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Typical experiences of transgender people in academia?
I've recently come to accept that I'm transgender (MtF, male-to-female).  I won't go into the exact details of this as it's personal, but I have a "girl mode" where I identify as a female.  I'm also a researcher/lecturer at a respectable university.  I'm yet to reveal this side of myself at work, but it's not impossible that my colleagues or students will run into me in girl mode e.g. at the mall.
Question: What are typical experiences of openly transgender academics?
I'd be particularly interesting in examples of successful academics who are openly transgender.
I know there are both legal protections and university policies which prohibit discrimination based on being transgender, but no policy can make people like you.
(Update: As things developed, I gave an answer to my question below.)

Raewyn Connell is an incredibly important Australian sociologist who identifies as a transsexual woman.  I'm not sure her experiences as an academic could be considered typical, as she was appointed Chair very early in her career and has published many works of national or disciplinary significance.  Scholars have concentrated on the fruitful elements of her scholarly biography (genealogy of her concept of structure, for example), rather than studying Connell as a biographic subject.

This is in no way intended as an illustration of any kind of general trend, but I thought it was an interesting (albeit demoralising) article: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115274744775305134-d_SKq3_dwVeWH2_85LdpMoT_Y2w_20060811.html?mod=tff_main_tff_top

Deirdre McCloskey's memoir Crossing is available for free this month in e-book format from University of Chicago Press (see http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/freeEbook.html).

I am assuming you are asking about the US, or at least "top" academic countries such as the US, Canada, Australia, Central Europe? Could you specify? I have an example from an Eastern European country where a person was unable to get official transcripts re-issued under the new name after a gender-change operation. I think all the info is really relevant, but I assume there would be a big difference between e.g. the US and a country where seeing a dark-skinned man on the street  is an exciting and unusual event (really not trying to offend anybody, just speaking from experience).

I was in Canada at the time I wrote the question; a lot has changed since then.

Dr Dan Irving based at Carleton University in Ottawa.

I know a couple of academics in mathematics who are openly transgender. Most people are very supportive and they seem at ease, but there always seem to be a couple of difficult people who never get the gendered pronoun correctly despite many corrections from the transgenders themselves and also others. But in my experience (North America, Europe) there's a huge social pressure not to discriminate. If you're in Asia, for example, I imagine things could be different, but I wouldn't know. Perhaps you could make your question location-specific.

Jennifer Finney Boylan, Professor of English and Department Chair, Colby College, Maine.  Jenny wrote "She's Not There" and other great books.  My heroine (happily married to a woman)
Dr. Lynn Conway.  Lynn invented both VLSI and superscalar architectures.  Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan.  My heroine (happily married to a man)
Dr. Deirdre McCluskey, University of Chicago, Professor of Economics.  Very famous economist from Milton Friedman's old school.
Want more??  You are in the SAFEST profession to DO the transition!!  Read Jenny books and Lynn's website and you'll learn how to do it, step by step.

Joan Roughgarden is a another example for your list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Roughgarden

(Original answer March 2015)
I guess it's time to answer my own question.  Not long after posting the original question I began living exclusively as a woman (barring some short family-related interruptions).
I'll list some themes that applied to me that I think would apply generally:

Work interruption: As much as I tried to avoid it, transitioning interrupted my work.  I spent a lot of time learning how to behave, e.g. to minimize the likelihood of being attacked, to know how to react when people ask intrusive questions, and so on.  Medically, you're sent to doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, etc., who make you jump through all sorts of hoops over a long period of time.  The various surgeries trans people get can take you out of action for weeks to months.
Comments at university: There were some "hiccups" transitioning at university (smart people can make some really dumb comments).  However, they were a drop in the ocean compared to the hate I received from elsewhere.
University accounts: IT were totally unprepared for my transition.  E.g. my request for a Rebecca Stones email was refused and a subsequent email about the matter was ignored.  So my students referred to me by name X but email me under name Y which I found humiliating.
Bathrooms: There were a few surprised looks initially when sharing the ladies room with my female students and other female academics.  I never heard any complaints about it, and it didn't seem to be a big deal.
Applying for jobs: I have noticed no significant difference when applying for academic jobs in my area.
Academic record: It takes time to get your academic history records updated, which makes applying for jobs beforehand awkward.  During this time, I took up an adjunct position where administration requested a record of my PhD; I refused to supply this but indicated that several professors at the university witnessed me obtaining my PhD.  They refused to accept this, which resulted in a prolonged exchange of emails.  Eventually, I cited the university's privacy policy, after which they backed off.
Prior publications: I had to come to terms with having publications under my dead name.  I absolutely hate hearing or seeing that word refer to me.  I had to decide whether or not to include those publications on my CV and cite them in my publications (which could out me as transgender).  For my CV, I include these publications, but I list only the author surnames (I still feel uncomfortable with the thought that whoever reads my CV will Google these publications).  I cite them in my publications, as citing them doesn't directly imply that that name belongs to me.  I'm hoping I can bury these publications in new publications over time.
Travel: As an academic, I travel a lot.  Consequently, I have to keep in mind (a) attitudes towards transgender people when going through immigration (you're not at your most "passable" after a long flight), and (b) local attitudes towards and laws regarding transgender people.  E.g. I want to go to a conference in Chile later in the year, so I Googled "transgender Chile" and upon reading things like "had her face disfigured with a blowtorch" was a bit unsettled.
(Update August 2015)
I attended the conference in Chile (SIGIR 2015) and I'm pleased that my face was not disfigured by a blowtorch.  Here's a photo of the women's support group (I'm in there somewhere):

I'd also like to add:

Travelling can also interfere with (a) access to medicine, (b) access to [non-prejudiced] medical help, (c) other procedures, e.g. hair removal, and (d) the ability to buy clothes that fit.
Sometimes conference accommodation will be organized by gender (with or without the participants' prior knowledge).  This opens the possibility of being humiliated in front of colleagues (e.g. if the accommodation staff have their own opinion on your gender), and the possibility of sharing accommodation with someone who is uncomfortable with you.

Reacquainting with colleagues: I have a lot of international contacts, many of whom are still unaware of my transition.  From my experience, it's much better to meet in person than email someone an explanation (when all sorts of weird ideas about who I am can arise).  This is hard to do when your contacts are spread globally.
Transgender students: Transgender students seem to significantly appreciate that someone employed by the university is transgender.  Having a transgender member of staff goes against the stereotype that it's just undergraduate activists out to cause trouble who are transgender.
Online university resources: From my experience, university LGBT webpages cater almost exclusively to LGB students, with no usable information for transgender people.

(Update August 2015)

Male-dominated area: I'm currently in computer science which is kind of a "boy's club".  Outside of academia, being in a male-dominated career is sometimes used to discredit transgender women (among other things).  This results in a tug towards more female-friendly career paths, both outside of academia (e.g. nursing) and inside of academia (e.g. biology).
Female role models: It has become important to me to see and interact with successful female academics, especially those in my area.  (I was very encouraged by the healthy female presence at the SIGIR conference.)  Interestingly, it seems that I'm meant to be a female role model nowadays.
Female co-authors: I'm not sure if this is just a co-incidence, but I've recently found myself with a rapidly growing number of female co-authors.
International lifestyle: I'm currently a postdoc in China.  While I speak enough Chinese to "get by", and while my colleagues here are friendly, I feel isolated and lonely, and this is exacerbated by the lack of access to a transgender community.  (See also this question: Is feeling lonely and uncomfortable in my (foreign) country of study a valid reason to drop out of a PhD?)
Unwelcome attention towards my gender: Generally, I don't mind if people know that I'm transgender, as long as (a) this is not the only thing about me they consider and (b) they are not mean to me or my friends and colleagues as a result.  Thus far, to my knowledge, unwelcome attention has been negligible at university.  However, it's unclear if this trend will continue (after all, we only need a one-in-a-thousand to cause trouble).  Things I'm concerned about:

Maybe some transgender person somewhere does something evil, making headlines.  How would a university react to the resultant anti-transgender backlash?
What if a student makes a complaint because of my gender?  What if the student is well-prepared, having extensively read online anti-transgender literature?  What if the student makes a religious objection?
If I become successful and notable, hate material will probably be written directly about me.  Here are some examples (and it doesn't take much Googling to provide more examples):

Boylan, a member of the all-male, all-white, all-heterosexual, all-middle-aged transgender leadership... (ref.)
"Lynn" Conway, computer geek and head honcho of the raging autogynephiliacs who tried to destroy Michael Bailey. (ref.)
Deirdre McCloskey isn’t a woman: wishing can’t make it so, not even wishing and flashing scalpels. Neither is Joan Roughgarden. (ref.)

Unwelcome attention from men: After meals, I like to go for a walk to get some exercise.  Consequently, I have now had three four unwelcome sexual encounters within walking distance from my office, during the day, and with other people around at the time.  I also had a male staff member in another faculty ask for "random sex".  I'm afraid to tell others about these incidents, fearing they might think I encouraged them (esp. if they attribute it to being transgender).  I also simply don't have time to waste sobbing about each one; they're much too frequent.
(In today's encounter, an elderly gentleman approached me and asked for the time.  I found my phone and gave him the time.  I also discovered his penis was hanging out of his pants.  He indicated towards some nearby bushes and said "gēn wǒ péngyou wáer", which translates to "play with my friend".  I walked straight back to the office, nearly in tears.  It's thirty minutes after the incident now, and I need to discuss a paper with a student.)
Paper cited during talk: Recently, one of my co-authors referenced our joint paper at a conference talk while I was in the audience.  I was not impressed that my dead name initials were on display, forcing me to sit there with that on the screen for all to see, and I was quite fearful that someone might ask if there was a connection between the two names.  If I had known that was going to happen, I would not have attended the talk.

