Academia or industry? PhD or no PhD? Career advice

0:00 Hi and welcome to the Neil Ashton podcast. In each episode we explain some of the fascinating ways that science and engineering are changing the world around us. We talk to leading engineers from elite-level sports like cycling and Formula One to some of the world's top academics, to understand how fluid dynamics, machine learning and supercomputing, are bringing in a new era of discovery. We also hear some of their life stories, their career advice and lessons they've learned on the way that I hope will be helpful to you too. So sit back and enjoy this [Music] episode. Welcome back to the Neil Ashton podcast. So this episode's going to be a

0:45 little bit different than the last two. I know I've said that in the past two episodes, but I guess this podcast is meant to be a bit varied on purpose. And it's just me today, no guest, but I wanted to cover a topic that I I I wish I had probably had more information on, which is essentially career advice, academia versus industry, the tech sector, how much can you get paid, what does it take to become a professor. So, basically, five or six things that I suppose I wish I knew when I was growing up and looking into a career into engineering, and I wanted to try and give you some information. This is is all my opinion. It's based upon my

1:34 life, my career, which is UK based, so I'm going to have a bit of slant, even though I work for an American company and therefore do have a reasonably sort of good sense of what's going on across the pond. So let's start off number one: PhD or no PhD? Do you need to do a PhD to advance in the field of engineering and in science? I would say yes and I'll explain why. For me, if you go and do a master's or an undergraduate, you can be the smartest, best person, but there is because of what you get taught, you're never an expert. After that time. You you may have

2:22 developed skills, you may have, you know, learned a good amount about your area, but they're not designed these courses to make you an expert in something. They're meant to give you a broad base. Typically, um, you do often do a sort of dissertation in your third or fourth year, depending if you're in the UK or Europe or the US, but by definition, really, a masters is about you know a grounding knowledge or an undergraduate, and not becoming an expert or specialism in a specific area. So if you look for a job after doing an undergraduate or Master's um. Many companies still see you as a graduate and see you as a more

3:03 generalist that they can mold and adapt. So most companies where it's Aerospace or mechanical or even in the tech sector are going to bring you into more generic engineering roles or generic data science roles and you won't be a specialist. So the advantages of not doing a PhD are you're going to move faster into a paying job. So maybe if you're doing a standard thing at 21- 22, you're going to be starting to earn money. So in the UK If you were to go into an engineering job, 30 to 40,000, maybe in the US 50 to 60 um- we'll get on to later about the tech sector- maybe it's a little bit higher- 60 or 70 um, potentially a bit

3:48 higher if you're in San Francisco or in the Bay Area. Maybe you might be earning $100,000 um after a masters if you're in a sort of decent position. But the negative is that you have you're kind of similar to thousands and thousands of people across the world who have done an engineering undergraduate, Masters. You can overcome that, of course, by doing extracurricular activities and doing the stuff in your own time. But that's that now. Contrast that with if you have a PhD. A PhD forces you to basically have three, four or five years extra education and extra time to become an expert in your area. A PhD, by definition, is quite

4:38 narrow, so you become focused in something. So for me it was not even just CFD, it was turbulence modelling within CFD. The pro is, by the end of those three or four years, or even five years, you have become probably- let's say, only a less than 100 people, maybe certainly in your country, or maybe broader than your country, maybe even Europe or the US know it as well as you do in your specific area—very specific—but you have become an expert in something. Most of the time you, you will go there for, to company interviews, potentially knowing as much or more than sometimes a person interviewing, because you've spent three

5:25 or four years becoming very an expert in that area. When I say no more than them, but you know you you're, you're up on the latest sort of advances. So you come in with a different mindset. You've, um, you've also had the chance to broaden academically to other areas. You've had the opportunity to to go to conferences to see the sort of Academic Way of working, the writing style, the investigation style, the sort of culture it ingrains into you. You've maybe learned more programming languages. You've done extracurricular activities, because often during a PhD you've had time to do other things. Um, because of the nature of what it's like at a

6:05 university, you've been able to explore the world a bit. Those are all advantages, and later we can talk about Academia or industry. Obviously PhD is an essential requirement, essentially to go into Academia. But what's the cons? The cons are that you are still in University and therefore you're getting paid less than if you were in the industry. So PhD is equivalent of maybe 20 to 30,000 a year. I say equivalent because of the tax systems. Sometimes it can be a bit less, sometimes it can be a bit more. But remember, after four years or 5 years of a PhD, your take-home sort of salary equivalent, given that the people who

