Exactly.  By this point it&#x27;s out of necessity, to stay in the game.  It&#x27;s like asking an MBA, &quot;If you could get to a plum Wall Street job without an internship, would you?&quot;  All of them would say, &quot;Of course not!&quot;  In Science, the supply&#x2F;demand imbalance is such that this &quot;internship&quot; (post-doc) lasts a lot more than a summer.<p>I have a friend who did his MD&#x2F;Phd immediately after undergrad.  That wasn&#x27;t enough to land a job, so he did a several year post-doc before landing at a research university.  Even still he was in his 40s before getting tenure.  At that point tenure is about rewarding performance more than anything related to academic freedom.