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Frankly, your post isn't relevant to this thread. Major R&D research labs exist to do the "R" in R&D. Many of them are explicitly not doing research that is in

Frankly, your post isn't relevant to this thread. Major R&D research labs exist to do the "R" in R&D. Many of them are explicitly not doing research that is intended to become a new business/product. There are many models here, but the important point is that if you want to start a new business (unit), an industrial research lab is probably not a good fit. They mostly exist for other reasons. If parent wants to start a new company or business unit, he should do that. But in that case, why is he applying to industrial R&D labs? He should be applying to y combinator instead... Your post is a bit like saying that it's reasonable for a personal trainer to get a job as a doctor at a hospital because exercise is more important than surgery to most people's health. I.e., you're saying true things but kind of completely misses the point of the sorts of organizations we are talking about (research labs in large companies). (I'll leave aside the ridiculous irony that you included Google in that list... in any case, each of those companies has benefited significantly from their internal R&D orgs.)

sonnyblarney 8y ago
"Frankly, your post isn't relevant to this thread." We're talking about the value of Phd's to high tech companies, so it's relevant. Tell me how Facebook, AirBnB, Uber, Microsoft, Salesforce have materially gained from their R&D labs? They would be essentially the same companies without 'research style' R&D. Windows and MS Office do not require PhD's to design, though surely there are material contributions made by those who hold a PhD, but the more classical R&D aspects have not been hugely relevant. For some silicon companies it's probably true, and possibly in the medical field, wherein clinical research etc. is essential part of the product approach ... but for most of Silicon Valley style companies - it's not. Companies tend to hire lots of PhDs after they are rich and flush with cash - not the other way around. "it's reasonable for a personal trainer to get a job as a doctor at a hospital" No - you need to be a doctor to do 'doctoring'; training to be a doctor is 100% relevant to the practice of actually being a doctor. But you definitely do not need to be a doctor, or even have PhDs on staff to make companies or products that are material relevant to people's wellbeing or fitness. PhD level, near pure R&D is not essential to the vast majority of even tech startups. We're on HN, i.e. a Y Combinator site - an entity that is really at the nexus of early stage investment. Care to run down the list of YC investments and see which ones are based on some kind of materially relevant PhD level research - and that are also successful? Because unfortunately there are very few. I know of one, off hand, Lyrebird - one of the more popularly significant investments that YC has made in AI, they make a really cool product that can take maybe a minute or so of your speech, and then re-create a text-to-voice simulator voice that sounds similar to the pre-recorded device. It's pretty cool, but not that great. It's been a while now, they have no real product that anyone cares about aside from it's novelty, they don't have any real revenue, and they probably won't. Sadly, they will be acquired by some BigCo R&D shop and hopefully make some money for themselves. They are making great contributions to science, but they might as well be doing it out of U. Montreal from whence they came. Most R&D done by BigCos is just a little more applied than such research done at Universities, but the results of such work benefit the commons as much as they do the companies anyhow. In a way, it's almost benevolent spending on the part of BigCo's, somewhere to park their cash, maintain prestige. It's important in the 'general' context, but often not very directly related to the bottom line of said companies.
- thrmsforbfast 8y ago
  > But you definitely do not need to be a doctor, or even have PhDs on staff to make companies or products that are material relevant to people's wellbeing or fitness. Again, research labs are not hiring people to build products. They are not even hiring people to do advanced development in most cases (and when they do, those supporting engineer roles typically don't require phds). They are hiring people to do heavy-R research. > We're talking about the value of Phd's to high tech companies, so it's relevant. No, we are talking about whether these companies should hire phds into their already existing research labs. Not even generally, but specifically (e.g., Intel Labs and Amazon). The decision that these labs should do heavy-R research was already made for us by VPs or C-level folks. These labs already exist, their mandate is already spelled out, and now the question is "why won't they hire me to execute on that mandate?" If parent disagrees with that mandate, why would he be interested in getting a job in one of these labs? The question of whether these places should have heavy-R research labs in the first place is entirely orthogonal to this thread. Why? Because parent already stated he wants to work within these existing research organizations. It sounds like you think typical industrial research labs are bad investments. That's fine. I disagree. More importantly, presumably, the parent commenter disagrees. After all, if he did agree with you, why the hell would he want to work in an R&D lab? If parent agreed with you, why the hell would he be pining for a job in one of these labs? He wouldn't. He would just apply to YC. So, again, litigating whether or not these heavy-R research labs should exist in the first place is an important topic but is not relevant to this thread, which is about the question: "why don't research orgs that have a corporate mandate to do heavy-R research hire non-phds?". Extremely off-topic, as I've stated multiple times now, but maybe it will help: YC has HARC and (indirectly) OpenAI. Those are much more analogous to corporate research labs than YC investments. Are they wastes of money? Good question; but one thing is certain: if you think so, then you probably don't want a job at one :-)