6:51 have joined industry, probably each year, have being advancing. By the point when you graduate, maybe at 27, you may be now um, earning, you know, £30,000 or half the amount that that somebody else might be might be actually learning be earning. So you have to factor that in. The other one is no one's going to let you buy a house on a on a PhD if you're a sole income um. So you haven't been able to establish that sort of security and some the buying place, unless you already have the money from alternative sources. But you have set yourself up up as an expert in something that I think has longer term implications. I'm biased- I did to go down

7:38 the PhD route, but I'll finish off by answer by saying I think you should do a PhD because it's a once- in a-lifetime Opportunity. You know it's almost impossible to do a PhD when you're older. It's very, very difficult to do it with family and work life and everything else and financially. So PhD? Absolutely, yes. There are issues with funding. You have to fund it. Typically, most people find some industry funding or university funding, so I'm not saying that it's possible for all um. Also, where you want to do your PhD. It does matter where you do your PhD in terms of you know the name of the University it. It opens doors if you do

8:20 it as a top tier University, but it's more important that you um actually are motivated and you enjoy your time. PhDs have a very high failure rate. I don't know the current statistics, but it's probably at least half people fail their PhDs or quit, because after the first year it's so you've really got to one be motivated to do it. So it's just not. It's not an easy option. It's very um independent, so you have to motivate yourself. Um it's tough. People get in difficult times again. You see other people moving on Beyond, getting better jobs, getting more money, and you're still stuck doing your PhD. It can feel like um,

9:00 but if you, if you pick the right supervisor, the right environment, it can actually be a very positive thing um for you. So I think, all in all, a PhD in the right topic that you're interested in and you really have a passion for, I believe is the right decision. So on question number one, PhD or no PhD, I would say PhD, okay. Second question: how do I become a professor? Well, first of all, um interesting, the term Professor is different in different countries. In the UK- and I think it's already kind of going out of fashion- this- it used to be lecturer, senior lecturer, reader and then professor. So only once you got to the top rank you

9:49 could call yourself a professor. Um, I don't know if they started it, but the US is, at least for as long as I know, has gone down the different route which is assistant professor, associate professor and Professor. So at all points people tend to still call you Professor, even if you're not technically a full professor. And in Europe it's a little bit um similar where you know people can still call you a sort of Professor. But it's an interesting one that um. Probably people who have worked hard to get to a full Professor don't like people being called a professor in their earlier years because there is, you know, potentially

10:26 difference. But anyway, when you hear someone say I'm a professor, often there is a different ranking system: assistant, associate professor. So how do you become a full Professor? Well, I'm not a full Professor, so I'm giving you, based upon conversations with um people, but I can give you at least the way I've seen it. So, first of all, you've obviously had to do a PhD. I say Obviously you can be given an honorary professorship. I guess some people who went straight into industry and spent 30 years could be given something honorary, but today, as it stands unlikely, you would almost certainly need a PhD. So you've

11:06 done your PhD, your, let's say, 27, again assuming that you went to University at at 18, and it depends in different places around the world. So first thing is, almost nobody becomes a professor after their PhD or the first ranker being Professor, which we'll call an assistant professor. Almost all need to do a postdoc, postdoctoral research, postdoctoral research, PDRA positions—different names— things in different countries and different universities. Essentially, what it is is a period of work, really now, or research after your PhD. When you're a PhD, you're still considered a student. You know post-graduate student, but

11:48 you're still a student. You have a supervisor. A postdoc is different because you're now essentially a contractor. That's the way I have now realized what it is for people who, working in Industry, a contractor is somebody who doesn't have a full-time permanent position, but somebody who is contracted to do work on a set time period, and in Industry that's used to fill gaps, um, when you're not sure if you have long-term funding. Unfortunately, in Academia that is the standard for a postdoc. So for me it's basically a contractor. All this. So this is the first stage. You are typically given a a one, Two, Three or, very exceptionally, 5year

