4 ms·

What about negative anecdotes? Has anyone here regretted his or her decision to leave academia? Particularly, have you found the work less rewarding or interes

by hagy 15y ago

What about negative anecdotes? Has anyone here regretted his or her decision to leave academia? Particularly, have you found the work less rewarding or interesting? I ask as a grad student with a background in chemical engineering. I’ve known two professors who’ve done the inverse – industry to academia – and they’ve provided convincing stories for academia. In both cases they found academic research (in engineering and the physical sciences) to be more interesting and personally rewarding than industry. Is the situation different in software and related industries? I ask, as I’ve been considering transitioning to such a career myself after grad school (my research is in computational modeling and simulation). My biggest fear is that I’ll find myself in a job that I find boring and will regret my decision. Doubly so, as such a career transition will make it very difficult to reenter my academic field.

eli_gottlieb 15y ago
>What about negative anecdotes? Has anyone here regretted his or her decision to leave academia? Particularly, have you found the work less rewarding or interesting? I left academia after undergrad, despite applying and getting into graduate school. My degree is in Computer Science, my specialty track was Programming Languages and Compilers, and my senior thesis was in Systems Programming Languages. I had job offers and eventually took one. What I found was that industry is smug, deceptive, fad-driven, cares nothing for fundamental problem-solving until you pay them for it, and (of course) near-fatally infected with live-to-work-ism and the Californian Ideology. * Smug: despite many of them having MSc degrees or being PhD drop-outs, most of the professional programmers I've met deride research itself as essentially pointless. Someone once asked me point-blank at lunch why I wanted to publish an invention/discovery of mine in a research paper, why I didn't just go found a start-up based on it. My discovery is in type theory: not exactly the most amenable field for using Ruby on Rails to pump out a "minimum viable product". Further: type-theory results are mathematical rather than empirical, the proofs have to be checked. Peer review has its just place in the world, and thus so does Research Science. * Deceptive: many of the people I met did not know or care whether their software served its intended purpose well, or whether that purpose was a good purpose, or whether (provided it was a good purpose, which I shall note that, say, investment banking isn't) it can be served well. The hiring binge I saw was completely uncorrelated to having an actual workload for the people they wanted to hire. The idea seems to have been to hire everyone's Hackathon friends. * Fad-driven: look at the ads for hiring "rock-stars" and "ninjas", and then realize that most of these people earning six-figure salaries just build web-sites or silly mobile applications. Who thought Groupon was a good idea (I'll note that I never did)? Why should everything be an ad-based web application to the point that things other than ad-based web applications simply don't get built that often anymore? * Cares nothing for fundamental problem-solving: Industry is infected with marketer-thinking (trying to please a perceived primary market of investors and secondary market of customers) rather than fundamental business-thinking (building cars instead of faster horses). The industrial programmers who can possess substantial skill in fundamental Computer Science, or who solve problems in Computer Science, are a vocal but still small minority. Think of Steve Yegge and his "cat-picture problems," and remember that Steve Yegge is talking about major companies like Google and Facebook spending their energy on cat-picture problems. * Live-to-workism and California Ideology: I was astounded and offended to find myself hearing hour-long talks between otherwise intelligent, humane and respectful coworkers on libertarianism and Austrian economics. Further, the software industry is powered by "passion" (a component of the Californian Ideology), which has mostly just become an excuse for long, unbroken workdays, fanboyish loyalty to employers/companies, and programming-centered social events outside work. The programming profession expects you to love your job, no matter what it is. Not enjoy, not like, not perform competently, love. The assumption is that if you didn't love what you were doing, you would leave. Never mind real life, where the state of one's bank account is more than just a way of keeping score, programming jobs are clustered in some of the world's most expensive metro-areas, people have families, and they may have moved to enter their programming job. I'm not quite back in academia yet (only admitted to one graduate school so far, with non-guaranteed funding, two other applications still pending), but I'll be damned happier when I get back there. And of course, unbias this anecdote by accounting for its kvetchiness and negativity, because you asked for a negative opinion about industry.
- eli_gottlieb 15y ago
  Not sure where the edit-button went, but here's a reminder: I WROTE THIS WITH A DELIBERATE NEGATIVE BENT. I often perceive industrial programmers and entrepreneurs as unduly biased against academia, so upon the request to write an "irregular" anecdote bemoaning having strayed beyond the university walls, I tried to impart the same level of bias. So: * Take the above comment as pessimistic by design. * Think a little harder about how you talk about academia, and how you feel when I talk that way about industry. And for those thinking of leaving academia for industry: * Think about what will really make you happy. Academia and industry aren't just different sets of problems during your workday (although they definitely are that!), they're different lifestyles. Don't think you're going to do the same work or live the same way "on the other side". Instead, look at what you can do "over there", and ask what you really want to do. * Consider if you're just burned-out. If you are, you'll still be burned-out in industry.
  - xxbondsxx 15y ago
    I agree with your take on industry's disdain and ignorance for academic research -- those are some of the most painful, agonizing conversations to endure in a professional context. They hold this opinion out of fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of what they do not understand. Fear that a new research paper could make their jobs obsolete. But most of all, their fear that because they do not understand academic research, they are less intelligent and less capable. So just think about it from their point of view. They are defending their own jobs and decisions in life, albeit subconsciously.
    - eli_gottlieb 15y ago
      That's fairly silly. I'd be a very rich man if I had $100 for every research result or open-source program that has never been turned into a successful, profitable product, despite its obvious potential, just because it never got quite faddy enough for BigCo's and VC's to throw money at it. And if I don't have that money, it's still someone else's to make.
- moldbug 15y ago