(Update February 2017)

Surgery: I'm not sure if I should say this, but I ended up having "bottom surgery" back at the end of 2015.  It was the most physically painful experience of my life, by a long way, and the pain didn't go away until about two and a half months later.  So much pain.  During this time, my spoons were limited.  E.g. I'd go to the office to prove I still work there (I mostly just stared at the walls), and I'd need to spend the next day recovering.  I would bleed a lot, and this resulted in some additional accommodation expenses.  I would not be able to stand for longer than around 5 minutes without it being too painful (requiring a wheelchair at the airport).
I managed to go to the 2015 CMS meeting shortly after surgery, where Yuval Filmus (who I knew through math.SE) sat next to me just after surgery, although I don't know if he realized any of this.  (And I remember being a bit snippy with David Pike.)
The painkillers caused hallucinations, e.g. I'd be walking and suddenly "There's no floor! I'm falling!! Oh wait, there is a floor."  I became afraid of stairs.  This was happening while I was at work, although I tried to conceal it.  I also sent out a few "interesting" emails.
More than a year later, I have no regrets about having surgery.  It has resulted in me having a lot more confidence.  If someone denies my gender, they are simply being unreasonable (although, nobody ever does).  I'm now far less afraid that someone is going to find out about my past.
Bodily maintenance (dilation) is both time-consuming and painful, particularly at the start.  It's embarrassing but it nevertheless must be done, including while sharing accommodation with other women.  I got used to making "chit chat" while doing this.  Airport security sometimes inspect your dilators (which need to be in carry-on baggage) which can be embarrassing and worrisome (esp. when travelling through non-transgender-friendly countries).
Conversion to Islam: Perhaps contrary to popular expectations, Islam is a relatively transgender-friendly religion.  Often the attitude is that someone's gender is innate and decided by God, and being transgender is considered along the lines of a birth defect.  Of course, being Muslim results in its own complications (e.g. hijab).  I haven't had any problems praying in the female prayer areas (including on-campus ones).
A publication about transgenderism: Perhaps this is not a typical experience, but I published a paper about transgender bathrooms usage (here), which was mentioned in the Washington Post.

I think I learned more from this answer than any one (or two or...) other answers posted on this site.  Thank you so much for taking the time to post it.  It was truly enlightening.

Congrats on your recovery from your major surgery.  Two ideas: 1) Re the yucky experience when walking: I know some women who have also had yucky experiences in broad daylight in Mexico; they learned to switch to the other sidewalk, or step into the street to give strangers a wide berth.  Would that help?  2) Re Paper cited during talk: could you republish the old articles on your own website or somewhere else, with your new name, and ask co-authors to cite the new version instead?  (I don't know the answer.)

About the unwanted male attention.....Men can be a pain.  I have been having a long duration internal dialogue regarding gender identity, with the whole thing complicated by the fact that I think of things through a almost purely concrete/logical lens due to my Asperger's syndrome.  This thread is an eye opener.

I reread this post every time this thread resurfaces. It's fascinating and (I hope) it's making me a better ally to my trans/genderqueer friends. Thank you so much for sharing!

There are two transgender academics in biology at Stanford University (both of whom transitioned during their tenure there I believe). Ben Barres has written extensively about his experiences (female to male). Joan Roughgarden is another example (MtF).

To add a few more examples, you can have a look at the Wikipedia list of Transgender scientists:

Ben Barres
Angela Clayton
Lynn Conway
Kate Craig-Wood
Alan L. Hart
Caitlín R. Kiernan
Anne Lawrence
Alexia Massalin
Deirdre McCloskey
Christa Muth
Rachael Padman
Joan Roughgarden
Julia Serano
Sophie Wilson

There is also a list of LGBT scientists.

In my undergraduate institution there was a transgender logician graduate student. He taught me category theory. As far as I remember none of us had ever any problems with his regular mini-skirt outfit. In my graduate institution there was a graduate student who changed gender and made it known to everybody (faculty and students). Again, there were no issues that I've heard of, the relationship of that person with their supervisor remained very good (as far as I can tell) and the person went on to a very good job later on. Keep in mind that I did my undergraduate and graduate degree in fairly "liberal" places. Overall my experience was that if you let people know, but then move on with you regular life then it doesn't become an issue. Also it is not unlikely that some of your colleagues already "know". I guess there is always an amount of risk involved with full disclosure. Keep in mind that people shouldn't judge you on what you do in your private time. Another factor is if you already have tenure, and if you don't and things go bad if you will try to explain them by your transition?

If the logician was actually transgender (as opposed to 'transvestite' - I put the term in quote marks because I don't know if anyone actually refers to themselves in this way, but it refers to dressing as the other gender, as opposed to identifying as a different gender than the one assigned at birth), then you may not be being as accepting as you think by still referring to them as 'he'.

the term i've more commonly used for a cisgender cross-dresser is, well, cross-dresser. my understanding is that "transvestite" is quite dated, although I could be mistaken. Another possibility is that the logician is genderqueer, and just dressing outside the gender binary entirely. But, the answer specifically says transgender so yeah, i think it's pretty safe to assume this person is not as accepting as they think they are

I'd be particularly interesting in examples of successful academics who are openly transgender.

The "500 Queer Scientists" project (https://500queerscientists.com/) includes openly transgender academics.
I encourage you to browse that site to for examples.


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Why is there no funding for the Arecibo observatory, despite there being funding in the past?
The Arecibo observatory shuts down its science.
This looks like the last step in its long decline caused by gradually reducing funding over time: the huge legendary radio telescope cannot be properly maintained, it collapses, there is no money to repair it, and it now, finally, reached its end (there are still other, yet smaller telescopes remaining.). There was a time when there was money to build the telescope. Why did this change so much?
The legitimate explanation would be that this radiotelescope was no longer scientifically interesting, or at least less than when it was built. Or was it a defense project that lost its military significance? Or just palace intrigues over funding? Or something else?

If you are interested in what capabilities that were lost with Arecibo, or the limits coming from the design that made spending more money hard to justify suggest looking at https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/search?q=arecibo and https://space.stackexchange.com/search?q=arecibo

When Arecibo was built it was the largest radio telescope. There is now the larger filled aperture system in China and several very large array telescopes.
As such rebuilding Arecibo as it was would be a lot of money to be 'somewhere in the top 10', which is a hard sell politically.
It is possibly also relevant that radio telescopes built into terrain can only point at a very small volume of space because they are rather immobile, this means that Arecibo has scanned all the sky it can see from that location to the precision the system allowed, and the China 500 meter array has similar sky coverage (18 vs 25 degrees north) and is generally more capable. The loss of Arecibo does impact high power active radio astronomy, but most of the bodies of interest now have orbiting radar equipped space probes.
If building a similar capability doing so in the southern hemisphere would probably offer the highest science per $ return as the skies would 'new' for this type of study, rather than trying to fit a larger/more capable system into the Arecibo geography.

In recent years, the technical advantage of Arecibo was its radar transmitter, not its size.  As far as I know, no radar is planned for FAST.

A bit of a contrarian answer:  Arecibo's funding lasted much longer than normal.  Arecibo is older than Voyager, Green Bank, Hubble, Keck, Mauna Kea ...
Lovell and Haystack are the only major facilities I can think of that are older than Arecibo.
Arecibo lost funding because it reached the end of an exceptional streak of funding successes.

McMath-Pierce had a slightly shorter life than Arecibo, being built shortly before and also decommissioned slightly earlier.

Arecibo was funded by DoD, NSF, and NASA.
DoD lost interest in 1969.
From 1998 to 2020, NASA's budget increased from $25.48 billion to $25.51 billion in 2022 dollars.  The cost of the Webb telescope increased from $1.83 billion to $9.66 billion in 2022 dollars.
LIGO cost over a billion dollars.  Over the lifetime of LIGO, NSF's inflation-adjusted budget decreased by over a billion dollars per year.  Astronomy gets a small slice of NSF's budget, which is smaller than NASA's budget.
A lot of stuff got cancelled.

it collapses, no money to repair

The simple answer is that the 2020 collapse was irreparable. Much of the telescope was destroyed and would have had to be completely rebuilt. Spending so much to rebuild a 60 year old telescope does not represent a good value proposition. It is true that an updated, modern telescope at the same site has since been proposed, and rebuilding at the same site would offer cost savings and cultural benefits. However, this proposal's price tag still comes to a $400 M, so the odds of funding seem remote.
The more interesting question is perhaps: why wasn't avoiding this collapse more of a priority? The NSF drastically cut funding to Arecibo in 2007 and was already planning a "controlled demolition" rather than a costly repair in 2020, when the telescope was in danger but hadn't yet collapsed.
To me, the official explanation is plausible. Astronomy budgets in the US are always tight. Arecibo was built in 1963, and while it remained relevant 45 years later (in 2007), it also remained costly. And by 2020, the value proposition was even worse: if NSF had only tepid interest in funding the observatory when it was fully functional, it's unsurprising that they would not be interested in funding costly repairs fifteen years later.

