First Person

Measures of Success

Article tools

Printer friendly	E-mail article	Subscribe	Order reprints
	Discuss any Chronicle article in our forums
Latest Headlines First Person Half a Sabbatical Giving up a full year's leave to take only a semester off was a mistake but even a limited break has its benefits. The Fund Raiser Collateral Baggage Who, exactly, is the audience for a capital campaign once it goes public? The CV Doctor Does Your Vita Need Work? Submit your CV and it may be selected for an online critique by our Career Talk columnists. Career Talk Starting Fresh A primer for new professors on what to expect in the first year on the job. Resource Salaries: Faculty | Administrative Presidential pay: Private | Public Financial resources: Salary and cost-of-living calculators Career resources: Academic | Nonacademic Library: Previous articles by topic | by date | by column Career Talk, Ms. Mentor, and more... Landing your first job On the tenure track Mid-career and on Administrative careers Nonacademic careers for Ph.D.'s Talk about your career Blogs

By Daniel P. Ames

Have you ever heard it said, "I could have made more money in industry but I prefer the intellectual freedom I get at the university"?

Years ago, as a new graduate student in engineering living on a lowly monthly stipend, I heard a professor say that and didn't believe him. To me, salary was at the top of my scorecard of success. Check off that box and you have it made. If he could make more money in industry, I thought then, why didn't he go do it?

I suspected that the job possibilities of Ph.D.'s in industry were overrated and that this professor just enjoyed the appearance of nonmaterialistic intellectualism that came with the statement.

I had reason to be skeptical. At about the same time, my older brother had just completed a master's in engineering and had taken a job in industry. As it turned out, his initial private-sector salary was barely livable with two sets of student loans and a family of four to feed. His career path also proved to be as unstable as the Wasatch fault line that passed near his Salt Lake City office.

I monitored my brother's situation with fear and trepidation. I watched him change companies in an effort to squeeze a few more drops of remunerative blood from the turnip of civil-engineering budgets. I watched him get downsized on New Year's Eve when his new company failed to win the "big contract."

Ultimately, I watched as he abandoned the shaky ground of private industry and moved into the comparatively stable world of government employment, where he has quickly risen through the ranks and is very satisfied.

Certainly my brother's experience runs counter to the idea that you can earn a fortune in industry. I suspect that there are many who would argue otherwise -- people who end up as senior engineers or managing partners with salaries much larger than the government agencies pay. Those are people who are willing to ride the waves that roll through the private sector, people who have a high tolerance for instability.

It was clear that my brother was not one of those people. I decided that my tolerance for instability was also low and added a checkoff box for "stability" to my personal scorecard of success.

In a previous column, I wrote about my initial indecision over whether to pursue a tenure-track job or work in industry. I described an interview I'd had at a university in Southern California, and how I'd hoped that a great tenure-track offer was imminent.

In the end, I did get a great job offer, not from the university, but from a large corporation. It came with a good salary, allowing me to check that box on my scorecard.

At the company interview, the individual who was vacating the position told me how great the job had been for him. "I have worked here for 30 years and never regretted a moment." It was clear that I could also place a large check mark next to "stability" on my scorecard.

With the company's offer of a high salary and good stability, I should have jumped at the opportunity. However, I struggled with the decision. I have a fool-proof policy for making tough decisions. Essentially, you flip a coin and if you are disappointed with the outcome, then you do the opposite.

In retrospect, that is exactly what happened last year. On one side of the coin was the prospect that I might find a great academic job and on the other a great job in industry. I flipped the coin by applying for both positions. It landed on the industry side. I was disappointed. That suggested that my personal scorecard of success was still missing an important element. I wasn't sure what that element was, but I had sensed it at the interview for the university job. So I began to hunt for a tenure-track job in earnest.

I soon found a job opening that appeared to be right up my alley. But while it matched my interests very well, it was in the "wrong" department. My degree is in engineering, and the position was in the department of geosciences at Idaho State University.

I e-mailed the department head and introduced myself. I explained that I was interested in the job, but that my Ph.D. was not in geology and asked if that would be a problem. His response was prompt and helpful and encouraged me to apply.

Throwing caution to the wind, I submitted my application. A few months later, an invitation came for a telephone interview. Excellent! I had already done a couple of phone interviews, and knew the drill well.

I knew, for instance, that it was useful to browse a department's Web page, look at faculty photos, and learn about the committee members before the interview.

(I had also learned that scanning a department's Web site is also a good tactic for relieving nerves. I had once found a Web site with teaching evaluations for several of the committee members I was about to encounter in a phone interview for a different job. It was amazing how much it helped reduce my sense of intimidation to know that the person asking for my "teaching philosophy" had an average teaching evaluation of 2.7 out of 10.)

The phone interview with the Idaho State committee went off without a hitch. Then in December, I was invited to an on-campus interview at the university, a two-hour drive from where I was living. The committee chairman assured me, "It's not just because you live close and won't cost us much to bring you here." I must admit that I probably wouldn't have thought of that had he not mentioned it. But, given that my Ph.D. was not in the requested field, I began to wonder if I was just an easy interview to fill a quota.

Interestingly, I found that having written off the chance of being offered the job made the interview much easier. Instead of fretting about how I was being perceived, I could relax and enjoy the experience.

Before leaving town on the second day, I was invited to dinner with a group of faculty members. As the conversation progressed, one of them asked, "Dan, I only have one unanswered question for you."

For the first time in two days, I got nervous. "Go ahead," I replied.

It was the question I had expected: "Tell me what an engineer is doing applying for a job in a geology department."

Although I had expected the question, I had never formulated an answer. It came to me at that moment. "Well," I said, "let me ask you what a geology department is doing advertising a position that fits me as an engineer?"

There was a moment of silence and the committee member took a sip of his drink and smiled, "Good point."

The job offer from Idaho State came in February. After some salary and start-up package negotiation, I readily accepted.

The department had begun its interviewing process fairly early. As a result, I continued to get responses from other universities to which I had applied. The responses were about evenly distributed between "Thank you, but no thank you" and invitations to begin the interviewing process.

It was nice to be able to disregard the rejections completely, and to have the satisfaction of telling the other institutions, "Thanks for the invitation, but I just accepted a job."

School starts this month and I am vacillating between nerves of steel and nerves that won't be still.

Regardless, the decision feels right. The uncertainty and indecision that revolved around me last year as I tested the waters are gone. My wife is impressed.

Frankly, I am impressed too. Looking at my scorecard of success, the salary is fine and the position appears to be stable for now (assuming, of course, I never show up on a Web page with a teaching evaluation of 2.7 out of 10).

A few years ago I read a newspaper column that asked the question, "Would you still go to work at your current job if you weren't getting paid for it?" Perhaps that is the best of all measures of career success -- when you wake up one morning and find that your job is simply doing what you like to do.

Maybe that is the missing measure on my scorecard. Maybe that is what my graduate professor was really saying when he said, "I could have made more money in industry, but...."