by hagy 15y ago

eli_gottlieb 15y ago

>What about negative anecdotes? Has anyone here regretted his or her decision to leave academia? Particularly, have you found the work less rewarding or interesting? I left academia after undergrad, despite applying and getting into graduate school. My degree is in Computer Science, my specialty track was Programming Languages and Compilers, and my senior thesis was in Systems Programming Languages. I had job offers and eventually took one. What I found was that industry is smug, deceptive, fad-driven, cares nothing for fundamental problem-solving until you pay them for it, and (of course) near-fatally infected with live-to-work-ism and the Californian Ideology. * Smug: despite many of them having MSc degrees or being PhD drop-outs, most of the professional programmers I've met deride research itself as essentially pointless. Someone once asked me point-blank at lunch why I wanted to publish an invention/discovery of mine in a research paper, why I didn't just go found a start-up based on it. My discovery is in type theory: not exactly the most amenable field for using Ruby on Rails to pump out a "minimum viable product". Further: type-theory results are mathematical rather than empirical, the proofs have to be checked. Peer review has its just place in the world, and thus so does Research Science. * Deceptive: many of the people I met did not know or care whether their software served its intended purpose well, or whether that purpose was a good purpose, or whether (provided it was a good purpose, which I shall note that, say, investment banking isn't) it can be served well. The hiring binge I saw was completely uncorrelated to having an actual workload for the people they wanted to hire. The idea seems to have been to hire everyone's Hackathon friends. * Fad-driven: look at the ads for hiring "rock-stars" and "ninjas", and then realize that most of these people earning six-figure salaries just build web-sites or silly mobile applications. Who thought Groupon was a good idea (I'll note that I never did)? Why should everything be an ad-based web application to the point that things other than ad-based web applications simply don't get built that often anymore? * Cares nothing for fundamental problem-solving: Industry is infected with marketer-thinking (trying to please a perceived primary market of investors and secondary market of customers) rather than fundamental business-thinking (building cars instead of faster horses). The industrial programmers who can possess substantial skill in fundamental Computer Science, or who solve problems in Computer Science, are a vocal but still small minority. Think of Steve Yegge and his "cat-picture problems," and remember that Steve Yegge is talking about major companies like Google and Facebook spending their energy on cat-picture problems. * Live-to-workism and California Ideology: I was astounded and offended to find myself hearing hour-long talks between otherwise intelligent, humane and respectful coworkers on libertarianism and Austrian economics. Further, the software industry is powered by "passion" (a component of the Californian Ideology), which has mostly just become an excuse for long, unbroken workdays, fanboyish loyalty to employers/companies, and programming-centered social events outside work. The programming profession expects you to love your job, no matter what it is. Not enjoy, not like, not perform competently, love. The assumption is that if you didn't love what you were doing, you would leave. Never mind real life, where the state of one's bank account is more than just a way of keeping score, programming jobs are clustered in some of the world's most expensive metro-areas, people have families, and they may have moved to enter their programming job. I'm not quite back in academia yet (only admitted to one graduate school so far, with non-guaranteed funding, two other applications still pending), but I'll be damned happier when I get back there. And of course, unbias this anecdote by accounting for its kvetchiness and negativity, because you asked for a negative opinion about industry.

eli_gottlieb 15y ago
Not sure where the edit-button went, but here's a reminder: I WROTE THIS WITH A DELIBERATE NEGATIVE BENT. I often perceive industrial programmers and entrepreneurs as unduly biased against academia, so upon the request to write an "irregular" anecdote bemoaning having strayed beyond the university walls, I tried to impart the same level of bias. So: * Take the above comment as pessimistic by design. * Think a little harder about how you talk about academia, and how you feel when I talk that way about industry. And for those thinking of leaving academia for industry: * Think about what will really make you happy. Academia and industry aren't just different sets of problems during your workday (although they definitely are that!), they're different lifestyles. Don't think you're going to do the same work or live the same way "on the other side". Instead, look at what you can do "over there", and ask what you really want to do. * Consider if you're just burned-out. If you are, you'll still be burned-out in industry.
- xxbondsxx 15y ago
  I agree with your take on industry's disdain and ignorance for academic research -- those are some of the most painful, agonizing conversations to endure in a professional context. They hold this opinion out of fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of what they do not understand. Fear that a new research paper could make their jobs obsolete. But most of all, their fear that because they do not understand academic research, they are less intelligent and less capable. So just think about it from their point of view. They are defending their own jobs and decisions in life, albeit subconsciously.
  - eli_gottlieb 15y ago
    That's fairly silly. I'd be a very rich man if I had $100 for every research result or open-source program that has never been turned into a successful, profitable product, despite its obvious potential, just because it never got quite faddy enough for BigCo's and VC's to throw money at it. And if I don't have that money, it's still someone else's to make.
moldbug 15y ago