How to leave philosophy (Guest post by Greg Stoutenburg)

By Greg Stoutenburg

I recently announced on Facebook that I left my NTT position for a non-academic one and offered to talk more about it. Marcus then asked if I might write something up for PC, which is something I am very happy to do!

It is very easy to get a non-academic job. All that you have to do is contact a friend who can get you hired and ask that friend to get you hired. Then, you interview with some people, possibly as a formality, and eventually, you get hired.

***

But the process of getting to the point where one can call upon such support can be frustrating and time-consuming and feel at times demeaning and hopeless. I started looking casually at non-academic positions a few years ago and much more seriously over the past few months. Looking back at various relevant conversations, interviews, and activities over the past couple of years, and the strategy that I cobbled together from others and applied in fits and starts, I now think that I could have successfully transitioned out of academia into an interesting and rewarding position in six months or less. The same should apply to you.

What I will do from here is state some things that I’ve learned and provide some personal commentary on each. These will be tidbits, and I hope to revisit this topic in more detail later. Although it makes me a little uncomfortable to offer advice, I am going to write this largely as advice, because that’s what I needed during my job search. I won’t spend any time on how hard it is in academia, or why a person would want to leave. I’ll write this for the person who already wants to leave. I’ll assume that’s common ground. I previously told the story of my academic search struggles here Sweat Equity on the Philosophy Job Market - The Philosophers' Cocoon (typepad.com).

Before I start, I do think it’s fair to say that mine is a success story. In the past month, I have been a candidate for a few positions in four distinct fields and had serious offers for further discussion about still other positions once I accepted the first offer. (Has that happened to you in philosophy? You tell someone, “I published yet another epistemology paper!” and they say, “Oh, really? We’re looking for epistemologists right now!”) The position I accepted is partly commission-based, so if I manage to make a non-zero commission, I will immediately earn more money than I did in my philosophy job, and potentially 50% more than in my philosophy job—at that’s all just the first year, while my philosophy job would pay the same until I die. On a personal note, I love the outdoors, and I am excited to finally be able to go camping in September again, which is impossible as an academic; I’ll be working remotely, so I can go anywhere I want to go and see my family regularly throughout the day; the work is interesting to me; and the career growth potential is astounding, especially in comparison to continuing in academia, where in your entire life you either get one promotion (two depending on how you count) or none (if you’re NTT, like me).

1. Having a Philosophy Ph.D. Is a Liability, Not an Asset

In one final interview for an analyst position at very well-known logistics company, the hiring manager I’d been talking with brought in someone who once held the same role and went on to climb the company ladder. After I had the opportunity to show in specific, clear, vivid detail how work I had done in my academic job, in epistemology, and otherwise applied specifically to the job requirements, she said, “You know, when I saw your resume, I said to [hiring manager], ‘Philosophy Ph.D.? Are you serious’ But when you explain it it makes sense.”

A senior HR director at a global marketing company said she would not have given my resume more than a second’s glance after seeing my education unless she’d already known more about me. I have had other interviews with similarly negative remarks about my education and academic work history. How many times was my application thrown out because of my education, which I always thought was a significant accomplishment?

When I say the degree is a liability, not an asset, I mean this: the *mere fact* that you have a philosophy Ph.D. counts against you, not for you. It is a reason to throw your resume out, a reason to hire the other candidate. The way to manage this is to show how, in very specific detail, with specific examples that appeal to the relevant audience and position, that YOU HAVE ALREADY DONE THE WORK THAT YOU’VE APPLIED TO DO. The reason you need to do this is that on a resume you can’t hide what you’ve done with the past 5-8 years of your life. So, you need to make it relevant to your new pursuit. And if you can do that, and you can talk specifically, clearly, vividly, about how the work you have done perfectly fits with what they are looking for, then you will sound like someone who can do the job who in virtue of the Ph.D. is also a serious thinker, and that’s a person with a lot of potential for growth.

2. YOU HAVE ALREADY DONE THE WORK THAT YOU’VE APPLIED TO DO

Your resume, and the way you talk about your education, experiences, and sometimes even hobbies, should be tailored to the job you’ve applied to do. It’s not that you can do the job. It’s that you have already been doing the job for years, you just haven’t held the title. You don’t need someone to give you a chance: you are making a lateral move. Repeat until confident belief is achieved.

