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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 w

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.

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.