Hi,
I've been lurking for a few months now, wasn't planning to sign up anytime soon (I'm planning to do a masters followed by PhD but won't start the masters until 2015) but I saw this post with career advice for freshly minted (or soon-to-be) PhDs:
Core Economics | Career advice for young economists
And thought that some people on this forum would find it interesting. Some of it is Australia specific but I think the more interesting parts are more general.
This passage in particular caught my attention:
"Within economics, most academics judge someone’s productivity by looking at what they have achieved since their PhD. This means the number of years a PhD took is usually not carefully considered, nor is any career before the PhD. In turn, this also means that it is actually in a young academic’s favour to have the date of the PhD be as late as possible. Students often want to complete their PhD sooner in order to please family, or to have it over with, but in terms of academic career, later is better."