Getting out of academia

August 14, 2008 10:31 AM

I want to quit academia and embark on a lucrative new career in the private sector. How do I do it, and is it worth it to get an MBA?

Here are the particulars.

Who I am:
- Late 30s guy.
- Ivy-league humanities PhD.
- Currently employed in a humanities/social science academic position at a university that is usually ranked in the top 30 internationally.
- Reasonably successful in my profession, though not a star. I have a good pedigree and have held a couple of relatively prestigious fellowships, but overall my CV is somewhere around average.
- My strengths: I'm very smart, and have a synthetic mind, good at seeing emerging patterns, and grasping and communicating complex concepts. I love public speaking and interacting with people.
- My weaknesses: I can be very detail-oriented if need be, but am not meticulous by nature. I have no specific marketable skills outside of academia, and no experience working 'real jobs' since retail in my mid-twenties.

What I want:
- A faster-paced, more challenging, riskier, and more creative work environment. Everything is so damn slooooooooow in academia; I feel like I am dying a long, boring, and painful death.
- I want to interact with people more. I can do just fine on my own (I wouldn't have gotten as far as I have if I couldn't do self-directed research), but the solitude and social isolation of academia is getting to me.
- I want to make more money. A lot more. I'm tired of seeing people who have my brains and education level, or less, make 10x what I do. I want a bigger slice of the pie.

What I am (and am not) willing to do:
- I have the extraordinary luxury of working a job that affords me a lot of free time. I can spend the next 3 years doing whatever it takes to make a significant career change. I could, for example, get an MBA on the side, or put in self-directed study to bring myself up to speed in some area.
- I understand that I will likely be somewhat entry-level whatever I do, and realize that I might well be working with a lot of people 15-20 years younger than me. But I don't think I can put in 100-hour work weeks and compete with 22 year-olds in terms of energy and time.
- That said, I am absolutely willing to work hard and put in long hours for a number of years.
- I am relatively flexible geographically, and would be willing to move to work in the US, Canada, or the EU (and I have EU citizenship). I would strongly prefer to live and work in a major metropolitan area.

The questions:

(1) What should I do? I am interested in finance and economics, do investing on my own, and read on these topics in my spare time. Something in banking, investing, or finance fits my criteria - such as a place like D.E. Shaw. Is it at all possible for someone like me to get in the door at a place like this without connections or a strong quantitative background? If I am effectively shut out of these kinds of jobs, are there other lines of work that fit my criteria? At this point, I alternate between feeling optimistic that I could do anything in the world, and being despondent that I am too old and unskilled to qualify for anything at all.

(2) Is it worth it to get an MBA? Like I said above, I have the opportunity to get one, for cheap. I think that it would help me in the relevant skills department, and would also signal my seriousness about a career change. But is it really worth anything, especially for someone in their late 30s/early 40s?

(3) Besides reading "What Color is Your Parachute," are there any resources that could help me making this decision? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

posted by googly to work & money (22 comments total)

Not exactly what you're asking, but how about academic administration? Aiming for a deanship or some such down the road, maybe. It wouldn't bring in much more money, but would be a change of pace, and something you wouldn't have to completely change track to do.
posted by AwkwardPause at 10:46 AM on August 14, 2008

If you can get an MBA, I would recommend that you do so. In a lot of private-sector firms, in any industry, an MBA is becoming the dividing line between advancement and stasis; everyone's got a BA these days, so the MBA starts to weed people out.

If you want to make a pile of money in the private sector, finance is the way to go - but understand that, by the time you get there (assuming you do get the MBA), a few things will apply:

1. You MUST have the MBA. You won't even be looked at for anything other than entry-level at a major firm without it.
2. If you go into finance, understand that there WILL be people there that are fresh out of college that are willing to work the 80-100 hours a week it takes to get ahead, so if you aren't willing, don't be surprised if you don't advance.
3. With a few exceptions, Corporate America doesn't care where you went to school, just that you went. Your Ivy League degree may open a few doors, and if it does you should definitely walk through them, but don't get the attitude of "I went to (whatever school) and so I'm entitled to this big fat raise and I don't have to work hard for it".
4. This goes double for an Ivy League humanities degree. It's by no means worthless, but it's worth a lot less in the corporate world than it is in the academic world, especially outside the Boston/NY business axis.

One of the keys with corporate America is that you need to find your niche, and your niche may turn out to be 180 degrees different from what you think it is today.

I'm sorry, but I don't have any parachute-esque resources for you...
posted by pdb at 11:20 AM on August 14, 2008

First of all, keep it's important to keep in mind an MBA is a remarkably versatile degree, especially so if you attend a University that allows a high degree of customisation. I'm currently finishing an MBA, my broad area of study is globalisation but I'm specialising in the Outsourcing of Services Jobs.

