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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

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
        > The main problem is that no one knows how to measure it. This is true for every single aspect of academia, even research. I don't think our metrics in research are good and that they are the reason we have the replication crisis. Metrics are always guides, having limitations and biases unique to each one. Over-reliance just results in Goodhart's Law, and instead of embracing the noise inherent to the system we have ill conceived attempts to remove it. Attempts to create meritocratic systems frequently result in less meritocratic systems than were being "improved" upon.
      - nobodyandproud 3y ago
        > 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. Teaching is a long game. It’s a given that a professor should be knowledgeable in their own topic; but the measure of success for a teacher in higher education is in how knowledgeable and influential their own students are. Contrast Emmy Noether to, say, Isaac Newton. Both were brilliant and loved their topics; but only one was an actual teacher. The other was paranoid and egotistical. Now in matter of influence and metrics: It shouldn’t just be measured in novel research and publishing but the ability to replicate and/or filter out bullshit research as well. Finally, I’d also go as far as to say professionals in industry should be able to link to their old professors and not just institutions. I have so many old, no-name instructors (some dead) who somehow managed to ignite a genuine interest in their topics. I wish I could honor them in a standardized way.
- godelski 3y ago
  Academia isn't supposed to be about markets, and I'd argue that framing it this way is at the root of issues such as the reproducibility crisis. Academia's mission is to educate and research for the public good. These are not things that can be captured well by markets. Success of their goals are fuzzy and take a long time to manifest. This doesn't mean it operates in a fantasy world. Take the difficulty of evaluating employees in industry (which is generally not straight forward), and make it a lot fuzzier but put an even larger stress on these metrics.
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.

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
      > The main problem is that no one knows how to measure it. This is true for every single aspect of academia, even research. I don't think our metrics in research are good and that they are the reason we have the replication crisis. Metrics are always guides, having limitations and biases unique to each one. Over-reliance just results in Goodhart's Law, and instead of embracing the noise inherent to the system we have ill conceived attempts to remove it. Attempts to create meritocratic systems frequently result in less meritocratic systems than were being "improved" upon.
    - nobodyandproud 3y ago
      > 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. Teaching is a long game. It’s a given that a professor should be knowledgeable in their own topic; but the measure of success for a teacher in higher education is in how knowledgeable and influential their own students are. Contrast Emmy Noether to, say, Isaac Newton. Both were brilliant and loved their topics; but only one was an actual teacher. The other was paranoid and egotistical. Now in matter of influence and metrics: It shouldn’t just be measured in novel research and publishing but the ability to replicate and/or filter out bullshit research as well. Finally, I’d also go as far as to say professionals in industry should be able to link to their old professors and not just institutions. I have so many old, no-name instructors (some dead) who somehow managed to ignite a genuine interest in their topics. I wish I could honor them in a standardized way.
godelski 3y ago
Academia isn't supposed to be about markets, and I'd argue that framing it this way is at the root of issues such as the reproducibility crisis. Academia's mission is to educate and research for the public good. These are not things that can be captured well by markets. Success of their goals are fuzzy and take a long time to manifest. This doesn't mean it operates in a fantasy world. Take the difficulty of evaluating employees in industry (which is generally not straight forward), and make it a lot fuzzier but put an even larger stress on these metrics.

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.