Academia to Industry: Recognizing When It’s Time to Move On

TL;DR

After 15 years of prusing cognitive neuroscience research, I had to accept a reality: industry maybe offers opportunities that better align with my values. This includes financial security, growth potential and freedom from the perpetual anxiety of “will I have a job after this grant”.

When people find out that I opted out of my academic career, they ask questions in a manner that makes it sound as though I abandoned it. Others wonder why I left, assuming that academia was/is a really well compensated job. When in reality, I didn’t abandon anything. I changed jobs. Further, the compensation is/was meh given the years of training/education that I had put in. (Many know, too, and are candid about it. See redacted email from few couple years back)

Below, I will discuss how my overly naive and idealistic perspective kept me from realizing that academia is a job like any other job (in fact, an article covered this). Pursue the job but don’t idolize it. Like any other job, change is often hard but necessary, especially when values become misaligned. In my instance, the change wasn’t because academia ‘isn’t worth it’, it was simply no longer worth it to me.

There are systemic issues in academia that necessitate prompt solutions. Otherwise, like the WEIRD samples Psychology studies, there will increasingly be a WEIRD pool of academic researchers as a long-term effect of survivorship bias.
Note: This is not a “I’m so much better than academia” posts. Academia can be a great place to work if it aligns with your goals, interests and values, and you’re okay with the sacrifices. The reflections below pertain to my naivity

From Academia to Industry: Recognizing When It’s Time to Move On

Initial Idealism: Academia as a “Noble” Career

My journey toward brain research began in 2006 in a high school psychology class. Despite nearly failing out of high school with consecutive years with a 1.7GPA and getting expelled, my fascination with brain imaging persisted. After graduation, I enrolled in a local community college to pursue it in full force.

The path was long and somewhat chaotic (I had no one to guide me and there was no ChatGPT or useful career blogs). I worked as a barista, volunteered in ADHD research and older adult EEG studies, served as a veterinary research tech at a primate research center, worked as a residential counselor and research coordinator, and, again, volunteered in a brain imaging lab. Each position was a form to contribute to science and gain skills toward PhD readiness and left me wanting more in advancement of skills. Fortunately, outside of one position, I enjoyed each of the opportunities I had. During each job, I told myself that I was following a principled path (or, “noble”), increasing my skills and, where it was possible, incrementally contributing to advances in knowledge and health for society. These things, to me, outweighed the financial concerns or personal gain. I assumed, for a while, everyone else on the path shared similar values with respect to “personal” gain (more on this later…).

After years of prep, I assumed my window shuttered for a PhD after I had a brain tumor that parked me into the ICU. Nevertheless, I got back on the horse and after rejections from 15+ programs over two application cycles, I finally caught a break: admission to University of Michigan’s PhD program in 2017. I was ecstatic. I still have the email saved, which I received from Dr. Daniel Keating on December 23. I remember with whom I was, where I was, the weather and the time that I read it . Emotional salience does rad things to memory consolidation.

I started my PHD program bright-eyed, intimidated but excited. I worked long hours and seized every opportunity. Coming from no-name schools and from a home of high school graduates from the USSR, I set out to prove myself. That I belonged & I didn’t take a spot from someone more deserving. In my work, I committed to doing research the right way, handling data and participants’ contributions with integrity. Not on personal ideology, which often occurs in science. In my collaborations I tried my best to focus on collegiality for advancement in science rather than personal gain. But gradually, I started wondering: Are people playing the game like they do in any other job? In other words, logically exploiting weaknesses in the system to advance and promote their name.

Between the time I started in research (2009) and the end of my PhD (2022), I observed:

• Junior researchers get thrown under the bus for personal advancement.
• People bend or ignore scientific ethics for a publication (what one advisor referred to as, “bean counting”).
• Masking self-serving behavior behind the veneer of “open science” practices. Simply because, it was the new signal.
• People maximize how to market their work and get research soundbites into the news (in writing this, I saw an article covered on BBC and realized… just like some personalities are not meant for TV, similar is true for research papers).
• In select cases, ignore ethical violations or critical scientific questions simply to “not step on any toes.” (Example: One colleague reported a blatant ethical violation I shared a couple years prior… the ethics office reviewed it and closed it with…. zero comments.)
• Landing positions because of political activism/ideals rather than rigorous science.

Of course, not everyone was/is engaging in behavior such as the ones mentioned above. The representations of these issues are proximal to Pareto’s 80/20 rule, I would argue. However, when people observed blatantly bad science, they infrequently challenged it in public formats. This was/is especially true during emotional, political climates. There were rare legends that did, such as Dr. Dave Mayer’s who frequently asked hard hitting questions.