12:32 position. Um, normally it's funded through research. So what that means is: later on, a professor has won some funding to do some research and they will either get a PhD student to do that research, the negative being it takes a while for PhD to learn and, you know, be good enough to do it. Or they can get a postdoc someone who's done a PhD, someone who is more productive and knowledgeable, and they will do the research. So what does a postdoc get you? Well, a post now gets you more money. You are actually an employee of the University, not a student. Money is still not fantastic, um, relative scales to what we'll talk about later. You may be on 30

13:21 to 40,000, so I'm going to guess in the us70- $80,000. Apologies, I could be, I'm just going to give a rough translation. It will depend as well which university where you are in the world. You know London PhD a little bit more because London waiting and um, so you'll be paid for that and your job is to do the research. In some universities you may also be asked to do some teaching. Uh, in the oxfords and the cambridges that's a way to supplement your income. At some of the colleges in more traditional universities, normally you're not directly teaching. You may be helping. In the US, typically you do more teaching.

13:59 It’s sort of a rite of passage, in a way, that you'll be helping um to do it. So it really does depend around the world. But during that time you're doing research and your aim- and I'm talking about the postdoc in the context of now becoming a professor- is to establish yourself as someone who could be an assistant professor, as in. You need to publish, to prove to the community and to your peers that you are somebody that is qualified enough and ready to do their own independent research. A postdoc is normally doing research that has essentially been one or proposed by an assistant professor or hire occasionally

14:40 during a PhD. You can apply for a fellowship. A fellowship is something where you have written- although still likely with the help of some Professor- a project that you want to get funding for, to fund your postdoc, and that is highly advised and definitely a good stepping stone. So most of governments have these sort of funding. They’re very sought after but definitely a good idea, cuz if you win one you've secured yourself probably three years of funding, some d l more. You've given yourself already a stepping stone of esteem because you won some fellowship and often those people then have a better chance of you know,

15:19 moving towards something because they've already got a track record during those, let's say, three years. You have to publish like mad. You have to work hard and start interviewing straight away. I say this because this is the mistake I made. I mean my career was a little bit different, I'll talk about that later- but during that time you have to really go for it. The other thing is that, um, now, during that post, most people say if you don't move out of a post, do within 3 years you're very unlikely to. And I've seen- and I didn't believe it at first but now I kind of believe it- all of the funding mechanisms and the sort of way

16:00 everything's done and the age that you are and the salary that you'll accept. All gets harder the older you are. So those first three years you have the best chance of making it and you have to be fully prepared to move. Most universities only have one or two positions opening up for a new assistant professor in a particular topic. So statistically it's most likely you're going to have to move to another University or even another country, but let's just assume another University in your particular country to get that first level academic job. There are again sort of fellowships and schemes, um, but the universities are typically doing it to

16:42 fill teaching needs, because primarily teaching is one of the ways that University brings in the money to pay for a position. So if you are um in charge of an engineering College University Department, you need some to help teach your courses. And, as we'll talk about later, the older you get and the more close to get to a full Professor, the less you want to teach. So you need these young blood coming in to do the teaching. So one of the primary focuses of hiring an assistant professor is to teach and to cover the teaching Lo. So they need to be able to do that and that's where the funding comes in. And there can only be a couple of them

17:22 because you only have a certain number of students. So this is why you- my point is you may have to move. So this is something we'll look again in the negatives- Academia or industry. This is something to be aware of. Let's assume now you do become assistant professor. Now it depends in different countries, but in the US, and increasingly also in some of the sort of top tier UK universities, that is still not a permanent position, that is still not a sort of Lifetime position. That is what they call getting ready on, like sort of moving towards tenure. Tenure is really when you become an assistant professor. Now I hope I’m not getting this terminology

18:02 wrong and if I am, please write in the comments. But to the best of my knowledge this is the way I've seen it and I've got many colleagues and friends who are at various levels of being professors and and not. So you go through that process, you become an assistant professor, but that's not the end of the journey. Then you have to fight, you know, pretty hard to get to the next level, which is your sort of permanent associate professor position. Now in the US that's typically 5 years, um, sometimes it can be less. In the UK um 3 to 5 years it it's kind of different in different universities in the UK. Sometimes they use the lecturer/senior