"The entire telescope was destroyed" is false.  In the November 7 2020 incident, one tower collapsed and part of the dish was damaged.  Wikipedia's picture dated December 2021 shows large parts of the telescope still present, but perhaps unsafe to work on.

A main asset of Arecibo is the sinkhole.  It would be very expensive to recreate in another location.  The sinkhole is still available for use in a telescope.

@AnonymousPhysicist Parts don't have to be physically destroyed to be effectively destroyed (i.e. damaged beyond repair). The earthquake prior the collapse already caused severe structural damage to the site, to the extent that scientific work had to be suspended. The collapse was the icing on the cake - not only did it destroy part of the dish and the whole (costly!) detector unit, but it surely caused further structural damage to the remaining towers and parts of the dish. I'd bet that at this point rebuilding from scratch would be more cost-effective than fixing the structure.

@Neinstein Yes, and the answer's been fixed now.

Because the whole one mega project solution mindset is pretty outdated? Today you take software, several small distributed radio telescopes with excellent time measurements and combine them into one huge virtual telescope the size of the planet.

References for such software, please. Thank you.

Several small telescopes into one size of the planet sounds pretty bold. Please provide references.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2008/mar/30/spaceexploration.spacetechnology Its pretty old even back then.

@algorithmic_fungus https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/news/black-hole-image-makes-history "This black hole is 6.5 billion times the mass of the Sun. Catching its shadow involved eight ground-based radio telescopes around the globe, operating together as if they were one telescope the size of our entire planet."

Not so far fetched per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_interferometer --maybe not the "size" of the planet, in surface area, but you could get close to the diameter FWIW.

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Is there a good source to compare academic salaries at European universities?
Is there a good source to compare academic salaries at European universities? For example, what are the salaries of full professors in different countries?
I would particularly welcome a possible source, a link pointing to a page where this information is available.

We could start writing down our salaries here... that would give some interesting comparison

Maybe you should reformulate the question. As it is now, this will lead to big lists, and you ask two different questions.

@Sylvain Peyronnet: Is the reformulated question better? You should edit it.

Yep, I like it now ;) I am not in favour of editing other people questions at the beginning of the beta. I prefer see before where the site is going, so that I can adapt myself.

I think this page has what you are looking for. As far as I can tell (e.g. for France) the numbers are fine.
However, we should keep in mind that the comparison can be made difficult. For instance, "full professor" is not an actual rank in french academia. You are either a "maitre de conférences" (roughly equivalent to assistant prof. position to "junior" associate prof.), then "professeur des universités" (roughly from more senior associate prof. to full prof.).

It would also be better if there were more information about benefits. Also, the data there isn't entirely correct (Germany's is out of date and also misrepresented—the salary for an assistant professor is about 3900€ per month).

I think these figures should only be taken as rough guidelines as the differences within a country can be larger than between two different countries. In the UK for example, while two people may be on the same position in the pay scale, the actual amount that is paid may differ from university to university. Then there are regional pecularities like an extra allowance for London universities.

Great link. However, since these figures stand for gross salaries, the page should be complemented with taxation information. Here's what I found for Europe: http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/tedb/taxSearch.html

http://www.glassdoor.com/ works by getting anonymous information from users and sharing it. It is really vast and accurate as far as I am aware.
Examples:
TA: Brigham Young University $10.41/hour
Professor: University of Warwick: £103/year-£112/year
You must only Select Salaries on the dropdown menu, add a description or phrase of the position and/or location.

nice, actually I even found a salary from a software engineer in Vietnam. Didn't expect that. Actually (in case of: Sotware Engineer Switzerland) those lists show only better paid jobs from international firms. Sure not every developer gets paid 100k per year, as their data shows. Unfortunately they force you to sign in, after 2-3 searches :/

I don't know how to get information about different countries, but this webpage allows you to query the information on salaries in different parts of Germany. If you query for "professor" you will find several categories depending upon the status of the academic institution (University, University of applied sciences (Fachhochschule) etc.). Here is the link to the salaries of full professor in normal universities.

For Germany, Öffentlicher Dienst is a much more accurate source of information.

For Germany the best website to see professor salaries is the following:
https://www.academics.de/wissenschaft/w-besoldung-2014-eine-uebersicht-der-grundgehaelter_56973.html
It gives the W1, W2, and W3 Professor ranges. Just keep in mind that it is not strictly comparable to an assist, assoc, full ranking as W2 is considered also a full professor. Also, there is not tenure track system in Germany, although a couple universities are starting to experiment with it so you can have a permanent or temporary contract that may become permanent in the future or may not.

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German Phd vs Swedish Phd vs Norway Phd
What phd is more capable of getting a job in industry in European countries? (in Engineering field)

Hey! Unfortunately, this site is not the right place for the question (it will get closed and downvoted, without any answers). You will have to find your answer yourself;)

Hard for me to imagine a difference except that Norway isn't part of EU. All high quality as far as I know.

Obviously a PhD from country X is better for getting a job in country X. However, the stature of the university is more important and, in the grand scheme of things, the country doesn't really matter. It's like asking "What car is fastest? A red one, a green one, or a blue one?"

All of the above.  Treat all those countries as one unit, apply in all three and take the best you can get.

I don't think this answers the question about getting a job in industry, unless you assume that there is a way to say which of the ones the OP can get is the best for industry.


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German doctorate (Phd) in industry; Working in a company or University?
I have just read about "German Phd in industry" in the site, "Research-in-Germany". It says that even if I get a phd position in industry, I need a university professor to supervise my research and award the doctor degree.
*So, I wonder if a company accept me, I should work in the company or University (Physically, I often need to go to the company (or not), and no need to go to University).

Can you give an actual reference to the site? It would surprise me if anyone but a university could award a doctorate, especially in Germany. I worry that you may have misinterpreted something.

Perhaps this site: https://www.research-in-germany.org/en/

I won't give a formal answer here since I'm not sure of details. I assume that this is just a situation in which some companies have formed partnerships with some universities to host student research. It looks like the "student" is a full-time employee and a part-time student. The professor guides and approves the research and the degree is awarded by the university. As a part time student the degree may take a while (but it will anyway). I assume the funding is from the company. Some US companies likely also do this, if less formally.

In many German universities, traditionally the PhD process is only concerned with what happens once you show up with your completed thesis manuscript in triplicate. Before that moment, there are little to no requirements - where I was, the only thing required was a letter from a Professor of this university saying "I agree to supervise X", submitted at least a year before the actual thesis. Therefore, it is trivial from an administrative standpoint to do a PhD in a company: you, Prof, and Boss agree on how to handle things among yourselves. This could be working all day in the company, and then writing it up on the weekends with the advice of Prof, it could be doing half time in the company and half time in the lab, it could be whatever seems good as long as it results in work of an adequate level (and earns you enough money to survive). The university only cares that at the end, you wrote a tome that a jury of three professors agrees is worth a PhD.
Of course, the devil is in the details. This might depend a lot on the field, but my previous lab had a collaboration with a Fraunhofer research institute, and I heard that even for employees of such a research-oriented company, where the possibility to acquire a PhD at the same time is baked into the contract and part of the attraction, the pressures of work life were such that many did not manage to make sufficient research contributions, and left without a degree when their time was up.

I cannot agree with your answer as it is not correct in general. For example, the TU Munich requires additional coursework throughout your PhD as well as being registered in their graduate school for at least two years. I think there is a trend towards such a PhD procedure now.

@J-Kun: That is possible, it's been 4 years since I left Germany. But I can't believe that this trend is so sweeping that no university remains that does it this way - no way are administrations moving that quickly! I've edited my answer to hedge my statements some more...

There was enough and correct said about the situation with thesis submission and formalia of the PhD awarding. I am tackling this question from a different viewpoint.
Money
Basically, if you work at the university, you work directly under your supervisor, the university professor. Either, you are paid from state funds (which you are not), or you are paid from a third-party funding.
Most third-party fundings are basically "your supervisor get a sack of money". So, while your research topic might be shaped by the third party, your boss is still the supervisor, you work for him.
Now, I would imagine that many companies would not like this. So, in most cases of an industry-based PhD project, you work for the company. The company might be nice enough to allow you to collaborate with your supervisor on your job results academically. But this is not a given. (In this case you basically do your PhD on weekends.)
The only exception to this view is when the company plays the role of a third-party fund. So, it's basically, "here is a ton of money" for your supervisor, there is an interest for the research in the company, and there are  capabilities to do it at your supervisor's lab. Where do you work depends now on some agreements between to sides, but you might have a choice.
In most cases, however, you cannot choose. You are either bounded to your supervisor (because the money for your position are with him and your university). Or you are chained to your company's chair (because they pay you and your PhD is at best a byproduct and at worst your own problem entirely).


