4 ms·

Your last impression, if true, would come as a great surprise to me. I would check but I'm literally in a Econ PhD class right now.

tlarkworthy 7y ago
My professor with commercial experience said roughly the same thing: academia is harder and more competitive than the commercial world. Now I have experience of both, he was right. Your collegues have roles and help you in commercial world. Everyone is against each other in academia, and the admin staff know your just a temp so your problems are not worth the effort.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  My brother-in-law is a tenure-track professor (though not tenured yet) in cancer research, I'm working on getting a startup funded. I would agree with that impression. There are more fundable startup markets than there are tenured positions available in academia, and you have more flexibility to pursue new ones that open up than you do to change your line of research if it doesn't pan out. Both professions require an enormous amount of work, but you have more control as a startup founder, and are less subject to the whims of politics, grants, and scientific reality. Hard science involves an amazing amount of risk and hard work to manage that risk, moreso than startups do. The rewards for a successful startup are about 2 orders of magnitude higher than the rewards for tenure, too. The latter means that you have a job for life; the former means you don't need a job for life.
  - andrepd 7y ago
    >There are more fundable startup markets than there are tenured positions available in academia >The rewards for a successful startup are about 2 orders of magnitude higher than the rewards for tenure, too. Massive [citation needed] on both these claims. "But my brother-in-law" is not evidence. It's not at all obvious that there are more startup markets than tenure positions. Also, founding a successful startup is largely a matter of luck, and being in the right place at the right time.
    - nostrademons 7y ago
      If you want data: As of 2016, academic institutions hired 21,511 full-time, tenure-track professors [1]. Your odds of getting tenure given that you're in a tenure-track position vary by institution, but seem to range from about 75% at elite private institutions to 90% at state schools [2]. Figure about 18,000 professors were hired into positions that will eventually grant them tenure. AngelList lists about 30,827 companies at the Seed or Series A/B/C stage [3]. Crunchbase has 33,577 funding rounds that occurred within 2016 [4]. The former stat has issues in that it includes funding rounds over a broad time period, and the latter potentially has issues with multiple funding rounds for the same company happening; however, given their general consistency and the existence of funded companies that do not appear in AngelList nor Crunchbase, 30,000 companies funded per year seems about right. The average tenured professor salary varies heavily by field, but the Chronicle of Higher Ed reports it at $104820 [5], Glassdoor at $70385 [6], PayScale at $71993 [7], Indeed at $66921 [8]. There were 12,688 mergers & acquisitions in 2018 [9], the vast majority of which were for undisclosed amounts (companies do not have to disclose the transaction if it's for < $75M). Given the distribution of the ones that are disclosed, it's a good bet that most of those are for between $1M-20M (I've heard $1M/engineer as the going rate for aquihires, where the team succeeds in delivering a product but the product fails in the marketplace). This is still roughly 100x what the tenured professor makes though. [1] https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/10112018%20Data%20Snapshot%20Tenure.pdf https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/10112018%20Data%20S... [2] https://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/dont-worry-too-much-about-whether-youll-get-tenure-because-you-probably-will/ https://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/dont-worry-t... [3] https://angel.co/companies?stage[]=Series+A&stage[]=Seed&stage[]=Series+B&stage[]=Series+C https://angel.co/companies?stage[]=Series+A&stage[]=Seed&sta... [4] https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/a416e3bdb172fd52fe210b50d8779c49 https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/a416e3bdb17... [5] https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Much-Did-Professors-Earn/243085 https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Much-Did-Professors-Ea... [6] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/tenured-professor-salary-SRCH_KO0,17.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/tenured-professor-salary-... [7] https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Tenure_Professor/Salary https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Tenure_Professor/Sa... [8] https://www.indeed.com/salaries/Professor-Salaries https://www.indeed.com/salaries/Professor-Salaries [9] https://www.statista.com/statistics/245977/number-of-munda-deals-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/245977/number-of-munda-d...
- scottlegrand2 7y ago
  As a nuclear physicist who left academia for Disney once told me: "Academia... The competition is so intense because the stakes are so low..."
  - jacobolus 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law

tlarkworthy 7y ago

My professor with commercial experience said roughly the same thing: academia is harder and more competitive than the commercial world. Now I have experience of both, he was right. Your collegues have roles and help you in commercial world. Everyone is against each other in academia, and the admin staff know your just a temp so your problems are not worth the effort.

