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> I'm not arguing that the things you describe never exist in academia, but they're the worst examples of when things go wrong. They're not the norm. Unfortuna
by weland 13y ago
> I'm not arguing that the things you describe never exist in academia, but they're the worst examples of when things go wrong. They're not the norm.
Unfortunately, they are the norm. There are places when this doesn't happen, or where you have the privilege of working with an extraordinary professor who manages to shield you from this.
That's rare, though. #3 isn't constant and #2 is not an entirely accurate description (or at least not that widespread), but by and large, the portrait is very accurate.
I miss the intellectual challenge of academia. I'm in a pretty high-end job and it's nothing compared to what I used to do. But the working conditions and the colleagues? Not in a million years. I'd seriously consider selling hamburgers than returning there, and I have worked on minimum wage before, I'm not talking out of my ass on that.
- _delirium 13y agoI could be lucky, but I have the opposite view. Some of academia is bullshit, but I genuinely like at least half my colleagues, and find the discussions with them interesting. I like some of what Silicon Valley produces, but the lifestyle and colleagues? No thanks. You've got the 60-hour crunch lifestyle on the one hand, the pagerduty.com lifestyle on the other hand, and the "everyone eats dinner at work at 7pm" lifestyle on the third hand. Plus a really bro-tastic atmosphere, and rampant jerks who are always trying to Disrupt The Very Concept Of Transport while quoting Ayn Rand. Sure, a bit of a stereotype, but some mixture of this actually does seem to be the norm. And people really do say "disrupt" a million times a day with a straight face. Maybe industry not in the SF Bay Area (where I lived a few years) could be more tolerable, though.
- barry-cotter 13y agoPlus a really bro-tastic atmosphere, and rampant jerks who are always trying to Disrupt The Very Concept Of Transport while quoting Ayn Rand. Isn't culture fit great? I mean, if you're a social psychologist you won't have that problem, they have less than 1% Republicans.
- _delirium 13y agoIt's not so much that the random startup person would be a Republican (I'm not sure they even are?) as that many seem to be buzzword-slinging airheads who've never read anything but YA novels and self-help blogs. There are plenty of conservatives (in CS academia and elsewhere) who've read Hayek and the Chicago school and can make an intelligent and informed argument for that side of economics & politics. They might be wrong (they are), but they at least have an argument. The disrupt/Rand people remind me more of Christian fundamentalists, in that they just have some slogans and faith.
- weland 13y agoI'm sure I'd be a really bad fit in the Valley, too. Things aren't bro-tastic over here in Europe. More often than not, the pretentious idiots who are always trying to Disrupt The Very Concept Of Transport while quoting Ayn Rand are just given a Mac to play with and kept away from programming.