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Supervisor does not give a research project
I am a graduate student in pure Mathematics. My supervisor gave me an idea to work on, and in 6-9 months I found enough stuff to write 3 papers. After I did that, I was eager to work on some new idea, but my advisor only gave me learning projects, so that I just read many papers without doing any sort of research. After 6 months, I would like to start a research project, but all this reading didn't really help me in finding one (of course I thought about questions on my own, but since the area is quite old and competitive, I was not able to find a reasonable question that was not already answered). My advisor still does not give me anything concrete to work on, but merely suggests to read this or that paper. All of this is very weird, because his other students are treated very differently, they all have projects that started from ideas of the supervisor, and some of them even publish with him!
I am quite desperate, because I get really anxious about wasting my limited time, and I would like to know what you think about this.

Three papers in pure maths in such a short period of time seems quite a high number. If these are short papers, perhaps your supervisor wishes you to learn more background and more context, so that your next bit of research can go deeper? But if these are substantial papers then I sympathise with your current frustrations

One is very novel, one is a nice result that was overlooked but not technically difficult, one is less interesting.

Maybe he is afraid that if he gives you a problem you are not challenged by you will lose your respect or patience.

You have already written 3 papers.  This is a lot for a graduate student in pure mathematics.  Although, technically speaking, you are still a graduate student, in terms of your research stage, you are already a postdoc.  Hence your advisor is treating you like a postdoc.
As a general rule, in order for you to get a permanent position, you will have to formulate and solve some problem completely independently of your advisor.  Your advisor thinks you have enough experience to start learning to do so.
If it turns out you can't develop the skills to be an independent researcher, it's probably best for you to find out earlier so that you can embark on a different career path.

Ouch. That last paragraph was pretty brutal. I think that most productive mathematicians don't actually work in isolation. They are surrounded by others who have good ideas and generate a lot of synergy within a department. Also, the OP has quite a lot invested already. I don't find it surprising that a doctoral student in math can't come up with a problem, especially in a well trodden field. While that is, indeed, the highest level of mathematical thinking, it takes time to develop - and a supportive environment.

@Buffy: The job market is pretty brutal.

Yes, indeed. But it changes. I graduated into such a market, but after a few years it changed. I struggled for a while, but ended up having a great career. Not exactly the point here, but people shouldn't make long term decisions based on today's economic conditions, whether they be good or bad.

Downvoted for the last sentence.  Nobody is born with the skills necessary to be an independent researcher.  Yes, it's best to find out early which of the necessary skills you lack, but the appropriate response to finding those gaps is not to give up, but rather to develop the necessary skills, with the help of your advisor, since that is in fact their job.

@JeffE: Yes skills can be developed, but not everyone can develop a skill at the same rate or to the same extent.  I'll edit to reflect this.

By the way, I agree with your answer's first paragraphs. Don't take my objection as being general. The first paragraph, especially, was great advice.

Nope, the revised last sentence is still essentialist nonsense.  Sure, some people are slower than others, but there is a vast difference between "slower than someone else" and "utterly incapable".  I firmly believe that anyone can develop the necessary skills, given enough time and energy and attention.  The only question is whether the student and advisor are willing to invest the necessary time and energy and attention, and whether the student and advisor think that investment is worth the payoff.

@JeffE - Yes, it's true that by 'can't develop' I mean 'can't develop quickly enough to a high enough level', but given how utterly brutal the job market is in pure mathematics now (and it looks likely to keep getting worse - I think it's reasonable to believe my PhD-granting department has hired its last ever permanent faculty member with research responsibilities), 'quickly enough' and 'to a high enough level' are strong qualifiers.  I don't think it's too essentialist to say that I could not have been an NBA player no matter how hard I worked and what training I got.

@JeffE Well it isn't the only question, is it, in places (oh wow, not everywhere is the USA) where there are time limits and constraints that student and supervisor may have no control over. And "given enough time and energy" can, in my view, be 10+ years

@YemonChoi Fair point.  I should have written "...if the student and advisor and their institution think the investment is worth the payoff."

@JeffE Thanks. It gets worse in e.g. UKHE, when it isn't just the institution, but the research councils, the [expletive deleted] government, etc.

You should talk to your advisor about this.  Some questions you might ask are “I’m excited to start a new research project, do you have any more concrete suggestions?”  Or “When you read papers how do you go about finding concrete projects to work on?” Or “I don’t think I understand how reading papers leads to a research problem to work on.”
I’d also encourage you do go to talk to other people and go to conferences and try to develop collaborations.  Once you have done one project with your advisor it’s good to start working with other people too.

I would emphasize the second paragraph more. Getting a sense from many mentors about their idea generation process is probably useful.

I can imagine several scenarios, but don't have much information here to go on. The most hopeful one is that it is just a communication mismatch, or a mismatch of expectations. The only way to solve that, I think, is directly by asking him for guidance to the end. If
If he treats other students differently it could be a variety of things. Hopefully he respects you and your abilities, but if not you have a serious problem. Is it that the other students are more advanced already? Or that they have worked with him for a long time?
Another possibility is that he is overextended in his own work and advising and you are just the one with the short straw. Finding a different advisor might be a solution to that, if you can find someone more compatible who works in a close enough field that you aren't set back too much. I've mentioned in answers to other questions that some junior faculty are working toward tenure themselves and don't have time to advise effectively.
A wild, and unlikely, scenario, is that he is afraid of your abilities. That is rare, but possible. The correct behavior on his part, if he sees you as a superstar eclipsing his own, would be to get you going and get out of your way. This is the Good Will Hunting scenario.
Another answer here is also possible, though not all doctoral students have yet made the transition of thinking deeply enough to come up with their own problem. It is the ideal, to be sure, but takes seasoning and maturing that not all students attain until they finish their degrees (I'm an example, actually).
You also mention working in a well worn subfield in which problems are just hard to come up with and results even more so. When a field of maths is new there is little known so a lot can be learned quite quickly. As the field matures it gets harder and harder and mathematics moves on to something newer, though not all mathematicians do so. This was exemplified in the switch from Classical Real Analysis to Functional Analysis fifty or so years ago.
I don't expect that I gave you an answer here, other than to try to talk to your advisor and improve communications, but hope I gave something to think about at least. Maybe one of them will lead to a solution.

For sure I do not eclipse him, but his current students are definitely worse than I. I often help them with their work, and I am much more knowledgeable than them. I believe that he wants me to find my problem in his area, but as I said I think it is just too classical for me to find something reasonable. Thank you very much for your time.

Is there any possibility that you and the advisor and one or two other students can have one (or a few) brain-storming sessions in which you speculate, even quite wildly, about problems? If your department has a "coffee lounge" for faculty this can be quite informal. If it happens during "coffee time" it won't feel as burdensome as a formal meeting. The big question in math is always "What would it be nice to know if we could figure out how to know it?"

Other wild ideas. Do you share an activity. Do you both bicycle for exercise? Racketball, ... Anything informal. I used to mix with some faculty this way in grad school, though not my (very formal) advisor.

Ok, I understand your suggestion. I have a tendency of working on my own and only asking my advisor. I will try what you suggest, thank you.

@Fuzuj, excellent. Take full advantage of the synergy available in a math department through both formal and informal communication. Over time you learn to contribute more and more as well as to integrate ideas that come from different sub-fields than your own. Each field has "special ways of thinking" that help solve problems, but "out of left field" ideas can also tweak the brain into creativity.


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What to do when an advisor repeatedly changes graduation requirements?
My friend is a PhD student in the "Jessica" computer science lab. Before beginning, he and Dr. Jessica came to a verbal understanding that he'd be allowed to graduate in time for a job offer scheduled to begin a few years after starting the PhD, but only if he passes his prelim and completes drafts of research papers covering all aspects of the prelim. No written records of Dr. Jessica's agreement exist, as Dr. Jessica was careful to organize only face-to-face meetings about this.
Dr. Jessica has reneged repeatedly on her promises and keeps upping the ante for graduation -- from having manuscript drafts to submissions and now to acceptances. Meanwhile, my friend has no written record of this and doesn't know what to do despite his job's start date closing in. He is not even allowed by Dr. Jessica to bring up the topic of graduation with his committee without her consent. What, if any, recourse does my friend have?

No email trail? Is there an ombudsman? Country? Is there a witness to the last outburst you mention?

I find the last paragraph overly lurid. Is it necessary to use this kind of subjective and emotive description?

My advice would be to cultivate one or more allies in the department (perhaps other committee members who already have tenure?). These allies can both put pressure on Dr Jessica to allow the student to graduate and provide accountability to both parties. Another way to pressure the faculty member is to publicize your upcoming job loudly and often. This way the faculty member’s peers start asking her about the student’s job and the defense.
In regards to scheduling the defense specifically, the student can get other committee members to “request” that a date be set. The excuse would be: “I was talking to Dr Adam (choose someone tenured to help with this) and he mentioned that his schedule is packed and he wants me to schedule the defense right now so he knows when it is. He knows that you have final approval, but he just wants a date to hold.”
I basically used these strategies to manage my reluctant chair when I had a job arranged. They only worked because my chair cared about his reputation with his peers more than he wanted to “perfect” my dissertation.
At the same time, the student needs to realize that many faculty have been burned by students who never publish their research results once they take jobs in industry. This represents a waste of good research/resources for the faculty member trying to get tenure and for society at large. The change in demands is likely because the faculty member is just realizing this possibility exists and does not trust the student. The student should do whatever it takes to assure the faculty member that the research will get published after the student starts the position.

Re last point, perhaps the OP should maximise their chance of getting that job - reminding the supervisor that they will be starting the job will be a motivator for the supervisor to stop messibg around...