If you chose to target yourself into finance, if you attend a Uni that allows no small amount of customisation you could tailor the degree somewhat so it would be far more attractive, to the point of outweighing lack of prior experience or a quantitative degree.

I can think of a couple of areas someone with your background might fit into.

A broad area to consider would be Risk Management. Currently very, very hot, and this discipline more than likely will be for the foreseeable future due to - ahemmm - recent events.

As you indicated that you might not be totally comfortable with or prepared for quantitative work, a very important (and hot!!) area to consider would be Operational Risk. Driven largely by the Basel II initiative, we expect this area of Risk Management to be very very high profile - and thus receiving much budget - for probably a decade to come.

While Op Risk does indeed have quantitative aspects, much of the work concerns itself with best practices for the actual operation of the bank or financial institution. I recently did an FPP on Op Risk at Credit Suisse, and how this discipline protected the institution from failure.

Next up I'd suggest looking at work in the Regulatory area; evaluating internal processes and procedures against requirements imposed by regulators e.g., The Fed, The SEC, the FSA, BIS, etc. Once again, almost always very high profile and thus in need of people with (what would appear to be) your communication skills.

Another area I'd suggest you look at would be Compliance. A rather thankless, but very, very critical job. Always in need of people, these folks insure that people on the inside of investment banks don't use this inside knowledge. A great gig if it clicks for you, a buddy of mind back in New York has been in Compliance for about twenty years, seems to work hard for three years or so then takes a year off to travel.

Just a personal note - I've got an Msc in Quantitative Finance and I'm completing an MBA (expected Q4 2008); I think looking at my two masters if I had to pick one if would have been an MBA, for the following reasons:

First of all, it's versatility. My MSc is very, very specific into a Capital Markets orientation. Lots of stuff happens to companies, for example, in the board room that my MSc didn't prepare me to understand (I took another degree in Management Accounting to cover that omission but won't discuss it here as that degree is very, very focused as well).

Second, my MBA taught me to think very, very critically, a skill that I believe lots of educational tracks (e.g., my MSc) omits.

Third, my MBA rigoursly exercised and strengthened my presentation skills, as most of our courses were graded to no small extent on interaction with a sometimes critical and hostile audience.

Forth, my MBA required solid time management skills to complete. Comprising fourteen courses (not counting dissertation), the amount of work was overwhelming for many. If you're going full time and capable of focusing (as your background seems to indicate you are) you shouldn't have a problem, but if you select the appropriate Uni you will be stretched.

Fifth, and I hesitate to add this but I must: connections. Much of modern business is all about relationships and who do you know. You'll meet people and friends of friends and form a network that will astound you going forward. Example: I'm two degrees away from Obama, due to my MBA - it's not like I'm gonna be able to call him for a favour, but I'm sure you get my point here. It's the people you know and the people they know that will help you land that dream job.

Ok, banking: don't get caught up in the lifestyle, work hard, save your money and in ten years you'll be able to leave the field and do whatever in the hell you'd like to.

So MBA? Hell yeah.
posted by Mutant at 11:20 AM on August 14, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

What should I do?

Why are you asking us, you already know the answer to this.
But anyway here's my two cents.

Screw the PHD, that whole system is whack and elitist, ooooh look at me, I studied college for way too long so I'm super smart now. I've taken enough classes with future doctors (MD and PHD) to have lost all respect for the University degree. But I digress and this isn't exactly what you were looking for, or maybe it was, I mean you're the one who said you wanted to drop out of academia. Yea that whole scene is kinda snobbish and kinda bullshit, and this is coming from someone with an academia background (probably not to the extent of you though). Good idea quitting, but finance? Really? Do you really want your life's profession to be about maximizing profit and making as much money as possible? For some reason I don't see yourself as a child dreaming of one day being an investment banker.
posted by BrnP84 at 11:21 AM on August 14, 2008

I am in my late 40's. I've been in the business world since I graduated with an engineering degree at 22, and I've been a manager since I was 28. I am just finishing up a MBA. (Of course, now that I have put all this work into it, I have to say it is worth it :)).

I decided to get a MBA for three primary reasons:
1. The vast majority of my experience has been in product development, not manufacturing, not finance, not marketing, not HR. I wanted to become a general manager and thought I should have a more well-rounded understanding of the whole business.
2. When I got laid off from the Fortune 500 company I'd worked at for 20 years and changed employers, I found that my new colleagues and new boss didn't always know what I had done and what I was capable of doing. The three letters "MBA" encapsulate a lot of knowledge and could add to my resume.
3. The only degree I had was a BSEE. Some days, I think I would like to teach and a Master's degree would help open that career option.

