One of the concerns PhDs have when contemplating leaving academia is wanting to do research without selling out to giant corporations that only care about profits.
A social science PhD may well worry that leaving academia means working as a researcher at Meta (Facebook) or another soulless entity where their insights will be used to manipulate users for corporate ends.
Yikes, eh? A lot of PhDs are thinking “no thank you” right now!
Now there’s a lot we could talk about here. (Me to these narratives: 👀)
Let me focus on just one thing.
While it’s true that corporations hire academics to work in research fields such as user experience (UX) and marketing, these and other research roles exist far beyond the FAANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) and AI startups with questionable missions.
For example, I know humanities and social science PhDs in UX research roles for government departments and hospital systems. Does that strike you as better?
Universities hire researchers and analysts too, as full-time, ongoing staff. And, no, I’m not talking about professors, postdocs, and research associates on soft money contracts here. There are other roles for researchers, even on university campuses!
If you find yourself engaged in all or nothing thinking about what leaving academia will mean for you, make sure you’re not overlooking options. To put it another way, there’s almost always a door number three, four, five, and more.
I take on a few more myths and missteps in my free on-demand training.