Looking back, the interviews that I think I botched in recent years were ones where I felt like I was asking for the favor of getting me out of academia. That’s a mistake. You have to constantly remember that the other person is doing something risky in hiring anyone at all, as a bad hire can cost the company a lot. So, you have to demonstrate that you have already been doing the job, and make the case that hiring you is a bet with low risk and a high probability of reward.

Say you’re applying for this job, which I pulled up on LinkedIn just now for the purpose of this blog: Medifast - Careers - Inventory Control Analyst in Baltimore, Maryland | Careers at Baltimore - US Headquarters (icims.com). Do click on it, as I’ll refer to it. Here’s a snip of the description:

Would anyone hire you to do this job? Here is the list of qualifications:

The third bullet point is this:

• Strong interpersonal, communication, facilitation skills to effectively interact with all teams, all areas and all levels of business.

You’re a philosophy teacher, so of course you have “strong communication and interpersonal skills”. You can get freshmen to read Theaetetus! You can do this job!

But you have to find the right way to communicate that. Switching seats and taking the recruiter’s position, which of the following two resume lines sounds like it is from the person who satisfies that Qualification?

1. Taught introductory philosophy courses to a diverse student body
2. Captured attention and persuaded clients (students, administrators) with dynamic, client-focused presentations

You can see that it is definitely person B. Those examples were taken from my old resume (A) and my current one (B). Both describe the same type of work experience: talking about ideas with students (A) or students and administrators (B). What makes B far better as a descriptor of what the philosophy teacher does is that it speaks to the activity and skills involved without unduly limiting the skill to something that almost no one understands. That makes (B) sound applicable to the Qualification in a way that (A) does not.

To make your resume relevant, look at the things you do and describe them in a way that the person reading your resume can understand, so that they can see that you are fit for the job. Tip: (literally) copy words from the ad into your resume wherever you can point to a specific responsibility that you have had. If you’ve written a conference paper, been published, or written a dissertation, then you can absolutely use the following line in your resume. Check the Qualifications again, and note the overlap between the following and the language in Qualification 5:

• Effectively analyzed and resolved problems using a systematic, logic-based approach

Why wouldn’t you say that if you’ve gotten positive feedback on your philosophical work? In interviews, do the same: be prepared to relate exactly how what you have done matches the responsibilities of the job you’ve applied to do. Below, I’ll discuss what to do if some of the essential qualifications describe things that you truly have not done.

3. Networking

This summer, there were 4 positions for which I was a finalist and/or received an offer. I had some type—even very minimal—of prior relationship with someone at the company for 3 of them. I probably applied to 40 jobs in total. So, 10% of the jobs I applied for involved some prior relationship, but a huge 75% of the jobs that were interested in me involved some prior relationship.

Not all networking is cold-contacting. Ask for connections through your graduate school friends, neighbors, kids’ friends’ parents, your dissertation advisor, your mom, your department’s administrative assistant, the college librarian—anyone you’re friendly with. This part should not be challenging if you are a friendly person. People will want to help you, just as you like to help others.

Sometimes you won’t have a connection with someone you’d like to talk with. There is nothing wrong with contacting someone and asking if they would be willing to share their work experience while you try to figure out if their line of work is a good fit for you. Wouldn’t you be excited to get an email that from someone that says they think your line of work sounds interesting, and they’d like to hear you talk about your experience and skills to see if maybe they could be like you? In my recent search, I have conversed for hours by phone or Zoom with at least 12 people about various jobs and career paths that I’m interested in.

I recommend Austin Belchak’s approach as outlined on his website and newsletter. I have found his advice very beneficial in my search. His strategy is basically this: develop your skills and experience so that you can reasonably say that you can fulfill the responsibilities of a particular job, contact people at the target company to establish relationships, learn what issues the company/department is facing, then put together a demonstration that shows you can fill that need.

