11 ms·

Uber and other companies (including Google) have been hiring a lot of robotics faculty as well as newly-minted PhDs. This is a good thing for robotics research.

by artnep 11y ago

Uber and other companies (including Google) have been hiring a lot of robotics faculty as well as newly-minted PhDs. This is a good thing for robotics research. There's generally a shortage of tenure-track jobs relative to the number of qualified PhDs, so when companies poach faculty, it improves everyone's career options. This is one of the reasons why CS PhDs have a much higher chance of getting good tenure-track faculty jobs than, say, physics PhDs. Of course, when there's a faculty exodus it causes a temporary leadership vacuum--e.g. this has been the situation at Stanford for the last couple years, where most of the AI faculty has left to start companies. But most of the students at Stanford seem to do fine, and universities can usually fill the void in a few years and hire some new enthusiastic faculty.

nickff 11y ago
Yes, the editorialist here seems to be bemoaning the 'professionalization' of the research topic, as if the companies and researchers owe some sort of loyalty to a university which profits off the cheap labour. It is roughly equivalent to chastizing NFL and NBA teams for taking all of the NCAA's best players, and paying them more.
- heydenberk 11y ago
  More, in this case, meaning "at all."
  - angelbob 11y ago
    Nah, the CMU Robotics Institute folks they're talking about were almost certainly paid. Not by Silicon Valley standards, but they did receive actual money. These were faculty and employees, not students.
    - heydenberk 11y ago
      I was referring to the NCAA athletes :)
    - nmrm2 11y ago
      > Not by Silicon Valley standards Ph.D. students don't get "poached", they "graduate or drop out" and then "get jobs". The people being poahced are professors and scientists in permanent positions. I think people tend to under-estimate a full professor's salary at a top CS deapartment. The average salary of an associate professor at CMU is $138,000, full professor $194,000. Before consulting, money from research spinoff startups, etc. Even not adjusting for cost of living, I'm not sure how that's "not by Silicon Valley standards". And adjusted for cost of living, Pittsburgh is in one of the cheapest cities in the US (e.g., it's not uncommon for CMU grad students to buy houses in reasonable areas of the city on their $30-40k/yr PhD stipends). I'm not sure about non-faculty research scientists and so on, but I would imagine the $50-$100 range is about right. Which, again, adjusted for cost of living, is right there with SV. Edit: E.g., according to the obviously-take-with-a-grain-of-salt CNN COL calculator, the average CMU professor would have to make $324,000 to have a comparable salary in SF. So I guess "not by SV standards" is probably actually accurate, just probably not in the way you meant
      - angelbob 11y ago
        Hm. I know the guy who ran the Master of Software Engineering department at CMU West (in Mountain View.) And he didn't make the "average full professor" amount you're claiming. And one would assume he'd be making at least average for a professor. That would be crazy money in Pittsburgh. Are you sure that figure is accurate?
        nmrm2 11y ago
        > Are you sure that figure is accurate? 1. I don't have first-hand information about CMU, I got the data from here: http://www.american-school-search.com/faculty/carnegie-mellon-university http://www.american-school-search.com/faculty/carnegie-mello... Other data indicate that the six figure range is definitely accurate for CS associate and full professorships at research universities: https://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?SurveyID=24 https://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?Survey... And it's not insane to assume that the top schools pay 30-50k more. 2. It is an average. Lots of compounding factors: Was the person running the program a Full Professor? (Most professors are not full professors, and a lot of faculty aren't professors. Note the 50k+ discrepancy between assistant and full professors.) Did he have a research lab and how does CMU factor grants into compensation? Etc. I don't know the specific details about that particular person (or even CMU), but I also don't have any reason to doubt the numbers given above.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > It is roughly equivalent to chastizing NFL and NBA teams for taking all of the NCAA's best players, and paying them more. That's characterizing industry as the more advanced form of academia (NFL/NBA are more advanced than NCAA). But that's not really true. Even at the companies with the most well-funded research teams, the actual kinds of research being done in industry are often different from the sorts of research those same individuals would be doing in academia. And while it doesn't make the headlines as often (for obvious reasons), it's hardly unusual for people in industry to return to research in academic institutions. We don't need to think of academia and industry as zero-sum, no, but we also don't need to think of academia as merely a stepping stone to industry, even if that's how it is used by some people.