18:44 lecturer titles, and, um, sometimes your lecturer position could already be permanent. Like I said, more the top tier they're trying to still Whittle out, so they don't want to make permanent positions until you've got even further into your career. In the US it’s most definitely like that. You're assistant professor. You still are working to get that tenure of being an associate professor. So during those 5 years you are might mad, needing to publish, needing to bring money in, needing to get more students and teach and this is probably one of the hardest periods. This is where the burnout happens. This is where people quit. It's

19:21 like a triangle. You're a student at the bottom, PhD, postdoc, assistant professor, bearing in mind. Now you're probably 30, 31, if you've gone through a standard sort of age thing, and you're still in the UK, maybe only earning 50,000. I say only. It's all relative. You know to different, where you are, what potential get to, but you're working flat out, you're working weekends, you are traveling around it. Academia at this time is one of the hardest jobs and you have to be trying to establish yourself internationally as well as nationally, getting into doing Publications and everything and- and you know, review and play the politics, trying

20:03 to win them, funding from different agencies and Industry, funding and nurturing students, trying to get posts, trying to get PhDs. And then you maybe you make associate professor or senior lecturer and I should be clear: some people never get beyond that. Some people never get Beyond a senior lecturer or an associate professor. Now, bearing in mind, you may be towards, you know, your late 30s at this point, or maybe even older, maybe in your early 40s or later, depending on how successful you've been. At this point, becoming a full Professor becomes another sort of time bound thing. You have to really establish yourself.

20:49 You have to probably be taking on departmental duties, you have to be supervising 10 or 12 students, you have to be creating centers or or or new areas. You have to be on the international stage, you have to be called to panels, you have to be seen as an internationally leading person, editing maybe a journal or co-editing a journal. All this and playing all the politics game to become a full professor. And most people, if you're mid-40s and getting a full Professor, you've done very well. Often people are in their 50s before they get a full professor and some never at all. And this is again dependent on the how ambitious

21:28 the person is and the starting salary of a professor. I just checked, I think in the UK is about 70 something thousand. I say that because the next. So so you've made it. Congratulations, you can now call yourself a full professor, and at that point I would say from the professors that I know this is when Academia, in my opinion, becomes a very worthwhile place, because you have reached the top kind of. You are internationally known, you are regarded, you're an expert, you're, you're sort of, you're secure, you've got a good salary, um, you can sort of pick and choose your teaching a little bit and from that point on until you retire, you can sort

22:16 of enjoy that P. It's still hard, don't get me wrong. I you know professors are working very hard, but there's a certain thing at that where I think you can enjoy the fruits of your labor. Um, so that’s a definite pro. But just consider all the stuff I've said. I've how to get there, which I would say: the more esteemed the university, the harder that gets. Some people will end up jumping to a lower University to get that Professor title because they think they can't get in the current one. Um, so there's a lot of moving around. But yeah, so that's the question: how do I get to be a professor? Of course I could talk for hours about

22:53 this more. I'm always interested in this kind of stuff and I still go to lots of conferences and speak to people. I'm always intrigued and maybe I'm giving the harder bits of it, uh, but anyway, I'd be interested. If people have a similar experience, you should write in the comments, um, or reach out to me, okay. Next question: Academia or industry, often a question people have at the beginning of their career, at the middle and the end. So let's now focus on an industrial career and I'm going to use um two different sort of uh places. I'm going to um pick a Formula 1 team for people into Formula 1 and maybe a a sort of

23:39 Automotive or, you know, aerospace, okay, so Formula One. So you finish your undergraduate and you try and get into Formula One. That's quite hard, um very tough to get into formula straight after a master's degree, undergrad, because you are literally competing against thousands of people. If you come in at that time you would be a junior. You probably on 25, 30,000, like a pretty low salary. Formula 1 doesn't pay that great at the beginning. If you've done a PhD- 27, 28- you may come in at 40 odd, maybe 50 and apologies if some of my numbers are not spot on. And what will you? You'll be doing. You'll be seen still as a graduate

24:16 or Junior. For those first few years you will just be doing what you're told. You'll be trying to be ambitious and progressing, but you'll be, you know, a member of a team as an individual and then maybe after two or three years, so maybe you're sort of uh in your mid to late 20s if you didn't do a PhD, or in your 30s if you did, you may move to being a sort of normal. Let's say aerodynamics- I'm going to take aerodynamics. At that point you're still an individual um, but you you maybe are sort of shadowing a few Juniors and graduates. You're helping them out a bit and maybe your salar's got up to more like 50 order or

