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Since this thread is turning into a yet another complaints about academia thread: One of the serious downsides of working in academia is you are basically doin

Since this thread is turning into a yet another complaints about academia thread: One of the serious downsides of working in academia is you are basically doing the industry's work for them for less pay and they will one day turn around, pat you on the back, then sell your work for millions of dollars. It gets worse honestly the closer you are to applied fields. There, you already straddle the line between what your more "pure" (and less well paid) peers think is "science" and actually making things that will in fact make people's lives better, so you have less room to be idealistic about why you are doing what you're doing, that is, whether it is for "moving the needle" or "adding to the corpus of humanity's knowledge" or whether you really are just doing someone else's work for them they aren't willing to fund given the risks. And given that the latter is basically closer to what you're doing and your closer to the place where you'll see your work enable someone else's riches, it's hard not to want to jump ship and just become one of those people on the other side but make money hands over fist. It's an upsetting situation honestly.

javajosh 4y ago
The next thought should be: why doesn't neo-liberal capitalism fix this problem? And: is my characterization of the problem correct? Why not start a new firm that better compensates researchers (and tool makers) for their valuable work? It seems like big tech (especially Google, and perhaps Microsoft) comes in from the commercial side and invests in R&D at reasonable rates for just this purpose! But surely if workers are systematically undercompensated, there is room for a disruptive firm to come in and take the best talent and still make a profit. Perhaps the characterization is wrong and the EV (expected value) of this work is far lower than you think (this seems likely), and/or there are externalities like regulation, or the leverage of prestige that traditional orgs (e.g. universities and publishers) wield, that warp the profit incentive. Or (and this is my cynical view) pure science was always best left to the hobbyists. Historically the most important discoveries have come only rarely and to those who loved doing science in their free time or, more rarely, when a talented individual found a patron. Building a science factory and hiring science factory workers not only sounds distasteful, but it doesn't seem to work very well. (The exceptions being those very capital intensive projects like the LHC which require a large pool of professional scientists and engineers to do the experiment.)
- hackernewds 4y ago
  They expected value theory is very plausible. there are a lot of r&D projects that basically produce zero output for decades. high risk high reward
- dgb23 4y ago
  There are plenty of firms that sell software to academia and many of them make a ton of money. I bet there are great opportunities in that space. I guess the issue is that most business educated/oriented people are both too disjoint from both engineering and science, so competition is rare.
- psyc 4y ago
  I'd guess that the expected commercial value being low would be the norm, and discoveries making millions relatively rare, just as this is in every other context. However, the second half of your second paragraph is where my mind went to first, because what gp says happens does happen, albeit at a normal (low) rate. The motivation of people working in science is different, as it is in say the games business. Game developers have historically been paid lower except at a tiny handful of companies. Not 33 cents on the dollar, but maybe 50 to 70 (bearing in mind that FAANG/unicorn salaries are not the norm either)
- fennecfoxen 4y ago
  > The next thought should be: why doesn't neo-liberal capitalism fix this problem? You are the vehicle by which neo-liberal capitalism fixes the problem. By leaving academia to work for a firm directly, you are responding to a price signal sent by the industry, relaying that price signal to the academic labs. You might object, this is slower than most price signals! That's because the university environment is somewhat insulated from the ordinary pressures of capitalism (and thus better able to exploit young research programmers).