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How do I approach a supervisor who seems to be unconcerned with my projected end date?
I am a Master's student two years into my degree and am planning to defend in the next few months. My supervisor is generally condescending and discouraging which unfortunately seems to be quite common for student-supervisor relationship. Until now, I've taken things in stride and have kept my head down, but as I get closer to the date that I'm hoping to finish, it seems he is continually putting up more and more barriers to actually finishing. When I push back or gently suggest alternatives he gets more and more difficult to work with.
Without going into too much detail, I now have a complete draft of my thesis that I would like to have him read for feedback and edits but instead of going through the whole thesis, he wants to go through each section back and forth until it's "as good as possible" and then move on to the next.
As he tends to take a week or two to make edits and he refuses to look at other sections while I'm working on his edits, it seems as though he wants this to take as long as possible. He has recently lost funding and I am no longer receiving funding from him so I'm wondering if it's in his best interest to have me around as long as possible. I understand two weeks can actually be a good turn-over for edits, but in context with other issues we've had, this just another in a growing resistance to any progress being made.
How can I best address this situation to ensure I can defend in a timely matter? I'd rather not go to the department head because I think she'll be obligated to take action as he has had other formal complaints made against him recently.
I've spoken with a committee member who has suggested I reiterate my goals and timeline for defense but this is something I do regularly and I don't think it will help in this instance.
Edit to add information from comments:
We have made numerous calendars and schedules that seem to go by the wayside the minute they're made. I suspect that having me on as a student is an advantage for him at this point, as he has no funding to secure new students and no longer has to fund me. The longer he holds onto me, the longer he can avoid pressure from the department to take on new students, projects, etc.

It could be helpful to buy a large wall calendar, and pencil some milestones in it, working backwards from your approximate defense date.  You could erase those milestones, bring it to a meeting with your advisor, and ask for some help in filling things in.  Perhaps you could put the target defense date two weeks earlier than what you really have in mind, for safety.  You could say that you have travel plans for the following month (some family situation that will require you to be out of town for a month), and you would like to defend before you go. // Try to get some overlap in the...

calendar, where polishing Chapter 1 is happening concurrently with rough editing of Chapter 2.  You could use color coding.  My idea is to involve your advisor in this planning so he'll get on board with your needed timeframe.  (No guarantee this will work, though.)

State you are done with the work and are now only going to improve your writing. If he does not give you any funding, he cannot force you to work more for him. Then iterating over the write-up only takes up his time that he could use to secure more funding, your time is nothing that gives him any advantage.

@aparente001 That is a good idea but we have made numerous calendars and schedules that seem to go by the wayside the minute they're made. I also do have travel plans in 4 months; I'm moving to the other side of the country. The problem with presenting this information to him is that he will end up with him viewing the time pressure as 'my fault' or 'my choice'. Of course it is my choice, but I shouldn't need a reason to want to finish my thesis in 2.5 years. That's plenty of time for an M.Sc.

@skymningen I think that having me on as a student is an advantage for him at this point as he has no funding to secure new students and no longer has to fund me. The longer he holds onto me, the longer he can avoid pressure from the department to take on new students, project etc.

@hamilthj That is exactly why I said, you need to stop being available for anything else than your thesis write-up. Then he is not gaining anything by delaying that, only losing more of his own time.

It sounds like it may be time for you to lay all this out to the director of graduate studies in your department.  Here are some suggestions in case you decide to do so:

You can take a friend with you for moral support if you wish.
Make an appointment. If someone asks you for a reason, you can say something brief, such as "ask advice about my graduation timeline."  (That's to get you a foot in the door.)
Speak calmly.  Just explain your experience so far, and leave out the part about your fears and how long you've been working on it.  Leave out your conjectures about your advisor's possible motivations.
The administrator may ask you some questions about your timeline and you may, of course, answer them.
If the administrator makes a suggestion or advises you to do something you've already tried, don't nod and say you'll try that.  Tell him or her calmly what has occurred when you have tried that.
Ask him or her if s/he can get back to you by (name the date that comes up in 6 days).  That way, if you have to go up the chain of command, you'll be able to say, "I met with Prof. YY a week ago."
Document the conversation by sending a thank-you email that same day.  E.g. "Thank you for meeting with me today to discuss etc." and include a bulleted list of the points covered in the meeting.
If the administrator does not commit to getting back to you, you may jump to the next level without waiting.

I think that in most departments a five or ten-minute conversation with the director of grad studies will do the trick and either your advisor will start moving, or the department will find some other way of getting you out the door.

I'm in a very small department. Do you think it would be best to ask for the meeting to be in confidence in my email to the director?

@hamilthj - You can, but that might put the administrator's guard up.  Could you stop by the department office in person and talk either to the administrator or a secretary, to request an appointment (in a casual tone)?  If they ask you for a reason for the meeting, you might want to say something more innocuous than what I suggested in my answer.  For example, "academic planning."  If the secretary asks you to explain, you can say, "It will be easier to explain when I meet with Prof. YY."  If they press you again, just repeat yourself in a pleasant, firm voice.  Look, typically, students...

talk with the director of grad studies all the time.  I've probably made it sound much more complicated than it is likely to be.

I'm quite familiar with the graduate studies coordinator and have spoken to her before so I think it will be fine. I'm concerned that this will end up making things a bit worse but as it is now, there's not much else I can do.

@hamilthj - Your concern is understandable, but since you have an existing relationship with the DGS (sorry, I just made that up), I think that if you share your concern with her, the two of you will be in a position to agree together on the approach to be taken. // I hope you will post an update when you have some news.

I've talked to a committee member about this extensively and tried to directly address my defense date etc with my supervisor to no avail. I've more recently spoken with the DGS (it's a good acronym) and she's suggested that I send the complete draft of my thesis with a gentle reminder that he's required by school regulations to review it within two weeks. Hopefully this will work a bit better than past attempts!

@hamilthj - good work, and thanks for the update.  Could you maybe cc the DGS when you email your supervisor this time?

We talked about that and a few other actions she could take if this didn't work but we're trying a last ditch effort at a conflict-free approach and taking it from there.

@hamilthj - This is great, thanks for the update.  If your supervisor suddenly starts behaving responsively and responsibly, great!  If not, you've laid the groundwork to be able to ask the DGS for some action.  Make sure you put that two-week-hence date in your calendar, and follow up promptly!

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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PhD and postdoc with no first author publications- realistically what are my career prospects?
I am a UK based researcher in life sciences. My research is in neuroscience, mainly involving in vivo electrophysiology. My PhD project was a disaster for a number of reasons (technical difficulties, difficult supervisor etc) and so I finished with very few results. Through a side project I got a middle authorship on a paper in a respectable but not outstanding journal (impact factor ~5-6). Despite all the difficulties I endured during my PhD I still wanted to be an academic researcher and decided to take a 3 year postdoc position at another UK university.
The postdoc project seemed promising and the lab had a track record of publishing decent papers. Unfortunately disaster has struck again, and none of my experiments have worked or produced anything publishable. I only have 6 months left on my contract and the odds of me getting a paper in that time are pretty much zero.
I know I need to think about what my next step is career-wise but I feel so stressed and demotivated that I worry I'm not thinking clearly. Plus my confidence is rock bottom from feeling like everything I touch in the lab falls apart. Part of me thinks it's time to cut my losses and try a different career path, however the thought of giving up on my long held dream of being a researcher is heartbreaking, and I then start to wonder if I'm quitting too easily. When I tell my science friends how I feel they all tell me that I'm not a bad scientist, that I've just been unlucky and that they're sure the next project (whatever it is) will go better. Are they right? Do I still have a chance? If I took another postdoc and got a paper from it, would that ever be enough to make up for the long gap in my publication record? Or would it be a  case of too little too late?
Any advice would be much appreciated!

Why aren't failures publishable? Scientific academia needs a major kick up the bum

@Strawberry "The laser broke because of a power spike and half our mice died and our algae had an unexpected and unrelated bleaching event, so we couldn't obtain results to any level of statistical significance above that previously reported in the literature to either confirm or reject any hypothesis" is a mode of failure that is distinct from a null result and it's still not publishable. Academia still needs a kick up the bum to publish negative results, but that's not synonymous with failed experiments.

@E.P. Now that's a paper worth reading!

You might consider this: https://www.princeton.edu/~joha/Johannes_Haushofer_CV_of_Failures.pdf

@Strawberry - "Applications of Murphy's law to electrophysiology lab experiments: a case study". BAM.

Apropos  of publishing negative results (that are rigorously obtained): https://jnrbm.biomedcentral.com/

I'll be honest with you. Sometimes, who you work with is more important than what you study. Some PhD and post-doc supervisors aren't worried at all with other people's career. Some of them are very advanced in their careers and don't need more papers that much, so they want to publish only Nobel Prize papers. They don't depend on any particular collaborator because they have already lots of people working with them, so they put post-docs in risky projects. Call some good friend of yours who is working in another group where even students are publishing and ask them if you can work with them.

Another postdoc might help it is very successful. Also remember that luck is definitely part of the game - e.g. someone could do amazing work in their postdoc and then get scooped, potentially costing them their career. It does not necessarily reflect on you as a scientist: The goal of a faculty search committee is simply to maximize the probability of the accepted candidate being successful in their future career.