24:55 60. Next, 3 years later you may be trying to become a senior, or three or four years later. So maybe not a senior aerodynamicist or senior, and maybe now you be getting up to more like 880,000, 70, 80,000 as a senior. Maybe you're in your early 30s or mid-30s, depending on um. You know when you started. I'm just going to pause there for a moment to realize that you could be a senior, a aerodynamicist, earning £70,000 in your mid-30s or early 30s, earning the same as a full Professor- a university, that's true, excluding- and I should have said in the previous one- some professors do supplement their income by doing

25:38 consultancy work and startups and all this. But just bear that in mind. Formula one pays quite well: by your early 30s you could be earning the same as someone who's probably in their mid-40s as a? U Professor. Then you could spend another three, four years, let's say now- and by the way, I should say Formula One is incredibly tough working hours, very, very difficult. So, um, potentially working on weekends- although I'd say in Academia, sometimes even harder working in the earlier years- sort of Tire between the two. You can then become like a principal or a deputy principal. So this is after maybe 8 to 10 years of being in. So

26:16 you're in your sort of mid 30s to late 30s. Some of the people I know are- you know, sort of principals who started at a similar time, or maybe sort of a deputy team leader and now they could be earning £100,000 a year, bit bit more or a bit less. You move on a little bit. But now you you're having to really manage a team more. Potentially you've got people underneath you when you're a certainly a principal or a team leader. So let's say you go a little bit further again, another three, four years. Maybe now you could be a sort of Deputy team or Deputy head of aerodynamics. Maybe you're in your mid 40s, early to mid 40s. You could

26:56 be earned now 150, 1702, 200,000, so well beyond what a professor earns. So if you look equally at someone who's in the um mid-40s and maybe have become a deputy head of era, even head of Arrow, where maybe they're earning 250,000, 300,000 or even more depending on the team. The time it takes for you to get to that position, the time time it gets you to Academia, is you can see why. At all those points there are some people who question: should they stay in Academia? Now I would argue at that point, the stress level when you're a deputy or a head of aerodynamics versus the stress level when you're a professor. I would argue that, and job

27:43 security, you're probably far more secure in your academic job as a full professor and you could top up your money. You know quite well, by being such a world expert you could be earning £200,000 in total if you, you know, do lots of consultancy work and you'll have a little startup on the side, like many do. All within the rules, um, and I say the starting solo for a professor of 75, let's say in the UK. But they get higher and higher. There's incremental, so they could be over 100 um by the time they're in their 50s or more, depending on the University, if they've, you know, really esteemed and um, but they're still quite

28:19 far off. Let's say formula one, and if you get even higher in Formula One, People earning half a million or more, but they're exceptional, that's, you know, sort team principle or very high up. But that's not the norm of standard engineering industry. If you were a sort of car company- Jag, Land Rover- all you have to do is look at Job adverts- um, you are going to be earning less than that. You're. Working hours are probably going to be a little bit easier. Form one is known to be difficult, but you may be earning, you know, 40 to 50,000 in your late 30s to 40s, or you could be earning 60, 70, a bit more. But what are you going to be

28:58 doing? Well, at that point you are going to be in a more corporate company. Of course I should say the university is very hectic, but you have a lot of freedom on your time. You're kind of like your own boss in a way. At a university it's, it's always known that they're all like little, um, CTO, you know, Professor, like they're running their own little company. So it's a very different lifestyle. You have a lot more freedom in a way, um, but in in the industry one you're, you're part of a, you know a company. There's corporate structures. Often if you're in a larger company and the way to progress is usually by managing people, and this is true of uh

29:36 in Academia in a way. You're often managing, you know, a group of students and postdocs and teaching and Engineering the same. So the question becomes: Academia or industry? I would say you have to do both. I'm biased because I've split my time a little bit between two. I think if you only go down the academic route, you will never be as knowledgeable as if you had spent some time in Industry, because it is fundamentally just a different place to work. It's different attitude on on what he's engineering- I'm talking from an engineering side. There's certain stuff that you only realize. Ah, now I understand why. You understand the

