Thanks for writing this! It seems really useful for people getting started on their career to hear concrete experiences others have had.
I’m so impressed with your persistence in finding roles that help others as much as possible. In your place finding it difficult to get the roles I wanted, I can imagine selecting for roles I’d enjoy and would pay well, rather than continuing to look for roles that helped others like in animal advocacy. I also imagine feeling kind of bitter about my bad luck. I’m so grateful for how resiliently you’ve stuck with the project of longrun having impact, and how kindhearted rather than frustrated you’ve continued to be.
A couple of other thoughts about the ideas in the post:
One way people might think of getting short term grants is as being analogous to getting post docs in academia—doing one post doc is expected, two is fine, but after that if you’re not finding longterm positions you probably want to be considering non-academic jobs in addition to academic ones.
How good/bad it is to have a stable job vs being on a grant varies a lot by person, and by life stage. Personally, I really value stability (eg living in the same place) and prefer having a manager, but have reasonable financial stability. Some of my friends really appreciate variety and independence. Others need more financial stability than I do. It could easily be the right decision for a person never to be willing to work on a grant rather than taking a stable job, even though the grant would be a much better option for someone else.
Thanks for writing this! It seems really useful for people getting started on their career to hear concrete experiences others have had.
I’m so impressed with your persistence in finding roles that help others as much as possible. In your place finding it difficult to get the roles I wanted, I can imagine selecting for roles I’d enjoy and would pay well, rather than continuing to look for roles that helped others like in animal advocacy. I also imagine feeling kind of bitter about my bad luck. I’m so grateful for how resiliently you’ve stuck with the project of longrun having impact, and how kindhearted rather than frustrated you’ve continued to be.
A couple of other thoughts about the ideas in the post:
One way people might think of getting short term grants is as being analogous to getting post docs in academia—doing one post doc is expected, two is fine, but after that if you’re not finding longterm positions you probably want to be considering non-academic jobs in addition to academic ones.
How good/bad it is to have a stable job vs being on a grant varies a lot by person, and by life stage. Personally, I really value stability (eg living in the same place) and prefer having a manager, but have reasonable financial stability. Some of my friends really appreciate variety and independence. Others need more financial stability than I do. It could easily be the right decision for a person never to be willing to work on a grant rather than taking a stable job, even though the grant would be a much better option for someone else.