@friedemann_bach - Thank you. I just forwarded links to the CV of failures (and the related "real" CV) to my daughter, whose goal is to become an academic.

It's more exciting when your mice died because of a power spike, your laser had an unexpected bleaching even, and your pile of bricks that was holding the table up died.

is your "failure" during postdoc connected to that during phD? it seems already too hard to find a nice/proper postdoc position without excellent publications.

Are you intending to stay in academia? You stated in your question that you've always wanted to be a "researcher"... you should be aware that there are many industry positions with similar duties and responsibilities. Having zero publications isn't good, but your skills as a researcher aren't limited to the length of your CV. I would spend some time investigating positions in industry that would allow you to perform similar work to what you're doing now in academia.
Hopefully someone else can post something focusing more on your academic prospects.

Edit: Your comment of "not sure if my work is relevant to industry" deserves more attention that an answer on an online forum can provide, but very briefly:
You are not defined by your field. I have a BS in psychology, a PhD in biomedical engineering (which actually was entirely neuroscience, but all my courses were electrical engineering), my first two jobs were a bank quantitive  analyst and a data science manager for an insurance company, and I now work for a cybersecurity research firm. When writing a resume you choose which skills to highlight and how to sell yourself. I strongly recommend you re-evaluate your own skill set and see whats out there that interests you.

Hi, yes I was hoping for an academic career. I am considering exploring industry as a potential alterntiave but to be honest I'm not sure how useful my skill set is in industry (I'm an in vivo electrophysiologist in Neuroscience)?

@ML15 – I've added the info about your field to your original post (see second sentence) and edited my answer to address your new comment.

One of the best software jokeys in my company had a B.S. in Philosophy. It's all about how well you can contribute.

The answers here so far are all encouraging and supportive, which is nice, but realistically and bluntly not having first-author publications after a Ph.D. and a postdoc is a bad place to be if you're looking for long-term academic positions (at least in the life sciences I'm familiar with).    Does it make it impossible to find a faculty position? No, but it makes it much more difficult, and in today's climate finding a faculty position is already very, very difficult.  No matter which university you go to (low-ranked or not) there will be lots of competition from people who do have first-author publications, and first-author publications are high on the list that hiring committees look at.
I haven't worked in industry, but I understand that there's less emphasis on publications in the hiring process there, and there are other "alternate" career paths (I put that in quotes because faculty positions are now so scarce that they are the alternate).
But for a traditional, academic pathway, you'd need to have some exceptional characteristic or quality to overcome the lack of first-author publications.  If that is the path you really want to follow, you might want to do a second post-doc while searching for faculty positions.

Unfortunately disaster has struck again, and none of my experiments have worked or produced anything publishable
Not that I know the details, but this probably isn't right. It's a good question and correct methods that make research publishable, not the results.
Even high impact journals like Nature publish no-effect papers e.g. Doi:10.1038/nature09042. So if you have unpublished work which was well conducted you still have opportunity to get some first author papers.
As an aside, I got my current post - in clinical trials - with only one published paper in total (albeit first of two), so a lack of papers probably isn't a complete bar.

I disagree. A negative result is not synonymous with a failed experiment, and there's plenty of failure modes which are not publishable even in the most optimistic light.

My situation is a bit like the one outlined by EP above. My PhD project aimed to record from two brain structures that had recenty been shown to be anatomically connected (previously they were thought not to project to one another). My plan was to stimulate site A and record site B. I'd never done any elctrophysiology before the start of my PhD, and the postdoc who was meant to teach me suddenly took a sabtical for personal reasons. My supervisor was very 'hands off' and hadn't been in the lab for years so I spent most of the first year trying to teach myself how to do the technique.

I never managed to record a response despite trying different stimulation protocols, recording from different locations in the target structure and trying different anaesthetics/surgical preps. Unfortunately, another group published a paper in which they recorded from the exact same pathway as I was trying to, and reported that whilst they got consistent responses in awake mice, as soon as they anesthetised them the responses disappeared and concluded that this pathway is heavily suppressed under anaesthesia. So my study basically ended up being a less convincing version of theirs.

My supervisor didn't feel it was strong enough to publish so I moved onto helping a different postdoc with ana antomy study. That got me the middle author paper that I mentioned in my origianl post. In my current project I've suffered a lot of technical difficulties - breakages, ectopic gene expression, unstable elctrode implants, following behaviour protocols that don't work etc

Realistically, you don't have career prospects in academia, at least ones that offer a stable middle-class life.
At least from my vantage point in the USA, to get a full-time faculty position in the sciences, you have to hit the ball out of the park serially - complete a stellar Ph.D. followed by one or two stellar post-docs, where "stellar" means "lots of papers, at least one or two head-turning results in fashionable journals, and a glowing reference letter." I have many friends who are tenure-track faculty, and all of them met this bar. The job market is simply too competitive for you to have good chances with less. In the USA, if you don't get a full-time faculty position, your working conditions tend to be worse than that as a high school teacher (I'm saying this as a person who was a high school teacher before his own Ph.D.). You have to go to war to make your rent and have healthcare. I grant that the UK is more civilized in this respect.
There's an outside chance that two stellar postdocs in a row could redeem your chances. But that leaves no margin of error. If you can't execute two flawless postdocs at this point, you're done, having spent more of your prime overworked, having moved every couple of years, and having earned very little. I would never accept such a risk in my own life.
That said, the skills, passion, and grit attained in a Ph.D. are valuable and sought-after in the private sector. In coaching grad students, both as a soft-money professional managing an academic research group and as a private-sector professional doing recruitment, I find the biggest hurdle in exiting academia to be emotional. It is deeply painful to curb-stomp your identity as an expert in "neuroscience, mainly involving in vivo electrophysiology" and admit that most of your hard-won subject matter expertise is worthless to your professional future. Once you can do that, you'll be able to attack the next hard job of retooling your skillset to be more marketable. Doing this in weekends and nights while maintaining appearances in academia requires some spring in your step. If you can do so, you'll subsequently find that your career prospects are excellent indeed.
You'll do things you never thought you'd be doing. Believe me, it's hard. I wanted to be a chemistry professor since I was 16. I got the Caltech chemistry degree with honors, the U Chicago Ph.D. And I had to walk away. But there's redemption here. Life went from a straight-and-narrow crucible as a budding chemist to a true adventure as a software engineer, data scientist, educator, and general scientist about town, full of opportunities and impactful decisions to make. I love it.
I wish you luck!

Interesting answer. One request for elaboration. You write: "n the USA, if you don't get a full-time faculty position, your working conditions tend to be worse than that as a high school teacher". In other words, do you mean that as a postdoc, your working conditions are worse than a high school teacher?

No, as part-time contingent faculty your working conditions are worse than those of high school teachers.

Fascinating answer, it gave me a lot of things to talk about. Thank you

I have been in a similar situation. I finished my post-doc with very few papers. I only had two short papers (unrelated from each other) as first author to account for my postdoc time. This certainly costed me a position in a top 15 UK university, where my competition (other postdoc) had several top papers, and also grants. However, they still called me for the interview.
In my experience "from the other side", that is, as a potential employer of postdoc has been that it is not that easy to find good post-docs. At least in my field (CS/HCI) there aren't that many people with the specific competences you might be looking for. Finding someone who has the sufficient training is what is important, even though they might not have an exceptional publication record.
You might have to accept a position at a lower ranked university as it happened in my case. However, I was able to recoup the time lost with some good papers in the meantime and I will move to a top-10 European university later this year.
So, it can certainly be done.

hey wanderer, what having gants means? and also grants.=?? in terms of postdoc? postodocs in UK can apply for grants?

@SSimon I mean having been awarded a research grant (money) from a funding agency. In the UK postdocs can apply to fellowship from the UK research councils (like the EPSRC, if it hasn't changed). They could be involved in EU funding proposals, and other agencies to which a post-doctoral researcher can be PI or co-PI.

@wanderer this is very useful information.

I’m not sure how useful this advice is for fields that aren’t CS or data science related.  In most fields there’s an abundance of overqualified applicants even outside the top 15.

Having bad luck in experiments/results is something which  happens even to people who are scientists. In academia - as in everything else which we do we can be lucky or unlucky and this can impact our options. (And consider that working outside academia is not the end of the world).
The short answer is: don't bet on an academic career - usually these are set by the end of the first postdoc. Unless you have enough money (so that you don't have to accept any position and even can afford to work in badly paid positions for a long time) and are willing to go through a long streak of bad job circumstances which will complicate your personal life very much, following an academic path under this circumstance is very likely to convert some streak of bad luck into permanent damage to your life.  As much as I would like have seen good people around me who had such a streak find their way back, most of them never recovered from something like this.
The little bit longer answer is this: let's look at the facts:

this will be an evaluation factor when you apply for the next position
In order to get a position in which you can "make up" the missing success to some extent in a predictable time (e.g. 1 postdoc or 3 years), you would normally have to go to a good, successful group
Typically very good groups get many applications and can select from a big amount of applicants, putting you at a disadvantage
This leaves 3 options to you - if you want to stay in science: go to a bad group and accept a longer time of uncertainty with the prospects of getting a good result there with low probability, accept a job which is not that prospective, but gives you stability (e.g. lecturer/assistant/technician), or wait for a job/opportunity in a good group to come along.

