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The obviously realistic assessment is: it depends. Sure, there are politics in industry, but most large corporations have large R&D organizations were politics
by timkam 4y ago
The obviously realistic assessment is: it depends.
Sure, there are politics in industry, but most large corporations have large R&D organizations were politics are manageable and predictable, at least for individual contributors and team leads, simply because this is a crucial environmental factor and critical for retaining talent and getting products shipped. Politics primarily happen on higher levels and in particularly competitive parts of the organization (like Sales).
In academia (in contrast), the governance structures that are in place essentially ensure that with the exception of the particularly lucky (or: 'genius') few, one always has to watch one's back to ensure the fight for employment, funding, research time, top-venue acceptance, tenure, etc. is successful.
- cs137 4y agoWith academics, I think the problem is to some degree self-created. In the Boomer days, they copped the attitude that their research was the only thing that mattered and that teaching was unimportant grunt work to be delegated as much as possible. This resulted in under-educated, condescended-to politicians reducing their funding, and this combined with administrative bloat (another Boomer trick) to create a truly awful job market. Government research labs tend to have decent cultures, but it seems like the replacement of old, decent noblesse oblige companies by new-style psychotic McKinsey-esque startup-culture ones is complete. What I've heard is that places like Google X are ultra-political (which isn't surprising, because all FAANGs are nasty places run by nasty people). I've had decent R&D jobs; the problem is that they're unstable. You are a resource to be pulled into someone else's war.