I used this strategy myself for the logistics analyst position. I had to look up lots of the words in the advertisement. But I reached out to the recruiter beforehand with a reasonable question—not “please hire me!” or “give me a chance!”, but a sincere acknowledgement of her expertise in selecting candidates to screen with a request to see if I could be considered with my atypical background, which led to a very brief but friendly message exchange through LinkedIn. I was invited for an interview a week later, and after that interview, I passed along a PowerPoint based on a committee project that I did which showcased my analytical abilities. In the second-round interview, one of the interviewers acknowledged having reviewed the PowerPoint, and said, “You definitely think like an analyst.” (Would I have gotten that interview without putting in the effort to create that presentation demonstrating my skills?) Put differently, I have the skills they’re looking for even though I didn’t have a single day’s work in that field or with those responsibilities.

I also highly recommend the most recent edition of “What Color Is Your Parachute?” It’s a standard career-change testimonial/workbook/guidebook. Some of the exercises struck me as hokey and may strike you the same way. Do them anyway. The takeaways can be insightful. I realized that what I want out of a job can be summarized very briefly: (1) freedom, (2) the opportunity to use my skills in critical thinking and analysis and research, and (3) opportunity for career growth. (My NTT job offered a lot of 1, a little of 2, and none of 3. My new job offers a decent amount of 1, a decent amount of 2, and a tremendous amount of 3. That’ll do.)

Last thing: you absolutely must be on LinkedIn and put effort into creating your profile. Choose a picture that makes you look approachable, but also serious. You will appear in searches based on words that you enter in your profile, you can showcase achievements, and it’s probably the best place to look for positions right now. I completed the Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate on Coursera this summer, which offers a virtual credential that is displayed on my LinkedIn profile. During a final-round interview for the position I was offered, one of the interviewers mentioned looking at my LinkedIn profile and seeing that credential and mentioned it as evidence that I am interested in the technology industry (which is the industry for that position). I had not even thought of making that argument.

4. Starting Over

This is related to the earlier advice: Your Philosophy Ph.D. is a Liability. You will probably need to take a position that sounds beneath you, in the sense that some of the responsibilities are or at least sound like they are ones that involve less responsibility than being an expert weighing in on course content, curriculum, departmental policies, etc. This is likely unavoidable. Although you likely have lots of experience that is relevant to career alternatives you are looking at, many positions seek candidates with a lot of experience in a specific field. Those are positions to grow into, and I recommend not even bothering to apply for them at first. In LinkedIn terms, you should focus on positions with “Entry-Level” and “Associate” in the title, as those are positions that require the fewest number of years in a specific field. (Side note: “Entry level” does not mean “entry-level worker,” as in “can walk out of the last day of undergraduate classes and get this job.” It means, “starting position for this career track.” Thus, people with lots of experience may be “entry-level”, and people fresh from college are not qualified for many “entry-level” positions.) If you are offered an Entry-Level or Associate position, think of it as a major opportunity for growth! I have yet to identify an “entry-level” position that pays less than what the average Assistant Professor of Philosophy seems to be making, which is low- to mid-50s.

In academia, we search for one job for life: get hired as Assistant Professor, get tenure, eventually get promoted to full Professor, all at the same place. That’s not how things work in the non-academic world. You need to find your next job, not your life job. You can leave it in a year. You could leave it in six months. The important thing is that you take a position that will help you build toward a goal.

5. Personal Growth

Always be meeting new people and learning new things. A strategy I settled on when I started in my academic position four years ago was to try to say “yes” to everything that I could that would improve my skills. Faculty are warned to avoid falling into the trap of saying “yes” to too much. That’s not what I mean: seek and say “yes” only to opportunities that improve your skills. My case for why I already had logistics analyst “work experience” rested significantly on a project that I led, and subsequent report that I wrote, assessing how well my college’s students performed in quantitative reasoning. I gathered faculty together to devise a definition of quantitative reasoning, led the development of a scoring rubric, recruited faculty members to score examples of student work, collected the results, and hunted for patterns. I was paid to do this for the college while a faculty member, but even if I had been paid nothing, it would have been worth it as the experience of doing that project was tremendously beneficial in my job search. The project probably took no longer than 20 active hours total, but I’ve been able to mention it in several interviews, and it’s been warmly received.

There are likely opportunities all around you that could have a similar benefit to your future. If you’re a graduate student, ask your department chair if there are any reports you could help put together, or ask faculty in other departments, or even administrators, if there are ways that you might offer some help—keeping in mind everything already said about leveraging your network and going into those discussions with some knowledge. If you’re a faculty member already, this should be more obvious: seek out committee responsibilities that stretch you.

