system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why is academia so obsessed with academic clock (e.g. years after PhD)?

Why does time play such a big role in academia? I try to ignore it, but it starts to stress me out.

I am 37 years old, had a very fast PhD (started at 23, finished by 26) and a very long postdoc (11 years), both in Germany. I have been fairly successful, a total of 4 first author papers in 14 years (in journals with IF 5, 9, 10, 12, if that matters). I worked in well-funded **life science** labs in **Germany**, so I never needed to get my own research money (I applied both during PhD and early postdoc years but never got successful with grant applications).

I'm now trying to determine my next career step. Academia doesn't offer me a permanent position. I apply for junior faculty positions but I don't get any interviews, because 11 years postdoc and no independent grant money makes me not so attractive to hiring committees. I want to apply for starting grants, but they all require you to be less than 4 or 7 or 8 years into your PhD. I look at associate editor positions in scientific journals, many of them say the applicant should have a postdoc experience of 1-5 years. I look at career advice platforms, everywhere it says "postdoc is temporary, don't fall into postdoc trap, don't become forever postdoc, move on to something if you are not an independent group leader of some form after 7 years". I join career days for R&D industry positions, the biggest advice is to apply after 2-3 years of postdoc, the older you are in academia, the less attractive you are for industry.

Why is everyone so obsessed with number of years after PhD? I wasn't forced to do a long postdoc. I wanted to work on fundamentals of **molecular neuroscience** and study its mechanisms, and it took me 14 years in total. 1 first author paper in every 4 years is quite normal. I have done my job well. It wasn't possible to do it outside of academia. But I'm not obsessed with staying in academia, I'm also fine with moving out and making space for younger scientists. It just stresses me out wherever I look I hear so many people babbling about timelines, number of years after PhD, academic age, "after 7-8 years you are an expired postdoc" etc. I am 37 but this makes me feel much older and less valuable than I am. Where does this obsession come from? Why do grant organizations set these time limits for applications? Now even industry positions set similar limits in job posts. It's quite discouraging and demotivating.
gpt
At least at research universities, search committees are implicitly trying to project your career trajectory to the point of retirement, and trying to guess how distinguished you'll eventually be. Spending 11 years in a postdoc suggests a career trajectory which is less meteoric than what the best research universities are interested in. In addition, not demonstrating a level of research independence (by securing independent funding) a decade post PhD does not reassure a search committee that you'll ever achieve research independence (which is a necessary criteria for a permanent position).