Slowly, throughout my PhD program, the “nobleness” of academia slowly wore off. It began feeling like any other job. Whether I was a roofer, a barista, a sales representative or a research tech, there were politics, personalities and crappy incentive structures that some individuals creatively leveraged in their advancement. At the tailend of my PhD, I had leaned toward not pursuing faculty positions because the applications required me to write a document that, as we were coached, was effectively an apology letter for who I was. It remains one of the weirdest experiences in my journey. The decision not to pursue academia solidified when I learned that the departments engaged in unethical hiring processes.

The Misaligned Incentives

Academia often depends on playing “the game” than producing quality research (I discuss the publishing issue in a previous post). The incentive structure rewards:

• Publishing quantity over quality. As noted here, every paper reads as a win, rarely is a hypothesis not supported (however, registered reports are helping with this).
• Chasing trendy topics rather than important questions. In some cases, lazily repackaging a theory to make it appear new, exciting and not citing the origins.
• Securing grants through persuasive storytelling rather than scientific merit. An aside: a few years back, a faculty member told a group of students in a room to focus “more on the story than the science”.
• Striving for top journals or getting big-name awards on your resume (ironically, who is in your circle drives what journals you can get into and awards may get. Not always but more than one would expect…)

But I don’t blame anyone who has or continues to engage in these extracurriculars. This is the academic incentive structure. These are unofficial rules of the game. The behaviors secure jobs, promote advancement and increase the probability of securing critical funding. By securing that top paper, big grant and big award, you increases your odds of getting the next. To play the game well isn’t easy. So people do what they have to do. So, in this regard, academia is no different than any other job.

I will never forget hearing a very successful researcher advocate that a graduate student “keep running stuff, something will pan out” (i.e., p-hack a dataset. p-hacking is exploiting the statistical properties of data: if you run enough tests, you will eventually get the coveted p < .05). When push comes to shove, the smart and skilled scientists will find something meaningful in their data (if they need to). As a very skilled academic once said to me, “I can make my data dance but I choose not to.”

In many cases, the scientists know what they are/were doing when they massaged their data. As a result, they will secure a lot of big wins in their career. Top-down pressure keeps them doing what gets rewarded. While I don’t like it, I can admit that it is a smart move if one’s goal is career advancement in academia. During my PhD, numerous colleagues openly noted how Professor X just had their students rinse and repeat analyses. Hence, I don’t hate the player, I hate the game.

Why may this happen? Like in any job, a lot of these behaviors are the byproduct of Goodhart’s Law: if the metric for promotion and advancement is papers and/or grants, people will focus on… you got it, papers! P-hacking is a very quick and easy way to get papers (as described in this paper, Big Little Lies). If you can dress that p-hacking up with some complicated math that most reviewers don’t understand and a really nice story, you’ve got it made (these days, getting reviewers is getting harder and harder, so squeezing garbage through the cracks is getting easier). In fact, if you can story-tell, do complicated math and are good at politics, you can make it really far in academia and industry.

At the end of my PhD program, I realized I was wrong about what “academia” was. Since I was unwilling, I had to carve a space out for myself where I could do science without feeling the need to chase papers and prestige. It didn’t come as a surprise that I was 50/50 on staying versus leaving academia at the end of my PhD. But… I stayed. Somehow, I got lucky enough to join a lab as a postdoc and research scientist where the team focused on data integrity, quality, reproducibility and openness, often calling out their own mistakes (i.e., acknowledging that their sh*t stinks, too… as Outkast alerted us in 2004 [H/T to Dr. DuPre for using this song in the context of science]).

The Maths No Longer Math’d

In my postdoc and research scientist role, I continued to work long[er] hours and weekends to do the best that I could. I was driven to continue. I had gotten so far and learned so much, I was scared to abandon it all.

Like I said before, I told myself “if I keep trying hard, it’ll pay off.” Friends advanced in their careers and even those with only high school diplomas outpaced my postdoc and research scientist salary. Despite that, I kept waiting for that break. Maybe the next grant, the next publication, the next opportunity… I had to keep going, right? I can’t simply “give up”. But I never really defined what I was waiting for… so as a result, it was a never ending wait because the train for that platform was likely cancelled.

When science funding came under attack in January 2025, I found myself wondering whether I’d have a job in academic research at all. I went through stages of denial and depression. For years, the culture in academia made me feel as though if I left, it was “all a waste” and/or that “you’re a sell-out”. On the other hand, industry made me feel as though academics aren’t ready for industry. Fortunately, I had a boss who had a open perspective: In front of a room of professors and students he once said, ‘When academics leave to industry, academia doesn’t lose another one rather it gifts another person to industry’. After a decade in academic research, that was the first time that I heard a healthy perspective on the transition.

Despite my funding running out at Stanford, I was fortunate to be approached by a couple of awesome teams to continue cognitive neuroscience research. I would’ve had the opportunity to do interesting methodological and scientific work. Being unsure whether I could survive one more grant cycle, one more round of watching someone p-hack their way to the top, one more round of DT attacks on scientific funding, I decided to apply for industry jobs. After all, a job is a job.