Keep learning on the side, as well. There are lots of websites like Coursera that offer tons of courses, and sometimes credentials, from major universities and businesses, that you can use to learn about new industries and develop new, marketable skills. As I mentioned, I completed the Google Data Analytics Certificate through Coursera this summer. It took me about 15 days, averaging about 3-4 hours per day, though it could take you more or less time depending on your speed and other commitments. It did not make me a data wizard, but I can now meaningfully talk about the functionality of R versus Tableau for data visualization, and that might just be enough to become an entry-level analyst. Take a look around to see what you can learn in your spare time. It can help you find industries that interest you—or eliminate ones that don’t—and develop knowledge that you wouldn’t otherwise acquire as a graduate student or faculty member.

Knowledge like that can also help you see that, at least sometimes, a job that you thought you were unqualified for is within reach.

Let’s look again at the qualifications for that job above:

What if you’re interested in this job, but you aren’t an expert in Excel or WMS? I didn’t know what WMS meant until just now. I Googled it, and it means “Warehouse Management System”. (Insider terminology often means something very plain. Don’t be deterred by vocabulary.) On Coursera, several courses appear when “warehouse management” is typed into the search. Take one! The same goes for Excel. You can become far more proficient than the average Excel user in 4 hours, and I’m not exaggerating. One Sunday afternoon could change your career.

6. Getting Hired

Now we’re back to where we started. If you build relationships, people will know you, like you, and want you to be hired. If you build skills, your contacts will not be taking a risk when they sincerely tell someone at their own company, “You should hire so-and-so.” From there, and really only from there, it’s a matter of interviewing well, persistence, and a little luck.

Comments

[Mike Barkasi]

Great advice! (I second it all.)

[Zac Cogley]

Greg's advice is excellent. I'll just add a few things on finding jobs that it may make sense to pursue:

1. To identify job possibilities: search for jobs that include things like "exemplary written and verbal communications skills"

2.Don't be deterred by not fully understanding job responsibilities on first glance -- do a web search and see what you can understand in 15 minutes and whether that's something you might find interesting.

3. Don't be immediate turned off by job titles -- if you think there's a shot you might be able to do the job, find someone on LinkedIn who does it with a philosophy background (guarantee you'll find someone)

[Julian Weitzenfeld, D. Phil.]

As someone who made this transition more than 40 years ago, I would just add: it's not about YOU. Anyone who posts a position is looking for someone who can accomplish something (preferably fairly specific) for them. Make the case, and leave out everything else. The advice to quote from the posting is good. Then, just fill in the evidence in language that can be understood. Hobbies, interests, family, prior job history, etc. are distractions unless they are relevant evidence. It is NOT a curriculum vitae.

[Zac Cogley]

I also posted on my journey recently at LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/zaccogley_academic-saintlouis-philosophy-activity-6836692072485965825-5EG6

[postdoc]

What are some jobs that a philosophy PhD has a chance of getting, assuming no STEM background?

[Greg Stoutenburg]

Postdoc: my opinion, outlined in the section Your Ph.D. Is A Liability, Not An Asset, is that the Ph.D. by itself won't get you anything. But it's perfectly fine as a way of framing yourself as a candidate, and you can highlight aspects of the work involved in getting the Ph.D. that are relevant to whatever you're doing now. I highly recommend building skills on the side in whatever you're doing. But if you're just trying to figure out where to aim those efforts, check out the Parachute book mentioned above, talk to lots of people, and take a look at this: https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/how-to-find-work-that-you-love-2794431ba3cb

Good luck, and get in touch if you'd like to talk more! [email protected]

[open sesame]

Huge thanks to Greg for this detailed guide to a non-academic job!

[postdoc]

I guess I don't really understand most non-academic jobs to be honest. When I look at descriptions they seem very vague and abstract and to involve a lot of jargon. I have thought of getting a job outside academia but always end up confused, and I don't really see anything that interests me (not that I really understand what I'm looking at). So, I was just wondering if there was like a list for dummies somewhere of jobs that are realistic goals for us PhDs written in every-day English. This way I can see whether it's worth trying to transition or not. I don't really have any non-academic interests but the pay sucks and the job market sucks.