Based on what you have said, I think it would be worthwhile for you to get a MBA if you want to go into the business world. Good luck!
posted by elmay at 11:26 AM on August 14, 2008

A broad area to consider would be Risk Management

sorry to sound even more cynical, but a buddy of mine does Risk Management insurance, his job is to use Google Street view to asses how "well off" a neighborhood looks. He looks at the type of people walking around (in other words he checks to see if they're black) and the cars parked in the neighborhood and based on this he evaulates whether to insure them or not. Needless to say he doesn't like what he does.
posted by BrnP84 at 11:28 AM on August 14, 2008

You don't say what specific discipline you're in, but I'm wondering if you can somehow leverage your academic research into some consulting work that would both be more lucrative and involve you in the "real world" more. Start positioning yourself as the expert on some issue that involves the intersection of your research and the business world, and then get businesses to pay you to tell you what to do about that issue. How this would actually work depends a lot on what your research/expertise is, of course.
posted by yarrow at 11:34 AM on August 14, 2008

BrnP84 -- "...sorry to sound even more cynical, but a buddy of mine does Risk Management insurance, his job is...

Yeh, but I'm talking about Risk Management in banks focusing on the Capital Markets perspective, and you're raising a point from another field, Insurance.

Not the same at all.
posted by Mutant at 11:38 AM on August 14, 2008

I've worked in the private sector. They expect results.
posted by SlyBevel at 11:44 AM on August 14, 2008

I'd caution you against giving up everything because you want more money. I hate to sound cliche, but for most people, money does not mean happiness; rather, it means working a highly stressful, highly time-consuming, soul-deadening job. It sounds like you could keep your current position, while reaching out for some new challenges that would give you the faster pace and increased social interaction you crave. Ask yourself if your craving for money is really a desire for something else -- prestige or respect, for example. If so, you can probably get those things without giving up everything you've already worked for. You have so much freedom and flexibility right now, do you really want to give that all up for an entry level job? After experiencing the perks of academia, I think it would be a very difficult transition.

On preview, I think yarrow's suggestion is a great one.
posted by pitseleh at 11:52 AM on August 14, 2008

So What Are You Going to Do With That? seems up your alley.
Guide to Non-traditional careers in science...probably more useful for the interviews w/people who transitioned.
posted by lalochezia at 12:17 PM on August 14, 2008

AwkwardPause, that's a good suggestion, and one that I have considered. For a variety of reasons, academic administration isn't a real possibility right now.

pdb, Mutant and elmay, thanks for your very helpful comments. Precisely what I was looking for.

yarrow, that is a great suggestion, and one that I have also considered. I work in the medical field, so it is entirely possible that I might be able to leverage my training and expertise somewhere down the road.

pitseleh, I hear you loud and clear. I am indeed trying to figure out specific ways to keep my current position and simultaneously reach out for new challenges. But part of the trap of academia - or at least the part that I am in - is that the lifestyle is so damn easy that it encourages complacency. So I also want to consider a wholesale career change as well.
posted by googly at 12:21 PM on August 14, 2008

I would recommend consulting while you're still in academia. If you're bored there then you have time to do some stuff on the side. I have no idea what your field is and probably couldn't even comprehend it but maybe it makes sense to start your own consulting business or related company? Maybe it wouldn't even be profitable but if its remotely like a job you want to get into it would be worth a lot I would guess. I am also not very meticulous, details bore me. Hire someone (a grad student?) to do the small stuff or get a personal assistant, as you know kids in school are very eager to get ANYTHING they can put on their resume.
posted by wolfkult at 12:38 PM on August 14, 2008

Have you subscribed to the WRK4US mailing list yet? You might get some good advice and find resources there.
posted by mariokrat at 12:57 PM on August 14, 2008

I've worked in the private sector. They expect results.

LOL. What, never heard of publish or perish?
posted by billysumday at 12:59 PM on August 14, 2008

Screw the PHD, that whole system is whack and elitist, ooooh look at me, I studied college for way too long so I'm super smart now. I've taken enough classes with future doctors (MD and PHD) to have lost all respect for the University degree.

Most successful PhDs that I know of got their PhDs because they wanted to explore their subject of interest further and were motivated at least somewhat by genuine curiosity and not some misguided desire to appear smarter than other people. Maybe you studied in the wrong places?
posted by peacheater at 12:59 PM on August 14, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

(oh, and I wasn't being sarcastic when I LOL'd. Academics have it horribly easy. I was impressed at the balls of some of the professors at the institution where I formerly worked - specifically, a notoriously whiny Religion professor who complained that teaching six weeks of consecutive classes was too draining on students and faculty alike. He demanded there be a fall break between the start of classes and Thanksgiving. I mean, seriously, bro. 5 months a year just isn't enough of a break, huh, buddy?)
posted by billysumday at 1:01 PM on August 14, 2008

I want to make more money. A lot more. I'm tired of seeing people who have my brains and education level, or less, make 10x what I do. I want a bigger slice of the pie... I don't think I can put in 100-hour work weeks and compete with 22 year-olds in terms of energy and time.

