On the heels of the recent announcement that the NIH will increase post-doc salaries, an article suggested that the proposed increase doesn’t go far enough. Leading the charge was a scientist in Boston who has been a post-doc for seven years. Maybe I was a bit of a troll for sending that Dr. Isis’s way. Seven years is too long for a post-doc, she posted, a post-doc should be no more than four years and a few people on line lost their minds at this suggestion. No way! Everyone is an individual! Different fields demand more time! Science doesn’t work on a schedule! You’re making our shakras come unaligned! Came the retorts. (I may have made that last one up.) Differences of opinion between intelligent people are fascinating, and I enjoy contemplating the roots of a disagreement. I don’t pretend to know the right answer, but I noticed a parallel with something apparently unrelated and I love making weird connections:
Extending your post-doc past four years is like going into debt. And I believe debt is a bad thing. “The borrower is the slave to the lender.”There is a fundamental disagreement amongst us about whether a post-doc is an employee and deserves a stable fair wage to send their kids to summer camp and have a nice place to live in a nice neighborhood with all the other fancy people. Or is it slavery*? I respect my post-docs tremendously and their professional and personal success is important to me. But they are more like slaves than employees. They are not paid enough for the work they do and that is as it should be because they a) receive training; and b) should be motivated to conclude their post-doc as soon as possible. We have staff scientist and technician positions that are straight-up get paid for the work of science, but a post-doctoral fellowship is not that.
Sure, some people spend 7 years and do just great. So do some people take on debt and pay it off without problems. But the hard nosed anti-debt philosophy is justified because the vast majority of people are victims while they are being swindled into believing they are the beneficiaries. Post-docs, like debtors, are victims in subtle ways like lost opportunities and a failure to build wealth. But more concretely, what post-docs are not facing hard enough is the reality of risk. Optimism is essential in science and in life and it’s difficult to put my own optimism on hold and contemplate the reality that things don’t always go as planned. Just like Dave Ramsey counsels “gazelle intensity” to get out of debt as fast as possible, post-docs should not get comfortable or chart an extended course, but should focus on getting their work done as soon as possible, like they were in a burning building. Because they are. There is the very real risk that the paper won’t work out, or the PI’s grant gets cut, or the imagined job opportunity won’t materialize, and this risk is real. Having debt assumes a rosey future path, that life will continue on without major interruption, but in the event of a crisis, the bank will be fine, but debtor is screwed. As a PI, I’m going to be fine. The primary job of the post-doc, for their own good, is to find a permanent job.
PS. The four years limit is of course arbitrary, but the number works because it is within the working span of many grants. A post-doc fellowship that extends beyond the scope of a single grant is also indirectly a violation of a promise to the granting organization.
* Addendum: Friends on line have expressed dismay and offense at the use of slavery in any way shape or form here. I know the missing and critical ingredient that differentiates slavery is consent. I agree wholeheartedly that post-docs are not slaves and it’s offensive to suggest that.
Saying that I should call post-docs “underpaid employees”or “exploited workers,” misses my point though, which was that it is not helpful to suggest we need a fix so post-docs can be contented workers. Post-docs are intentionally and consensually exploited workers and the fix is to wrap things up and get out ASAP.
The Analog World 
There was a time, not so long ago, when TWO years was standard. And gimme a break on the training part. After 2 years, the advisor’s not doing much except getting reduced cost labor. If the post-doc comes with their own funding, as many demand these days, it makes the situation more predatory. Academia is increasingly a Ponzi scheme.
Sure, there are 40,000 postdocs for perhaps 2,000 tenure track spots, but if they were just “gazelle-intense” then they would all be done in 4 years or less.
You got some whole life insurance to sell too?
Ha!! Whole life is the worst!!
An alternative employee status to for post docs that I think is more accurate: self employed. Hours and pay suck there too but you do it because you enjoy it (and gtfo if you don’t; there are enough of us already). Like being self employed, you’re building your business (in this case, you) for future success.
Could help one’s outlook, but there is much less independence than someone self employed IMO
Longer is fine if you’re productive. A short PD doesn’t matter if you don’t get the job you want.
With that said, I would say 4 years is a good cut-off as well, since many early investigator awards (and NIH ESI status) have eligibility of 10 years post-PhD. So that keeps you in ESI until year 6 of your TT job, at which point their deciding your tenure. So either you’ve lost ESI because you landed an R01 or you’ve lost your job…
Agree that if a PD is generating grants and/or papers that can certainly help and possibly buy more time.
Am I the only one that finds it strange that a post written about how postdocs are slaves (and it should be that way) is written by someone who has power over postdocs?
“I respect my postdocs but they should be my slaves” does not make a compelling moral argument that all is right with this system.
My question is, if the goal is for them to receive training and to be motivated to finish, is there perhaps some better system than ‘slavery’ or ‘indentured servitude’? Even comfortably entertaining this as a viable model for academia is disturbing, and invites abuse.
The new overtime/pay rules are really bringing a lot of weak arguments out of the woodwork, none of which seem to be respectful of postdocs.