[Derek Bowman]

I appreciate your taking the time to share your advice, but I confess I'm puzzled why you chose this as your example position. How do you recommend that we reframe our teaching duties into "2-3 years experience in an inventory, operations or Supply Chain IT position"?

[Greg Stoutenburg]

Postdoc: Here's the most recent advertisement on PhilJobs as of right now: https://philjobs.org/job/show/17886. I'm sure everyone reading this understands the entire ad, but looked at from an outsider's perspective, it is full of jargon and arcane references to different university responsibilities. Typically, non-academic ads are no more challenging to read! You've just gotten used to the lingo. The APA has this resource: https://www.apaonline.org/members/group_content_view.asp?group=110435&id=927100. That resource includes information about people who have left philosophy for other things. Also check out the links I posted at the bottom of this comment.

I had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to do, as everyone told me that I had to choose a new career path. The advice I gave above is importantly different from the recommendation to find a new path and settle on it: my suggestion is to find a FIRST job that sounds interesting, and go for that. Trying to decide on the next twenty years in the same way that I had decided on the previous twenty years was too daunting. The best way to learn about a career path is to be on it.

Derek: Fair enough, but I did not want to suggest that anyone who has made it part of the way or fully through a philosophy PhD, and has no other skills or connections, could get that job. My point with that example was that job qualifications that academics might think put a position beyond reach may not actually do so, and that one's experiences should be reframed to match what the advertisement is looking for. In later sections, I also encouraged networking and further training to satisfy the requirements of positions one is interested in. I'll add now that if you're a pretty good fit, you can be considered for a position where you don't satisfy all the requirements. (Evidence: testimony of others, personal experience. I was a finalist for a job a lot like the one in the example, and I have no IT or supply chain experience, nor the degrees they were asking for: statistics, logistics, supply chain management, economics, mathematics.)

Thanks for the feedback so far, everyone! Take a look at Zac Cogley's writeup that he posted in the comments above. I think you'll find a lot of similarities in how we went about this. It's a common strategy!

A friend of mine in religious studies also recommended these resources: https://beyondprof.com/, https://www.imaginephd.com/. You might need to either pay or access through your institution.

[John Doe]

What do you recommend for someone who has no friends outside the academy? Did people you cold-called help you get jobs? Or was it only friends,etc.?

I also second post-doc's question. I realize I need extra skills, but I also know that I can't just get some skills on the side and become an architect. I'm not sure what careers have low enough barriers to entry that getting some skills on the side (i.e
not an extra degree) is enough.

[postdoc]

To further John Doe's thoughts here's kind of where I get. Doctor, nurse, psychologist, lawyer, architect, structural engineer, software engineer, financial analyst, economist, and so on all require years of more education.

I then try to think about what's left. Waiter/bartender, salesman, marketing, manager, real estate agent, secretary or admin...

(Leaving off jobs that are not realistic like actor, movie director, astronaut, artist, musician...)

As you can see I really don't have a feel for what jobs are left. I'm not particularly interested in the ones I can come up with. I'm not even sure it's realistic to get a management job or a marketing job without relevant training.

So, I'm kind of left with waiter/bartender, salesman, real estate, and secretary.

I'd really like someone to expand this list for me. LOL

Like I'm at the dummy stage of not even knowing the basic jobs people do really, so I can't even do the Ikigai method in that link cause I don't know what to write down.

(Parents are academics, most friends are academics, etc, so I don't know crap.)

[Greg Stoutenburg]

John Doe, Postdoc: There are tons of jobs out there! Growing up, we didn't have family friends with anyone who had a career in anything, and so the options I was drawn toward were those of the people in some position of authority, which came down to teachers and ministers.

A good start would be with some of the resources I mentioned above. Start talking to people you know about their work. Ask follow-up questions to get some of the day-to-day specifics.

As far as the Ikigai thing: Instead of writing job titles in those circles, you should be writing skills or activities. "Research" is a skill, "Professor of Philosophy" is a job title. "Establishing relationships, providing attentive customer service" is a skill, "Bartender" is a job description, etc. Let the skills and activities be the guide. Talk to people and use the resources provided to learn more about specific positions that utilize those skills.

