No job
Should have quit years ago
Failed the market
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I didn't get a job either, and I'm trying to reorient myself to alt ac. We will probably be happier than if we took medio/cre jobs in flyover states.
I think academia is great for the lucky 10%, but for the vast majority, we'd be better off elsewhere. I'm happy to take the skills I developed and apply them to other work.
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I didn't get a job either, and I'm trying to reorient myself to alt ac. We will probably be happier than if we took medio/cre jobs in flyover states.
I think academia is great for the lucky 10%, but for the vast majority, we'd be better off elsewhere. I'm happy to take the skills I developed and apply them to other work.I'd rather starve to death than eat lunch with a Kentuckian
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It�s not luck for the 10 percent.
Whatever helps you sleep ...You're the worst.
Scrap the lazy and the not so smart, there are still way more very good PhD students than there are jobs. Then it's luck every step of the way. Picking advisor and trendy topic, timing publications (out of your hands with the review times in soc journals), who's hiring, who's on the search committee...
I've seen it from both sides.
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I do think that the market for soc would be stronger if we had less lazy and not so smart. I think that the "filter" is stronger at econ progs and hence they have better prospects.
It?s not luck for the 10 percent.
Whatever helps you sleep ...
You're the worst.
Scrap the lazy and the not so smart, there are still way more very good PhD students than there are jobs. Then it's luck every step of the way. Picking advisor and trendy topic, timing publications (out of your hands with the review times in soc journals), who's hiring, who's on the search committee...
I've seen it from both sides. -
It�s not luck for the 10 percent.
Whatever helps you sleep ...I wouldn't frame it as "luck".
Sociology is essentially a caste system in which elites feed lower programs with their graduates.
Publications, grants, etc. matter, but only within your caste.
There are almost no examples of upward social mobility within sociology.
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It�s not luck for the 10 percent.
Whatever helps you sleep ...You are replying to me, and I will say that it's not strictly speaking luck in the sense of purely random chance. There are lots of structural and, yes, some individual factors conditioning who gets the attention of a search committee in a particular job cycle. Within that context, though, so much is about whether a job opens for which you are a good fit, whether someone on the SC has someone else in mind, etc., etc. Those factors are huge and feel closer to what most people would call "luck."
However, if you actually think it's anything like a meritocracy: HAHAHAHAHAHA. Whatever helps YOU sleep at night, honey...
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It?s not luck for the 10 percent.
Whatever helps you sleep ...
I wouldn't frame it as "luck".
Sociology is essentially a caste system in which elites feed lower programs with their graduates.
Publications, grants, etc. matter, but only within your caste.
There are almost no examples of upward social mobility within sociology.I agree with this and wish I had understood it going in: I would have attended the top 5 program in the "bad" location over the 10-20 in a better location where I ended up. I did not know what I was doing.
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I do think that the market for soc would be stronger if we had less lazy and not so smart. I think that the "filter" is stronger at econ progs and hence they have better prospects.
It?s not luck for the 10 percent.
Whatever helps you sleep ...
You're the worst.
Scrap the lazy and the not so smart, there are still way more very good PhD students than there are jobs. Then it's luck every step of the way. Picking advisor and trendy topic, timing publications (out of your hands with the review times in soc journals), who's hiring, who's on the search committee...
I've seen it from both sides.That "smartness filter" is absolutely not why econ grads have better job market outcomes.
If the same person got into a good econ program and a good soc program, and he chose the soc program, his job market prospects at the end would still be bad in soc no matter how smart he was. Speaking from personal experience...
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The "bad" locations in the Top 5 are what, Ann Arbor? Maybe Madison or Chapel Hill if it was long enough ago. None of those are so bad.
There is a pretty big difference between 10-15 and 16-20, tho. NYU, UT-Austin, Indiana, Duke, those are pretty good programs.
I agree with this and wish I had understood it going in: I would have attended the top 5 program in the "bad" location over the 10-20 in a better location where I ended up. I did not know what I was doing.
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What I'm hoping for this hypothetical ABD who got into a good econ phd program but chose to go to a decent but not top soc program and this year struck out on the academic job market (hypothetically) is that his prospects in alt-ac will still be good because he's a smart, creative guy who's good at data analysis.