When I received job offers from both academia and industry, I decided to make a weighted decision analysis. I scored academia and industry (1 to 10, lowest to highest) on factors that were important to me, weighted each factor by its importance and determined which came out on top. Unsurprisingly, what I felt in 2022 (wanting to leave academia) was even more clear now given this semi-quantitative reflection. Industry jobs were a better fit for me than academic jobs. Two critical impacts components were clear: Industry offered significantly more financial security and growth potential.

Note:Weights are multiplied by self-reported 1-10 rating scores. For example, if the weight is 25% and resulting weighted value is 1.5, then the original is recomputed via 1.5/.25 = 6.

Coming from a family where I was on free or reduced lunch throughout my education and my family losing everything during the Great Recession, financial security was never a given. I was used to it. However, it also meant my parents wouldn’t have anything to retire on and someone would need to assist them. If I can only afford to pay for my own bills and every grant cycle I had to live in fear about funding, how and when could I help them? That increasingly weighed on me and played a critical role in my decision. Some would argue, if you leave academia you lose intellectual freedom. Pursing a job due to “intellectual freedom” is a massive privilege — something my dad as a miner/roofer and mom a house-keeper, never ever even consider. Besides, intellectual freedom exists in industry, too. It just appears in different forms than academia.

Jump When You Can

If you are like me and are 50/50 on staying versus leaving academia, push back against the illogical thinking and/or fear that I had. Leaving isn’t giving up. Leaving is getting a different job. Leaving is trying something new. Leaving is challenging yourself in a new way. Leaving is giving yourself more opportunities for growth. Who knows, you may like it just as much, if not more. Heck, some work has cited job satisfaction is increasing more in industry relative to academia. I feel happier now than I have felt since … 2018? Maybe it will change. But I don’t think about work every moment when I am not working — I can finally disconnect. Yes, in Q4 we had a massive sprint where I may have worked 50-60 hours, but that was a me problem — my boss didn’t expect that. As opposed to before, I no longer have slack/teams or work email on my phone.

So far, in my first few months, I have been extremely satisfied with my decision. My boss is extremely appreciative of the work that I have been doing. Outside of adjusting to the oddities of cubicle life (this Quantitude episode covers several oddities quite well, so I won’t go into them) and everyone having their Teams cameras off 99% of the time, I got up to speed extremely fast. It barely felt like I started a new job. Whereas in academia I felt like my advancement in career and income would be slow, the sky is the limit at this point.

What I Gained from Academia

I was well prepared for industry because my previous work and training got me there. I developed quantitative, collaborative, project management, community building, and adaptability skills. In fact, a PhD has a lot to offer. These skills transfer well to industry roles (as I previously discussed here). Academia was valuable training; it just wasn’t my final destination.

Despite being in finance, I’ve been comfortable since day one. My boss thanks me for my work and compliments the progress I make weekly. My team is small, highly collaborative and we work on large-scale data, automation and model building that will facilitate complex modeling strategies to offer better services to people in the real world on a daily basis. It will have a direct impact on thousands of people.

The Job: Then versus Now

Conclusion: A Job Is a Job

Leaving academia doesn’t mean abandoning the values that brought me to science and where I am today. It means finding a job where those values such as intellectual rigor, ethical practice and meaningful contribution can flourish without requiring me to sacrifice my financial security, personal life or integrity. The longer I stayed in academia, the more I realized the self-talk of “one more break,” “one more long weekend of work,” etc., were forms of lying to myself to justify staying the course. Despite the hard reality: I passed my exit a couple miles ago.

If I had to do it again, I would do my PhD program. I would still do my Postdoc. I learned and grew a lot. I had a lot of great colleagues and made, what I hope will be, life-long friends. I obtained critical thinking and analytic skills that I may have not had the opportunity otherwise. Like some friends have  correctly noted, I had a chance to work with the top 1% of the 1%. It was both a privilege and an honor. My hope is that I can still remain affiliated and do science with these colleagues on the side. After all, academia has some terrific people.

At the end of the day, some people thrive as academics and in academia, and that is wonderful. We need those people. I can’t say whether I was a good or bad academic. I can now say, I’m simply no longer an academic. And that’s okay.

There are a number of issues in academia that need to be resolved, which many have written on this topics. So I won’t go into depth. Put simply:

• • Pay people more. Leaving nearly doubled my pay, it shouldn’t have to be this way.
  • Remember that people are humans. Celebrate successes, give people a “good job” more than once per year.
  • Enforce data integrity standards and training requirements within departments. I’d wager many papers out there are “significant” due to errors.
  • For gods sake: Fix the broken incentive structure. No graduate student should be publishing 20 papers during their 5-year program.