4 ms·

This is one of the things that struck me most about moving out of academia and into various other things: how collegial in the best sense of the word most of th

This is one of the things that struck me most about moving out of academia and into various other things: how collegial in the best sense of the word most of the engineering teams I've worked on have been. In academia, if you're any good, you're a threat to other good people. You try to be nice to each other, but when it's you and a few dozen of your closest colleagues in pursuit of the one or two tenure-track openings in your field this decade... there are limits on how collaborative you can be. In the business world, if you're any good, you're a resource and people want to work with you. It's pretty awesome, actually, although there are obviously bad situations as well. They're just fewer and further between.

NotOscarWilde 12y ago
> In academia, if you're any good, you're a threat to other good people. You try to be nice to each other, but when it's you and a few dozen of your closest colleagues in pursuit of the one or two tenure-track openings in your field this decade... there are limits on how collaborative you can be. There are many "academias", but this is not my personal experience of it. Yes, I think most of us PhDs realize the bleak situation we are in, but still, we usually work together at the university as well as across universities. Whenever I see a PhD student that has a better track record or just more talent, I am very happy for him -- after all, he's got a bigger chance than me for making it in academia. There might be some politics and bickering among researchers/employees within a university, but that's something that happens in every community.
cfallin 12y ago
> In academia, if you're any good, you're a threat to other good people This may be the case for career academics (professors), but in my experience, as a PhD student, at least in a day-to-day setting my fellow students were remarkably friendly and collaborative. The camaraderie within my advisor's group and within the dept as a whole was great; we were always happy to bounce ideas off of each other, always friendly and encouraging, mostly constructive in criticism, and it was generally pretty productive. I think this type of rivalry comes out much more between different research groups at different schools. I can recall a number of times we thought some other group's paper was full of crap, and asked questions as such (usually politely) after the conference talk. But that mostly comes from a tradition of academic debate, not a 'shoot down everyone else so I can win' attitude. I didn't stay for the "go on the job talk circuit and fight for a tenure-track slot" stage (actually I left before the "defend and graduate" stage, oh well), so maybe I'm just pleasantly lacking the visceral experience of that part...

NotOscarWilde 12y ago

> In academia, if you're any good, you're a threat to other good people. You try to be nice to each other, but when it's you and a few dozen of your closest colleagues in pursuit of the one or two tenure-track openings in your field this decade... there are limits on how collaborative you can be. There are many "academias", but this is not my personal experience of it. Yes, I think most of us PhDs realize the bleak situation we are in, but still, we usually work together at the university as well as across universities. Whenever I see a PhD student that has a better track record or just more talent, I am very happy for him -- after all, he's got a bigger chance than me for making it in academia. There might be some politics and bickering among researchers/employees within a university, but that's something that happens in every community.

cfallin 12y ago

> In academia, if you're any good, you're a threat to other good people This may be the case for career academics (professors), but in my experience, as a PhD student, at least in a day-to-day setting my fellow students were remarkably friendly and collaborative. The camaraderie within my advisor's group and within the dept as a whole was great; we were always happy to bounce ideas off of each other, always friendly and encouraging, mostly constructive in criticism, and it was generally pretty productive. I think this type of rivalry comes out much more between different research groups at different schools. I can recall a number of times we thought some other group's paper was full of crap, and asked questions as such (usually politely) after the conference talk. But that mostly comes from a tradition of academic debate, not a 'shoot down everyone else so I can win' attitude. I didn't stay for the "go on the job talk circuit and fight for a tenure-track slot" stage (actually I left before the "defend and graduate" stage, oh well), so maybe I'm just pleasantly lacking the visceral experience of that part...