Which one of these you will take, depends on your personal savings, priorities, mobility, character, determination and dream job. I have seen people getting happy using the latter 2 options. Having a stable lecturer/assistant/technician job will not enable you to rise very quickly, but could be a way to come back on the long term or just do research happily. Joining a bad group can only work if you have some connections in the field so that you can collaborate with other groups (e.g. you are paid by a university which starts up, but work as a guest somewhere else) - for the people which I knew which assumed that the bad lab would get magically good when they appear, this lead to a disaster. I have seen that waiting for a opportunity in good group worked out for one person which I knew.
If you can accept a long streak of uncertainty with an unforeseen outcome is up to you. Another word of warning: People will recognize that you are there because of your dreams. They will use this to put you under pressure, and potentially not care much about you.
Added after comment:
A good group IMHO has (in this case) the following properties:

solid publication record (regularly impact factors > 4) based on their own work (not as participants of collaborations)
a good groupleader - he should impress you by knowing what is going on
Track record of having many group members as coauthors (this indicates a good leadership and a collaboration in the group)
clear structure, with sub-groupleaders if the group is big enough (important to keep people from fighting)
Track record of not burning PHDs/postdocs and dropping them when a project/field gets cold, but rather using knowledge management to have them enabling other experiments
Good mixture of small and big investigations - the small ones should be collaborations where guests visit and bring in stuff to do experiments on, and give people a solid base as coauthors
Connections in the field: Postdocs and PHDs should be sent to other groups at some point.
Balance in co-authorships: PHD and Postdoc coauthorships should have no sign of nepotism.
a good reputation of solid work in the field - sometimes there are groups with a good publication but bad reputation.
Invited talks should be not only given by the groupleader

A good summary of the situation. And correctly emphasizes the importance of being in a good group. While this isn't very important, the answer could be reasonably expanded with a discussion/description of what to look for in a good group.

I've actually been in a rather similar situation (I'm sure this kind of thing is far from unusual), and didn't really recover. I think to a large extent the probability of an eventual recovery from this kind of situation depends on what kind of leverage you have.
You don't mention your supervisors (or what the term is for senior people where you are). What is your current relationship with them? This is highly relevant in your situation. Also, you don't say whether you are a UK citizen or a resident. This is also highly relevant.
So, a little, hopefully relevant, autobiography. After my PhD, I spent some time in a couple of different places, nominally as a postdoc. One of the positions I was in wasn't really a research position. The people I were working for weren't very nice. This seems to be unfortunately quite common. I wound up working on various projects. What they mostly had in common was that in practice I was the only one working on them. I did nominally have other people working with me on these projects, but what they had in common was that they were senior to me, and their only interest was getting their names on those projects. These are not promising circumstances in which to complete projects, and the end result is that after a while I had a bunch of partly finished projects and no finished ones. As a foreigner in the US (in this case) I had no leverage, and nobody wanted to help me. And as everyone knows, doing a research project solo is horribly hard work, and very time-consuming.
Anyway, the point of this is that (it seems to me) things can go wrong quite easily, and they're not that easy to fix. But a lot of it depends on your circumstances. If you are in a position to get a reasonable post-doc even after your current one finishes, then you're already in a relatively good position.
One note: try very hard not to be the only junior person to be working on a project. The senior people don't care - they don't have much invested, and the failure of that project won't significantly impact them. However, other junior people would (or should) care.
You don't specify anything about your current projects. Are you the only one working on these projects? Presumably you have senior people involved, at least to the extent that they will put their names on the project if you get anywhere. Have you been talking to those junior and senior people? Do you really have no results? And how many different projects do you have on the go? Oh, and to be clear, you got no published papers from your PhD? Did your PhD not contain any publishable results, or did you just not get around to extracting them?
As you can see, this answer is more questions than answers, but it's hard to give specific suggestions without knowing more details about your circumstances. If you would care to elaborate, perhaps the forum members can make more concrete suggestions.

During my PhD I was the only one working on my project and it was a bit 'left field' of wat my supervisor usually does. I didn't get any publishable results from my PhD (basically I didn;t manage to record a response and ended up in the 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence' trap). In my current project I'm also on my own. I have been trying to get recordings from various GM mice but they all turned out to have issues with expression etc. I've suffered various equipment breakages and I've essentially had to re-build my rig from scratch.

Also, I am a resident in the UK so that's not a problem. I'm not sure how much leverage I have though - I found out my boss has a new grant which requires a postdoc but 1) he didn't tell me about it (which I wonder is a sign he doesn't want to employ me again) and 2) even if he did offer it, I'm not sure I want to take it. I've struggled to enjoy my current research area as much as I did my PhD and I worry that with all the negative associations I have in the lab whether it's better to start afresh somewhere new?

Hi @ML15, My answer could probably be better written. Being a resident is a form of leverage, in that you don't have to leave the country if things don't go well. Believe me, this is a good thing. Being a citizen even more so, since then you may be eligible for govt grants (e.g security-related) which non-citizens would not be eligible for. I don't know anything about the kind of experimental work that you are engaged in, but as I understand it, you've had various problems with your experimental results which were partly act-of-god, or at any rate not under your control.

It is possible to move to a less dicey area? I remember a colleague in a lab I worked in saying that he had moved from experimental work to more computer type work, because (I forget his exact words) computers were more predictable and mistakes were easier to recover from. (Actually, I think he said something overly optimistic like - things always work with computers.) I'm not suggesting you move to computer work. But perhaps more collaborative projects where the life and death of the project doesn't rest entirely on your shoulders?

Your PhD can't have been that bad, if you passed! I'm not sure how it works at your current university, but in my department our postdocs are often helping current PhD students with experiments, whether it's helping to design and troubleshoot or simply getting some data for them, and with writing papers. It also increases their publishing output. If you're concerned about your output, then that might be worth considering for your last 6 months. A second postdoc could yield numerous first author publications, depending on what it is you're looking at: however, there is definitely an element of luck involved, so you shouldn't take it personally if things don't work out. That's just how research is sometimes.
It may also be worth considering industrial or commercial research: there are still opportunities to publish, and I know a number of academic researchers that started in industry and only moved to academia later. Speak to the academics at your university: they'll have a lot of advice to give, and I'm sure that a few of them will have been in a similar position.

I got my PhD mostly by trying to explain as throughly as I could all the steps I'd taken to test and fix my experiments and from the bit of anatomy data that I got from a side project (which led to the middle authorship paper mentioned in my original post). My examiners were kind and told me they felt sorry for me. Thankfully they saw 'good scientific thinking' in my thesis even though it was short on results.

Unfortunately in my current lab I'm the only experimentalist (there's a computational postdoc and PhD student but they are on a different project) so there's no other projects I can easily latch onto.

This does sound like a lot of bad luck, but your work was obviously something worth looking at (since I noticed you mentioned another group published around the same time), and to gain your doctorate you have to show some deep understanding of your field.
From what I understand, neuroscience is now quite a prominent part of pharmaceutical industrial research, while a quick google search found quite a few job advertisements for "scientist, in vitro electrophysiology" at places like Biogen and Alkermes.

You might actually find that it's not the "academic" aspect of the research that's most important to you. Industrial research is often collaborative and gives more immediate rewards, as you know the research will be applied. The science is often more important than the setting, if you like.

This not intended as commentary on the OP, I'm in no place to judge, but "Your PhD can't have been that bad, if you passed!" is terrible logic.  Lots of people have gotten Ph.D.'s based on projects that left them in no position to get a postdoc, let alone launch a stable academic career.  I don't think that's the standard most committees use, and certainly you can't rule out a committee being a bit lax.

The entire point of a PhD standard thesis is that it must be, at least in principle, worthy of peer review publication. There are other reasons why that may not have happened (such as someone beating you to the punch), but the work has to be to a certain standard. Anything less is awarded an MPhil, or worse not awarded at all, although I appreciate that some may slip through the net.
At any rate, we're talking about someone who's PhD project was obviously good enough to get them a postdoc, as is implicit within the question, so I think we can rule out the committee being lax in this case.

The entire point of a PhD standard thesis is that it must be, at least in principle, worthy of peer review publication.  That's pretty naive. Many PhDs are not worthy of publication.  It's nice to set your standards there, but you should also be aware of reality.

I would like to give you the same advice I would give to someone having done very successful PhD and postdoc, not getting a tenure-track job yet, and wondering whether to get into another postdoc or quit academia.
Imagine you go to the next postdoc (or two), and do a truly great job, and that it does not suffice to get into academia (the market is hard everywhere I look) and you have then to move to industry. Would you be happy for your additional years in academia? Or would you regret not forking earlier?
My advice (to almost everyone) is: take your decision as if it was a given you won't get a permanent job in academia, because that is the most likely turn of events. Only go for the next (or first) postdoc if you enjoy the prospect of it for itself, not because you hope it will give you access to something else (e.g. a tenure-track job). Otherwise, it is probably the best move to look into something else -- there are plenty of jobs around, and your PhD is proof that you can learn a lot, fast, and become autonomous in many, many different fields.
Now, when I say "take your decision as if it was a given you won't get a permanent job in academia", I really only mean take your decision as if: if you do decide to go for a postdoc, then as soon as the decision is made you should go for it fully, and try to be the best craftsman (craftsperson?) you can in your line of work.

