• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

The Professor Is In

Guidance for all things PhD: Graduate School, Job Market and Careers

  • Home
  • Courses & Events
    • How To …
    • The Art of the Academic Cover Letter
    • The Art of the Article
    • Unstuck: The Art of Productivity
    • On Demand Courses
    • Upcoming Live Webinars
    • Free Productivity Webinars
    • Gift Certificates
  • Personalized Job Help
    • Document Editing
    • Quick Reviews
    • Specials
    • Interview Prep
    • Personal Negotiating Assistance
    • One on One Career Consults
    • Testimonials
    • Interview Testimonials
    • Graduate School Application Assistance
  • Productivity
  • Coaching
    • Productivity Coaching
    • Private Coaching
    • Leaving Academia Coaching Group
  • The Professor Is Out
    • It’s OK to Quit
    • Our Art of Leaving Program
    • Prof Is OUT Services
    • Our Prof Is OUT Team
    • Prof is OUT Client Testimonials
    • Ex-Academics: A TPIO Support Community
  • Workshops
  • Blog

Ivory Tower In the Rear-View Mirror — Dr. Henry Ngo

By Kel Weinhold | February 25, 2020

We continue with our new column, “Ivory Towers In The Rearview Mirror,” featuring interviews with PhDs who have charted a course unrelated to the tenure track, putting academia squarely in the rearview mirror.

Our hope is that seeing and hearing from a wide range of PhDs who are celebrating their careers rather than settling for them will inspire every grad student, ABD and PhD to add the road OFTEN traveled to their list of options.

Remember, 50-90% of PhDs (depending on the field) end up in work off the tenure track. Putting traditional academia behind you IS the normative path!

We are excited to hear and share your stories. If you have a PhD and are working outside of the academy and would like to share your experience with TPII readers, we’d love to hear from you!

Share YOUR PostAc story here!

Today we are pleased to feature Dr. Henry Ngo.

Currently, I am doing data science work with my provincial government’s Ministry of Health. 

I got a PhD in Planetary Science from Caltech in 2017.

Before starting the PhD, I had a range of careers that I found interesting, including research and teaching in academia, government and industry, and I realized they all would benefit from the training and research skills that come with obtaining a PhD.

At the start of the PhD, choosing where my spouse and I lived was more important than what we did for our careers. So we were prepared to move a bit for postdocs but planned to eventually end up geographically where we wanted even if it meant leaving academia.

During the PhD, I learned what I really enjoyed about the work. I liked the science aspect but that wasn’t my passion. I also learned that the main product of academia is a paper and most projects are not really done until this happens, which was limiting. What I did like was using techniques and solving problems. Luckily, these skills and problems need solving everywhere, not just in academia!

I got my first postdoc in this geographic area working at a government lab! There I could see that projects have lots of different end goals and purposes. It doesn’t have to be a paper in the end. This is refreshing to me!

I eventually decided that if I was going to stay in astronomy, I wanted to work at the government lab and not at a University, mainly for the work-life balance and my desire to support great science rather than be the PI all the time. The actual workload compared to the pay and work-life balance in Canadian tenure track faculty positions are not the right fit for me at all. It isn’t worth it. Especially compared to the cost of living for most places.

However, new hires at the lab where I did my postdoc are very scarce so I also looked for positions in the same city but outside of astronomy. I found a job posting that  felt like I was reading my CV. So I applied for it, got it and turned down another term position with my postdoc employer.

If you are a PhD considering alternatives to the tenure track, you should do what is right for you! There are a lot more careers out there besides TT and the (stereo-)typical post-academic path for astro/physics PhDs (i.e. data science, finance, etc.). Do informational interviews and find out what you can be doing. Many of us went into PhD programs because we wanted to contribute to the greater good of humanity. There are a lot of ways we can do this outside of academia too!

Share Your Story Here

Similar Posts:

  • Interview with Karen Kaplan, Senior Careers Editor at Nature
  • Ivory Towers in the Rearview Mirror: Allison Yakel
  • #Dispatches: How Has COVID19 Impacted Your Career Planning, Part I: Leaving the Academy
  • Questioning Your Future in Academia? Do This Now!
  • An Alt-Ac Summer Workshop That Works (A guest post)

Filed Under: Goodbye Ivory Towers, Post-Ac Free-Lancing and Small Business, Post-Ac Job Search, Quitting--An Excellent Option, Rearview Mirror

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Buy My Book!

4.8 stars on Amazon!

The_Professor_Is_In.indd

Get Immediate Help

In addition to our blog and book, we have upcoming live webinars, pre-recorded webinars and other programs that you can get started on right away:

The Art of the Academic Cover Letter
The Art of the Article
Unstuck: The Art of Productivity
Quick Reviews
Free Productivity Webinars

Categories

  • #MeTooPhD
  • Academic Job Search
    • How To Choose and Manage Recommenders
    • How to Interview
    • How To Write Academic Job Cover Letters
    • How To Write CVs
    • Landing Your Tenure Track Job
    • Major Job Market Mistakes
    • Negotiating Offers
  • Adjunct Issues
  • Advising Advice
  • Alt-University Critique
  • Black Lives Matter
  • COVID19
  • Dispatches
  • Goodbye Ivory Towers
  • Graduate Student Concerns
    • Bad Advisors and Good Mentors
  • How To Do Conferences
  • How to Get Grants and Fellowships
  • International Perspectives
  • Intersectional Analyses
  • Makeup
  • Marginalized Voices
  • Mental Health and Academia
  • Ph.D. Poverty
  • Podcast
  • Post-Ac Free-Lancing and Small Business
  • Post-Ac Job Search
    • Careers Outside
  • Postdoc Issues
  • Productivity
    • Book Proposals and Contracts
    • Publishing Issues
    • Writing
  • Promote Yourself!
  • Quitting–An Excellent Option
  • Racism in the Academy
  • Rearview Mirror
  • Resumes & Postac Docs
  • Sexual Harassment in the Academy
  • Shame
  • Stop.Acting.Like.A.Grad.Student
  • Strategizing Your Success in Academia
  • Teaching and Research Statements
  • Teaching Demos
  • Teaching Portfolios
  • Tenure–How To Get It
    • How To Build Your Tenure File
    • Surviving Assistant Professorhood
  • The Campus Visit
  • Unstuck
  • Webinars
  • What Not To Wear
  • Women of Color in Academia
  • Work/Life Balance in Academia
  • Yes, You Can: Women in Academia
  • Your Second and Third Jobs

Footer

About Us

  • Who Is Dr. Karen?
  • Who Is On the TPII Team?
  • In The News
  • Contact Me
  • FAQs
    • Why Trust Me?
  • Testimonials

Community

  • #MeTooPhD
  • Peer Editing
  • PhD Debt Survey
  • Support Fund
  • I Help With Custody Cases for Academics

Copyright © 2023 The Professor Is In·

We Are Redefining Academic Community

That’s why we upgraded our private
Mighty Network.

We are committed to building a community with a focus on productivity support. Every day, in a dedicated space, we offer free coaching advice and encouragement. And the couple thousand people who have already joined are steadily building a supportive and interactive community devoted to that elusive idea of work-life balance.

Learn More

Get on Dr. Karen's Schedule

Get on my schedule to work on your tenure track job cover letter, CV, grant applications, book proposals, interview preparation, and more.  [si-contact-form form=’2′]