As of May 31, Kyle had two very attractive job offers in front of him, both of which he had negotiated. While he had submitted a few more applications earlier in the month, as he hadn’t heard back from them yet it seemed that he would just be deciding between the postdoc and the real job at the start-up. Kyle asked to take another week to make his decision, which the postdoc advisor agreed to.

This was basically an embarrassment of riches situation. We hardly did anything in our non-work time throughout the whole week other than think about, talk about, and research this decision. Kyle is a very slow, deliberate decision-maker. Even though these two options were both great, it was really hard for Kyle to actually choose, especially because he didn’t want to let anyone down.

These are the factors we considered:

The Original Reasoning

Our plan had originally been for Kyle to do a (real) postdoc because he had always been told that it was necessary to do a postdoc to be able to be hired in industry in the biomedical sciences. At least, I thought that was Kyle’s reason. When Kyle managed to get an offer from a company with only a year of (non-real) postdoc experience for a job doing exactly what he wants to do long-term, I thought he should skip the postdoc and accept the offer. (I soured on postdocs in general after I read The Postdoctoral Experience Revisited this past spring.) But Kyle apparently had a second reason for wanting to do a postdoc – the love of research in his field and the opportunity to gain additional, more diversified training. And as reasons go, that is a great one for doing a postdoc! It was pretty difficult for him to wrap his mind around the idea of not doing a postdoc after assuming for so many years that he would.

Career Goals

In some ways, this was the key decision Kyle needed to make in this process. If he wanted to pursue a tenure-track academic position, he really should take the postdoc. Once you go into industry you can “never” go back to academia. Kyle has never been die-hard about becoming an academic, but he didn’t want to close that door, either. But if his goal was go to into industry, why not realize that goal right away? As excellent as the training might be in a postdoc, work experience would probably be better for getting the next job. Also, I’ve always heard that start-up work experience in particular is incredibly valuable because your development is so fast and broad.

The Work

In both jobs, Kyle would be able to work in his field on problems of interest. He would use his existing skills and also gain new skills. The mentorship and training would almost certainly be better with the postdoc, because that’s what its purpose is. However, Kyle really enjoys working in a team, to which the nature of private sector work is better suited; academic work tends to be quite solitary. The slight advantage here would go to the real job because of the types of problems Kyle would get to work on.

Training

Even though he has a B.S. in biology, Kyle’s dissertation work was all computational. He was interested in getting “back to the bench.” The postdoc position would allow him a 70/30 split between computational and wet-lab work, while the real job was supposed to be all computational. However, Kyle was able to negotiate for 10% of his time to be spent being trained in and carrying out wet-lab experiments.

Publishing

In academia, credit for work is given in a (ideally) straightforward manner: authorship on papers and sometimes patents. Kyle would definitely build his publication record at in the postdoc. In industry, some companies allow publishing, patents, and conference presentations, while others do not. Kyle would not be able to publish original research at the start-up, but he would be able to attend a few conferences and be listed on patents. It’s difficult to consider leaving behind the currency of the academic world!

The Prestige

The postdoc advisor’s university is considered by many to be the pinnacle institution for academic research. This is the kind of place that gets uncomfortable to name-drop (we learned).

At first I didn’t see why anyone would care that much about the university a postdoc advisor works for (after all, Kyle wouldn’t receive a degree from this university). I’m not really into brand names in education, and I thought Kyle wasn’t either. After all, we both chose to go to a college that no one has ever heard of. It was nice to get a degree from our PhD institution, which also has a brand name, and I consider it to be on par with the other dozen-ish top universities in the country for research. But apparently a lot of people think the postdoc university is a cut above that!

When we told people Kyle had an offer for a postdoc at this university, they would almost invariably respond, “Ohhhhh, [university name]. Wow, great.” Kyle was even told that having that university on his CV for his postdoc training would give him an incredible networking advantage for future jobs and allow him to easily land an academic position. Again, this was a little hard for me to believe.

For the real job, since it is a start-up no one has ever heard of it. In Kyle’s field, it spun out of the best-known lab and the foundational papers were published in Science, but it’s still not going to get him anywhere on name recognition ever with the general public or anytime soon within his field.

The Politics

Kyle has a great professional relationship with his PhD advisor (his current boss) and respects him a lot. His advisor made no bones about his preference that Kyle take the postdoc offer, going so far as to give Kyle advice on housing near the university and commuting options on multiple occasions (the university is his alma mater). There were several reasons, one of which was the common academia-is-better-than-industry refrain. It was hardly conceivable for Kyle that he would go against his current advisor’s wishes with respect to this decision.

