Pivot Your Career at Age 50
Major subject shifts should be the norm
We’re all familiar with Planck’s Principle that science advances funeral by funeral1, but what if we did something about it? The healthspan of the typical leading scientist is getting longer, so if we don’t take action and this effect is real, scientific progress will slow down.
The solution isn’t complicated: scientists should execute a dramatic career pivot to a new field somewhere between age 50 and age 60. That’s old enough to have made serious progress in their first field and to have trained several cohorts of junior researchers, while still young enough to leave time for a full second act. They might not start again from the bottom of the ladder, but we expect that they’ll generally start low enough and fresh enough to be out of the way of progress.
Scientists actually do change fields reasonably frequently, but our community rarely discusses it and certainly doesn’t do much to reward it. Perhaps we don’t mention it because it’s usually a response to a researcher’s initial field falling so far out of favor that a major change is the only rational choice. Dan knows a researcher who spent about 25 years in chaos theory and non-linear dynamics before executing a 5-year pivot (when interest in chaos was collapsing) to genomics and bioinformatics where he worked for another two decades.
We think of him as a hero for being willing to start over in a new field, but are protecting his identity because we’re honestly not sure if he’d be judged negatively for this decision by his peers. Our expectations are what really needs to change. Major subject shifts should be the norm.
Imagine celebrating these pivots and even shaming scientists who spend their whole careers in one field. We should have the equivalent of the NSF CAREER award for scientists changing fields mid-career.
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This phrasing is actually attributed to Paul Samuelson
Love the idea of an award for this