Sunday, August 16, 2015

Peer pressure

I had actually developed a post about peer pressure for my new digs at Academic Infiltration here on blogspot, but mainly in relation to some of my new faculty colleagues pressuring me for one thing or another.  Given recent peer pressure advising me to move to Word Press, I'm doing that.  My biggest hang up was how easy it would be to manage from my phone since the vast majority of blogging I do is on my phone.  But it appears I'll be able to manage it just fine.  I'm going to save the peer pressure post for my new site because I've given into pressure and am moving Academic Infiltration to Word Press.

academicinfiltration.wordpress.com/

I'll catch you there!!!!!

Wednesday, August 12, 2015

My new digs

The name of this blog is PhD-ing in Industry. I've decided that rather than change the name, PiI will serve as a relic of my industrial encounters and my academic search. A new chapter in life warrants a new blog. I've been batting around names and I've decided on Academic Infiltration (academicinfiltration.blogspot.com).  I'm still keeping the Phindustry moniker...just uploading to a new blog. Leaving PiI will also be emotional as it's been a loyal sounding board for everything I love and hate in (mostly) my professional life. I'm really pumped about the career shift and writing about how I go gray in the course of my first year as an academic!

I know that especially as of the past few months my posts have been more infra- than ultra-sound (that's a frequency joke).  I can't promise I'll be uploading any more frequently, but I am beginning to have more free time. While blogging is very fun it's pretty low on my list of hobby-priorities. Those of you that have following me on PiI, I sincerely thank you for any kind/funny comments/emails. I hope you'll still follow even though I'll be a boring academic ;)


Saturday, August 8, 2015

Things I'm looking forward to in Academia

I only thought it was correct to list the positives I have to look forward to I'm academia after listing the positives I had in industry. This is about to be a very naive list of things, so maybe in a few years I'll revisit with a series of edits about how much of a mistake I made....

Here goes!

1. I'm super pumped about the students. Mentoring grads and undergrads will be a lot of fun. 

2. Working on my own stuff. I've got ideas flying through my brain all the time. Having a lab where I can actually apply these ideas, even if they won't result in a profit, is going to be a blast!  I got to work on a lot of my own stuff in industry, but there were always a few projects where some board member came to my group directly and forced us to spend half of our time on some business-critical project.

3. I won't report to anyone! I can't stress how great this will be. I don't want to worry about making sure that some guy that's just trying to climb the corporate ladder gets his data to present to more guys trying to climb the ladder. I want to go in and out when I want. I didn't appreciate this freedom when I had it in grad school, but I'll appreciate it now!

4. Being around students. I'm not just talking about mentoring them. I'm convinced that being around young people keeps you young. I notice I'm sharper when the people around me are energetic. I'm really looking forward to that again. 

5. The college town. I'm moving from a very big city to a college town. I really like college towns because you get the diversity of things to do, food, people, etc of a big city, but the ease of driving and personalities of a smaller city. I love the sense of community that college towns have. I'll miss all the things to do, and experiencing the expanded cultural opportunities the big city offers, but I won't miss the commuting and cost if living. 

6. Being able to talk about what I'm working on. Things are very secretive in industry. One leaked secret could cost your company hundreds of millions of dollars. So I could never talk about my stuff even though it's all really badass and deserves to be talked about. I'm going to talk about my stuff with anyone that will listen!

7. Outfitting my lab. I did this in my current lab, but I picked things that would be needed to get my company's work up and running. I'm looking forward to buying my own computer and equipment that best serve the research I'm interested in. 

8. Public outreach. Universities love putting research in the forefront. I was interviewed by media and donors in grad school several times about my research. Like #6, I'm looking forward to being part of a community and putting my research out into the world. 

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As my time in industry has come to a close, I've been riding the emotional roller coaster. It's been a crazy few years. I'm leaving behind a group that I led to a lot of great things, but my number 2 is taking charge and she'll be awesome (and she'll hopefully throw some research money my way).  

I've left behind a bunch of friends again (leaving behind friends when I left grad school was insanely emotional), and I've been crying a lot, and I can't help but wonder if I'm making the correct decision. I've noticed that with each move I feel more and more alone because I'm stuck trying to make new friends again. 

But I think it will all be worth it.  

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Things I'll miss about industry

Do you want to be vastly overpaid after your PhD?!

Do you wish you could just work on projects without begging national agencies for money?!

Do you want crazy discounts on all sorts of personal purchases?!

Would you like a practically unlimited budget to do your research?!

Then maybe industry's right for you! 

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I complain about the problems in industry, but there are all kinds of perks. Especially if you have a PhD. Starting my academic job will undoubtably change my life. My lifestyle will remain similar as my spouse and I live our lives as though we pull in $60k/year in a major (very costly) metro. We're pretty frugal. The rest of the money goes into savings and donations. It will change my life for other reasons. Mainly, I want to work on my own stuff without justifying that it will make profit, want to mentor students, and I want to make my own schedule. Obviously, I haven't experienced faculty-stress yet; so I may change my tune (or tune-ure...that's a tenure joke :) ). 

I know that as I continue this blog (well, a linked blog with my same name) I know I will chronicle the good and bad of the industry-academia switch. In my past posts I think I focused mainly on the bad of my industry work so I thought I'd list the things I enjoyed.