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    > you are responding to a price signal sent by the industry, relaying that price signal to the academic labs. Which means absolutely nothing unless a ton of other people do it as well. A handful of people here and there can be replaced.
kongolongo 4y ago
I think this is only a half-truth. There certainly are examples of academic research being translated into lucrative products by industry (there are even prominent examples in software/systems engineering) but I think that many times the translation of academic research into a useable product is also a massive endeavor that deserves recognition in its own right. I see this scenario described in medical research all the time with people saying that industry just leeches off of academic research and what people leave out conveniently is the vast amounts of money and research that goes into translating research into a real drug (billions spent on clinical trials to meet regulation, millions to billions spent on scaling manufacturing and synthesis of the drug to industrial volumes, drug delivery like pill design or injection methods) Additionally many industries also do have well-paid research positions that "move the needle" on science and basic research. While they're more targeted at producing and supporting products instead of full liberty to exploring just for the sake of knowledge, it's not like there is a complete black and white poorly compensated academic research vs industry.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  Fundamental: the patents produced by taxpayer-financed academic research have no business being exclusively licensed to some pharmaceutical corporation. As far as the cost of clinical trials being borne by those companies, well, let's get the FDA involved in the clinical trials. Then the competition can come in, i.e. whoever can produce pure preparations of those drugs at the lowest cost will win the most market share. This means investing in top-of-the line manufacturing platforms (much of this is now outsourced to India, Mexico, etc. for drugs being sold in the USA) instead of squatting on the patents, blocking competition, and using monopoly status to jack up prices. Yes, this would greatly reduce the profit margins and perhaps the stock prices of Big Pharma outfits, but the overall benefits would greatly outweight this. As a practical example, look how the best Covid vaccines (mRNA types) have been monopolized, leading to low rates of vaccination in Africa etc., even though that was technology developed with taxpayer funding at public universities.
  - jollybean 4y ago
    No, if a Uni has developed some patents, and wants to 'exclusively license' them to a Pharma, that's probably a good application of that patent, they become much less worthwhile otherwise. It's a misunderstanding of the market to suggest that somehow 'the FDA will lead the trials'. This is about as likely as a manned mission to Venus, it won't happen, and it shouldn't happen for good reason (cost vastly outweighs the benefits). It's also a misunderstanding to suggest 'whoever can produce pure preparations of those drugs at the lowest cost will win the most market share'. The 'cost of manufacture' is most cases is not a material or relevant issue. Your example of 'COVID' monopolization is completely upside down - companies didn't maximize their profit potential there, and may not have even developed such vaccines in a normal case, they were giving very special prices to places like 'Africa' - and none of this has anything to do with 'low uptake' in Africa. Africa has 'low uptake' for the very same set of reasons they don't have electricity, or consistent electricity in many places.
jollybean 4y ago
Less than 1% of 'research' ends up being commercially viable in any way. Almost zero research is commercialized directly, in a manner that equates tech to 'product'. There are usually enormous costs in applying research to markets - just because something 'makes a million' doesn't mean there were no costs. As for software: We probably need cleaner, simpler tools, better SaaS for many things. We just can't afford to have a lot of devs doing research. Think about the zillions in lost man hours due to Python weirdness of various kinds. It's a giant productivity sink. Also, I hope tooling for many researchers starts to improve. I think the target should be, in most cases, that researchers themselves have the tools available to 'do their work' without having to hire devs.

