Guide / Career and transition

Leaving academia: the jump to industry or freelance

Most of us researchers live worried about publications and projects, as if nothing else existed. It does: there is a whole universe of ways to make a living from what you know outside academia. Most people never consider it. This guide is for those who do.

This is the essentials, the framework I use, not a treatise. Just enough to start well and not waste time. The detail of your own case is what we work through in mentoring.

The three options (not two)

We tend to think in black and white: either you stay in academia, or you move to a company. But there is a third path almost nobody considers:

• Academia: salaried, with your pay and your research. Relative stability, but a ceiling set by your institution.
• Industry: salaried at a company. Usually better paid, but also with a limit and with bosses.
• On your own: neither academia nor a company. You build it yourself: a startup or a consultancy. This is the option almost nobody talks about, and the one this guide is about.

What independent consulting is

Helping others (researchers, companies, groups) with a very specific knowledge you have built over your career and that brings value they do not have. That is what you sell: not your time in the abstract, but accumulated judgement.

The pros

• No bosses above you. And none of the imposed project deadlines of academia.
• No ceiling. In a company you climb up to a limit; in academia your salary is capped. As an independent, if you do it very well, that ceiling does not exist.

The cons (no sugar-coating)

• Total uncertainty. You trade academic deadlines for the duty of covering your living costs every month. You are continuously looking for clients.
• Paperwork and registration. To invoice legally you have to register as self-employed. The rules, contributions and thresholds vary by country, so the first time, get an accountant to help you.
• Taxes. Self-employment contributions plus income tax. I will be blunt: many countries do not exactly make entrepreneurship easy. Sorry to break the dream.
• The big problem: it does not scale. If you charge a fixed rate per hour and work a set number of hours, there is your real ceiling. Your time is finite, and pure consulting ties you to trading hours for money.

Where to find clients

The daily challenge of the independent is finding who to offer your services to. Two routes:

• Your network. The most profitable long term: contacts from your career, former collaborators, people who already know what you are worth.
• Freelance platforms. You open a profile, detail your services, and a reputation system gives you visibility. General platforms work, but there are platforms specifically for researchers where your scientific profile is worth more. The platform acts as an intermediary and covers you if something goes wrong.

The mistake I see: jumping out of exhaustion

Most jumps out of academia that go wrong have one thing in common: they were made out of exhaustion, not out of judgement. Running away from something is not the same as running towards something. Before you take the step, be clear on what you sell, to whom, and how much you need to bill to live. If you do not have those three answers, you are not ready yet, and that is valuable information too.