After seeing Ashley Ruba's twitter post about salaries in the academia vs industry, I would like to share my experience of switching career after 4 years of postdocs.
When I was young, I used to dream about being a scientist like the professors I met in the class and famous physicists I knew on the books. I was fortunate enough that I was able to get into Duke Physics, where I started my dream and had been a physicist for about 9 years until last September, when I switched to work in the industry at an age of 34. Many facets of the academia convinced me to switch my career.
My PhD life at Duke (~ 5 years)
My research experience at Duke University was actually a great journey that I really enjoyed doing research and learned the experimentalists' mindset from my advisor Prof. Finkelstein. To be honest, my learning curve of being a low temperature physicist is actually quite long. With my undergraduate degree in electrical engineering, I had minimal knowledge in physics prior to the graduate school. I also had to switch a dissertation topic at the third year of the PhD study. Nevertheless, after I was more experienced on the essential experimental skills, doing research became easier and I was able to publish a few papers at the last year of my PhD career.
In the last four months before I graduated, I convinced my ex-girlfriend (now my wife) to move from Taiwan and stay with me, because we had a long distance relationship for more than four years. With a spouse visa, she could not work in the US, and that is why I really appreciate her about sacrificing her career to stay with me.
My postdoc life at University of Maryland (~ 3 and 1/3 years)
As I was moving forward to be a postdoc at University of Maryland, a prestigious university in quantum science, starting in September 2018, initially we were optimistic about our future. The paycheck I received at UMD was about 56k - 60k a year, which is enough for two of us to enjoy our life in Maryland if we don't go out for dinner too often.
The research was going well in the first year of my postdoc life at UMD (late 2018 to late 2019). However, one of the projects I was leading did not eventually work because of the constraint in our dilution refrigerator, and about a half year of pause due to COVID. I eventually switched to another topic that I was not very interested but anticipated to produce some quick results. However, the ferromagnetic material that I worked on was actually nearly impossible to make a successful sample to study superconductivity. I finally realized that this research direction would also be a dead end.
At this moment, around early 2021, I was still interested in quantum, so I think I should step out of quantum transport and plan for another career in quantum computing, which has more opportunities both in academia and industry, as many big tech companies, like Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon, invested and actively hired people in this field.
In my last year at UMD, my supervisor was not advising me and gave me the flexibility to explore things by myself before my next move. So, I learned Qiskit and Qiskit Pulse, in order to run quantum computing experiments on IBM cloud quantum computers. I even met friends from India through a hackathon event and we collaborated a qutrit project using Qiskit Pulse that we hoped to publish a paper with it. And I was invited to join CDL quantum bootcamp, and spent a month learning business and technical aspects of quantum computing industry.
In April 2021, I found that my supervisor did not get tenured so he had to plan for leaving UMD by the end of 2021, too. So I started looking for positions in quantum computing. I had interviews with Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL), a small startup, and IBM quantum. Eventually, I moved to California for my second postdoc position at LLNL in January 2022.
After seeing my UMD supervisor, who got his PhD at Harvard and received postdoc
fellowship at Stanford, was not able to get tenured. I entirely gave up the possibility of being a professor. Working in quantum industry or national lab was my dream job because I could still be a physicist with a decent paycheck and wouldn't have to be stressed about getting tenured until 40s and, meanwhile, indirectly impacting many students' future. Nevertheless, I greatly appreciated my UMD supervisor, who gave me a huge flexibility of exploring new opportunities for my career there and was also very supportive for my green card application. Fortunately, I got my green card right before joining LLNL. Green card is essential for me to apply for industry jobs without worrying about the lottery and sponsorship of H1B visas.
My postdoc life at LLNL (~ 8 months)
My postdoc salary at LLNL was 102k, almost doubled compared to my UMD salary. It is also much higher than many other places in the US. And working at LLNL, I would have a high chance >60% to be promoted to a permanent staff scientist position, which is much easier than getting tenured at a university. The salary for a staff scientist is about 140k, higher than many assistant professors in the US. So I felt really privileged and appreciated that I could work at LLNL. In my first few months at LLNL, I worked hard and enjoyed every moment working on new projects related to quantum computing. I did achieve something before I left that I felt proud of myself.
