btw, i’ve stubbed out some wiki pages on this topic:
Job Hunting Links
Possible Career Paths

I do think there needs to be more of a forum for astronomers (and physicists) to learn about opportunities outside academia. The people who I worked with in astronomy didn’t really have much insight; they just said, “I’m sure you’ll find a faculty job.” One idea is to interview friends who left the field and post the results to a blog, as this blogger did. I was thinking of doing this with my blog, but my ambition outstrips my energy. . .

We do need a forum to see the variety of places where people get hired 3-5 years after their PhD and where/how they move around. Hard to know if this should be the Rumor Mill or the non-academic network or an entirely new forum. Its difficult to gather the data when we rely on voluntary input (and we lose track of people who leave the field entirely!). Some university departments maintain lists of where their students are – so maybe we can start to draw from those more systematically (and encourage more of them to maintain such lists).

That said. . . . I do think the astro rumor wiki does need more of the mission support/staffing jobs listed and those where people punt to SSI, PSI or one of the various contracting companies if they need a place to run the soft money.

I think if anyone at the AAS was listening, this should be one of the topics the professional development committee should tackle: how to educate people about other jobs that are out there. Obviously the alternative careers website is not so easy to find, so maybe we need something with a bit more visibility and maybe something a little less passive.

The AAS however might have a harder time with the topic of last week’s snarking on the rumor mill, that seemed to be many things crashing together all at once.

I sympathize with the sentiment that it would be good to have a forum for providing information about non-research jobs (and job searches), but I don’t think the Rumor Mill is the place for that. I think it’s important to make a distinction between non-academic and non-research positions. Strictly speaking the Rumor Mill does include positions outside of academia (e.g. observatories, astrophysics positions at national labs).

What seems to be the issue is that many people are looking for (or turning to) alternative career paths that are not in research astronomy. And the desire to include those careers on the Rumor Wiki is driven by 1) not wanting these people to simply “drop out” of the astronomy community and 2) wanting a forum for other people to know about the opportunities available to astronomers. Both of these are great things, but they would both be served terribly by the Wiki…and expanding the purpose of the Wiki to include them would render it much less useful.

I agree that an alternative forum is the way to go. I tried to get one started last year, but my efforts sort of fizzled out (partially b/c I did not receive a lot of interested feedback, and partially b/c I got busy). I’m in a pretty different place now, but happy to be involved in trying again.