5 ms·

>Academia is hard because it's extremely competitive, The issue isn't the level of competitiveness but the cost of losing. Now that I'm outside academia, ther

by foldr 6y ago

>Academia is hard because it's extremely competitive, The issue isn't the level of competitiveness but the cost of losing. Now that I'm outside academia, there's plenty of competition. For example, getting a good job at Google is just as competitive as getting a tenure-track position. The difference is that I can easily get a respectable job that pays the bills if I don't make the cut for Google. A nice side effect of this is that it enables me to take a rational view of how attractive these prestige jobs really are. And there are limits on what Google can demand of its engineers because they all have other options. Academia these days is competitive in about the same way as gladiatorial combat.

yodsanklai 6y ago
> The issue isn't the level of competitiveness but the cost of losing. I agree but only to some extent. First, there are many research institutions in the world. The same way there is more than one software company. They are not all equally selective and prestigious. There are also a lot of companies doing R&D. It may not be academic research, but it can also be pretty cool. In that sense, not getting an academic position isn't the end of the world. Even if it may seem so from the perspective of a post doc.
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  Yep, you can probably get a position at some backwater university that will pay (in the rich Western World) still enough to live a "normal" life. But of course everyone thinks they deserve a place at the top of the totem pole and anything less prestigious is a catastrophe. It's understandable. Many were always the top or one of the top kids in class or in school, won various local competitions but then it comes to competing against everyone across the globe and suddenly the story changes and it's no longer automatic and a given that you are at the top. It's a cold shower to many.
  - foldr 6y ago
    >Yep, you can probably get a position at some backwater university that will pay (in the rich Western World) still enough to live a "normal" life. This is a bit of a misconception. Even if you're willing to take any tenure-track job anywhere, the odds are still against you. There are simply far fewer tenure-track jobs per year than there are graduating PhD students.
    - bonoboTP 6y ago
      How could it be in any other way though? I just can't get into the viewpoint of people who are surprised. Did they think that getting to tenure is just a normal, default stage in life that you will progress to as a natural consequence of time passing? Do they also think that everyone who works for long enough at a company will become a manager, then a VP then a CEO and if not, then they either did something wrong and worked below expectations or the system failed them? Who starts a PhD and believes strongly that they will with high likelihood become profs? You have one prof as your supervisor and the same prof has many more PhD students. Do people not notice this? After a certain point of bloat, growth cannot be sustained. Especially in America the system has ballooned up to an unreasonable degree and will collapse when people realize that value is elsewhere and will refuse to pay into the system through tuition. Prestige, status, attention, fame etc. are scarce resources. Not every garage rock band can become superstars, most will not even be able to sustain it as a job or even to earn nonnegligible money. Prestige is zero sum because it is relative. If everyone can become a professor then being a professor will inflate its meaning (already happening). But be assured there will be new concepts to signal prestige and people will be disappointed that they aren't all getting that prestige.
      - foldr 6y ago
        Yes, you're totally right. I think in general people do these things because they think they're special. You could ask the same question about why people found startups or attempt to become olympic athletes.
thomasahle 6y ago
> For example, getting a good job at Google is just as competitive as getting a tenure-track position. That's far from my experience.
- foldr 6y ago
  I should have explained that I am thinking of a pure software engineering job. I.e., the kind that you can apply for if you're smart and can code, but don't have a research background that jives with the kind of research that Google is doing. If you want that kind of job you're competing against a lot of very smart people who've studied very hard for the interview process. If you have an ML PhD or something like that, it may be a different story.
  - ichbinwiederda 6y ago
    An ML PhD will not help you pass leetcode tests. Completely different knowledge base.
    - foldr 6y ago
      Yes indeed. I assume Google often hire ML PhDs for their ML expertise and not just their coding skills. But I have no first-hand experience.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
orbifold 6y ago
Getting a job at google is nowhere near as competitive as getting tenure, you have to live in an alternate reality to believe that. I know several people that went there after their PhD one of them got the lowest possible grade on their dissertation (rete). Both published no papers as first author.
- foldr 6y ago
  It's a different skill set, though. Just because someone was a mediocre academic doesn't mean that they weren't a great candidate from Google's point of view. There are also lots of very successful academics who Google wouldn't hire. For my part, I had a couple of decent shots at getting a tenure-track job, but I doubt I'd make it through more than a couple of rounds of Google's interview process. Perhaps it's easier than I think though (I've not tried it), but for sure there are vastly more people who want to work at Google than there are positions available. The chance of getting a tenure track job can vary a lot from field to field, so it's not surprising that people are reporting very different views on this.
  - yodsanklai 6y ago
    Overall, I'd say it's harder to get an academic position than a job at Google. But these are different skill sets as you say. Getting a job at Google is "just" a matter of graduating from a good school, grinding 500+ leetcode problems, applying at the right time, and being somewhat lucky. I would say that anyone who managed to get a tenure-track job is able to do this (provided they are willing to spend the time preparing for the interviews - which is quite a commitment). Getting an academic position is harder. Even though I've seen very average people getting one too...
- unishark 6y ago
  What are the actual odds? Last I saw for engineering, something like 10 percent of phd's find a tenure track job _somewhere_ (and it was double that ten years ago). You're comparing the difficulty of getting a job at a single selective company to getting in to any college in the country.
concreteblock 6y ago
> getting a good job at Google is just as competitive as getting a tenure-track position. From my experience this is not true. I personally know about 10 classmates who either dropped out of the (pure math) PhD or left academia immediately afterwards and ended up at FAANG as generic SWE. They all said that a few months of DS and alg prep was enough.
- foldr 6y ago
  I know about 10 classmates who got tenure track jobs. I'm not sure what that shows.