Decision to Leave the Academia
Right before I got the offer from LLNL, my wife found that she was pregnant. We started planning our living (including our newborn baby) in California. Our son was born in May 2022 and we gradually found that the postdoc salary was no longer enough for three of us, given that the cost of living is so high in California ( rent and utilities about $3000 per month) and the inflation rate was increasing since early 2022. My wife and I realized that we could not afford daycare for our newborn. So she could not work and have to stay at home to take care of him). As a father and a husband, I had to decide between my physicist career and my family.
On the other hand, as a Taiwanese, I'm considered as a sensitive country foreign national for Department of Energy and LLNL. I had limited access for my computers, some important shared computers. I felt this discrimination (due to national security) might negatively impact my productivity, and eventually harm my career, compared to other US citizens. Therefore, I opened up my LinkedIn profile in June.
Interviewing with Big Tech Companies
I first got an interview opportunity for quantum hardware engineer at Google Quantum very soon. I was really happy about this opportunity, and I thought the interview went well except one nonsense answer... Although I eventually didn't get an offer probably due to the hiring freeze right after my interview, I became more confident about interviews. This was the first time I noticed that my value could be higher than 200k for the first time (L4 at Google has total compensation ~ 270k). One of my high school friends who works in silicon valley also encouraged me to try more opportunities. I became more open to opportunities outside of the quantum realm. I had interview opportunities for hardware engineer roles at Qualcomm and Apple. The interview process at Qualcomm was quick that I only had less than one week to prepare for the interview, and they gave me an offer to decide within 4 hours in the next business day. Considering the hiring slowdowns in many companies, I decided to join Qualcomm as a senior RF test engineer and gave up my incoming interview at Apple that was planned in the following week.
Finally Exit Academia
My total compensation (base salary + stock + bonus) is more than doubled of my LLNL salary. I am very happy about that. At least, I can financially support my family -- our baby can go to a daycare and my wife can finally find a job in the US. Although many master degree graduates can get the same salary after three or four years, I finally feel valued about my PhD degree.
It was a tough decision to quit what I loved to do and I felt I owed my colleagues at LLNL. I wished I could finish the project that I invented the idea. However, after about 4 months working in the industry, I never regret. My supervisor and colleagues at Qualcomm are very considerate and flexible. I could finally work from home most of the time, and came back to my hometown, Taiwan, to work from home there after 3.5 years (due to COVID travel restrictions). I am really happy that I can spend many precious moments with our little son, watching him grow. I really appreciate my manager, who gave me this opportunity to learn from the beginning at the age of 34, and also gave me the flexibility to work from home and go back to visit my family in Taiwan. In return, I work hard and finally start contributing to the team. Qualcomm also provided many benefits and learning opportunities for employee. I feel I can learn a lot in many aspects in RF engineering, stepping on top of the knowledge and methodologies developed by many generations of engineers, and grow with the company here. And I'm no longer working on small-scale projects by myself in a university lab; instead, now I work with many talented colleagues on very large-scale projects, many of which can turn into profitable products.
Final words
Looking back the past decade, I went through a dream of being a physicist, enjoyed the happy moments doing experiments, and also experienced the economically unwelcome environment in academia nowadays, such as 1) commonly low salaries for grad students, postdocs, and even some professors, 2) low job security before tenured, 3) competitive academic job markets, and 4) uneven costs in journal publishing industry (researchers write and review journal papers for free, but in order to read and publish them, unreasonably expensive journal subscription fees and publication fees need to be paid to the publishers by govenment funds and universities around the world). The current academia is not welcoming people to stay. Science can be still be my interest, but it is not necessary to do science for living.
I hope the academia can become more welcoming in the future, so more youths can fulfill their dreams of being a scientist without worrying too much about money and job insecurity.
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