Why did I leave academia? It's complex. It's 100% related to the culture of academia that I felt I couldn't stay. So here's a thread on why, particularly as a woman, with depression, I had to leave, despite having a good track record and designs on being a prof one day. 1/

The precarity of contracts. Honestly, the rolling from one contract to the next was crushing. Not knowing if I'd be jobless in a few months was too much. Combine that with my anxiety, and it was debilitating. I've since got a permanent job in industry. 2/

The culture of overwork. Feeling like I had to be constantly "on" all the time, and if I wasn't it was valuable time I could have been working on a paper to get ahead. Again with my depression (and quite frankly anyone else with or without depression) burnout was not my friend.3/

Moving across the world for a "good" CV. I didn't want to move to get postdocs to make my CV competitive. I couldn't think of anything worse than uprooting my life away from my support networks. My partner had a permanent job, and that took priority. 4/

The pay. Industry pays much better. It meant I could actually buy a house and have the stability of being in one location. I can now actually afford things like therapy and self-care to help me be well. 5/

Family in the future. Maybe I'll have family one day, maybe I won't. But the culture of overwork did not feel conducive to having a family. I now have more time and benefits being in industry. 6/

Not seeing visible role models. I couldn't see visible women role models at my institution that "had it all". It made me think there was no way for me to have it all either. 7/

Opportunities to teach. I love teaching, but because of TEF the opportunities for ECRs to teach was so small because of fear of poor student feedback that ECRs really didn't have much option to teach. 8/

The small number of tenured positions. Was I willing to sacrifice everything to "make it"? I wasn't. Does this mean I didn't want it enough? My thoughts are that the environment didn't want *me* enough. 9/

These are just some of the reasons why I chose to leave. I'd be interested in hearing other peoples' reasons why. It's taken me a long time to realise I'm not a failure for leaving academia, academia failed me. 10/10