Finding Your Path: a BoF on early career paths in NLP at EMNLP 2026

On Monday, October 26, Marlene Lutz, Matthias Orlikowski, and I hosted a Birds-of-a-Feather session at EMNLP 2026 in Budapest: Finding Your Path: Honest Conversations on Early Career Paths in NLP.

The idea was to have a session about working in NLP that is not standard career counseling. Plenty of panels explain how to get a job; far fewer ask what the job does to the rest of your life. We wanted to talk about the trade-offs people navigate between research and everything outside it, the struggles that rarely make it into a CV, and the strategies that actually help.

Five panelists seated in a row in front of the session slides

Our panelists, left to right: Sebastian Padó, Barbara Plank, Abhilasha Ravichander, Meeyoung Cha, and Zhijing Jin.

The survey

Ahead of the session we launched a community survey on careers in NLP, asking researchers at all career stages how their path unfolded, what they would do differently, and how working in the field shapes their lives beyond the job. We presented the first results in Budapest. One slide that got people talking: among the senior researchers who answered, 66% said their path closely matches what they had aimed for, and 78% would do it again — but 51% of those with changes.

Presenting the first survey results: 66% say their path closely matches their aim, 78% would do it again

First results from the survey.

The survey is still open, and we would like to keep it that way for a while. If you work in NLP — whether you are a first-year PhD student, a postdoc weighing options, or a senior researcher looking back — please take a few minutes to share your experiences and perspectives. The more career stages and paths it covers, the more useful the picture becomes for everyone who comes after.

The conversation

After the survey results, we moved into a participatory discussion and a panel with more senior members of the community — Sebastian Padó (University of Stuttgart), Barbara Plank (LMU Munich), Abhilasha Ravichander (MPI-SWS), Meeyoung Cha (MPI-SP), and Zhijing Jin (University of Toronto) — who talked openly about their own paths: the detours, the decisions made under uncertainty, and what they wish they had known earlier. The room was overfilled with interested participants — people were standing along the walls — and the conversation was as honest as we had hoped for.

A panelist speaking into a microphone while the others listen

During the panel discussion.

What’s next

We are collecting what came out of the session together with the survey responses, and plan to share a write-up once the survey has run its course. If you would like to be part of that — by filling in the survey, by telling us about your own path, or by organizing something similar at your own venue — please get in touch.

Thanks to everyone who came, to our panelists for their candor, and to the EMNLP 2026 organizers for helping us host the BoF sessions.