5 ms·

The lure of industry is strong for academics, especially in CS. It's hard to pass up making my 2x or more in industry. But every time I think about making the s

The lure of industry is strong for academics, especially in CS. It's hard to pass up making my 2x or more in industry. But every time I think about making the switch, I find it really hard to put a value on what the author points out at the end: The freedom and unstructured time to explore fuzzy problems is unmatched. An assistant tenure-track professor in CS or CompE is going to make maybe $100k for 9 months of service, and really it's more like 30-32 weeks. I don't know any other job that gives you 6-figure salary and lets you basically do whatever* you want for 42% of the year. Is a 2x salary increase worth giving up that kind of time? For me I think It'd have to be a sum where I could retire much sooner, but what I would imagine myself doing in early retirement is the research I'm doing right now. I know a lot of people that made the same decision as this author, and they do report they miss the freedom of summer that academics get. * - you get 6 years or so to prove you've spent your time wisely.

lapsedacademic 5y ago
> It's hard to pass up making my 2x or more in industry. Austin's salary is public data, and I have a really good sample of what people like him make in industry. Try 5x. Before RSU appreciation. Maybe 3x. But 3x would imply a VERY chill industry position. "Name your interest space and we'll let you work on that" type of gig. Probably way more chill than academia. > The freedom and unstructured time to explore fuzzy problems is unmatched. Industry also provides this. Actually, I find much more freedom in industry than in academia. And, if we're honest, my industry position is probably at least as secure as a faculty position at a public university in a red state. > I don't know any other job that gives you 6-figure salary and lets you basically do whatever you want for 42% of the year. In industry research, you can't do whatever you want. But you can usually do what you want. In fact, the caveat of "prove your worth" is a huge tell. In industry, you REALLY CAN do what you want! Real freedom; just be useful. In academia you have "freedom". By which we mean "raise money". But even if not... look at it like this: an industry position that pays 5x allows you to work for a year and then take the next 4 off. 2/5 is bigger than 1/5. And that is time you can actually take off. To do whatever. Not "off" in the "better be writing grant proposals!" sense. Actually off. > Is a 2x salary increase worth giving up that kind of time? Probably not. But if you can land an R1 CS position in SE, you should be making closer to 5x.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  Do you know anyone who made $500k for a year and then took 4 years off to work on their research? I'd like to see what they managed to do with their time.
  - lapsedacademic 5y ago
    To be fair, no. (People do switch between "low key pure-R" jobs and "higher stress r&D" jobs. Perhaps similar.) But... perhaps this is because after you've made $industry_money for 10 years and hit your late 30s, you realize you'd rather spend all of your time training your biological AGI agents and don't really give a shit about the kinda unpleasant industry rat race, much less the totally brutal higher ed rat race. Or skiing. Lots of multi-millionaire ski bums in my grad cohort. No idea what they do in the summers. Not my cup of tea, but probably better than writing papers no one will read. In early retirement, there's time for research. And time to share that research. Just... no incentive to do the rat race thing that's necessary to convince an academic you're "accomplished something". But who cares? You finished the race. You don't have to get paper awards or NSF grants. You just have to do work that matters. Or ski. Or change diapers. So, I guess, to be even more fair: yes. CS PhDs work through their 30s and then retire. Totally. All the time.
  - mattkrause 5y ago
    A friend of mine did! He's been pretty productive, both in terms of academic things and living a good life. CS is nice in that you don't (initially) need access to a lot of resources. I think this would be much harder to do in a wet-lab field, which is one of the reasons I'm still here.
  - raphlinus 5y ago
    That's not too different than what I did. I left Google fall 2018, at the time thinking I'd write a video game. That morphed into doing research on 2D rendering, because building the infrastructure for that was more interesting and exciting than the actual game. For a while (not the whole time) it was pure unstructured time, no outside responsibilities. I rejoined Google a year ago with a research software engineer title, mostly because it was a better place to pursue this research than just continuing on my own. Partly I'm posting this to support 'lapsedacademic's assertion, you can do good research in industry. It takes a certain element of luck to land a spot, but it also helps to be very passionate about the research itself. I'm now writing a paper on an exciting GPU algorithm, but it's pure love, funding doesn't depend on it, it just makes a nice point on my list of accomplishments during perf time.
muaytimbo 5y ago
