5 ms·

I think I'm a good bit earlier in my career, but I've been in a similar situation for a number of years now. It was extremely discouraging to me when I discover

I think I'm a good bit earlier in my career, but I've been in a similar situation for a number of years now. It was extremely discouraging to me when I discovered that the typical result of my spending years (in some cases) researching and developing some software/ideas[0] would be far from gratitude and offers of financial assistance or employment to pursue these obviously important subjects ;) Instead the breakdown of responses has been something like 20% dismissals following a cursory reading, and suggestions that what I was doing was some other extremely commonplace thing I was already well aware of and could precisely relate to what I was actually talking about[1]; 30% people saying essentially, "ooh, neat!" and then moving on; 20% inquiries from genuinely interested folks, often times professional researchers (often possible to get the main idea across with them, but still: unless what you're doing relates in a very direct and positive way to their work, that's not going to go anywhere); 30% various, with a surprising amount of hostility mixed into all the categories (except the "ooh, neat!" people). It has certainly helped in the professional realm (for software engineering, not research)—though not in the way I would've hoped. By far the most typical thing is some potential employer sees your work and is like, "oh wow, he must be good to have made this—I can get him to write LOTS of CODE for me!!" but they'll use their knowledge that you value developing original ideas to lure you in, pretending they also care about your ideas, and then allow the memory to slowly fade as your new role doing totally vanilla software engineering solidifies. I actually had someone offer to give me a place to live and pay monthly expenses and tried to arrange for me to move to another state (all the time claiming the world needed the ideas I was working on). I told them about my experience with the above and said that I was maybe paranoid but wasn't getting into something with potential for that again; he replied that it wasn't paranoia but wisdom and we ended our discussion. So now... I realize if you work hard and develop new ideas that may (or may not) end up being important, no one's going to help you unless you turn it into a product or do it in the context of Academia. It's hard work to communicate new ideas, and all too easy to just let them sit rather than doing that hard and often unforgiving work. But I'm still excited about working on the ideas so whatever, for now. ---- [0] To give some context for the kind of ideas/software I'm talking about: I (re-)discovered the idea of a structure editor/projectional editor, not knowing what a grammar or AST even was at the time (I was going to develop a 'linguistic constraint description language' before discovering formal grammars), and built a novel incarnation that may still have lots of potential (almost forgot: it also included a modular system that did something like language-agnostic full-language auto-complete; essentially the inverse of a 'compiler compiler' so I call it a 'generator generator'). That project was largely re-discovery, but led to a formulation for a new general architecture for programming tools built around very simple 'program models' and 'language models' (this is what I'm most interested in pursuing now). I also developed a new kind of general purpose interactive data structure visualization system, which I see as an incarnation of a more general notion of an 'abstractoscope' (something to allow us to usefully/systematically remove detail, rather than adding it like e.g. a microscope). [1] I read recently that Douglas Engelbart had so much trouble with this precise phenomenon (people assuming whatever new idea you're talking about is some common thing from the framework they're used to thinking in), that it inspired him to give a more explicit philosophical grounding/context/framework for his idea, which resulted in a famous piece of writing of his (can't remember the name atm).

btrettel 8y ago
> By far the most typical thing is some potential employer sees your work and is like, "oh wow, he must be good to have made this—I can get him to write LOTS of CODE for me!!" but they'll use their knowledge that you value developing original ideas to lure you in, pretending they also care about your ideas, and then allow the memory to slowly fade as your new role doing totally vanilla software engineering solidifies. I laughed. While I've never heard employer say that explicitly, it fits with my experience. Many employers seem to think solely about what a candidate can do for them and not in terms of what they can do for the candidate. When phrased like that, the employer might say something like "But we have generous pay/benefits/whatever!", which just shows that they don't understand their problem. I'd gladly take a reduction in pay and benefits if it gave me more control over my work. It might be worth asking a potential employer who claims to value your work to state in the employment contract that you can choose X hours per week for your own work. This would be a more formal way to test how serious a potential employer is about your work. Unfortunately few employers seem to be willing to make that deal, but after I finish my PhD I'll be asking.
- westoncb 8y ago
  Hehe, yeah, it's been surprising how common that pattern is. I fell for it once when a prospective employer found a demo video of mine on the front page here and sent me an email saying, "I can offer you the opportunity to continue and extend your work here at <company>"—but since then I can smell the trap coming and have been able to avoid it.

btrettel 8y ago

> By far the most typical thing is some potential employer sees your work and is like, "oh wow, he must be good to have made this—I can get him to write LOTS of CODE for me!!" but they'll use their knowledge that you value developing original ideas to lure you in, pretending they also care about your ideas, and then allow the memory to slowly fade as your new role doing totally vanilla software engineering solidifies. I laughed. While I've never heard employer say that explicitly, it fits with my experience. Many employers seem to think solely about what a candidate can do for them and not in terms of what they can do for the candidate. When phrased like that, the employer might say something like "But we have generous pay/benefits/whatever!", which just shows that they don't understand their problem. I'd gladly take a reduction in pay and benefits if it gave me more control over my work. It might be worth asking a potential employer who claims to value your work to state in the employment contract that you can choose X hours per week for your own work. This would be a more formal way to test how serious a potential employer is about your work. Unfortunately few employers seem to be willing to make that deal, but after I finish my PhD I'll be asking.

westoncb 8y ago
Hehe, yeah, it's been surprising how common that pattern is. I fell for it once when a prospective employer found a demo video of mine on the front page here and sent me an email saying, "I can offer you the opportunity to continue and extend your work here at <company>"—but since then I can smell the trap coming and have been able to avoid it.