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Leaving academia: Some learnings from one year in the private sector
13 February 2025 on posts
One year ago, I took a step into the deep unknown; I decided to leave my academic job to pursue a career in the private sector. While there were many surprises and challenges, now that I’m one year down the road I have no regrets.
For context, I am a geographer interested in sustainable agriculture and food systems. After earning my PhD in the U.S., I spent three years as a postdoc in Amsterdam. Though I enjoyed my work and was being encouraged to take the next step, the thought of pursuing Assistant Professor positions left a bad feeling in my stomach; the highly individualistic nature of academia—where success is often tied to personal reputation—didn’t feel right for my personality. I began to realise that I might find greater fulfillment and balance in a different kind of work environment.
So I looked for other options. I was particularly attracted to team-based environments where I could work with others to achieve a common goal. I also wanted my new employer to have a strong sustainability focus. After some months applying, I was offered a role as an “Environmental Modeller & Researcher” at Climate Farmers, a fully remote, mission-oriented startup working on regenerative agriculture in Europe.
It was a perfect fit! I was able to apply my research skills and my expertise in agri-food systems to help real farmers in their transitions to regenerative agriculture. Collaborating with agronomists, tech developers, and other colleagues showed me how satisfying it can be to work towards a shared goal. Perhaps most importantly, the experience taught me a lot about myself—what I value in a job, what motivates me, and what kind of work environment allows me to thrive.
So what did I like? What did I miss? And what comes next? While these are just my personal experiences that may not apply to every situation, I hope sharing them can help encourage others to take bold steps themselves.
The one time I met the Climate Farmers team in person, at our team retreat in May 2024.
The good
Exposure to different kinds of people. As a scientist, I was used to spending most of my time with other scientists. At Climate Farmers, it felt like I had joined a beehive: a buzzing array of specialists, each contributing unique skills to support the company’s shared mission. You could probably characterise me as one of the nerdy worker bees. Although I worked most frequently with other nerdy worker bees in the Science Team, our tasks often intersected with—and depended on—other branches of the company. It was fascinating to collaborate with designers, salespeople, and tech developers, each coming from all walks of life and bringing a wide range of backgrounds and unique ways of thinking. In academia, I rarely encountered such variety, and this exposure helped broaden my understanding of the diversity of possible career and life paths.
I am not my work. This was probably the factor that contributed most strongly to improving my wellbeing in the past year. I still cared deeply about the work and the mission, but when challenges arose, I didn’t feel the same pressure to carry those problems home with me. I imagine this might change in a more senior role, but it felt like the shared responsibility made it easier for everyone to let go of problems while off work, and tackle them together during work hours.
Perhaps even more profoundly, I found myself changing the language around how I describe myself. Instead of saying “I am a researcher,” I would say “I work at a startup.” This subtle change helped distance my sense of identity from my occupation, allowing me to reclaim independence. This wasn’t always easy, as it left a hole that I was sometimes not sure how to fill. But over time, it felt like I was building a healthier and more sustainable sense of balance in my identity.
Human-human interaction. I expected this would be the biggest day-to-day difference from academia, and I was not wrong. It had been years since I truly worked side by side with someone in real time. Collaborations in academia are usually asynchronous—the lead author handles 99% of the work, while collaborators offer periodic feedback. Now, rather than using a Doodle poll to schedule meetings two weeks in advance, I could just press a button and ‘huddle’ someone. Daily, unstructured check-ins with my team provided much-needed moments to step back from what I was doing and put my problems into perspective. These frequent check-ins fostered a true sense of camaraderie—something I hope to bring to any role I take on in the future.
The frustrations
Ideator-implementer gap. My role at Climate Farmers was firmly as a ‘worker’. Although I still felt connected to the broader context of our work, my role was focused on implementation rather than shaping the bigger picture. I missed the intellectual balance I had in research, where you simultaneously execute tasks and situate them within broader theoretical and empirical contexts. I recognise that some private sector roles might better bridge the gap between ideation and execution, but they seem to be the exception rather than the norm.
Vision-reality gap. Climate Farmers is united by a compelling and holistic vision for “a world where humans live in harmony with nature.” This was a key motivator for me when I joined, and all of us at the company deeply believed in our mission to scale regenerative agriculture in Europe. But working in a ‘regenerative’ way often felt like swimming upstream against the realities of a capitalistic system. Agricultural carbon markets also often promote a narrow ‘carbon tunnel vision,’ which fails to fully account for the broader benefits of regenerative agriculture. While the shared vision for a better future was sometimes a powerful source of motivation, these disconnects were often frustrating, and are likely common in mission-driven startups trying to balance vision with business realities.
Academic writing. The reports we worked on were factual, precise, and technical. While scientific writing can be dry, it’s also a form of storytelling—a process of weaving context, data, and results into a compelling narrative. I missed the creative challenge of crafting those stories.
No knowledge sharing. Perhaps I am an idealist, but I believe collaboration is key to solving today’s massive societal problems. Academia generally embraces this mentality (e.g., through open-source data), but in the private sector the pursuit of market share and profit tends to discourage knowledge sharing. Market dynamics like increasing returns to scale and winner-takes-all competition likely fuel this protectionist mindset. At Climate Farmers, we recognised that other businesses were likely facing similar challenges to us, but there wasn’t much encouragement to reach out and share lessons or learn from what is working elsewhere. Although I understand the reason behind this isolationism, the lack of collaboration between organisations limited my own ability to learn, and may more broadly undermine the industry’s collective impact.
Lack of passion. This is the flipside of the point about “I am not my work”. While the strong work-life balance was refreshing, I do feel it sometimes came at the expense of excellence. There were times when going the extra mile could have made a critical difference, but the tendency to “be the hero” was missing. In a mission-oriented context like this, where people aren’t driven by money or prestige, I had hoped for stronger intrinsic motivation to go above and beyond. In this specific case, I think many employees were feeling jaded and therefore less keen to throw themselves into the company. This feeling also reflects broader cultural differences between holiday-oriented Europe and the achievement-oriented U.S., and I’m yet to see a best-of-both-worlds balance.
Conclusions and next steps
I am writing this now because Climate Farmers has decided to wind down its business operations. It’s truly sad that their vision won’t come to fruition–at least not yet–but I am proud to have been part of an organisation that tried to push the needle on systemic change towards regenerative agriculture. The relationships, ideas, and culture that we built at Climate Farmers will continue to live and grow beyond this particular organisation.
In two weeks, I will move back into the academic system (surprise!), with a role as a Senior Scientist at the University of Hohenheim. I had a strong preference to remain in Stuttgart, and a nice opportunity arose at the perfect time. I am both anxious and excited for this re-transition. In my new role, I’ll expand my understanding of the economics and market dynamics in transitions to organic agriculture, while gaining experience mentoring PhD students. It will surely be another rich learning experience!
Although I am not staying in the private sector for now, it remains an option for my future. I have no regrets about my decision a year ago—it opened my eyes to new career pathways and ways of thinking and working. No matter where my career takes me, these lessons will continue to shape how I work and strive to make an impact.