javajosh 4y ago

The next thought should be: why doesn't neo-liberal capitalism fix this problem? And: is my characterization of the problem correct? Why not start a new firm that better compensates researchers (and tool makers) for their valuable work? It seems like big tech (especially Google, and perhaps Microsoft) comes in from the commercial side and invests in R&D at reasonable rates for just this purpose! But surely if workers are systematically undercompensated, there is room for a disruptive firm to come in and take the best talent and still make a profit. Perhaps the characterization is wrong and the EV (expected value) of this work is far lower than you think (this seems likely), and/or there are externalities like regulation, or the leverage of prestige that traditional orgs (e.g. universities and publishers) wield, that warp the profit incentive. Or (and this is my cynical view) pure science was always best left to the hobbyists. Historically the most important discoveries have come only rarely and to those who loved doing science in their free time or, more rarely, when a talented individual found a patron. Building a science factory and hiring science factory workers not only sounds distasteful, but it doesn't seem to work very well. (The exceptions being those very capital intensive projects like the LHC which require a large pool of professional scientists and engineers to do the experiment.)

hackernewds 4y ago
They expected value theory is very plausible. there are a lot of r&D projects that basically produce zero output for decades. high risk high reward
dgb23 4y ago
There are plenty of firms that sell software to academia and many of them make a ton of money. I bet there are great opportunities in that space. I guess the issue is that most business educated/oriented people are both too disjoint from both engineering and science, so competition is rare.
psyc 4y ago
I'd guess that the expected commercial value being low would be the norm, and discoveries making millions relatively rare, just as this is in every other context. However, the second half of your second paragraph is where my mind went to first, because what gp says happens does happen, albeit at a normal (low) rate. The motivation of people working in science is different, as it is in say the games business. Game developers have historically been paid lower except at a tiny handful of companies. Not 33 cents on the dollar, but maybe 50 to 70 (bearing in mind that FAANG/unicorn salaries are not the norm either)
fennecfoxen 4y ago
> The next thought should be: why doesn't neo-liberal capitalism fix this problem? You are the vehicle by which neo-liberal capitalism fixes the problem. By leaving academia to work for a firm directly, you are responding to a price signal sent by the industry, relaying that price signal to the academic labs. You might object, this is slower than most price signals! That's because the university environment is somewhat insulated from the ordinary pressures of capitalism (and thus better able to exploit young research programmers).
- the_only_law 4y ago
  > you are responding to a price signal sent by the industry, relaying that price signal to the academic labs. Which means absolutely nothing unless a ton of other people do it as well. A handful of people here and there can be replaced.

kongolongo 4y ago

I think this is only a half-truth. There certainly are examples of academic research being translated into lucrative products by industry (there are even prominent examples in software/systems engineering) but I think that many times the translation of academic research into a useable product is also a massive endeavor that deserves recognition in its own right. I see this scenario described in medical research all the time with people saying that industry just leeches off of academic research and what people leave out conveniently is the vast amounts of money and research that goes into translating research into a real drug (billions spent on clinical trials to meet regulation, millions to billions spent on scaling manufacturing and synthesis of the drug to industrial volumes, drug delivery like pill design or injection methods) Additionally many industries also do have well-paid research positions that "move the needle" on science and basic research. While they're more targeted at producing and supporting products instead of full liberty to exploring just for the sake of knowledge, it's not like there is a complete black and white poorly compensated academic research vs industry.

photochemsyn 4y ago
Fundamental: the patents produced by taxpayer-financed academic research have no business being exclusively licensed to some pharmaceutical corporation. As far as the cost of clinical trials being borne by those companies, well, let's get the FDA involved in the clinical trials. Then the competition can come in, i.e. whoever can produce pure preparations of those drugs at the lowest cost will win the most market share. This means investing in top-of-the line manufacturing platforms (much of this is now outsourced to India, Mexico, etc. for drugs being sold in the USA) instead of squatting on the patents, blocking competition, and using monopoly status to jack up prices. Yes, this would greatly reduce the profit margins and perhaps the stock prices of Big Pharma outfits, but the overall benefits would greatly outweight this. As a practical example, look how the best Covid vaccines (mRNA types) have been monopolized, leading to low rates of vaccination in Africa etc., even though that was technology developed with taxpayer funding at public universities.
- jollybean 4y ago
  No, if a Uni has developed some patents, and wants to 'exclusively license' them to a Pharma, that's probably a good application of that patent, they become much less worthwhile otherwise. It's a misunderstanding of the market to suggest that somehow 'the FDA will lead the trials'. This is about as likely as a manned mission to Venus, it won't happen, and it shouldn't happen for good reason (cost vastly outweighs the benefits). It's also a misunderstanding to suggest 'whoever can produce pure preparations of those drugs at the lowest cost will win the most market share'. The 'cost of manufacture' is most cases is not a material or relevant issue. Your example of 'COVID' monopolization is completely upside down - companies didn't maximize their profit potential there, and may not have even developed such vaccines in a normal case, they were giving very special prices to places like 'Africa' - and none of this has anything to do with 'low uptake' in Africa. Africa has 'low uptake' for the very same set of reasons they don't have electricity, or consistent electricity in many places.

jollybean 4y ago

Less than 1% of 'research' ends up being commercially viable in any way. Almost zero research is commercialized directly, in a manner that equates tech to 'product'. There are usually enormous costs in applying research to markets - just because something 'makes a million' doesn't mean there were no costs. As for software: We probably need cleaner, simpler tools, better SaaS for many things. We just can't afford to have a lot of devs doing research. Think about the zillions in lost man hours due to Python weirdness of various kinds. It's a giant productivity sink. Also, I hope tooling for many researchers starts to improve. I think the target should be, in most cases, that researchers themselves have the tools available to 'do their work' without having to hire devs.