In this survey, one in five said that they had sought help for depression or anxiety caused by their work, and 22% that they had not sought help but wished they had. Forty-five per cent of respondents felt that they weren’t achieving as much as they should.Īll that stress exacts a mental toll. Thirty-nine per cent of all respondents said that they frequently or always felt drained of emotional and physical energy. A woman who is now president of her own health-care company in the United States said that, earlier in her career, she was forced to invest more “time, effort and personal resources” than her male colleagues to achieve similar levels of funding and respect. Fifty-one per cent of female researchers, and 39% of their male counterparts, said that they felt that way. Forty-five per cent of respondents said they frequently or always felt that they couldn’t keep up with the demands of the job (see ‘Satisfaction and strain’). Overall, 59% of respondents said they were satisfied with their work–life balance, down from 70% in 2018. Working weeks of 50 hours or more were twice as common in academia (36%) as in industry (18%). Nearly one-third (31%) of respondents reported working more than 50 hours a week, even though only 2% indicated that such long hours were written into a contract. I basically have two full-time jobs.”įor many, long hours are a fact of life in science. “The problem is the conditions that we work under.” She continues: “As a profession we’ve gotten into a position where we work every night, we read theses, we review for journals, we sit on grant panels, all for free. Fiona Simpson, a cancer researcher at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, says that her satisfaction significantly worsened as demands of the job steadily increased. That period was marked by widespread COVID-related slowdowns and disruptions, but the pandemic wasn’t the only factor darkening the moods of scientists.
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In this year’s survey, more than half (54%) of respondents said that their job satisfaction had worsened in the past year. Scientists count the career costs of COVID Our 2018 survey, the most recent survey of the general scientific population, found a satisfaction rate of 68%. In the 2019 survey of PhD students, 71% of respondents said they were satisfied with their PhD experience. Our 2020 survey of postdoctoral researchers, a group particularly prone to overwork and stress, found a satisfaction rate of 61%. The 58% of respondents who said they were either somewhat or very satisfied with their positions marks an all-time low in the ten-year history of annual Nature surveys. All in all, the survey suggests a growing uneasiness with a career path that still manages to challenge and inspire. Follow-up interviews with selected respondents provided a glimpse of the real-life stories behind the numbers. Through survey answers and free-text comments, the respondents shared the upsides and downsides of scientific careers.
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It included a series of questions that illuminate the realities of working life. This year’s survey ran in June and July and drew responses from more than 3,200 self-selected scientists at various stages of their careers. Forty-two per cent of respondents said they had sought help or wanted to seek help for job-related anxiety or depression, a rise of six percentage points from 2018. That’s about 10 percentage points less than in earlier satisfaction surveys, including the previous one, which ran in 2018.Īs satisfaction wanes, mental health seems to be a growing concern. Less than 60% of respondents to the sixth Salary and Job Satisfaction survey reported being satisfied with their positions. Stress, burnout, impostor syndrome and the mental-health problems they can trigger are strongly tied to job satisfaction, a key focus of Nature’s 2021 careers survey (see ‘ Nature’s salary and job survey’).
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There’s a chip on your shoulder to prove yourself.” “You are in a competitive field, but you’re constantly getting these messages that you aren’t good enough, that you shouldn’t be here, that you barely made the cut. John Henryism is a term that particularly applies to under-represented groups, who feel an especially intense pressure to perform, she adds. “The finish line isn’t strongly defined unless you define it for yourself.”
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“That level of curiosity can keep you on a hamster wheel,” she says. Science tends to attract people who want to get to the bottom of important questions, but few things in science are ever fully solved, says Rolle. Rolle co-wrote a 2021 paper about stress, burnout and ‘John Henryism’ in the STEM workforce. Scientists around the world could learn something from the cautionary tale of John Henry, a US folk hero who literally worked himself to death, says Tiffany Rolle, a science education and engagement fellow at the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.