sonnyblarney 8y ago

"Frankly, your post isn't relevant to this thread." We're talking about the value of Phd's to high tech companies, so it's relevant. Tell me how Facebook, AirBnB, Uber, Microsoft, Salesforce have materially gained from their R&D labs? They would be essentially the same companies without 'research style' R&D. Windows and MS Office do not require PhD's to design, though surely there are material contributions made by those who hold a PhD, but the more classical R&D aspects have not been hugely relevant. For some silicon companies it's probably true, and possibly in the medical field, wherein clinical research etc. is essential part of the product approach ... but for most of Silicon Valley style companies - it's not. Companies tend to hire lots of PhDs after they are rich and flush with cash - not the other way around. "it's reasonable for a personal trainer to get a job as a doctor at a hospital" No - you need to be a doctor to do 'doctoring'; training to be a doctor is 100% relevant to the practice of actually being a doctor. But you definitely do not need to be a doctor, or even have PhDs on staff to make companies or products that are material relevant to people's wellbeing or fitness. PhD level, near pure R&D is not essential to the vast majority of even tech startups. We're on HN, i.e. a Y Combinator site - an entity that is really at the nexus of early stage investment. Care to run down the list of YC investments and see which ones are based on some kind of materially relevant PhD level research - and that are also successful? Because unfortunately there are very few. I know of one, off hand, Lyrebird - one of the more popularly significant investments that YC has made in AI, they make a really cool product that can take maybe a minute or so of your speech, and then re-create a text-to-voice simulator voice that sounds similar to the pre-recorded device. It's pretty cool, but not that great. It's been a while now, they have no real product that anyone cares about aside from it's novelty, they don't have any real revenue, and they probably won't. Sadly, they will be acquired by some BigCo R&D shop and hopefully make some money for themselves. They are making great contributions to science, but they might as well be doing it out of U. Montreal from whence they came. Most R&D done by BigCos is just a little more applied than such research done at Universities, but the results of such work benefit the commons as much as they do the companies anyhow. In a way, it's almost benevolent spending on the part of BigCo's, somewhere to park their cash, maintain prestige. It's important in the 'general' context, but often not very directly related to the bottom line of said companies.

thrmsforbfast 8y ago
> But you definitely do not need to be a doctor, or even have PhDs on staff to make companies or products that are material relevant to people's wellbeing or fitness. Again, research labs are not hiring people to build products. They are not even hiring people to do advanced development in most cases (and when they do, those supporting engineer roles typically don't require phds). They are hiring people to do heavy-R research. > We're talking about the value of Phd's to high tech companies, so it's relevant. No, we are talking about whether these companies should hire phds into their already existing research labs. Not even generally, but specifically (e.g., Intel Labs and Amazon). The decision that these labs should do heavy-R research was already made for us by VPs or C-level folks. These labs already exist, their mandate is already spelled out, and now the question is "why won't they hire me to execute on that mandate?" If parent disagrees with that mandate, why would he be interested in getting a job in one of these labs? The question of whether these places should have heavy-R research labs in the first place is entirely orthogonal to this thread. Why? Because parent already stated he wants to work within these existing research organizations. It sounds like you think typical industrial research labs are bad investments. That's fine. I disagree. More importantly, presumably, the parent commenter disagrees. After all, if he did agree with you, why the hell would he want to work in an R&D lab? If parent agreed with you, why the hell would he be pining for a job in one of these labs? He wouldn't. He would just apply to YC. So, again, litigating whether or not these heavy-R research labs should exist in the first place is an important topic but is not relevant to this thread, which is about the question: "why don't research orgs that have a corporate mandate to do heavy-R research hire non-phds?". Extremely off-topic, as I've stated multiple times now, but maybe it will help: YC has HARC and (indirectly) OpenAI. Those are much more analogous to corporate research labs than YC investments. Are they wastes of money? Good question; but one thing is certain: if you think so, then you probably don't want a job at one :-)