I read it as "if academia were toy boats, industry would be aircraft carriers." Edit - the blog post clears this up: The way I think of it, being in academia

I read it as "if academia were toy boats, industry would be aircraft carriers." Edit - the blog post clears this up: The way I think of it, being in academia is a lot like building toy boats and playing with them in your bathtub. ... Whereas being at Google is like working on an aircraft carrier at sea.