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I got my PhD degree from the one of the most excellent universities in Asia and am currently postdoc in US. However, I had the worst nightmare PhD advisor who thought his own students as potential competitors and tried to disturb their future career. He usually did not write reference letters for his own students and I saw most of my seniors leaving the lab without reference letters. Fortunately I got a good postdoc position in US and escaped from the previous lab. After postdoc, I would like to continue research work in US, because I am so exhausted with my PhD advisor and never want to see. Is it difficult to get a position if I do not list my former PhD advisor in the reference list? I can get recommendation letters from postoc supervisor and other professors. In fact, I usually have nice relationships with other people. Also, my PhD advisor has different research interest field from mine. This situation is causing me such difficulty. Please give me any good advice to overcome this situation.
My current aim is working in the tenure-track academic position or national lab than industry. However, if this problem is distracting me too much, I am considering of working in the industrial field.

need help
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    the only problem with not having a rec letter from your PhD advisor is that the reviewing committee will be wondering why? So you need to get to the stage where you can explain what happened with your advisor. – Herman Toothrot May 14 '15 at 10:07
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    Personally, I have never seen a faculty position advertisement, which specifies that one of referees should be your Ph.D. advisor. – Aleksandr Blekh May 14 '15 at 10:10
  • Potential duplicate of http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/635/12391 and http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/8023/12391. – Aleksandr Blekh May 14 '15 at 10:21
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    Thank you about comments and web addresses for previous questions. Particularly, your comment about faculty position advertisement gave me real hope. In my situation, there is no way to get recommendation letter from PhD advisor as this is not based on my fault and thus certain advice such as "recovering the relationship" would not be helpful. However, I do have a strong passion in research and thus trying to find a way to overcome this hard situation. When I become a professor or faculty, I would never do similar actions like my PhD advisor as I know how it is so hard for students. – need help May 14 '15 at 10:30
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    I have never seen a faculty position advertisement, which specifies that one of referees should be your Ph.D. advisor. —Most cultural norms are not advertised. – JeffE May 14 '15 at 10:44
  • So do you think PhD advisor should be generally included in the reference list? I know that PhD advisor can be supportive if he is my side. However, since mine is acting evil and becoming disaster for me, I have no choice but to listen to other people's advice and encouragement to overcome this suffering situation. If you know any good wisdom or direct/indirect experiences, please tell me. – need help May 14 '15 at 10:59
  • I do not understand what your question is. It seems like it is something like how bad/medicore does my PhD advisor's reference letter need to be before it is better to not include it. – StrongBad May 14 '15 at 12:21
  • My question is, if I do not include my PhD advisor in the reference list due to his evil spirit, how can I overcome the negative impression caused from absence of PhD advisor's recommendation letter during faculty apply. As JeffE said, many people think it is kind of cultural norm to include PhD advisor in the reference list during faculty apply. Is it really fine to simply exclude my PhD advisor and do not care and just show people other recommendation letters from other professors? – need help May 14 '15 at 12:36
  • I know of a case where someone got a tenure-track position of the sort you want without a recommendation from the advisor. In his case the problems were (1) the advisor was very controversial (2) every letter the advisor writes is so positive that they provide no content. This would have been known to most reviewers. If any of your other letter writers are familiar with your advisor and his actions, you might ask them to comment on it. That said, if you have other strong letters and a strong record as a postdoc, my guess is that this won't be a serious problem. – Zach H May 14 '15 at 12:57
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    Dear Zach H, Thanks for giving me hope. In this dark situation, this kind of story gives me hope. Thanks again. I will try to focus and contribute on the science development instead of suffering from that evil greedy villain. Sometimes, I cannot sleep because of terrible memories from PhD advisor. – need help May 14 '15 at 13:04

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