John Doe: You don't know *anyone* outside the academy? That is hard to believe. Are you Facebook friends with anyone from high school? Ever converse with faculty spouses at departmental/college events? Those people are a part of your network.

It may be that some deliberate practice at getting to know new people is in order. I read the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie when I was in graduate school and I found it very helpful. (You also get to enjoy some very dated anecdotes as you glimpse into the past.)

As an encouraging note, I would have been out of academia years ago if I'd had the resolve and optimism to keep trying, keep applying, keep networking, and keep building skills. You have to believe that it's going to work out, and it will, if you keep going.

[Michel]

postdoc: Perhaps one way of finding out what's out there is just to spend time scrolling through job ads in various places. It's the same kind of research as when we scroll through the CVs of people whose jobs we'd like/career paths we'd like to emulate, or when we scroll through the jobs on philjobs looking for what they want, obsessively read about hiring in the profession across different blogs, try to figure out which journals are a good fit for what and what's been published in them recently, etc.

(For my part, I've known a fair few people who've gone into content marketing as a first step, and many who've become government analysts).

[Mike Barkasi]

Re: all the comments like "I don't know what's out there": I think something often lost when philosophers read stories/advice like Greg's is just the extent to which you have to get your hands dirty and immerse yourself in a new space. You have to talk to a lot of people (informational coffee chats), intern, network, go to mixers, etc etc. This is a long process that takes months, not something you sit down and get after a single workshop or reading a few online guides. I think people like Greg mean to convey this, but if you're someone who's only ever known the very weird world of academic philosophy, I don't know if Greg's works really will convey to you the idea (since we do so little, if any, of this sort of stuff as philosophers).

Also, any transition is going to require re-education, whether that's a full-blown second degree, months spent taking online skill courses or doing stuff like coding bootcamps, or just *a lot* of on-the-job training. I know it's a defeating to think "I just spent 10 years in school, and now I have to go back and do it again?", but, yeah, that's how it is. The sooner you embrace it, the sooner you can free yourself from the limits of a career in philosophy (which more and more, for most of us, is just a string of poorly paying adjuncting gigs). I mean, yeah, like Greg said, a lot of what you learn and do as a philosopher transfers (e.g., Greg's great "teach intro" vs "persuade clients" example), but even so, there's always going to be tons to learn.

[John Doe]

I can pretty much guarantee that none of the people I know who aren't academics would be interested in helping me get a job anywhere. In some sense I know them, but they aren't friends. More like distant acquaintances.

That's why I wonder about the utility of cold-calling. If people I cold-call won't ultimately help get me an interview, I don't see that it will help much. I'd still need friends in industry.

Frankly, the networking stuff is pretty discouraging because I also live in the middle of nowhere. It's hard to meet people at industry conferences when you live 4 hours from a respectable city and make just enough to get by.

At some point, I have to wonder if the only way it will work out is if I go for an extra formal credential, given my limited network. Maybe a programming bootcamp or something could work.

Re: Mike -- the big difference between going back to get another degree vs. online skill courses and the like is money, plus the attendant issues like applying for admission, taking entry exams, and so on. So that's why it's very important to figure out which jobs require a new degree and which jobs do not.

[Greg Stoutenburg]

John Doe: It's not as hard as you're making it out to be, but I've felt that way in the past. Please send me an email and we'll talk, and I'll show you some of the people I've contacted through LinkedIn who I didn't know and who wasn't connected to anyone I did know. I'm serious! Email me and we'll talk on Zoom.

[email protected]

[Mike Barkasi]

"I can pretty much guarantee that none of the people I know who aren't academics would be interested in helping me get a job anywhere. In some sense I know them, but they aren't friends. More like distant acquaintances."

@John Doe: I'd reach out to Greg. He's one nonacademic you know willing to help. My experience was that lots of nonacademics I knew (or didn't know) were willing to help me. Both times I've left philosophy, obscure friends of friends, or spouses of friends, came out of the woodwork to sit down with me and have coffee chats --- once I made it known I was leaving, that is. Sure, plenty of people ignored me. Most of the people that did offer to help me didn't end up being any help (beyond their good nature and the general experience). But business networking is just like making friends and finding dates: just keep spinning the wheel. 9/10 people will ignore you, for good or bad reasons, but some will help. Most of the ones who will try to help won't get you anywhere, but eventually some will.

