Academia Pay vs Passion

Believe it or not, scientists need to eat, want to own homes, have vacation, and buy things like everyone else. There's a selection bias in "scientists don't do it for money"--the scientists that don't do it for the money tend to be the most successful because they're willing to undercut their competition. They're the ones who will invest significant amounts of their life towards an area of research, spend their weekends and nights pursuing some goal, sometimes

"why bother doing that when you could learn programming and work at a FAANG for $400k, or work in the finance sector and make possibly more?"Because it's boring and depressing. And one thing money can't buy, unless you're solely interested in accumulating money, is satisfaction with your life.Obviously not true for everyone, but we've got 8.8 million "scientists" (I'm not sure what they mean by the word). <a href="https://sciencebusine

Academia is a career, not some sort of side project for bored scientists. We don't measure the competence of developers by the time they spend on side projects outside of work. You don't have to be full of visionary ideas to do research, and talent is everywhere. Teller would't be where he was had he been born in South America or Africa.If you only give money and positions to people with "passion" when there is a clear demand for more, that's called exploi

The difference is people rarely go into academic research for money - it's not just a job, it's a lifestyle choice. If you wanted to do research and receive better compensation you could work in industry or for a government lab - still research but less freedom.

I think the problem is there is academia the calling, and academia the profession.Academia the calling is the pursuit of knowledge, truth, the advancement of humankind. It sometimes needs flexibility, other times rigor. Sometimes a full team of aligned individuals. Sometimes the singular concentration of one person over a long period of time. Results are not guaranteed, and even when they happen they may be revolutionary, or they may be a tiny stepping stone that only reveals it's greate

That's exactly why academia sucks so much - since for the best scientists science is its own reward, people figured out they can skimp on monetary rewards.Ironically, this sabotages science very much. Research works best when you can focus on your work and are free from dealing with bullshit like worrying whether you'll have enough money for your rent or groceries of health bills.I understand how the forces of the market lead to this, but it still rubs me wrong - jobs seem to be

Certainly a depressing perspective, but as a Stanford PhD student (neuro), my thoughts have always been that pursuing science was a decision to work on the problems that interested me at the _expense_ of not receiving good financial compensation. The particular things I'm interested in studying happen to exist primarily within academia (and non-university academic institutions like Allen Brain and Janelia), because the neuroscience work being done in industry (today) is far more primitive (

> We need people who are interested in the science, not those who (pretend to) do it for money.In the US, the problem is mostly the opposite. Lots of people would rather do science, but it's hard to choose using your skills for real science when some company will pay you 2x-10x to instead optimize ad clicks on their website or algorithmic trading or whatever.In some of the humanities, liberal arts, social sciences etc academia may pay better than other options for those people. But

It's quite probable that they are interested in things that don't directly relate to making money. I know many senior researchers with Phd's in the UK who get paid something like 30-40K GBP - I don't know the exact figure but that's about right. They could probably earn at least 4 times that if they worked in banking or accounting but that doesn't interest them. Often they aren't even aware it is a possibility. So it's more a question of motivation rather

The problem with academic science is threefold:1: you are expected to feel privileged for doing something you vaguely enjoy. (how many people actually enjoy running columns and NMRs at 12am?)2: you are expected to be altruistic in your ambitions. Curse those vaguely better paid lizard people who are working in industry to forward some profiteering enterprise rather than "science"3: there are huge barriers to entry (tech excluded) so you will not do something entrepreneurial an