  - rqebmm 11y ago
    > That's characterizing industry as the more advanced form of academia It's not a perfect analogy, but I think he was mostly trying to hit on the amateur/professional split.
    - chimeracoder 11y ago
      > It's not a perfect analogy, but I think he was mostly trying to hit on the amateur/professional split. Right, and I'm saying that it's inaccurate to claim that either academia or industry research is 'amateur'. They're both professional, just with different funding sources and different goals.
- untog 11y ago
  That analogy breaks down a little - one of the reasons to lament this is because public universities publish their research for others to consume and build upon. Research within private companies stays inside those companies.
  - jessriedel 11y ago
    But in that sense you might as well lament when private companies hire recent grads too, since it's competing with the talent pool for academia.
  - nickff 11y ago
    I could also make similar arguments for the NCAA, as it builds the skills of many new and young players (far more than will ever play in the professional leagues), providing an indispensable resource for the development of talent and new techniques. In addition the NCAA teams are a valuable part of the colleges they are in. In truth, I am completely ambivalent as to the value of NCAA; but I do not believe that professors and students have any obligation to be 'loyal' to university research labs, as the universities pay the researchers as little as possible, and would be more than happy to sell the researchers down the river for a small increase in their endowment or government grants.
  - 9872 11y ago
    Companies publish plenty of research. And unlike universities, they actually make products people can use, which is even better.
    - marincounty 11y ago
      Yes, they do publish plenty of research, and thanks to the Bayh-Doyle act they make a lot of money off publicically funded entities too. Those great discoveries are patented, and those licensing fees are making products expensive. I'm not bashing the act; government wasn't getting the job done. I would rather see something like a prize system in tech, and medical discoveries. For instance, we need a cure for a certain disease. The government could offer, say a 1 billion dollar prize, to the first company that solves the problem. The discovery would then be required to open sourced to U.S. companies? Hell, it might prevent some companies from relocating overseas to avoid taxes? So instead of outrageous drug prices, generic drug companies would bring the price down due to competition? (a little off topic, but relevant? Maybe not relevant towards gadgets, but relative to expensive medical cures?) http://www.ucop.edu/ott/faculty/bayh.html http://www.ucop.edu/ott/faculty/bayh.html
hammock 11y ago
>There's generally a shortage of tenure-track jobs relative to the number of qualified PhDs, so when companies poach faculty, it improves everyone's career options. Good for the PhDs; bad for the schools, who must now find more funding to retain the same level of talent, thus making future academic research (e.g. the next gen of robots) more challenging to accomplish
- meatysnapper 11y ago
  Maybe they can divert money from their athletic departments to pay their PhDs $20k more per year?
  - relaxatorium 11y ago
    This is not an argument that applies much to, say, the mighty Carnegie Mellon Tartans.
  - rsfern 11y ago
    Even at schools with actual athletics programs and budgets, most PhD students are paid with grant money won by their advisors, or through government fellowships. Not by the university. (I'm a PhD student at CMU paid with NSF grant money.) Also of note, CMU just introduced a new presidential fellowship to fund undergraduate and graduate students in all fields [1]. 1: http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2015/september/presidential-fellows-scholars.html http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2015/september/pres...
- plonh 11y ago
  You are assuming that there is a talent shortage and that universities know how to rank the talent. Not really true, considering how many PhD seats there are and how few faculty seats there are.

