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Well, the situation is following - I'm doing my Ph.D. currently abroad, while still having a position in my home country. It's not a high-ranked university there, but the research institute itself is a very good, new supercomputing centre (40-50th cluster in TOP500 and getting new ones). Now it seems, that if I'll keep my current productivity level, I could aspire to get a senior position, right after my Ph.D.

That said, I'd love to have a family in a few years, but I'd also like to keep an opportunity to get to a better university in a future (possibly with them).

So, do you think, that accepting (if offered, of course) such leading position, could make up for the post-doc experience, if the subsequent publications from my team would be good?

I'm aware, that this is highly non-standard situation, as I know nobody who would experience it.

EDIT

To explain my situation in more detail - let's say I have an opportunity to become a leader of my own research team in a not-so-good university right after my Ph.D. with a chance to do a good research there, as the quality of this research centre is much higher, than the uni average.

On the other hand, my long term ambition would be to get a research position at some higher ranked university. So, would this university usually prefer man with some leadership experience or a fresh "post post-doc" from some more prestigious institute?

EDIT 2

My home institute is in the Czech Republic.

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  • It's not clear what you mean by "senior position" or "leading position". Also, I'm not sure that there's any correlation between how big a computer an institution has, and how good its work is?
    – Flyto
    Jun 24, 2019 at 17:09
  • @Flyto In my country, there are strict professional "levels" in research field - before your Ph.D. you're R&D Support Staff, during Ph.D. then Research Assistant, later Researcher and Senior Researcher. All the levels under Senior are basically the same - low salary and very little freedom of choices - very often you get assigned to something, which is not your interest at all. As a Senior Researcher, on the other hand, you have your own small team (5-10 people) and you're responsible for the choice of research topics etc.
    – Eenoku
    Jun 24, 2019 at 17:35
  • @Flyto Also, I don't think, that all the HPC centres are needlessly bad with smaller computers or good with larger ones. That said, larger ones usually correlate with directorship ability to get money and projects, which, in my experience, means a better research quite often.
    – Eenoku
    Jun 24, 2019 at 17:36
  • Thanks for the clarifications adn the edit. I've nominated the question for re-opening. You might find it helpful to edit again to mention which country you're in, as systems can be very different.
    – Flyto
    Jun 24, 2019 at 18:52

1 Answer 1

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I'm not exactly sure what your dilemma is. Normally a post doc is valuable because it helps you get a good position (i.e. not as a post doc). If you can do that otherwise, a post doc seems to me to be of little value. Of course, it can lead to broadening your circle of collaboration, which is a good thing, but there are other ways to do that also.

I think that most post docs would rather be post post docs. With real and secure positions.

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  • Thank you for your answer! The main point of my dilemma is, that I'd love to try to switch to some more prestigious university in the future (possibly abroad), but I'm not sure, if it's even possible after "junior phase" - I have no experience with that, obviously...
    – Eenoku
    Jun 24, 2019 at 12:30
  • @eenoku I don't know what country you're in, and probably don't know the system there, but I think it's unlikely that accepting a non-postdoc job at one institution will get you "stuck" there.
    – Flyto
    Jun 24, 2019 at 18:53
  • @Flyto Thanks! I've added the information about my country.
    – Eenoku
    Jun 24, 2019 at 19:47

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