by foldr 6y ago

yodsanklai 6y ago

> The issue isn't the level of competitiveness but the cost of losing. I agree but only to some extent. First, there are many research institutions in the world. The same way there is more than one software company. They are not all equally selective and prestigious. There are also a lot of companies doing R&D. It may not be academic research, but it can also be pretty cool. In that sense, not getting an academic position isn't the end of the world. Even if it may seem so from the perspective of a post doc.

bonoboTP 6y ago
Yep, you can probably get a position at some backwater university that will pay (in the rich Western World) still enough to live a "normal" life. But of course everyone thinks they deserve a place at the top of the totem pole and anything less prestigious is a catastrophe. It's understandable. Many were always the top or one of the top kids in class or in school, won various local competitions but then it comes to competing against everyone across the globe and suddenly the story changes and it's no longer automatic and a given that you are at the top. It's a cold shower to many.
- foldr 6y ago
  >Yep, you can probably get a position at some backwater university that will pay (in the rich Western World) still enough to live a "normal" life. This is a bit of a misconception. Even if you're willing to take any tenure-track job anywhere, the odds are still against you. There are simply far fewer tenure-track jobs per year than there are graduating PhD students.
  - bonoboTP 6y ago
    How could it be in any other way though? I just can't get into the viewpoint of people who are surprised. Did they think that getting to tenure is just a normal, default stage in life that you will progress to as a natural consequence of time passing? Do they also think that everyone who works for long enough at a company will become a manager, then a VP then a CEO and if not, then they either did something wrong and worked below expectations or the system failed them? Who starts a PhD and believes strongly that they will with high likelihood become profs? You have one prof as your supervisor and the same prof has many more PhD students. Do people not notice this? After a certain point of bloat, growth cannot be sustained. Especially in America the system has ballooned up to an unreasonable degree and will collapse when people realize that value is elsewhere and will refuse to pay into the system through tuition. Prestige, status, attention, fame etc. are scarce resources. Not every garage rock band can become superstars, most will not even be able to sustain it as a job or even to earn nonnegligible money. Prestige is zero sum because it is relative. If everyone can become a professor then being a professor will inflate its meaning (already happening). But be assured there will be new concepts to signal prestige and people will be disappointed that they aren't all getting that prestige.
    - foldr 6y ago
      Yes, you're totally right. I think in general people do these things because they think they're special. You could ask the same question about why people found startups or attempt to become olympic athletes.

thomasahle 6y ago

> For example, getting a good job at Google is just as competitive as getting a tenure-track position. That's far from my experience.

foldr 6y ago
I should have explained that I am thinking of a pure software engineering job. I.e., the kind that you can apply for if you're smart and can code, but don't have a research background that jives with the kind of research that Google is doing. If you want that kind of job you're competing against a lot of very smart people who've studied very hard for the interview process. If you have an ML PhD or something like that, it may be a different story.
- ichbinwiederda 6y ago
  An ML PhD will not help you pass leetcode tests. Completely different knowledge base.
  - foldr 6y ago
    Yes indeed. I assume Google often hire ML PhDs for their ML expertise and not just their coding skills. But I have no first-hand experience.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

orbifold 6y ago

Getting a job at google is nowhere near as competitive as getting tenure, you have to live in an alternate reality to believe that. I know several people that went there after their PhD one of them got the lowest possible grade on their dissertation (rete). Both published no papers as first author.

foldr 6y ago
It's a different skill set, though. Just because someone was a mediocre academic doesn't mean that they weren't a great candidate from Google's point of view. There are also lots of very successful academics who Google wouldn't hire. For my part, I had a couple of decent shots at getting a tenure-track job, but I doubt I'd make it through more than a couple of rounds of Google's interview process. Perhaps it's easier than I think though (I've not tried it), but for sure there are vastly more people who want to work at Google than there are positions available. The chance of getting a tenure track job can vary a lot from field to field, so it's not surprising that people are reporting very different views on this.
- yodsanklai 6y ago
  Overall, I'd say it's harder to get an academic position than a job at Google. But these are different skill sets as you say. Getting a job at Google is "just" a matter of graduating from a good school, grinding 500+ leetcode problems, applying at the right time, and being somewhat lucky. I would say that anyone who managed to get a tenure-track job is able to do this (provided they are willing to spend the time preparing for the interviews - which is quite a commitment). Getting an academic position is harder. Even though I've seen very average people getting one too...
unishark 6y ago
What are the actual odds? Last I saw for engineering, something like 10 percent of phd's find a tenure track job _somewhere_ (and it was double that ten years ago). You're comparing the difficulty of getting a job at a single selective company to getting in to any college in the country.

concreteblock 6y ago

> getting a good job at Google is just as competitive as getting a tenure-track position. From my experience this is not true. I personally know about 10 classmates who either dropped out of the (pure math) PhD or left academia immediately afterwards and ended up at FAANG as generic SWE. They all said that a few months of DS and alg prep was enough.

foldr 6y ago
I know about 10 classmates who got tenure track jobs. I'm not sure what that shows.