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Ask HN: Highly technical and want to continue in research, but how?
2 points by ipunchghosts on Feb 21, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments
I am highly skilled in computer science, computer vision, signal processing, and machine learning. I love doing research and publish a few papers every year where I am the first author.

I recently received a large raise which makes securing funding a bit difficult. My grant money doesn't go as far which means I dont have as much time to spend on each problem. Essentially, I must find another grant to keep myself funded. I hate this.

I have asked HR to lower my salary but they refused. They said I can charge overhead if I am short on money but I think this is a bad long-term solution especially as layoffs are in swing.

It seems that with my skillset, I am no longer encouraged to work on research, but to help supervise several projects simultaneously to help younger folks with their research. I have experience with this and its quite rewarding but the younger folks simply dont have the math chops to create the robust solutions I have been able make throughout my career. I usually have one "brilliant" idea a year which leads to a big breakthrough hence my salary raise. This has only come about because I allocate larges amounts of time to sit and reflect on a problem. But, with having to manage more projects to stay funded, I no longer have the ability to work within such an environment. I have to believe I am simply at the wrong organization and that someone will hire me.

I am 39 with a PhD. I feel way to young to give up on research yet! Any thoughts on how to proceed or where to look for a new position?



I don't understand the problem. You have to pay your own salary with the grants you get?

[In my case the university pays the salary, and we use the grants to buy stuff (a computer, air conditioner, travel, ...)]


The University takes 50% of my grant money off the top as overhead. Here's an example, a 100k grant usually covers a grad student for 1 year but only covers me for 3 months.


Yes. My institution works solely on soft money.


National lab if in U.S.


Bingo!

At many national labs, there's a reason why the acronym RIP stands for "retired in place," rather than "rest in peace."




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