5 ms·

There were a few places where the text sounded weird. > He had a plum position, and he was years away from tenure review. It’s hard to walk away from a place l

There were a few places where the text sounded weird. > He had a plum position, and he was years away from tenure review. It’s hard to walk away from a place like that after a lifetime of striving. The nominal academic career is ~45 years, as successful academics rarely retire early. In most fields, getting a tenure-track faculty job signals the transition from early to mid-career. But this seems to be about CS in the US, where it's common to get a faculty job with minimal postdoctoral experience. Getting tenure is then the true starting point for mid-career, and this was more likely about an early-career researcher choosing to leave the academia. > Academics for their part tend to lean into this by playing the “let’s see how quickly I can destroy this entire presentation” game. There are some toxic fields of research, but I don't think this attitude is particularly common in the academia. There are many fields with a true sense of community. People generally realize that it's better to be nice to your colleagues, even if you are competing against them, because you will be stuck with them for decades. > Academia is characterized by well-trodden problems, hashed over for decades, and negligible novel data for resolving them. Here my experience is the opposite. The academia is characterized by world's top experts in a narrow niche investigating speculative problems few people have any idea of. More often than not, that research turns out to be a dead end, "wasting" years of work.

the_watcher 4y ago
It seemed like this was about someone transitioning to industry data science, not CS. From the people I have worked with that came to DS by way of academia, the post sounds extremely accurate. It may be that you can get a faculty job in CS without much postdoc experience, but it’s not true for psychology, political science, cognitive science, urban planning, economics, etc (all backgrounds of PhDs I have worked with in big tech data science).
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  Post docs are not normative in economics academia and I don’t think they are in political science either. Psychology and Cognitive Science I’m sure do have post docs as the academic job market has fierce competition and I don’t think there’s much private sector demand for their skills.
  - the_watcher 4y ago
    At my FAANG job, we happily hired CogSci PhD’s, and I also worked with multiple political science PhDs who’d left or turned down postdocs. I’m unsure about any of the Econ PhDs that I worked with, but I strongly suspect you’re right as it did seem like they were drowning in job options relative to others (conditional on getting a FAANG job in the first place, I suppose).
gone35 4y ago
> There are some toxic fields of research, but I don't think this attitude is particularly common in the academia. Yes it is. Sadly.
spekcular 4y ago
> There are some toxic fields of research, but I don't think this attitude is particularly common in the academia. The author was formerly an economics student, where this attitude is quite common. It might have colored his perspective.
- bachmeier 4y ago
  It really isn't "quite common". There are some places that take pride in those things, but they are a small minority. People that have only been in the "top" departments are probably not aware of that though.
  - barry-cotter 4y ago
    The top 20 US Economics Departments train a majority of PhD economists so “quite common” seems fair. Also, using scare quotes for top in Economics is, ah, questionable. There is a very visible ranking and you’d get substantial agreement on it from most academic economists. The strong core agreement on techniques and axioms is part of why economists are more influential in policy than the rest of the social sciences put together. > The Superiority of Economists > There exists an implicit pecking order among the social sciences, and it seems to be dominated by economics. For starters, economists see themselves at or near the top of the disciplinary hierarchy. In a survey conducted in the early 2000s, Colander (2005) found that 77 percent of economics graduate students in elite programs agree with the statement that “economics is the most scientific of the social sciences.” Some 15 years ago, Richard Freeman (1999, p. 141) speculated on the origins of such a conviction in the pages of this journal. His assessment was candid: “[S]ociologists and political scientists have less powerful analytical tools and know less than we do, or so we believe. By scores on the Graduate Record Examina- tion and other criteria, our field attracts students stronger than theirs, and our courses are more mathematically demanding.” https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.1.89 https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.1.89
