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Most people were not able to succeed in academia. What do you think you did differently than most people?

• ScottAaronson 8y ago
  Uhh, most people don't even try to succeed in academia! So no surprise if they don't. It's not like I made it to the NBA or something. :-) Let me speak only about academic CS, since that's what I know best. Of the students who enter the major CS PhD programs in the US, I think something on the order of half of them (maybe a bit less) end up in academic positions, with the rest going to startups and industry and government. So, of the PhD students who really want academic positions in CS, fortunately a large fraction are still able to get them---just not necessarily at a top-tier school. Of course, many students outright prefer industry -- Google and Microsoft can, after all, offer compensation packages that blow academic ones out of the water -- or else they prefer industry to the academic options that are available to them. And that's fine. I feel lucky to work in a field where PhD students have multiple career options, and when a student comes to me for advice, I try to help them figure out what's best for them, rather than imposing some global preconception on it. From what I know, the situation is worse in other academic fields, like math and high-energy physics and certainly philosophy and other humanities fields -- where you can get dozens of well-qualified applicants for every academic opening, with all the cutthroat competition and other pathologies you'd imagine that would lead to.
  • vymague 8y ago
    Thank you very much for your answer. I suppose the situation is a bit different in CS.