Finance and consulting are where a lot of MBAs go, and while 100-hour weeks are the norm only in banking, 70- and 80-hour weeks are pretty common everywhere else. That's a big reason for the big paychecks. And in many of those 70- and 80-hour jobs, you need to be ready to answer the phone at 3AM when some Aussie or Japanese client/investment does something completely unexpected and you are called upon to assemble a presentation, make an investment decision, or build a model by the time your boss gets in at 7 AM. And it's a good thing that you want a riskier environment, because hidden inside that big median total comp number is a lot of volatility.

As to DE Shaw, well, they'll give anyone a look but usually you've got to be pretty damn special. And while the investment community has open arms for all sorts of learned people, I'd say that humanities are viewed by many as anti-empirical, and (excepting historians-- Niall Ferguson's dog could get a million-dollar signing bonus, I reckon) humanities PhDs are probably at the bottom of the "highly-educated" drawer. No one cares what you think of the Iliad.

For most investment jobs (analyst, portfolio manager, etc.)-- which your question suggests are interesting to you-- you'll need to learn how to build models, and that's exactly what many MBA programs teach you how to do. It's not really difficult to capitalize an operating lease or forecast working capital intensity, but its a bitch to teach it to yourself unless you already grasp the concepts. And even if you conceptually understand accounting, if an interviewer hands you a balance sheet and starts asking you about DTAs and NOLs, you'd be well served by knowing what he's talking about.

An MBA from the right program will get you the skills and the interviews you need to do the vast majority of intermediate-level business-type jobs, whether in strategy, finance, operations, or marketing. And if you enroll in a full-time program, you might even learn (from your classmates or career services) what you want to do with your life. If your sure you want to work in business, and you're talented enough, an MBA should be a no-brainer.

Last-- and you don't sound that arrogant, but still-- no one gives a damn how smart you are, because smart and savvy are two different things entirely, and plenty of really smart people have a perfectly awful time in business. I'm reminded of Taleb's tale of Fat Tony.
posted by Kwantsar at 2:43 PM on August 14, 2008

Getting an MBA was a great learning experience for me and helped both professionally and personally.

You didn't mention whether you like math/quantitative subjects. Certainly some of the more lucrative finance jobs are math-intensive.

If you really enjoy finance, then you might want to look into a CFA. That's one designation that does open doors. And since it's a standardized test, employers know what they're getting.

One caveat though, with the credit crisis deepening, the financial industry may be in for a long spell of contraction...
posted by storybored at 7:13 PM on August 14, 2008

I considered both finance and strategy consulting coming out of undergrad, and either of these would fit your criteria. Although the stereotypes about douchebag i bankers and consultants have some truth to them, there is a wide range of personalities in the industry and I really like the people I work with.

However, I really want to emphasize that the lifestyle is VASTLY different than what you are probably used to in academia. Not just the long hours (be prepared to work at least 65 hours/week on average, possibly more), but the lack of control over your schedule. If something comes up Friday night at 7 PM, you're expected to work through the weekend to get it done. Also, it can be extremely frustrating to sit around all day with nothing to do while waiting on a boss, who finally finishes whatever he was doing at 6 PM, and then he expects you to do your part for him by the next morning. I'm not trying to discourage you, just be aware of what you are getting into.

I echo mutant's suggestion to consider risk management, but advise against operations work. Although the work they do is essential, it is not very "intellectual" and the guys I know in operations are bored by what they do and looking to move into another area. Other areas to consider are (in banking) corporate finance, sales and trading (especially if you have good "people skills" - salespeople make tons of money and the work is not overly quantitative), and equity research. Also, you mention finance/economics as your area of interest, but you might want to consider something like marketing or brand management. I don't work in these fields, but from what I know they are well paid, do fairly creative work, and the lifestyle is better than banking or consulting. It may be easier to transition into marketing that banking/consulting, which are very competitive, and currently all of the big banks have hiring freezes.

Finally, contrary to some of the above advise, I would advise against immediately getting an MBA, just because you want to "get into business". It may not be necessary. First, decide what industry you want to go into - or at least identify 2 or 3 that you are interested in. Next, reach out to anyone you know that is tangentially related to these industries. Having a PhD from a "name" university will help you out, even if it is not in economics or finance. Contact the career centers at your current and former universities, and get the names of alums who are in positions that you are interested in. Then, network like crazy. If you can score some interviews, you have a decent chance at landing a job without having to get an MBA. If you don't have any luck, then consider the MBA. But don't do it just because you think that you need one. Much of what you need to know can be learned on-job.
posted by btkuhn at 8:15 PM on August 14, 2008

MBA? The downside.
posted by storybored at 5:42 PM on August 16, 2008

Article about a book written by a journalist who went through Harvard's MBA program.
posted by yarrow at 6:47 PM on August 17, 2008