Passion for your work (academia vs. industry), March 9

Last year, I went to catch up with my friend Gen over a pint at the local Cambridge pub the Pickerel (affectionately “the Pick”). In the low-ceilinged, four hundred years old pub, we discuss our social lives, our climbing pursuits, and our research. I remember leaning forward as my friend Gen, an atmospheric scientist, traces convection cells in the air with her hands. In turn, I explain how atmospheres are modeled on other planets.

Deep into the conversation, I realize I’m enjoying myself. This feels different.

The year before, I’d been working at Starfish Space, an aerospace start up in Seattle. I remembered at work or going to conferences marveling at how much my colleagues lit up talking about their work. I found it interesting, and I liked it, but I wasn’t keen to discuss it over a pint, or when I wasn’t strictly working. I was happy to explain it, but I didn’t seem to find the problems deeply interesting the way that they did. I was jealous of the way my manager seemed to eat and breathe Starfish’s mission; he seemed interested in it for the sake of the engineering problems themselves.

After two years at Starfish, I left to be a scientist and went to complete my master’s at Cambridge, and I’m now working on my PhD at ETH. I enjoyed being at Cambridge, but it felt overwhelming, and people constantly questioned my decision to leave. Why are you here? Why did you leave your whole life behind?

Realizing I was having so much genuine fun talking to Gen about my research felt validating. Everyone questioning me had me questioning myself, too. But now, I was experiencing the joy of the work I had seen in my colleagues at my old job and that I had wanted for myself.¹ I was actually interested for once in talking about my job (along with still discussing other topics) outside of work hours.

Now, during my PhD, the decision has taken some time to settle in. There are now many things I miss about my industry job. Some of these are trite observations anyone can tell you: the pace of work is faster at a startup; startups adapt faster to new technology; you have a sense of being more on a team as opposed to working on your own project. I even miss the project management technology we used to use.

There are of course upsides as well: less teamwork means more autonomy. Everything I produce will be published instead of kept siloed. The science I work on feels important for the world, and for myself, and the work is intrinsically so interesting to me.²

I’m glad I spent the time there. I’ve brought a plethora of technical skills from there to here, as well as softer one. At Starfish, both technical and softer skills were explicitly addressed: time management, public speaking, and networking were covered in feedback sessions. In contrast, at ETH there has been less explicit discussion of these professional development benchmarks.

Reflecting now on the conversation I had with Gen, I realized I enjoyed it so much not necessarily because the research itself was so interesting. I enjoyed the breadth of connecting ideas across two related but separate fields, an experience that is rare in academia and industry. I had my own purpose and was working on my own project that I’d chosen and directed instead of being told what to do. And, importantly, before, my job was just a job; now, what I’m doing is something I’ve chosen and sought out myself. Being a scientist is now an identity marker, that comes with its own cultural signifiers and stakes that people can apply to me upon hearing what I do, something that is slightly differen than being an engineer.

I think this essay reads a bit ambivalent. I am happy with my PhD, and I have wanted to be a scientist my whole life. But as expressed, I’m glad I saw what else was out there. Maybe I can bring in some of what I’ve learned to academia, even if I'm hardly an industry veteran, and academia isn't known for change.³

¹ There are many other reasons I want(ed) to pursue science but just focusing on the love-for-work aspect here.

² Although the more time I spend solving problems, the more I realize I can make any problem interesting to me. This is an article in itself.

³ Again, a whole article in itself.