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Having moved from academia to industry, industry is everything academics think it is. A lot of arrogant people, a lot of incompetent people, equal or more poli
by tensor 12y ago
Having moved from academia to industry, industry is everything academics think it is.
A lot of arrogant people, a lot of incompetent people, equal or more politics, very few "hard" problems where hard is defined as "I'm not sure if there is a solution to this, or if there is I have no idea when we will be able to find it, if ever."
It's not about culture, it's about priorities. Academics are interested in solving hard problems or advancing our collective knowledge, not making a bank account higher, not serving ads, and not entertaining people.
Sure, in any large group, there are standout counter examples, but they are the exception, not the rule.
- skybrian 12y agoThere are many problems that are known to be solvable in principle (because there's a paper) but in practice are not solved because production-worthy code isn't widely available. For example, the existence of the Paxos paper didn't mean that most organizations could actually use distributed state machines in real life. So how about "write the definitive library for X so that nobody needs to write this code again?" That ought to count for something. If you want to see problems solved for real (not just in principle), maybe you're better off in industry.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago>So how about "write the definitive library for X so that nobody needs to write this code again?" That ought to count for something. That sounds like a job for the open-source world.