosity is noble, sacrifice is respectable, and ambition is acceptable as long as it’s directed toward publications, fellowships, grants, and prestige, but the moment ambition becomes attached to salary, people start to look at it differently.

This was something I had absorbed over years of being in academia. The best people were supposed to care about the question so much that everything else became secondary. The people who left for industry were often spoken about with a complicated mixture of respect, disappointment, and suspicion, as if they had made a perfectly understandable choice that still revealed something slightly unfortunate about them.

And I really don’t understand that mindset. Most PhD students aren’t choosing science because they think it will make them rich. They spend years earning very little, often while watching friends in other fields build savings, get promoted, move into better apartments, buy homes, take real vacations, and become adults while their life is still organized around experiments, funding, deadlines, and temporary contracts.

So when someone finishes a PhD and decides they want a job that pays them better, I don’t think that means they suddenly stopped caring about science. They just also care about other parts of life, and they should.

Because it matters if you can pay rent without panic, help your family, afford to move for an opportunity, deal with an emergency, travel home, have children, buy a home, or leave a bad situation. So money isn’t everything, but it’s also not nothing.

And at some point, you have to ask yourself what you want to prioritize in your life and you can’t keep waiting on “temporary” situations to end. The PhD is temporary, and a postdoc is temporary. The next postdoc might be temporary too, but maybe it leads to something.

Academia promises that the instability, low pay, and uncertainty are all temporary, and if you just persevere long enough you’ll eventually get where you want to be. But not everyone gets that ending.

A lot of people give years to the academic path and still end up having to leave. Some leave because they want to, some leave because the jobs are not there, and some leave because they are tired of living in a state of permanent stress, constantly hoping that the next stage will finally allow them to feel secure.

And when they do leave, I don’t think they should be judged for it. I have never understood why choosing better pay is a negative.

If someone can continue working in science, using their training, contributing to research, medicine, technology, policy, communication, product, data, or any other part of the broader scientific ecosystem, but do it in an environment that pays them enough to build the kind of life they want, why should that be looked down upon?

Why is the lower-paid version more pure? Why do we act as if the only way to prove you care about science is to accept a version of it that makes the rest of your life harder?

I understand why people stay in academia. There are parts of academia that are beautiful when the environment is good. The freedom to ask strange questions, the depth of thinking, the mentorship, the long conversations about ideas, the feeling that you are contributing to knowledge in a way that may not have an immediate commercial purpose but still matters.

I know people who look at the tradeoffs honestly and decide that staying is worth it. They know the salary, the uncertainty, the odds, the pressure, and they still choose it because the work gives them something they don’t think they can find anywhere else.

I respect that enormously. But I also respect the people who look at the same tradeoffs and choose differently.

I respect the person who realizes they don’t want to keep moving every few years, who wants to earn enough to support their family, and the person who loves science but also wants savings, health, rest, and choices.

That isn’t selling out. You’re allowed to care about science and still care about your salary, and to love research and still want a stable life. You can choose the path that gives you more freedom, security, room to breathe, or simply a better chance at building the kind of life you actually want.

You don’t owe anyone a financial sacrifice to prove that you’re a real scientist.

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If I were in your shoes...

If you’re trying to decide whether to stay in academia or leave for a better-paying role, I would try to separate the decision from the guilt around it.

The guilt we learn in academia can make you feel like leaving means you wasted your training, disappointed your supervisor, gave up on your younger self, or admitted that you weren’t strong enough for the path. But none of that is true. What matters is what you want now and for your future.

So I would look at each option and think about it practically. How much will you earn? Where will you have to live? How long is the contract? What does the next step realistically look like? Will you be able to save? Will you be able to rest? Will you build skills that give you more options, or will you become more dependent on a path that’s already making you uneasy?

And if you do choose to leave, don’t worry about what anyone else thinks. The people who understand will understand, and the people who judge you for your choice won’t ever be convinced otherwise.

Make the choice that gives you the life you can want to live with, not the one that impresses or satisfies anyone else.

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In My Orbit

This week, I finally watched The Drama with Zendaya and Robert Pattinson. I thought it had potential, but I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the movie. It was produced by A24, which has a bit of a cult following, but I’ve never really liked their movies.

I think they are bit too artsy for my taste, and they always strike me as a little odd and offbeat. I think that’s kind of the point, but it’s not my cup of tea!