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The author's piece makes me think that all PhD students should serve at least once on an academic hiring committee. This would be a very clear way of communicat

by jprete 3y ago

The author's piece makes me think that all PhD students should serve at least once on an academic hiring committee. This would be a very clear way of communicating to PhD students what research universities want from their tenure-track faculty, by putting them in the room where the decisions are actually made. I was in the author's shoes, but I was lucky enough to find out all the same information through Internet sites written by embittered PhDs who described what the negative side of the process was like. I went into industry instead, first for an R&D government contractor, then big tech. Like the author, I don't have any regrets about it. I don't blame the committee for filtering on specialty, though. The academic job market is so tight for applicants that every PhD has to flood every job opening with applications to have a chance. There's something to be said for channeling people to the right job instead of any old job. PhD programs IMO should stop being an implicit lottery for the ivory tower, maybe by having explicit "industry" and "academia" tracks and being careful with how many of the academic PhDs they're producing. But they'd have to admit just how unfair the system is to the students.

thumbuddy 3y ago
The only surprising thing to me about this is that anyone is surprised by any of it. It's been going on for decades if not centuries. It's not like industry is any better really
- rtpg 3y ago
  There is of course a lot of unfair social dynamics at play in industry hiring, but at least there are a lot of industry jobs to compensate a bit.
  - lazide 3y ago
    Industry tends to be more biased towards obvious concrete incentives too, so it's easier to see how to succeed. And those incentives pay the rent better. Academia tends to be really opaque and BS heavy because the the games that need to be played are far more opaque (by design), and concrete objectively useful results far less important.
- atlantic 3y ago
  Industry tends to be better because mediocre hires eventually feed into a company's performance against its competitors. Or putting things another way, the public sector operates in a fantasy world, whereas the private sector is constantly reality-checked by markets.
  - nobodyandproud 3y ago
    The academic world (nothing to do with the public sector) has its own performance metrics. It also follows it rigidly and in a more cut-throat manner, because there is less jobs. The criticism is that the performance metrics are often in opposition or irrelevant to the stated mission(s) of said academic institutions.
    - godelski 3y ago
      > The criticism is that the performance metrics are often in opposition or irrelevant to the stated mission(s) of said academic institutions. This is something I deeply believe. Goals: educate individuals and produce original research. Metrics: h-index (h papers with >= h citations), frequency of publication, academic service (politics). Teaching is generally not considered an important metric. H-index biases to quantity of papers rather than quality, and there is a pseudo-pursuit for novelty while the most important thing in science is reproducibility (hence our crisis). I would say that evaluation of academics is nowhere near aligned with the stated goal of academic institutions and there's a reason several Nobel prize winners have stated that they do not think they would have made it in today's system.
      - Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
        > Teaching is generally not considered an important metric. The main problem is that no one knows how to measure it. There are many metrics, and as far as I know, all of them are mostly noise. In research, metrics are highly imperfect, but at least they do carry some signal.
        godelski 3y ago
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  In theory, acedemia should be shielded from the pressures industry has to make money on products and whatnot. In reality, the pressured are distinct but similar.
  - thumbuddy 3y ago
    In some ways it's worse. Most academia jobs are more like internships then they are actual jobs because of tenure etc.
    - godelski 3y ago
      With additional politics and a massive focus on prestige. You can essentially only work for a school that is lower than your prestige, not higher. In industry you often climb the latter by switching companies, but this is harder in academia.
  - thumbuddy 3y ago
    Academia has the same issue because most of it is government/military funded. Unironically, a whole lot of the private sector is too. And a good deal of professors sell off their students for pennies to industry partners for 5-7 years. I would say, academia has it worse depending on where you sit.
parpfish 3y ago
I also think that there needs to be a “non-professor” track in grad school. Too often, grad school applicants are just kids that have overachieved in academic settings and think to themselves “I’ve been good at school my whole life, why not just do school forever?”. A lot of them would actually thrive in industry but they just continue doing school out of inertia. Grad school could help those kids figure out if they like working in industry by mixing in courses taught by industry folks and/or pushing for internships rather than traditional RA positions.
- NotOscarWilde 3y ago
  > Too often, grad school applicants are just kids that have overachieved in academic settings and think to themselves “I’ve been good at school my whole life, why not just do school forever? Anecdotally, I did not observe this during my PhD studies (theorerical CS) in Central Europe. I think this might be due to the separate 3 year Bachelor track, then a 2 year Master track, and only then 4 year PhD studies. Sure enough, a lot of applicants faced tough career decisions after graduating, but whoever started the PhD usually knew what research is about and that it's going to be work first and foremost, not just "more school".
- cumshitpiss 3y ago
  [dead]
- justinpombrio 3y ago
  > I also think that there needs to be a “non-professor” track in grad school. There is, it's called getting a master's degree. Typically, the first two years of a US CS PhD are a mix of research and classes, and the remaining few years are pure research. Students that are good at classes but bad at research should be able to walk away with a master's degree after two years, whose requirements they have should be at least close to meeting. I'm sure this varies a bit between schools, though I hope not too much because it's an essential escape valve. Students that know up front that they just want to continue to be students should go for a master's degree, and one without a research requirement if possible. ("Bad at research" meaning "bad at research in combination with their advisor", which can be due to the student, or the advisor, or the way they interact.)