Job Security

The postdoc offered very high job security because the lab is well-funded. Kyle would work there for 3-4 years, and the postdoc advisor would help him get his next position. The start-up is, of course, a start-up. It’s been around for a number of years and is in an expansion phase (obviously), but job security is much lower in industry than academia at this level, and the company may very well close at some point.

The Location

Both jobs are in major coastal cities (yay!), but neither in southern California (boo!). The postdoc is on the East Coast and the real job is on the West Coast. We’re not thrilled about the weather in either location, but the postdoc city would be more trying weather-wise. We have friends who live in both locations who were able to give us insight into how it is to live in each city. For job opportunities for me, both would be fine, but the postdoc city has the advantage, both for my business (flying East to West is definitely easier than flying West to East, and there are more universities on the East Coast) and for jobs in the fields I’m interested in that are related to my PhD work. The cost of living is similar (high) between the two cities, with the postdoc city being slightly more expensive.

Money Money Money Money

Of course, the start-up salary is higher than the postdoc salary. Naturally. That’s what we expected. Kyle’s base salary is for the start-up is about twice what he makes now (about three times what either of us earned toward the end of grad school), plus there is a vesting schedule for a small amount of equity and the possibility of yearly cash or equity bonuses. (We had to do a lot of research fast to even understand the offer!)

The postdoc salary is actually slightly less than he makes now. In fact, after adjusting for the cost of living and additional taxes, Kyle’s pay from this postdoc would be less than his pay as a grad student.

I’ll be really honest here. I was surprised by my reaction to the two salary offers. I know I’m a personal finance blogger and all, but I’ve generally felt that I don’t care that much about earning lots of money. We lived comfortably on our two grad student stipends, and would be fine living that way for the rest of our lives. I’ve always focused more on using what we do earn well rather than earning more. I had assumed for years that Kyle would be doing a postdoc next and I was well aware of the amount of money he would earn in that kind of position.

Kyle actually received the real job offer at 1:30 AM while he was on a red-eye back from the interview. I knew he hadn’t heard anything by the time he got on his flight, so right before I went to sleep I checked his email to see if they had sent him anything. I thought, “It would be so funny if I knew whether or not he got an offer before he did, because he’s out of communication range on his flight.” But that’s exactly what happened!

tears of joy

I saw that he had an email from the start-up CEO with “offer” in the subject line. I opened and read the email. I saw the salary offer, immediately burst into tears, and thanked God for it. I’m not much of a crier so I shocked myself with my reaction. I just thought, “He’s made it. We won’t have to struggle any more.” I wasn’t even aware that I felt that we were struggling!

I took a selfie and emailed it to Kyle with a congratulatory message expressing I was crying out of joy so he would see it when he landed.

I thought I had steeled myself to accept a postdoc salary, so my visceral reaction of relief when I saw the real job salary really surprised me.

After thinking and talking about it more, I realized that if Kyle took the postdoc offer I would have to look for a full-time job and keep my business as a side pursuit. Even my optimistic earnings projections for the next year would not be sufficient to maintain anything close to our current lifestyle in our new city. If he took the real job offer, I would at least be able to give my business a full-time shot. Even if I earned no money, we would be more than fine.

The Final Decision

Kyle agonized over this decision for the full week leading up to the postdoc advisor’s deadline. He talked with each of our sets of parents multiple times as well as friends, acquaintances, and former colleagues who had any kind of input on the two cities or the choice of academia vs. industry. We had multiple heart-to-hearts. Kyle seemed to be in a total deadlock as the deadline drew near. Finally, on the last day possible, he made a decision. He turned down the postdoc and accepted the real job!

In the time since Kyle made this decision, we have further negotiated his contract (lawyer time!) and started making arrangements for our move in the latter half of July. Kyle also finally heard back from the two other companies he applied to in the form of invitations to interview! While the job he accepted is definitely the best fit for him, it was nice to get that confirmation that he could get past the HR screening process at other companies without having done a postdoc. 🙂

All that to say… We are moving to Seattle!!

Do you make decisions easily or with much difficulty? What factors did you consider during you last job transition? How heavily do you weigh salary in choosing a position? Do you have any (positive or negative) thoughts about Seattle?