Things I'll really miss about industry:

1. Unlimited budget.  My budget is practically unlimited; pushing $300,000/month nonsalary, just supplies. I've purchased $30,000 worth of disposable parts on a whim on my corporate credit card in a single purchase with no one batting an eye. I've been able to buy cool technologies that end up having no use after the first cool novelty factor. I don't think I'll ever be on the cutting edge of consumer products like this again unless I strike it rich.  I'm really going to miss my corporate credit card.

2.  Travel and amenities. I get to talk with brilliant people all over the world. And while I'm traveling, I get to fly first or business class everywhere, and put expensive wine and food on my corporate credit card due to my $300/day food per diem. The hotels are top-notch with views of oceans or the Eiffel Tower. 

3.  Peers.  I work with mostly people around my age. My peers. So there ends up being more of a friend-like relationship. When I'm gone, I know I'll still talk to a few of these people and visit if I'm in town. I'm going to miss these friends. And from what I hear, faculty members don't usually hang out together outside of work.

4.  Income. I've said it before. I make double what my old advisor (a moderately successful associate prof at a major R1) makes in base salary. Tack on my 15% bonus, and I'm living pretty comfortably.

5.  Discounts.  This mainly qualifies if you work for a large entity. I get very big discounts on cell phones and the bill, insurance, realty, cars, home improvement, electronics, exercise equipment, parking at the airport, admission to all kinds of attractions, and other smaller things.  It's crazy since these discounts saved me around $12,000 last year.

6.  Physicians and collaborators. Whenever I need help with something I pick up the phone and help is provided. Whether I'm putting together a device outside of my expertise or need a physician to try my device on a dog or pig, it's so easy. This is mainly because we pay these collaborators huge sums of money, but I remember how difficult it was to get physician collaborators to do anything for us in academia before. Having anyone I need at my fingertips will be missed. 

7.  My lab. I put $15 million into making the perfect lab. Every desk, office, and lab station was customized down to the lip on the counter. It's perfect. I know I won't have a blank check when I start at University of Phindustry, and I'll be given whatever lab space the university has laying around. 

8.  Impact. Talk to 99.99% of those doing medical research in academia, and they will tell you they work on Crazydisease. You ask for details and they say they're trying to better understand Obscureprotein or they are making Cooldevicetotreatordiagnose. In actuality, they don't directly touch patients, and probably never will in academia.  I said my research was clinically relevant in grad school and have heard nearly every biomedical researcher in academia say it (I know some will say that basic and cutting-edge research lays the foundation for applied. I agree, but when industry people see these project most people say they're useless, and will never be useful in the clinic. Every academic lab I've visited saying they have a cool technology turned out to be absolutely useless and a waste of my time to fly out and see it.  But I digress.). In industry I've directly touched more patients and saved more lives with my medical devices in just a few years than I will with direct impact throughout the rest of my academic career. There's instant impact because we don't make profit otherwise in industry. I know there is indirect patient impact in academia, but most focus on pushing the knowledge of the human race. Important, just not as directly applicable. I will miss the direct-impact I have had and could have had on thousands of patients and their families.

9.  The people that care.  I would not have lasted that long if the people in my group and my boss don't care about patients.  This is by far the most important things to them.  I fear I will never see this kind of passion again, and I feel confident that these people will be taking care of our healthcare future.

There are a couple smaller things, but these are the big ones. Leaving industry is quite emotional for me, not just because of the move from friends and great work, but because it's a part of me.  It changed me as a scingineer.  My time in industry, just like my time in every job I've had so far has molded me professionally and personally into who I am today.  If I switched to another industry job, I wouldn't be as emotional, but this is a major shift to my life. I'm incredibly anxious, but I've never been so excited for anything in my life (including my wedding! Sorry, Spouse)!

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

I moved...

The last few months have been a little stressful.  During the week I was putting in 12-16 hour days and on the weekends I was flying to my new lab. Or I would work on the weekend so I could take some time during the week to do a recruiting event, meet with a student, talk to a collaborator, etc. It's been an insane few months capped by eventually moving my life to my new city. My spouse told me to just hand off tasks and be done, but my thought is leaving a good taste will only increase the possibility of my old company wanting to fund my new research. In the past months I've had a ton of post ideas I've written down and I do plan to post them soon since life is beginning to calm ever so slightly. There's this quote used in House of Cards about the wind blowing the hardest the closer to the top you climb. I feel like I summited. Left with my name not sullied or damaged. But it's kind of a false summit (hikers out there know what I'm talking about) because I see this new mountain and at the top the flag looks like it says "tenure" but my visibility in these goggles is pretty bad.  

I plan to have two more posts related to what I'll miss about industry and look forward to in academics and start up a new blog. I'll keep my name: 1. Because I'm lazy and 2. Because my industry experience has shapes me more than anything I've done so far. Students are already lining up asking me everything they can about successful in a medical engineering field and they all talk about how they're so excited to have someone that's "made things inside of people".  

This move has been absolutely crazy: finding a renter (we don't want to sell yet), packing all of our crap, hiring new people in my old group, planning out budgets, transitioning knowledge and planning to the new guard, buying a house, moving everything, and a ton of smaller things that add up.  And there are plenty of stories to tell. You'll be seeing a few last posts and I'll talk about my new digs in the upcoming week!