This is only somewhat true, to get hired to a tenure track position you generally have to propose a body of research to the other faculty members during your job talk, so it has to be research they find compelling AND that they think will pull down grant money, so . . . generally not absolute freedom there. Also when you work as an academic you are underpaid and working the equivalent of three jobs, 1) research and begging for grant money, 2) teaching, 3) bureaucratic nonsense, committees, student advising, etc. So I think 42% to do your research is a very generous estimate. I left academia after my PhD and wish I would've left sooner. It's a house of cards built on the illusion "prestige" and indentured servant wages.
karaterobot 5y ago
You're not going to release anything people actually use in academia. Research is useful, but it's not product. Based on what he says at the end of that message, it seems like he wants to release a product; I take him at his word. To do that, he basically has to go into industry.
voxl 5y ago
2x? Try 10x
- ModernMech 5y ago
  How common is it for an assistant professor to move into a role for one million dollars a year?
  - lapsedacademic 5y ago
    Very uncommon. I've never seen it. 3x-5x is more reasonable. But those numbers are before RSU appreciation, which I suspect you're massively underestimating. FB granted 5 years ago went from 128 to 326. AMZN 800 to 3200. AAPL 29 to 171. GOOG 800 to 2700. MSFT 62 to 311. (Netflix excluded for the obvious reason.) So if your total comp is 500K and half or more of that is long-dated stock (or you just didn't sell) then over the last 4-5 years you could very well have been making million a year or so. And 500K is doable for an asst prof. Not guaranteed, of course. But cash is comp is risky as well. How many professors got a 7% raise to adjust for inflation last year? 10x pre-appreciation is certainly possible after 5-10 years in industry, though. Probably not the norm, but not some crazy impossible out-of-reach number.
    - ModernMech 5y ago
      I understand what RSUs are, but the way I look at it, they are essentially payment for the fact that Google or whoever owns the IP to all of your output. The kind of IP language in contracts I've been under can be quite onerous, and NDAs can even prevent you from talking about your work freely! Or are there situations where industry researchers own the IP they create at e.g. Google, and can go on to create companies based off of that IP?
      - lapsedacademic 5y ago
        I'm sure; I didn't mean to imply otherwise. The appreciation in RSUs can have a staggering effect on total comp even to those of us who should know better :) Regarding IP: Yup. It's true. If you're willing and able to do the work to make millions in ARR from your IP then academia can break even. (beware tech transfer... universities can be more predatory than the slimiest of VC firms!) Even at tippy top R1s that's a tiny fraction of faculty and requires a ton of extra work. But, yeah, it's a good case where academia can make sense.
bachmeier 5y ago
> lets you basically do whatever* you want for 42% of the year. Henry Ford once said "A customer can have any color they want, as long as it is black". You can do whatever you want as long as you want to do exactly what you've been told you have to do. You have to do something extremely specialized - publish your work in good outlets (whatever that means, depending on the field). The truth is that you can work on any topic you want, as long as you can publish in the right place. You have to deal with reviewers. You have to follow the norms of the profession. Don't like the way things are done? Tough. You do it the way the reviewers and editors want you to do it. I'm writing this more for anyone that's considering going into academia. It's not at all what you think when you hear people talking about your "freedom". There's a long list of rules you have to follow, not unlike any profession.
ISL 5y ago
In the research world, the summer (and the holidays) is the rare time where you can actually get work done. A tenure-track professor, in particular, isn't going to be taking 42% of the year off. They're going to be crushing it, attempting to turn out quality work and secure enduring funding. The reason to pursue a Ph.D. is love. Perhaps the reason to pursue a professorship: if you look at the combined tasks of committee-work, grant-applications, teaching, and research and think, "hell yes, I'm in!", it might be for you. As I worked through my undergraduate, graduate, and post-doc careers, I consistently noted that faculty were not, on average, all that happy. The work can have real purpose, but the sacrifices one (and their families) must make toward that purpose are substantial. A major reason that I left academia was that we were under-resourced, especially in institutional support, to do our jobs, despite being extremely well-funded by academic standards. The IT-onboarding my first day in industry was a huge breath of fresh air -- it would have taken 1-4 weeks to do in academia what was accomplished in 4 hr; industry values time.
vladislav 5y ago
It's pretty easy to make $100K per year doing consulting at half-time or less, and have 50% or more time left-over to do whatever you want. If there is any argument about staying in academia, it cannot be rooted in financial considerations.

