The solution to escape the postdoc trap for applied STEM fields in the US is easy, but implementing it is hard—don’t do a postdoc; and instead get industry R&D experience (5–10 years), build contacts, and a reputation, and only then get a tenure-track position.
All the best professors I know first spent at least half a decade in industry before joining academia. My adviser worked at Bell Labs, and my co-adviser worked at Bell Labs, and then at Rockwell (where he invented the MOCVD process) before joining academia. Another collaborator worked in Xerox PARC before becoming a professor. I can go on and on.
You know who the most mediocre professors tend to be? Ones who join academia straight after graduate school or a postdoc. They have no idea about what industry cares about, have a very narrow focus, and fight for government funding (NSF, NIH, DoD etc) because they lack any contacts outside academia.
Now imagine that the candidate (let’s call him Bob) has done strong work in industry for five years. All his colleagues know Bob as the talented guy who solves hard problems. In five years, many of his colleagues will have left to go to other companies. When they have a hard problem, they remember Bob, so guess who gets the funding and research contracts from industry. Universities know this, and that’s
why they love getting faculty from industry. The industry contacts are a constant source of funding and/or consulting. Furthermore, the stint in industry allows Bob to understand the type of problems industry cares about.
For example, academia only cares about getting the first/best/most unique laser, and they don’t care if it dies in 2 minutes; while industry also greatly cares about making it last for 10,000 hours. So naturally, working in industry exposes one to the nuances and theories behind laser reliability, which no one in academia knows. This makes grant applications in the future much easier, because you have a more holistic picture, having worked in both academia (PhD) and industry. This is a great position to be in as a professor.
As you rise in industry as an R&D scientist, you have to mentor and guide people of all abilities and skill-sets. This provides a gentle introduction to dealing with students, teaching complicated ideas, and mentoring others. This makes the transition to academia more gentle compared to being a professor right after graduate school. You would have matured a lot more.
Everything I’ve said sounds great, right? So why don’t more people do it? That’s because it requires a very delicate balance. You need a continuous publication record to be considered for an academic position, but industry doesn‘t always like their scientists publishing for IP reasons. Research is incredibly expensive, so the company doesn’t want to give away the fruits of their investment to competitors. The only way to get the best of both worlds for yourself is to work on something broad and general, closer to fundamental science, rather than working on a product. That way, you can drop certain details, and still provide a holistic and big picture view to the reader in a compelling paper. I’ve been trying to publish 1–2 papers per year while in industry.
In conclusion, I’d recommend that you get out of academia for a bit after your PhD. See what else the world has to offer. Once you’ve sampled corporate R&D, built a professional network, learned about your field more broadly, only then come back as a tenure-track professor. You’ll easily beat the fresh PhD and postdoc applicants.