30:18 mindset, the culture, not only the science and the Practical engineering, but just the way that industry works. But equally, if you've only been in the industry, I think it's a shame that you're not seeing the good side of Academia, in the way to stretch your mind and to work with students. And the good thing, there are schemes that allow the movement of both sides. So there are people who move from um Academia to Industry, either permanently or through sort of like comment, and increasingly is also the other way around, where academics can go into industry for a year or or sort of time periods. Now I could end the episode

30:58 there and I would say that would be a fair reflection of, certainly in the UK. And again, um, it's kind of the angle I can say is: what I certainly knew up to, let's say, uh, four years ago. I thought that was basically it. Do you? You know Formula One's sort of the best paying job but most Industries somewhere in the middle. You have Academia, you have the pros and cons, but then there's another option- and I think in the? U, in the US this was far more known- which is the tech sector, which is the Amazon, the apples, the Facebooks, the Googles, the Microsoft- I'm probably missing out

31:47 names- and the sort of associated startups and companies that surround those sort of big tech companies. Now you could also ask, argue, to be fair, that the Teslas and those are kind of like tech companies. And NVIDIA- sorry, I missed out NVIDIA. That's another option that I would highly recommend people think about. Now I'm biased because I work from those companies, but this is no way me trying to say, come and work for ads, not at all. I'm just saying as a sector. So what? What is it? Tech companies, um, are now into many areas of engineering because the Advent of ma, machine learning and computer science and numerical methods and high

32:31 performance Computing. Engineering is no longer just with your hands building something. It is inherently a computer thing and increasing now machine learning, so the closeness. It used to be that it was only computer science people who went to work for tech companies, just developers. Increasingly now I'm seeing a lot more people come from engineering backgrounds to go into tech companies because they're working on more Tech problems. You know robotics or Computing or fluid dynamics, or there are a lot more opportunities. So if you are early on in your career and you've just come out from doing an engineering undergraduate or Masters, it

33:09 may be that actually, instead of you going to the classic car company or Aircraft Company, you may consider looking at a tech company. Now you may need to slightly change your skill set, focus more on the sort of data science and the Computing a little bit, particularly in those early stage jobs, because that is, you know, the most jobs. Cloud computing is massive. Um, you know high-performance computing or or Computing from the. You know chip companies, AI- now so many AI companies. So where do they differ? Well, they are a um. First of all, if you go and do a PhD- sorry, let's assume you've done a PhD- it certainly makes it

33:50 easier. postdoc is not a permanent position. Tech company is a permanent position, so for most companies anyway. So you've got a post stock that pays maybe like 40K- 45k and a starting Tech sector job that may be paying more, like 70k or 80k. And if you're in the US you're talking even higher than that, like in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, low hundreds, for like someone after their PhD. So you're like: oh okay, so that's actually a really good salary. So someone just have their PhD could potentially 60, 70,000. Now I'm not talking about banking or financial sector too, I know, but actually it’s important for me to say that because a

34:33 lot of Engineers fought. The only way that I can get a really good salary is to go and work for a consulting or banking company instead of engineering. And what I'm saying to you is there are. There is another alternative, which is into the tech sector, which increasingly, is now becoming a quite a broad sector. So you don't have to abandon engineering to. You know, go into the finance sector or go into. You can stay as an engineer, but into the tech sector. This is something I had no clue about, didn't even know about these companies until I was, you know, until four or five years ago. So, and how do they progress? Well, it

35:10 is tough if you join after your PhD in tech tech company that is, you know you are still at the sort of bottom end of the ladder and you're going to have to work hard to re differentiate, even with a PhD. Um, you're going to have a tough, tough job but as you progress your salary is going to be even surpassing sort of Formula One, to the point that if you're into your sort of early 40s, let's, let's equate these different role. Well, let's, let's forget about salary for a moment. So for the tech companies you move through, you can progress from a sort of they have different leveling systems- there's lots of website on there that show them sort

35:54 of standard up, going to a normal, to a senior, to a principal, to a senior principal. Um, interestingly, most tech companies allow you to stay as an IC, an individual contributor, if you want to like: I am an individual, I don't manage anybody. I personally like that. There aren't many companies that you can keep progressing and keep progressing and never had managed anybody. And what's it like? Well, it's kind of exciting because you're in a fast moving environment. So it's it has. I'd say the tech sector has a lot of analogies with academia. and, and that's why, actually, of all the people who are assistant professors or

