Academia versus industry

Trying to optimize a career decision based on current conditions is a bit like trying to time the stock market—you are sure to be overtaken by events.

One approach is to choose some reasonably long time frame, perhaps a decade, and ask yourself whether you’d be content to have lived through the average ups and downs you’d experience in a given job over that period.

That is from Ten Simple Rules for Choosing between Industry and Academia.

On the academic job market this year? For the entrepreneurial academic, I see a third option to a faculty or industry job: create your own post-doc to wait out the market.