drawbacks of becoming a scientist
Answers
Becoming scientist requires much efforts and time. The PhD course of studies takes around ~ 4 years, add to that 3 years for the undergraduate degree and 2 years for the masters (well, at least in Europe it works this way), eventually you get to ~10 years from the day you stepped at the university to the day you become PhD. There is also the process of enrolling to PhD program, which is competitive and takes much efforts.
I tried it 8 years ago, and it included searching for a promoter in different Canadian universities, reading some of their papers before addressing them. Then, suggesting your own specific and somewhat detailed line of research that can fit well with their interests, taking the TOEFL and GRE tests (then my English was much better than it’s today) and having video online interviews later on. This process is kind of a full time job and it may take half year.
Eventually I didn’t go there, but I started the PhD studies elsewhere just to drop out two years later, when they cut my lab research funding. I was warned before that even if I complete it with great success, the academy is very competitive place and it’s very hard to find an academic position. Today there is inflation in the number of academics, I think that we have now more people with PhD than in all history combined.
Once completing your PhD you have to find Post Doc position and to keep it for year or two (in some cases even three), publish as many papers as you can in international peer reviewed journals. Whether you are first author or second/third/etc, the impact factor of your article and the ranking of the journal that published it - they all have weight when it comes to your chances to achieve academic position.
The universities have not many open slots compared with the number of people who want to become staff members and they want those who can contribute both on the academic side (which is ok, I believe that only those who can come up with original contribution should be there from the first place) and also be very prolific, having good academic ties internationally, and have good prospects to find funding for their studies (this requires them to spend much time and efforts on grants writing).
There is also the issue of tunneling, most academics today are focused on narrow sub subject withing a sub subject within a subject in their domain (an outcome of too much data, too many studies, etc).
If one is not being accepted as staff member, than he/she have few choices: Becoming entrepreneur (well, most are not I guess), finding a job that match their skills (a friend of my brother was a fresh staff member in the faculty of mathematics, in one lecture he gave on his research, unknowingly to him then, two seniors from Google were sitting in the audience, when the lecture ended they gave him an offer and he left the academy for the industry very fast- but not everyone are mathematicians and/or brilliant- and anyway, he also had the option to be academic staff), finding a job that don’t match their skills: happen a lot, over-qualifications for the industry in areas where they can work, is not rare at all for most people with PhD, many times they work under people with only undergraduate degree (in some cases even less). Becoming unemployed- also not too rare, I guess that for brilliant people it’s even more common. Someone who enjoys the flow of abstract thoughts may sometimes find it hard to adjust to modern work place, where many times the job requires one to be focused on narrow, uninteresting data and having a kind of routine thinking and lack of intellectual stimuli. Getting to another person with PhD in mathematics that I met, he published his dissertation fairly good international peer reviewed journals, but later on opened his own grocery store after not finding suitable job (to open this little business, he took a loan).