I can certainly relate to your post!  Still trying to figure these sorts of things out for myself.  And, if you're at all like me, you tend to see the world in a pragmatic and pessimistic perspective when it comes to developing a scientific career because YOU CARE and YOU ARE THOROUGH.  I, too, want a lab of my own (or at least I think I do).  Maybe my American science story will help you to see that you still have a chance, even in the USA.  I also have friends that are PIs today at GOOD American institutions who literally did 10 years of postdoc in several labs before finding their paths, and for the record, they are AMAZING scientists says myself and the institutions that hire them.
Unlike you, my PhD experience was great. I was surrounded by great mentors and labmates that patiently and thoroughly taught me electrophysiology (in slices!).  Even with all of that, I only published a single first author paper.  That one paper was published in Neuron, and then I was proud and confident to begin a postdoc.  According to an article that I read about 3 years ago, only ~10% of graduate students graduate with a first-author publication from their PhD.  Mine wasn’t published until shortly AFTER I graduated and started my postdoc.  That basically means that others saw promise in me despite my bare-boned CV.  The same is true for you!  I know that you are at the postdoc phase, but you REALLY don’t have to worry about not looking productive during your PhD even at the point of finding a faculty position.
Here's where our experiences start to merge:  After graduating, I started a postdoc at Yale.  Very quickly I started to realize that things weren't working as they did in the previous lab.  No joke,: amplifiers weren't working, the vibratome sounded like a jet engine, cameras were shoddy, I couldn't see fluorescence in slices, viruses weren't expressing, the osmometer wasn't calibrating, the pH probe wasn't pHing, the list continued!  On top of that, my mentor and labmates - literally all of them except 2 - were strangely sadistic human beings: genuinely happy when I failed and genuinely upset when I succeeded at something.  My mentor would throw things at me and other lab personnel, cuss at us, and the worst was the gas lighting.  He would bully me into writing and submitting grants about a project that he designed even if I verbally expressed my concerns.  And lastly, he would slam pens into counters while yelling at me to make a point instead of actually making a point worth discussing.  I left that God-forsaken place after 16 months after a lot of introspection and internal struggle (I worked my whole life to get to an Ivy League institution and what a disappointment!). I knew that things weren't working after only 5 weeks in the lab, and the whole "courage-gathering" process required the advice and support of my PhD mentors and other PIs with whom I have developed personal relationships.
From the Yale experience, I still do not know what lessons the universe was trying to teach me.  Perhaps God was trying to show me that he really does exist by making me experience a Hell that could not exist otherwise?!  All I can tell you is that I'm a different person today: I'm more cynical, less enthusiastic, more defensive, more cautious, and more insecure about designing and performing experiments.  And if you could know me, you would understand that I'm not exaggerating or pointing fingers. I am most certainly capable of pointing one at myself.  You would also understand how traumatizing this experience was on my psyche and my physical health.
Today I'm in a very successful laboratory with 30 other labmates that are helpful.  My new PI is generous and kind, although he is very fancy and busy so I don't see him so much.  In fact, I chose the Yale lab OVER THIS LAB at Johns Hopkins when I initially interviewed.  Why?  Because during graduate school and before my paper was published, I wasn't very confident in my own independence….. because I am careful, thorough, pragmatic, and pessimistic.
YOU, MY FRIEND, AREN'T IN A POSITION TO GIVE UP! Even as American neuroscientist and electrophysiologist, I am telling you this.  You could end up in a great place: mentally and geographically!  Just hear me out:
Just because things aren't working for YOU, doesn't mean that they are working properly. Surprisingly, others in the lab at Yale were publishing and collecting data despite that commercial companies demonstrated that our osmometer, pH meter, amplifiers, and vibratome were malfunctioning in their own ways (even today I wonder how from those Science and Neuron papers emerged quality results upon one utilizing all of this objectively subpar equipment!).  There were also people WHO LEFT THE LAB BECAUSE THEY WERE UNHAPPY AND UNPRODUCTIVE that weren't around to tell me that they were having similar problems YEARS before I arrived; I had to find them to hear this.  From my Yale postdoc, I didn't really have any data!  I went from patching 4 neurons simultaneously and ~20 cells/day in graduate school to patching 20 cells/year (that's a real number!) as a postdoc.  But if I went to a lab down the hall, suddenly I could patch again!  That was a telling and uplifting experience!!!!  Also, reviewer comments associated with my REJECTED grant applications expressed similar concerns that I did to my PI at Yale before those applications were submitted; these experiences confirmed that I'm not a bad scientist and that I can design good experiments and scientific rationale.  You might very well be suffering from BAD LAB SYNDROME!  It's a real disorder, and I'm convinced that it's contagious (bad labs spawn bad scientists that make their own bad labs and so forth).
I FIRMLY believe that most labs are good labs, but I know some people that are unlucky and have repeated awful experiences.  Also, I know several people from Yale who aren't good scientists and also don't have stellar CVs that hold PI positions around the world.  Some are lucky like that, and you and I are not.  BUT, that doesn’t mean that you should give up!  You are probably a wonderful scientist that is experiencing self-doubt from being in unsupportive environments.
My advice to you: Keep going on this career path.  PLEASE evaluate whether or not your lab is a good fit for you, all things considered.  If the answer is "No" or "I'm not sure" then start looking for a new lab, regardless of the amount of time that you've been there.  Cut your reservations about leaving a place without a paper.  Just leave.  I wasted arguable 15 months of my life, changed my personality for the worse, look less scientifically productive, and have developed insecurities that I'm still battling months later.  I'm happy to give you my contact info if you wanted to chat more about any of this.  Lastly, please don’t worry about looking unproductive by not having a list of publications.  My PhD advisor would tell me that and would share stories about other scientists that she deeply respects that care about quality and not quantity.  She also mentioned that our department had recently offered a position to an older faculty candidate who had only 3 first-author papers in her life: Science, Nature, and Neuron.  Seriously, you have a lot of time!  Don’t sell yourself short if you still care about something.  A postdoc isn’t wasted time unless you only care about money; it is a valuable learning experience that both academia and industry cherish, appreciate, and seek.  Unless you didn’t mention something extremely important, you aren’t as astray as you think.

Watch the film Underwater Dreams.  It is a documentary about a group of ragtag underdogs who beat a crack MIT team in an engineering competition.  How did they do it?  By documenting and explaining their work extremely well.
I'm not going to say that your talent and skill at documenting and explaining will get you a dream job right away.  But after reading your question and your comments, it is clear that you do have a strength in that area.  I don't know what other strengths you might have, but that one I can already see.
If you want to keep progressing towards your dream, I suggest you do another postdoc, get a position as a research assistant where you will get your name on some group papers, or in the worst case tread water as an unpaid researcher (which plenty of trailing spouses do).

First of all take care of your self. Exercise, take some breaks. This will improve your mental performance.
In this life anything is possible. In you position I will definitely change my mindset from "I will fail" to "I will shake earth and heaven to succeed". Do everything a human can do to make most of you remaining time as a postdoc.
You really have to believe you can make it. The worst thing is to quit and say "it was impossible all along".
You can to trust God/your destiny/wherever that one day, somehow, if you don't give up, you will achieve your dreams.
To sum up, the most important thing in life is your viewpoint. Why feel "the pressure"? Just do your best there, try some more and research a topic alone (if the field allows it).
You may ask: "And if I fail and years pass without results?". This is the wrong mindset. The correct one is: "No matter the result, if I do my best, this research won't be futile.". You may get hired for an industry position based on the fact you have a PhD.
You never know, do your best, follow your heart, and don't ever give up because "it was impossible all along". It never really is.
I would stick at least 2 more years in academia before thinking about doing something else. But no matter what, do not say "I have a last chance and I quit".

XKCD has a relevant comment for this answer https://xkcd.com/1827/

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


text:
Providing data of unpublished thesis
As part of my thesis in an ML/NLP I build some datasets (corpus and word embeddings) and of course the thesis.
After the first revision round, the lectors suggested to cut many of the topics discussed and focus on just three.
My concern is that now my director is requesting me to give my data/models to other student, so that she can make her thesis in a related topic. Even more, he suggested her to do exactly what I told him that I'm doing for an article based on the discarted parts of my thesis.
At this point I have no thesis defense date, almost no feedback from my director on the document (except changing the colors on the figures) and a deadline to complete the program at midyear, otherwise I get expelled. Although, the document was ready since January and I was expected to do the defense in April.
Should I provide the pretrained models?
I should raise my concerns to someone else at my university?

I would attempt to raise concerns first with your own thesis advisor/director. Sometimes it is worthwhile to just speak directly to those with whom we have disagreements.
Does your department have a graduate coordinator or a professor overseeing the graduate on the whole? He or she may be the next point of contact.
As for the discarded portion of your thesis, it may be okay to allow another student to join in on that work. (Although, just giving it over to them wholesale is slightly different). Even if it goes into the other student's thesis, nothing (in theory) prohibits the both of you from publishing a paper jointly on the work.
Note that many advisors see any work you did under their supervision (as minimal as that supervision may have been) as belonging to them themselves. It might have been work that you performed, but if your advisor funded it or gave any input (or even existed on the planet) while you did that work, he may see that work as being his to make decisions on.