    - workingon 4y ago
      Yeah but it also attracts students a lot worse than actual sciences. And yet here we are, listening to people with two straight lines intersecting talking about “supply and demand” and writing the world based on it.
closeparen 4y ago
Toxic, or rigorous? To my understanding, this kind of questioning is how the search for truth tries to keep itself from veering off into bullshit, and is fundamental to the whole project. I work in the corporate world where we incubate a great deal of bullshit; projects, careers, and entire teams enjoy wild success on the backs of purported contributions that do not withstand a moment’s scrutiny. It makes a polite and non-confrontational environment, sure, but also comes with its own kinds of psychic injuries.
- cs137 4y ago
  In academia, it's open season on attacking ideas. There's nothing wrong with this; indeed, that's what we expect our intellectuals to do. Unfortunately, some cannot separate (both as critics, and when criticized) the attacking of ideas from attacking of people. In corporate, it's always an attack on a person, because ideas don't matter in corporate. In theory, ideas can matter insofar as they can drive a P&L, but in practice, corporate is not about P&L at all so much as it is about how P&L are attributed to oneself personally. This does mean people are less ready to criticize an idea (or a person) in the open, although that's mostly because the real gaming happens behind the backs of those being gamed.
- jltsiren 4y ago
  Toxic. Most professional environments are non-confrontational but not nice. The academic ideal is being nice but sometimes confrontational. Being nice matters, because you can't hide from the same people behind your professional role for decades. Academic research is fundamentally based on trust. Trust that the others know what they are doing. Trust that they have taken something obvious into account even if they don't mention it explicitly. Trust that they are presenting their work honestly. And so on. If you choose not to trust the other party, you can almost always poke holes into their argument, as long as you are reasonably familiar with the topic. You should always be critical of your own research and offer constructive criticism to others. Your job is not shooting down their arguments but finding what can be salvaged and guiding them towards stronger arguments. And sometimes you have to accept that their arguments are already good enough, even if you think further work could improve them. Besides, everything is bullshit anyway. Our job is just finding something interesting in it.
YetAnotherNick 4y ago
> There are some toxic fields of research, but I don't think this attitude is particularly common in the academia. You are grossly underestimating toxic culture in academia. Although, in his case I think it more of a case of not enjoying the work for the amount of effort put.
aqsalose 4y ago
>The academia is characterized by world's top experts in a narrow niche investigating speculative problems few people have any idea of. More often than not, that research turns out to be a dead end, "wasting" years of work. I believe this is very much dependent on where and with whom you are working with. By definition, not everyone is a top expert. Even rarer to publish a top paper. Sometimes entering a narrow niche field makes it possible to work in an insulated silo where niche's favorite problem statements and research programs can escape critique from experts of other disciplines. As a practical, though not quite disastrous example, I did an applied maths MSc with focus on ML and data science, and then spent some time in bioinformatics oriented data science grad program. It was only after I entered the pharma industry that I found a field where it was expected to have serious interest in doing ones best with causal inference while acknowledging its limitations ... with methods which apparently have been bread and butter of econometrics and maybe some biostatistics for decades. On the other side of fence, typically only people exposed to particular statistics textbook or ML fields are interested in running LOO/cross-validation model validation checks for their model fits. I see some more communication between the disciplines could absolutely improve the work of everyone involved. And these are big fields. Small niche fields with niche problems where everyone publishes in a niche journal can become worse.
- jltsiren 4y ago
  The world is small, but there are many things to study. If you want to make a career in academic research, you have to build a profile other people in the field know you for. That profile quite likely makes you a top expert in something.