I know it's emotionally devastating to leave philosophy. I've been in some dark places, for sure. Some of the best advice I've worked out for myself over the years is to focus on the possibilities in the future, not the failures in the past --- focus on the next ten doors in front of you, people to contact, or whatever. Don't focus on all the stuff that didn't work in the past.

Part of what's so, so pernicious in philosophy is the scarcity mindset it engenders. We all learn to treat opportunities as a scare resource: e.g., there's only 150 jobs (or whatever) for the 1000-1500 people on the market, there's only so many journal slots, only so many invited speaker gigs, etc etc. That scarcity conditioned me to think in horribly negative ways, and it's taken a lot of work to view the outside (nonacademic) world for what it is: a space of many, many opportunities. When one doesn't work out, just move on to the next (because unlike in the academic world, there is a next).

Now, I admit that life is a bit different when you're in a rural area with a small economy. I've been there, too. I don't have any good advice, and, at the risk of being insensitive, I'd just suggest any philosophers stuck in that position seriously think about moving for the sake of better economic opportunities in a new city.

[Samuel Kampa]

Excellent post, Greg! I strongly agree with (2)-(6). My only quibble would be with (1).

Because I haven't had the chance to do philosophy in a while, I'm going to take all the fun out of Greg's artful overstatement and offer a qualified version of the thesis "Your PhD is a liability, not an asset". I'll even give it an unnecessary abbreviation, because why not.

PHD-AL: All else being equal, your Philosophy PhD is more likely to be a liability than an asset only if each of these conditions holds:
a. You're applying for an entry-level position. (i.e., this is your first post-ac job).
b. You're playing up your Philosophy PhD in the wrong ways. (e.g., "I know a lot about this thing you don't care about" vs. "I have a proven track-record of completing longterm projects with minimal supervision.")
c. You have little concrete evidence of having developed hard skills that bear on the position in question. (e.g., "I'm interested in coding" vs. "I recently started a data vis project in my free time; check out my github repo").

I think (a) is important and underappreciated, because so much energy and anxiety is wrapped up in that first position. But the game really does change once you have some industry experience under your belt. When you're first applying for jobs, the primary skills you have to your name---the ones you need to play up---are general aptitude and curiosity; ability to independently complete longterm projects; and ability to teach, construed broadly (e.g., ability to explain complex issues to "students/clients"). That's not nothing, but it doesn't tell your employer you know how to write industry-ready code, for example.

Once you have that entry-level job, though, you have a profile that's unique for all the right reasons (depending on your target industry, your trajectory, blah blah blah). You have all the good-making qualities of a PhD recipient plus concrete evidence of success in industry, of developing and utilizing hard skills under time constraints and resource scarcity, etc. Suddenly, your resume is more intriguing than confusing.

The reason I'm emphasizing (a) is that it's tempting, in the early goings, to despair. When I was starting out, I had promising informational interviews that went nowhere, and I was outright ghosted at a coffee shop once. There's a lot of inertia at the outset, and having a PhD can be part of the problem if you haven't perfected your elevator speech (which, if you're new to industry, is probably the case). But if you stick it out, what seems like a liability can become a longterm asset.

[John Doe]

Re: Mike -- doesn't one generally need a job offer in location X to move to X? Otherwise, how does one pay the rent while networking, etc.? I've heard people give that kind of advice before, but unless I take out significant debt, I just don't see it working out. (If the job hunt goes long enough, even taking out debt wouldn't work out!)

Re: Greg -- thank you for your kind offer, but at present I'm still pursuing academia until the funding is closer to running out on my temp position. I just wanted to raise issues that might be relevant for readers / me down the road.

[Mike Barkasi]

@John Doe: As you point out, stability (staying where you are) is best. Hell, with the cost of moving (direct and indirect), I've had cross-country moves to *take* a (not-bad-paying) job set me back financially. So, yes, no matter how you look at it, there's tremendous cost to moving to a new location (e.g., taking on debt until you find a job). But (speaking from my perspective) if the situation really is such that there are no opportunities besides unstable adjuncting gigs in your current location, it may be worth the short-term costs to move.