lapsedacademic 5y ago

> It's hard to pass up making my 2x or more in industry. Austin's salary is public data, and I have a really good sample of what people like him make in industry. Try 5x. Before RSU appreciation. Maybe 3x. But 3x would imply a VERY chill industry position. "Name your interest space and we'll let you work on that" type of gig. Probably way more chill than academia. > The freedom and unstructured time to explore fuzzy problems is unmatched. Industry also provides this. Actually, I find much more freedom in industry than in academia. And, if we're honest, my industry position is probably at least as secure as a faculty position at a public university in a red state. > I don't know any other job that gives you 6-figure salary and lets you basically do whatever you want for 42% of the year. In industry research, you can't do whatever you want. But you can usually do what you want. In fact, the caveat of "prove your worth" is a huge tell. In industry, you REALLY CAN do what you want! Real freedom; just be useful. In academia you have "freedom". By which we mean "raise money". But even if not... look at it like this: an industry position that pays 5x allows you to work for a year and then take the next 4 off. 2/5 is bigger than 1/5. And that is time you can actually take off. To do whatever. Not "off" in the "better be writing grant proposals!" sense. Actually off. > Is a 2x salary increase worth giving up that kind of time? Probably not. But if you can land an R1 CS position in SE, you should be making closer to 5x.

ModernMech 5y ago
Do you know anyone who made $500k for a year and then took 4 years off to work on their research? I'd like to see what they managed to do with their time.
- lapsedacademic 5y ago
  To be fair, no. (People do switch between "low key pure-R" jobs and "higher stress r&D" jobs. Perhaps similar.) But... perhaps this is because after you've made $industry_money for 10 years and hit your late 30s, you realize you'd rather spend all of your time training your biological AGI agents and don't really give a shit about the kinda unpleasant industry rat race, much less the totally brutal higher ed rat race. Or skiing. Lots of multi-millionaire ski bums in my grad cohort. No idea what they do in the summers. Not my cup of tea, but probably better than writing papers no one will read. In early retirement, there's time for research. And time to share that research. Just... no incentive to do the rat race thing that's necessary to convince an academic you're "accomplished something". But who cares? You finished the race. You don't have to get paper awards or NSF grants. You just have to do work that matters. Or ski. Or change diapers. So, I guess, to be even more fair: yes. CS PhDs work through their 30s and then retire. Totally. All the time.
- mattkrause 5y ago
  A friend of mine did! He's been pretty productive, both in terms of academic things and living a good life. CS is nice in that you don't (initially) need access to a lot of resources. I think this would be much harder to do in a wet-lab field, which is one of the reasons I'm still here.
- raphlinus 5y ago
  That's not too different than what I did. I left Google fall 2018, at the time thinking I'd write a video game. That morphed into doing research on 2D rendering, because building the infrastructure for that was more interesting and exciting than the actual game. For a while (not the whole time) it was pure unstructured time, no outside responsibilities. I rejoined Google a year ago with a research software engineer title, mostly because it was a better place to pursue this research than just continuing on my own. Partly I'm posting this to support 'lapsedacademic's assertion, you can do good research in industry. It takes a certain element of luck to land a spot, but it also helps to be very passionate about the research itself. I'm now writing a paper on an exciting GPU algorithm, but it's pure love, funding doesn't depend on it, it just makes a nice point on my list of accomplishments during perf time.

muaytimbo 5y ago

This is only somewhat true, to get hired to a tenure track position you generally have to propose a body of research to the other faculty members during your job talk, so it has to be research they find compelling AND that they think will pull down grant money, so . . . generally not absolute freedom there. Also when you work as an academic you are underpaid and working the equivalent of three jobs, 1) research and begging for grant money, 2) teaching, 3) bureaucratic nonsense, committees, student advising, etc. So I think 42% to do your research is a very generous estimate. I left academia after my PhD and wish I would've left sooner. It's a house of cards built on the illusion "prestige" and indentured servant wages.