the_watcher 4y ago

It seemed like this was about someone transitioning to industry data science, not CS. From the people I have worked with that came to DS by way of academia, the post sounds extremely accurate. It may be that you can get a faculty job in CS without much postdoc experience, but it’s not true for psychology, political science, cognitive science, urban planning, economics, etc (all backgrounds of PhDs I have worked with in big tech data science).

barry-cotter 4y ago
Post docs are not normative in economics academia and I don’t think they are in political science either. Psychology and Cognitive Science I’m sure do have post docs as the academic job market has fierce competition and I don’t think there’s much private sector demand for their skills.
- the_watcher 4y ago
  At my FAANG job, we happily hired CogSci PhD’s, and I also worked with multiple political science PhDs who’d left or turned down postdocs. I’m unsure about any of the Econ PhDs that I worked with, but I strongly suspect you’re right as it did seem like they were drowning in job options relative to others (conditional on getting a FAANG job in the first place, I suppose).

gone35 4y ago

> There are some toxic fields of research, but I don't think this attitude is particularly common in the academia. Yes it is. Sadly.

spekcular 4y ago

> There are some toxic fields of research, but I don't think this attitude is particularly common in the academia. The author was formerly an economics student, where this attitude is quite common. It might have colored his perspective.

bachmeier 4y ago
It really isn't "quite common". There are some places that take pride in those things, but they are a small minority. People that have only been in the "top" departments are probably not aware of that though.
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  The top 20 US Economics Departments train a majority of PhD economists so “quite common” seems fair. Also, using scare quotes for top in Economics is, ah, questionable. There is a very visible ranking and you’d get substantial agreement on it from most academic economists. The strong core agreement on techniques and axioms is part of why economists are more influential in policy than the rest of the social sciences put together. > The Superiority of Economists > There exists an implicit pecking order among the social sciences, and it seems to be dominated by economics. For starters, economists see themselves at or near the top of the disciplinary hierarchy. In a survey conducted in the early 2000s, Colander (2005) found that 77 percent of economics graduate students in elite programs agree with the statement that “economics is the most scientific of the social sciences.” Some 15 years ago, Richard Freeman (1999, p. 141) speculated on the origins of such a conviction in the pages of this journal. His assessment was candid: “[S]ociologists and political scientists have less powerful analytical tools and know less than we do, or so we believe. By scores on the Graduate Record Examina- tion and other criteria, our field attracts students stronger than theirs, and our courses are more mathematically demanding.” https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.1.89 https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.29.1.89
  - workingon 4y ago
    Yeah but it also attracts students a lot worse than actual sciences. And yet here we are, listening to people with two straight lines intersecting talking about “supply and demand” and writing the world based on it.

closeparen 4y ago

Toxic, or rigorous? To my understanding, this kind of questioning is how the search for truth tries to keep itself from veering off into bullshit, and is fundamental to the whole project. I work in the corporate world where we incubate a great deal of bullshit; projects, careers, and entire teams enjoy wild success on the backs of purported contributions that do not withstand a moment’s scrutiny. It makes a polite and non-confrontational environment, sure, but also comes with its own kinds of psychic injuries.

cs137 4y ago
In academia, it's open season on attacking ideas. There's nothing wrong with this; indeed, that's what we expect our intellectuals to do. Unfortunately, some cannot separate (both as critics, and when criticized) the attacking of ideas from attacking of people. In corporate, it's always an attack on a person, because ideas don't matter in corporate. In theory, ideas can matter insofar as they can drive a P&L, but in practice, corporate is not about P&L at all so much as it is about how P&L are attributed to oneself personally. This does mean people are less ready to criticize an idea (or a person) in the open, although that's mostly because the real gaming happens behind the backs of those being gamed.
jltsiren 4y ago
Toxic. Most professional environments are non-confrontational but not nice. The academic ideal is being nice but sometimes confrontational. Being nice matters, because you can't hide from the same people behind your professional role for decades. Academic research is fundamentally based on trust. Trust that the others know what they are doing. Trust that they have taken something obvious into account even if they don't mention it explicitly. Trust that they are presenting their work honestly. And so on. If you choose not to trust the other party, you can almost always poke holes into their argument, as long as you are reasonably familiar with the topic. You should always be critical of your own research and offer constructive criticism to others. Your job is not shooting down their arguments but finding what can be salvaged and guiding them towards stronger arguments. And sometimes you have to accept that their arguments are already good enough, even if you think further work could improve them. Besides, everything is bullshit anyway. Our job is just finding something interesting in it.

YetAnotherNick 4y ago

> There are some toxic fields of research, but I don't think this attitude is particularly common in the academia. You are grossly underestimating toxic culture in academia. Although, in his case I think it more of a case of not enjoying the work for the amount of effort put.

aqsalose 4y ago

>The academia is characterized by world's top experts in a narrow niche investigating speculative problems few people have any idea of. More often than not, that research turns out to be a dead end, "wasting" years of work. I believe this is very much dependent on where and with whom you are working with. By definition, not everyone is a top expert. Even rarer to publish a top paper. Sometimes entering a narrow niche field makes it possible to work in an insulated silo where niche's favorite problem statements and research programs can escape critique from experts of other disciplines. As a practical, though not quite disastrous example, I did an applied maths MSc with focus on ML and data science, and then spent some time in bioinformatics oriented data science grad program. It was only after I entered the pharma industry that I found a field where it was expected to have serious interest in doing ones best with causal inference while acknowledging its limitations ... with methods which apparently have been bread and butter of econometrics and maybe some biostatistics for decades. On the other side of fence, typically only people exposed to particular statistics textbook or ML fields are interested in running LOO/cross-validation model validation checks for their model fits. I see some more communication between the disciplines could absolutely improve the work of everyone involved. And these are big fields. Small niche fields with niche problems where everyone publishes in a niche journal can become worse.

jltsiren 4y ago
The world is small, but there are many things to study. If you want to make a career in academic research, you have to build a profile other people in the field know you for. That profile quite likely makes you a top expert in something.