Of course, I wouldn't move to a totally random city --- I'd try to move somewhere I've lived before, or had friends/family/a connection. You can also scout jobs ahead of time, whether that means landing a job before the move (I've had companies fly me to their city to interview) or simply being aware of the job market in that city. Perhaps there's long-term planning involved? --- e.g., you know there's lots of jobs doing X in city Y (they have a shortage of workers), so you spend a year training in X in your current location than go to Y and have your pick of jobs.

I'm not just talking to John Doe here, but to any struggling early career philosopher. I really do think the small world of philosophy conditions us to make decisions with a scarcity mentality that just doesn't reflect reality in the non-academic world. If your brain is conditioned to think of opportunities as a scarce resource, because philosophy opportunities (TT jobs, journal slots, etc.) are scarce, you're going to make the wrong risk calculation about leaving academics. This is one of those system 1/ system 2 things. Your reflexive reaction about the odds/pros/cons are probably wrong, because your gut has been trained in one context (academics) with statistics that don't match the new context (the wider world).

[postdoc]

I'd love to hear more about your new job Greg and how it compares with the academic job you had.

People are saying there are so many opportunities, but I still don't really have a clue what those opportunities are.

[David Lu]

@postdoc: you seem really conditioned to think one-dimensionally in terms of career opportunities. There aren't many specific opportunities that funnel former philosophers. The point is just that there's a wide array of opportunities that you can transform your career to -- rather than start over. Most likely, you'll need to gain some additional skillsets and knowledge to make the transition.

Examples help. I'm a researcher in the cybersecurity industry (and NTT CS instructor). I know former philosophers who work in accounts management, project/product management, sales, customer success, customer education, digital production, AI/machine learning, data analysis, marketing, and software development. It leans heavily toward tech not because former philosophers are particularly good at tech, but mostly because knowledge work pays well in the sector. Just look over at the sidebar for 'Philosophers in Industry' to see more examples.

You're trying to think of opportunities for philosophers in industry. It's not that. You need to think of opportunities in industry which you can leverage your academic background into. There are many of these.

[Postdoc]

I think what’s going on here is a linguistic confusion. When I think of opportunities for philosophy PhDs I think of whatever jobs are available straight out of the gate without much if any further training. People graduate with philosophy BAs and presumably get jobs doing something or another. I just want to jump straight into a non academic job. What opportunities are there?

[anon]

@postdoc: I know of a couple of philosophers that got work writing policy for the government. They did this without extensive social networking - just through asking for advice at the university career office and getting a referral to a government worker that was hiring. And they didn't have to complete any additional formal program before counting as qualified for this work.

This is just one anecdote, but I thought I would mention it, since you seem interested in ideas that don't involve lots of training or networking.

[Derek Bowman]

David Lu,

I think you may be underestimating the problem that someone like Postdoc has. The core problem is not that people are thinking one-dimensionally, or even simply that (in Postdoc's specific case), a desire for opportunities that require no further training or networking.

You say, "You need to think of opportunities in industry which you can leverage your academic background into." This isn't good advice, not because it's not good, but because it's not really advice. It's has the form of advice, but for someone like Postdoc - or like me - who doesn't yet have a clear idea of which of those opportunities are worth focusing on - it's too general to give us anywhere to get started.

I'm lucky, in that I've been able to secure a temporary (and term-limited) but well-paying academic job. This has given me the economic security to do some networking and volunteering to connect me with people doing interesting work in other areas. And even so, I haven't yet figured out how to turn any of those into a concrete alternative career path worth pursuing.

Yes, there are lots of things philosophy PhDs can do, but it's precisely that variety that can make it hard to even get started.

[Recent PhD Grad]

Whilst this post is encouraging and (refreshingly) honest I'm not sure how much of it will be realistic for recent phd grads. People with full time academic positions may find it easier because they have some savings to rely on for the transitions. As recent PhD grad who has been on plenty of interviews but is staring at the dearth of academic job postings, I don't have much time to do networking and coursera stuff in between two casualised jobs to pay the rent. It seems to me, at this moment in history, the best way to leave philosophy is not have gotten in in the first place.