by jprete 3y ago

thumbuddy 3y ago

The only surprising thing to me about this is that anyone is surprised by any of it. It's been going on for decades if not centuries. It's not like industry is any better really

rtpg 3y ago
There is of course a lot of unfair social dynamics at play in industry hiring, but at least there are a lot of industry jobs to compensate a bit.
- lazide 3y ago
  Industry tends to be more biased towards obvious concrete incentives too, so it's easier to see how to succeed. And those incentives pay the rent better. Academia tends to be really opaque and BS heavy because the the games that need to be played are far more opaque (by design), and concrete objectively useful results far less important.
atlantic 3y ago
Industry tends to be better because mediocre hires eventually feed into a company's performance against its competitors. Or putting things another way, the public sector operates in a fantasy world, whereas the private sector is constantly reality-checked by markets.
- nobodyandproud 3y ago
  The academic world (nothing to do with the public sector) has its own performance metrics. It also follows it rigidly and in a more cut-throat manner, because there is less jobs. The criticism is that the performance metrics are often in opposition or irrelevant to the stated mission(s) of said academic institutions.
  - godelski 3y ago
    > The criticism is that the performance metrics are often in opposition or irrelevant to the stated mission(s) of said academic institutions. This is something I deeply believe. Goals: educate individuals and produce original research. Metrics: h-index (h papers with >= h citations), frequency of publication, academic service (politics). Teaching is generally not considered an important metric. H-index biases to quantity of papers rather than quality, and there is a pseudo-pursuit for novelty while the most important thing in science is reproducibility (hence our crisis). I would say that evaluation of academics is nowhere near aligned with the stated goal of academic institutions and there's a reason several Nobel prize winners have stated that they do not think they would have made it in today's system.
    - Al-Khwarizmi 3y ago
      > Teaching is generally not considered an important metric. The main problem is that no one knows how to measure it. There are many metrics, and as far as I know, all of them are mostly noise. In research, metrics are highly imperfect, but at least they do carry some signal.
      - godelski 3y ago
johnnyanmac 3y ago
In theory, acedemia should be shielded from the pressures industry has to make money on products and whatnot. In reality, the pressured are distinct but similar.
- thumbuddy 3y ago
  In some ways it's worse. Most academia jobs are more like internships then they are actual jobs because of tenure etc.
  - godelski 3y ago
    With additional politics and a massive focus on prestige. You can essentially only work for a school that is lower than your prestige, not higher. In industry you often climb the latter by switching companies, but this is harder in academia.
- thumbuddy 3y ago
  Academia has the same issue because most of it is government/military funded. Unironically, a whole lot of the private sector is too. And a good deal of professors sell off their students for pennies to industry partners for 5-7 years. I would say, academia has it worse depending on where you sit.

parpfish 3y ago

I also think that there needs to be a “non-professor” track in grad school. Too often, grad school applicants are just kids that have overachieved in academic settings and think to themselves “I’ve been good at school my whole life, why not just do school forever?”. A lot of them would actually thrive in industry but they just continue doing school out of inertia. Grad school could help those kids figure out if they like working in industry by mixing in courses taught by industry folks and/or pushing for internships rather than traditional RA positions.

NotOscarWilde 3y ago
> Too often, grad school applicants are just kids that have overachieved in academic settings and think to themselves “I’ve been good at school my whole life, why not just do school forever? Anecdotally, I did not observe this during my PhD studies (theorerical CS) in Central Europe. I think this might be due to the separate 3 year Bachelor track, then a 2 year Master track, and only then 4 year PhD studies. Sure enough, a lot of applicants faced tough career decisions after graduating, but whoever started the PhD usually knew what research is about and that it's going to be work first and foremost, not just "more school".
cumshitpiss 3y ago
[dead]
justinpombrio 3y ago
> I also think that there needs to be a “non-professor” track in grad school. There is, it's called getting a master's degree. Typically, the first two years of a US CS PhD are a mix of research and classes, and the remaining few years are pure research. Students that are good at classes but bad at research should be able to walk away with a master's degree after two years, whose requirements they have should be at least close to meeting. I'm sure this varies a bit between schools, though I hope not too much because it's an essential escape valve. Students that know up front that they just want to continue to be students should go for a master's degree, and one without a research requirement if possible. ("Bad at research" meaning "bad at research in combination with their advisor", which can be due to the student, or the advisor, or the way they interact.)