36:34 postdocs, I see so many of them who have actually moved over to the tech sector, either before they became an associate professor, assistant as an associate or even as a full, but we'll talk about a full in a minute, because I think that's what's an interesting distinction. So if you were to go through that route and let's now compare, so you've got someone who, let's say, an associate professor at their end of their 30s, earning 65, 70,000 or maybe 50, $60,000, massively depending on which university or in the US. You got someone who's in Industry who's maybe earning 50 60,000, so not that different between, maybe, an associate professor and some in

37:23 the industry, depending on how far they've advanced in their age. And then you have someone who in the tech sector, who could be earning £150,000 or more, so it's almost double the salary, and in the US you could have somebody who's earning $400,000. So so many of these people are thinking: I'm I, I you know why am I working so hard in Academia? I can just get paid so much more and just join a tech company. Now you lose some of the freedom of the of the Academia, of course, but it's. It's kind of interesting that move. Now don't get me wrong. There are some top us universities who pay very high to take an average sort of thing,

38:05 and particularly in the UK. So I know I'm jumping around all the place. I think this is sort of interesting. What about a full Professor? So you're a full Professor, you may be on 80, 90,000 or in the US maybe, let's say, $300,000 or even higher. But then you look at a tech sector and you think, hold on, I'm a full Professor, I'm one of the top people in the world. I reckon I could probably move there. And what happens is, yes, they could and they're really value, particularly, let's say, people in machine learning, and so they may be offered a role, a tech company, where, let's say, in the US they're paid a million dollars, or in the

38:48 UK maybe 400,000 or $500,000. Unfortunately, salaries in the UK are quite a lot lower than the US. So basically they could be earning twice or three times as much as what they earn the university, and that is why a lot of universities have said: well, how about we give you a duel position? You can have both, and that is why, if you look at almost all of the top tech companies, There is almost always the person who's like one of the top VPS, of sort of science or whatever. He's almost always also have an as an academic position. And I, you know, I'm obviously basing this only on some conversation, but most of the time it's because the

39:31 universities had to do that to keep them, because if not, they're going to go anyway. Um, it's also a little bit the other way around, where the tech company may want access to the academic's, you know, research group- and their students, and so they want to do it. But so I'm rambling around. What's my conclusion to this? And these podcasts have already been too long, so I I'll I'll summarize this discussion starting from the beginning: PhD or no PhD, do a PhD is worth in the long run? How to get a professor long role? But be aware that, um, as I kind of said and didn't say, there is more than one Route. One route is the

40:11 pure academic route, but there is routes where you jump in and out and you particularly come back when you you know you're quite, you've made it more in industry and you do see that in lot of universities where people have sort of come and gone a little bit. So bear in mind it's a long journey but it's worth it once you get right to the top. But you know, just have the conviction that to to go for it- Academia or industry, difficult um- Academia- once you get to the end I think looks fantastic. But I do see people burn out and really struggle. So you know it's a tough one. Industry can be good. A lot more permanent um basis um with work if

40:51 you things like Formula 1 can pay very well, but which is kind of a little bit the concluding for on this- be aware of the opportunity that's coming through sort of tech companies, particularly in this age of AI. I wish I'd known about this. That's why I'm really doing this episode, because I wish I'd known this when I was an undergraduate. I I I'm glad in some ways I didn't, because I like the route that I've taken, but I wish I'd known because I think maybe I would have been more educated about the opportunities out there. Okay, now I work for that company, but I think what would it been like if i' have done that. So I really wanted to

41:29 do this episode just to make people aware I've- like I said, I could talk about this for hours cuz it's it really is. There's so many nuances and I've, you know, probably made some things generalized too greatly or or or not. But I'm hoping you find this useful, particularly if you're maybe a bit younger and you don't really know what, what sort of roles and positions are out there. And please do let me know if you found this useful, cuz I'm happy to record more, more episodes like this. And uh, yeah, I think the uh next few episodes are going to be back to the normal interviewing guest about interesting things in science and engineering, but I

42:02 wanted to try this format, um, to see how it goes. So so thanks for listening. [Music].