When I think about the things that lead to people leaving academia I think about this image. It shows where the bullet holes were on planes that came back during WW2. The question is: Where do you put the armor?

If you thought, put the armor on the bullet holes, you would be incorrect. Abraham Wald (a really cool Austrian statistician) pointed out that these planes survived, and that armor should be placed on the areas without holes.

So, I think about this whenever I see faculty give advice about surviving graduate school, or getting a faculty position, because we are not seeing what leads to people being driven out of the field.

This has implications for how we as a field consider issues of diversity and equity. If we aren't careful, we might end up addressing the wrong issues.

Overall, thinking about this has made me more careful when I think about mentorship or how I interact with junior colleagues, as the things that I struggled with are less likely to be the issues driving people away.

It also means that senior folks need to elicit feedback early and often from colleagues at every level of seniority, and not rely on their personal experiences or perspective, because they are the planes that came back.