by artnep 11y ago

nickff 11y ago

Yes, the editorialist here seems to be bemoaning the 'professionalization' of the research topic, as if the companies and researchers owe some sort of loyalty to a university which profits off the cheap labour. It is roughly equivalent to chastizing NFL and NBA teams for taking all of the NCAA's best players, and paying them more.

heydenberk 11y ago
More, in this case, meaning "at all."
- angelbob 11y ago
  Nah, the CMU Robotics Institute folks they're talking about were almost certainly paid. Not by Silicon Valley standards, but they did receive actual money. These were faculty and employees, not students.
  - heydenberk 11y ago
    I was referring to the NCAA athletes :)
  - nmrm2 11y ago
    > Not by Silicon Valley standards Ph.D. students don't get "poached", they "graduate or drop out" and then "get jobs". The people being poahced are professors and scientists in permanent positions. I think people tend to under-estimate a full professor's salary at a top CS deapartment. The average salary of an associate professor at CMU is $138,000, full professor $194,000. Before consulting, money from research spinoff startups, etc. Even not adjusting for cost of living, I'm not sure how that's "not by Silicon Valley standards". And adjusted for cost of living, Pittsburgh is in one of the cheapest cities in the US (e.g., it's not uncommon for CMU grad students to buy houses in reasonable areas of the city on their $30-40k/yr PhD stipends). I'm not sure about non-faculty research scientists and so on, but I would imagine the $50-$100 range is about right. Which, again, adjusted for cost of living, is right there with SV. Edit: E.g., according to the obviously-take-with-a-grain-of-salt CNN COL calculator, the average CMU professor would have to make $324,000 to have a comparable salary in SF. So I guess "not by SV standards" is probably actually accurate, just probably not in the way you meant
    - angelbob 11y ago
      Hm. I know the guy who ran the Master of Software Engineering department at CMU West (in Mountain View.) And he didn't make the "average full professor" amount you're claiming. And one would assume he'd be making at least average for a professor. That would be crazy money in Pittsburgh. Are you sure that figure is accurate?
      - nmrm2 11y ago
        > Are you sure that figure is accurate? 1. I don't have first-hand information about CMU, I got the data from here: http://www.american-school-search.com/faculty/carnegie-mellon-university http://www.american-school-search.com/faculty/carnegie-mello... Other data indicate that the six figure range is definitely accurate for CS associate and full professorships at research universities: https://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?SurveyID=24 https://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/salaryDisplay.cfm?Survey... And it's not insane to assume that the top schools pay 30-50k more. 2. It is an average. Lots of compounding factors: Was the person running the program a Full Professor? (Most professors are not full professors, and a lot of faculty aren't professors. Note the 50k+ discrepancy between assistant and full professors.) Did he have a research lab and how does CMU factor grants into compensation? Etc. I don't know the specific details about that particular person (or even CMU), but I also don't have any reason to doubt the numbers given above.
chimeracoder 11y ago
> It is roughly equivalent to chastizing NFL and NBA teams for taking all of the NCAA's best players, and paying them more. That's characterizing industry as the more advanced form of academia (NFL/NBA are more advanced than NCAA). But that's not really true. Even at the companies with the most well-funded research teams, the actual kinds of research being done in industry are often different from the sorts of research those same individuals would be doing in academia. And while it doesn't make the headlines as often (for obvious reasons), it's hardly unusual for people in industry to return to research in academic institutions. We don't need to think of academia and industry as zero-sum, no, but we also don't need to think of academia as merely a stepping stone to industry, even if that's how it is used by some people.
- rqebmm 11y ago
  > That's characterizing industry as the more advanced form of academia It's not a perfect analogy, but I think he was mostly trying to hit on the amateur/professional split.
  - chimeracoder 11y ago
    > It's not a perfect analogy, but I think he was mostly trying to hit on the amateur/professional split. Right, and I'm saying that it's inaccurate to claim that either academia or industry research is 'amateur'. They're both professional, just with different funding sources and different goals.
untog 11y ago
That analogy breaks down a little - one of the reasons to lament this is because public universities publish their research for others to consume and build upon. Research within private companies stays inside those companies.
- jessriedel 11y ago
  But in that sense you might as well lament when private companies hire recent grads too, since it's competing with the talent pool for academia.
- nickff 11y ago
  I could also make similar arguments for the NCAA, as it builds the skills of many new and young players (far more than will ever play in the professional leagues), providing an indispensable resource for the development of talent and new techniques. In addition the NCAA teams are a valuable part of the colleges they are in. In truth, I am completely ambivalent as to the value of NCAA; but I do not believe that professors and students have any obligation to be 'loyal' to university research labs, as the universities pay the researchers as little as possible, and would be more than happy to sell the researchers down the river for a small increase in their endowment or government grants.
- 9872 11y ago
  Companies publish plenty of research. And unlike universities, they actually make products people can use, which is even better.
  - marincounty 11y ago
    Yes, they do publish plenty of research, and thanks to the Bayh-Doyle act they make a lot of money off publicically funded entities too. Those great discoveries are patented, and those licensing fees are making products expensive. I'm not bashing the act; government wasn't getting the job done. I would rather see something like a prize system in tech, and medical discoveries. For instance, we need a cure for a certain disease. The government could offer, say a 1 billion dollar prize, to the first company that solves the problem. The discovery would then be required to open sourced to U.S. companies? Hell, it might prevent some companies from relocating overseas to avoid taxes? So instead of outrageous drug prices, generic drug companies would bring the price down due to competition? (a little off topic, but relevant? Maybe not relevant towards gadgets, but relative to expensive medical cures?) http://www.ucop.edu/ott/faculty/bayh.html http://www.ucop.edu/ott/faculty/bayh.html

hammock 11y ago

>There's generally a shortage of tenure-track jobs relative to the number of qualified PhDs, so when companies poach faculty, it improves everyone's career options. Good for the PhDs; bad for the schools, who must now find more funding to retain the same level of talent, thus making future academic research (e.g. the next gen of robots) more challenging to accomplish

meatysnapper 11y ago
Maybe they can divert money from their athletic departments to pay their PhDs $20k more per year?
- relaxatorium 11y ago
  This is not an argument that applies much to, say, the mighty Carnegie Mellon Tartans.
- rsfern 11y ago
  Even at schools with actual athletics programs and budgets, most PhD students are paid with grant money won by their advisors, or through government fellowships. Not by the university. (I'm a PhD student at CMU paid with NSF grant money.) Also of note, CMU just introduced a new presidential fellowship to fund undergraduate and graduate students in all fields [1]. 1: http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2015/september/presidential-fellows-scholars.html http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2015/september/pres...
plonh 11y ago
You are assuming that there is a talent shortage and that universities know how to rank the talent. Not really true, considering how many PhD seats there are and how few faculty seats there are.