karaterobot 5y ago

You're not going to release anything people actually use in academia. Research is useful, but it's not product. Based on what he says at the end of that message, it seems like he wants to release a product; I take him at his word. To do that, he basically has to go into industry.

voxl 5y ago

2x? Try 10x

ModernMech 5y ago
How common is it for an assistant professor to move into a role for one million dollars a year?
- lapsedacademic 5y ago
  Very uncommon. I've never seen it. 3x-5x is more reasonable. But those numbers are before RSU appreciation, which I suspect you're massively underestimating. FB granted 5 years ago went from 128 to 326. AMZN 800 to 3200. AAPL 29 to 171. GOOG 800 to 2700. MSFT 62 to 311. (Netflix excluded for the obvious reason.) So if your total comp is 500K and half or more of that is long-dated stock (or you just didn't sell) then over the last 4-5 years you could very well have been making million a year or so. And 500K is doable for an asst prof. Not guaranteed, of course. But cash is comp is risky as well. How many professors got a 7% raise to adjust for inflation last year? 10x pre-appreciation is certainly possible after 5-10 years in industry, though. Probably not the norm, but not some crazy impossible out-of-reach number.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    I understand what RSUs are, but the way I look at it, they are essentially payment for the fact that Google or whoever owns the IP to all of your output. The kind of IP language in contracts I've been under can be quite onerous, and NDAs can even prevent you from talking about your work freely! Or are there situations where industry researchers own the IP they create at e.g. Google, and can go on to create companies based off of that IP?
    - lapsedacademic 5y ago
      I'm sure; I didn't mean to imply otherwise. The appreciation in RSUs can have a staggering effect on total comp even to those of us who should know better :) Regarding IP: Yup. It's true. If you're willing and able to do the work to make millions in ARR from your IP then academia can break even. (beware tech transfer... universities can be more predatory than the slimiest of VC firms!) Even at tippy top R1s that's a tiny fraction of faculty and requires a ton of extra work. But, yeah, it's a good case where academia can make sense.

bachmeier 5y ago

> lets you basically do whatever* you want for 42% of the year. Henry Ford once said "A customer can have any color they want, as long as it is black". You can do whatever you want as long as you want to do exactly what you've been told you have to do. You have to do something extremely specialized - publish your work in good outlets (whatever that means, depending on the field). The truth is that you can work on any topic you want, as long as you can publish in the right place. You have to deal with reviewers. You have to follow the norms of the profession. Don't like the way things are done? Tough. You do it the way the reviewers and editors want you to do it. I'm writing this more for anyone that's considering going into academia. It's not at all what you think when you hear people talking about your "freedom". There's a long list of rules you have to follow, not unlike any profession.

ISL 5y ago

In the research world, the summer (and the holidays) is the rare time where you can actually get work done. A tenure-track professor, in particular, isn't going to be taking 42% of the year off. They're going to be crushing it, attempting to turn out quality work and secure enduring funding. The reason to pursue a Ph.D. is love. Perhaps the reason to pursue a professorship: if you look at the combined tasks of committee-work, grant-applications, teaching, and research and think, "hell yes, I'm in!", it might be for you. As I worked through my undergraduate, graduate, and post-doc careers, I consistently noted that faculty were not, on average, all that happy. The work can have real purpose, but the sacrifices one (and their families) must make toward that purpose are substantial. A major reason that I left academia was that we were under-resourced, especially in institutional support, to do our jobs, despite being extremely well-funded by academic standards. The IT-onboarding my first day in industry was a huge breath of fresh air -- it would have taken 1-4 weeks to do in academia what was accomplished in 4 hr; industry values time.

vladislav 5y ago

It's pretty easy to make $100K per year doing consulting at half-time or less, and have 50% or more time left-over to do whatever you want. If there is any argument about staying in academia, it cannot be rooted in financial considerations.