Academic Job Market

[Underwhelmed]

Any other chiefs or graduating fellows a bit underwhelmed by the academic job market? It is crazy to go through all this training and have little control over your geography or terms of your job.

[Guest]

The job market in general sucks. Everything available is in some shithole in Nebraska.

[Guest]

Unrelated, but what's the average total comp. for an employed position in the Northeast? (Base + Call + Productivity). I have heard total comp. in employed positions right out of training to be 1 M - 1.2 M. Is that correct?

[Guest]

I totally agree, and this is something I didn't fully realize as a med student. Our job market is "good" in the sense that you're guaranteed to have a high paying job at the end of training, but because our field is so small, we have a lot less control over geography. Our friends in ENT, urology, etc. can basically point on a map and move there as a generalist (even to smaller, desirable cities). Not so in neurosurgery. Based on our experiences at my program, endovascular/dual trained folks probably have the most control geographically. Skull base is by far the most saturated.

[Focus]

Median salary is 610k for an assistant professor of neurosurgery in the academic world. 770 for associate, 810 for professor, 1.25M for chair. 2023 faculty salary survey.

Also, peds nsg is probably most saturated because there are few PP jobs.

[Guest]

The job market is saturated for academic neurosurgery jobs only. It is quite easy to find PP or hospital employed positions in almost any state, the exception in my opinion being Hawaii. These non-academic jobs will also pay you vastly more, and your quality of life will be significantly better. It’s an easy decision.

[Guest]

This. Same thing for every other specialty of medicine. One of my best friends is a total joints surgeon. Almost no/few academic jobs, but PP is wide open (obviously the pay is lower and competition is higher in highly desirable areas).

[Guest]

Academic jobs are all about who you know and what happens to be available. So if your looking at a specific region I would have your mentors reach out to those specific locations. Most of these jobs will never be posted or generally known about. That being said its true the employed and PP jobs are going to simply be better in terms of quality of life and pay in most circumstances. It really comes down to how much money and time are you willing to sacrifice for your academic career. Generally the more prestigious academic job the worse the pay but there are outliers and privademic places like Barrow, Carolinas, Siemens Murphy etc.

[Guest]

The above is very true, there of often positions available that are not advertised. However, this make ur position at the negotiating table worse, not better. With non-academic positions u can negotiate details like pay, benefits, ancillary service compensation, call, etc., with a non-advertised academic position u will just have to accept whatever slop they shovel ur way, which will typically involve more call, worse pay, lower status on the totem pole, u get the idea.

[Guest]

If that's the case, then why are academic positions so competitive/sought after? You basically need to have a top program and/or fellowship, lots of research, connections, etc. on top of being a great resident. Private practices don't care and will take pretty much anyone (your CV is basically your residency).