nostrademons 7y ago
My brother-in-law is a tenure-track professor (though not tenured yet) in cancer research, I'm working on getting a startup funded. I would agree with that impression. There are more fundable startup markets than there are tenured positions available in academia, and you have more flexibility to pursue new ones that open up than you do to change your line of research if it doesn't pan out. Both professions require an enormous amount of work, but you have more control as a startup founder, and are less subject to the whims of politics, grants, and scientific reality. Hard science involves an amazing amount of risk and hard work to manage that risk, moreso than startups do. The rewards for a successful startup are about 2 orders of magnitude higher than the rewards for tenure, too. The latter means that you have a job for life; the former means you don't need a job for life.
- andrepd 7y ago
  >There are more fundable startup markets than there are tenured positions available in academia >The rewards for a successful startup are about 2 orders of magnitude higher than the rewards for tenure, too. Massive [citation needed] on both these claims. "But my brother-in-law" is not evidence. It's not at all obvious that there are more startup markets than tenure positions. Also, founding a successful startup is largely a matter of luck, and being in the right place at the right time.
  - nostrademons 7y ago
    If you want data: As of 2016, academic institutions hired 21,511 full-time, tenure-track professors [1]. Your odds of getting tenure given that you're in a tenure-track position vary by institution, but seem to range from about 75% at elite private institutions to 90% at state schools [2]. Figure about 18,000 professors were hired into positions that will eventually grant them tenure. AngelList lists about 30,827 companies at the Seed or Series A/B/C stage [3]. Crunchbase has 33,577 funding rounds that occurred within 2016 [4]. The former stat has issues in that it includes funding rounds over a broad time period, and the latter potentially has issues with multiple funding rounds for the same company happening; however, given their general consistency and the existence of funded companies that do not appear in AngelList nor Crunchbase, 30,000 companies funded per year seems about right. The average tenured professor salary varies heavily by field, but the Chronicle of Higher Ed reports it at $104820 [5], Glassdoor at $70385 [6], PayScale at $71993 [7], Indeed at $66921 [8]. There were 12,688 mergers & acquisitions in 2018 [9], the vast majority of which were for undisclosed amounts (companies do not have to disclose the transaction if it's for < $75M). Given the distribution of the ones that are disclosed, it's a good bet that most of those are for between $1M-20M (I've heard $1M/engineer as the going rate for aquihires, where the team succeeds in delivering a product but the product fails in the marketplace). This is still roughly 100x what the tenured professor makes though. [1] https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/10112018%20Data%20Snapshot%20Tenure.pdf https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/10112018%20Data%20S... [2] https://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/dont-worry-too-much-about-whether-youll-get-tenure-because-you-probably-will/ https://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/dont-worry-t... [3] https://angel.co/companies?stage[]=Series+A&stage[]=Seed&stage[]=Series+B&stage[]=Series+C https://angel.co/companies?stage[]=Series+A&stage[]=Seed&sta... [4] https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/a416e3bdb172fd52fe210b50d8779c49 https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/a416e3bdb17... [5] https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Much-Did-Professors-Earn/243085 https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Much-Did-Professors-Ea... [6] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/tenured-professor-salary-SRCH_KO0,17.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/tenured-professor-salary-... [7] https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Tenure_Professor/Salary https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Tenure_Professor/Sa... [8] https://www.indeed.com/salaries/Professor-Salaries https://www.indeed.com/salaries/Professor-Salaries [9] https://www.statista.com/statistics/245977/number-of-munda-deals-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/245977/number-of-munda-d...
scottlegrand2 7y ago
As a nuclear physicist who left academia for Disney once told me: "Academia... The competition is so intense because the stakes are so low..."
- jacobolus 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayre%27s_law