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Working outside of philosophy while ABD?

In our September "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Do you know of cases where people take other jobs (non-TA jobs) outside of the university while finishing a dissertation? I can make more outside of the academy in fewer hours than if I were TAing because of a particular skill set I have, and I want to be able to live with my partner who is in another state. I've only heard about this in other fields, but not philosophy. For context, I feel 50/50 about going into academia or into industry. Have people seen successful or unsuccessful examples of this in philosophy?

Good questions! I'm curious to hear from readers on this. I guess I'd worry a bit about being distracted too much from finishing the dissertation. But then again, the OP says they could make a significant amount of money working fewer hours than they do now. Given that they are only 50/50 on going into academia and working outside of their university would enable them to live with their partner, the positives might well outweigh the risks.

But these are just a few of my quick reactions. It would be great to hear from readers who have tried this! Were you able to work outside of academia while finishing up your dissertation? How did it go?

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6 responses to “Working outside of philosophy while ABD?”

  1. academic migrant

    I would just say that being able to know that one wouldn’t starve if one didn’t get an academic job would really help reducing anxiety when on the job market, and may boost one’s performance during interviews. Saying this because for me I doubted I could get a somewhat well paid nonacademic job when I was on the market, and that was very stressful.

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  2. Larry McCullough

    One piece of advice for those who take up such work. Be sure to include it in your CV. Not including it creates a gap in your history. Hard experience has taught me that such gaps, especially when left unexplained in the cover letter, unnecessarily risk making a search committee member immediately suspicious of an applicant. As a consequence, when I participated in searches, the first thing I did was go through the CV to determine if there were any gaps and flagged CVs with gaps. It is not wise to shoot oneself in one’s foot.

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  3. doctopus

    I’m assuming that if OP is considering this, their tuition funding isn’t contingent upon holding a TAship, or they’re in a position to pay tuition for a short time while they finish up. But for anyone in a similar situation, I would double-check that you won’t be on the hook for any unexpected bills. This goes for health insurance as well, since it’s often tied to TA duties. (Source: a grad school friend finished up remotely and was briefly faced with losing their insurance and having to pay a few thousand bucks, before their home department found a remote TA position for them.)

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  4. Bill Vanderburgh

    I’d try to make sure that you have some recent teaching on your cv when you start applying for academic jobs, but otherwise no problem.

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  5. teacher

    To expand on what is said or implied by others, one disadvantage is that someone who works outside the academy will likely have less teaching experience. Does this really matter? It certainly mattered at the state college I taught at previously. We were just not going to consider applicants who did not have teaching experience, and the more teaching experience the better. Our teaching load was not light – 3 courses per term, where one was large. And we were not able to provide a lot of mentoring or support to new hires. (sad to admit). So take that into account.

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  6. Assistant Prof

    I did this, and it actually helped me a lot. I worked in a biomedical-adjacent field during my ABD years (all 4 of them). It paid more than 3x my grad student stipend, which was very nice. And then I ended up getting a postdoc that combined my dissertation work with my job work. And now I’m an assistant professor where it helps that I know the biomedical stuff that I learned in the job. I doubt my experience is common, but it was actually really helpful for me in almost every way.

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