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[anon99]

You have a TT position and mention the two body problem.  Is your husband only applying to places in your current area or are you willing to move should he get a job elsewhere?

[navelgazer]

You have a TT position and mention the two body problem.  Is your husband only applying to places in your current area or are you willing to move should he get a job elsewhere?

He applied to every job in the three sub-areas he thought he could remotely get an interview for, from Kansas to Toronto to LA to Florida. The limiting factor is PhD research institutions and no Masters or undergraduate programs.

We decided not to even worry about the specifics of my department unless it became relevant. To me this is the biggest issue, but again not why I hate his job.

[dellaroux]

You can really only productively hate evil.

His job is not inherently evil.

Some aspects of it are certainly uncomfortable, and may be making you unhappy, but it is not evil.

It also seems to me you are more angry at the overall situation, which might be understandable, but it is affecting your balance about things.

Anger can be defined in one way of looking at it (mine, anyway) as love and hate streaming together along a voltaic differential--between love and hate for the same thing, usually.

Love is for people, places and things. You need to balance some of this hating out with love, it seems to me.

What can you love about his job? How can you integrate this love more fully into your view of the whole situation?

I think getting stuck in the hate is at least as bad or worse than someone getting stuck in a job. Eventually, the person will leave the job but the habit of hating is harder to shake.

I'd start shaking that now, stop fussing and whinging and whining about it (as the ?Irish, or ?English or ?both) sometimes say, and take in with gratitude the positives people have been reminding you of here, and the positives you've mentioned about your husband and your relationship.

Find a place to transcend some of the hating from, because the acid will keep dripping into everything else you say and do, and you won't be able to stop it after awhile.

Ventilating here is a good first step, but you seem to keep resisting the positives people are reminding you of.

Take them in and let the fresh air blow some of that fuggy hatred away.

[galway]

I think it's also worth noting that while 2-3 years may have been standard in his field the recent economic debacle has probably changed that.  It certainly has in my field.  I know a lot of incredible people who have ended up in postdocs longer than anyone would expect because of the global economy and state budgets.  In 2008-2009 something like 40% of the TT jobs advertised were pulled, sometimes after the interview, in a few cases after the offer.  The market was slightly better in 2009-2010 but there were fewer jobs and some were still pulled.  This year?  I haven't heard of so many getting pulled but there are fewer than their were a few years ago.  As a result the average time postdoc-ing has gone up.  This has fallen directly in the middle of your husband's job searching and it's probably been a factor in why he isn't in a TT job now.  Consider that when you look at his career trajectory and evaluate his potential for getting a TT job.  Also - Science is a career maker and will probably make a big difference in his shot at getting interviews.
Good luck to you both!

[adjunctprincipessa]

I'm not in STEM, so I cannot add anything to this discussion except my hope for the best for you and your husband.  It is very stressful combining two careers along with raising a newborn, and having to deal with job search anxiety each year.  I do think galway makes a good point about the difficulties of the job market in recent years.  Also, if your husband is not ready to give up on his dream, it might make sense to support him for another year of searching, so he can see if the Science publication makes a difference.  Best of luck to you.

[navelgazer]

Thanks galway and adjunctprincipessa!

Well, it looks like we're in it for the next 12+ months. He finally got deadbeat adviser on the phone, and his advice was (almost) the same as what I've been saying: do a local industrial job and academic search at the same time next academic year. Then do a nationwide search for an industrial job.  *I* wanted it to be local industrial now, but I can deal with this decision since the argument is more science up until September can only be a good thing.

There are additional complicated factors in regards to my status, but that's okay.

Still hate his job! Plus, they've started (understandably) taking lab space away randomly, which makes my husband really sad. I think he's basically a floating postdoc on a multi-PI grant, which I don't fully understand. It seems lonely and isolating for him to not be in a lab.

[mleok]

navelgazer, I've heard you repeatedly state that you hate this situation, and that you and your husband's graduate advisor want your husband to apply for an industrial job... what I haven't heard explicitly is: what does your husband want? I do get the sense from your posts that his heart is set on an academic career. In which case, his experiences are far from atypical, these are the unfortunate realities of the academic job market in your husband's field.

He did perhaps suffer from the loss of a postdoc advisor at a rather critical point in his career, but by all indications, he has handled the situation admirably, and I can't help but feel that letters from the other PIs on the grant about his critical role in keeping the lab operational will be impressive to a number of search committees.

In all honesty, I don't get the feeling that you are all that supportive of your husband's academic career aspirations. I say this because in every two body situation in which spouses were supportive of each other's academic careers, both spouses have gone onto the market together.