7 ms·
Here's how to understand academia. When you're 22, almost everything you've done has been measured in relative terms to your peers (in part, because almost no
by michaelochurch 12y ago
Here's how to understand academia.
When you're 22, almost everything you've done has been measured in relative terms to your peers (in part, because almost no one at that age has real accomplishments by adult standards, except in athletics; so it's a favorable curve). You think that the world is more competitive than it actually is, because you've been rewarded (or punished) based on individual performance. Of course, people who are academically strong tend to be socially weak when younger. Academia appeals because you're not around the "jocks" with superior social skills. Let's be honest: most people who go into academia do so because they're afraid that if they go into the big, bad business world, they'll be out-shouldered by "asshole jocks".
Here's the trap. The real world is a lot more cooperative than competitive. If you're a social "4", you do better being the weakling in a crowd of 7's (business)-- you'll rise up to that level, from exposure, in a couple of years-- than the relative leader in an ivory tower full of 2's. Why? Because social skills aren't about competition; you want to be around skilled people who have your back. Those "jocks" don't out-shoulder you, because adulthood isn't middle school: they teach you how to get what you want. If anything, the worst bullies in adulthood are the ex-nerds who have something to prove.
Then there are the tribal effects. Why do bankers and traders earn 3x what programmers do, and why do we as programmers earn 3x what academics do, at each level? Because the worst place you want to be in a market is side-by-side with someone who's similarly competent in the rendered service but has no organizational or social skill, nor sense of self-worth; he'll sell himself very short, and drag you down with him by lowering your market value as well.
Academia's appeal is that it's some sort of safe haven for the socially awkward beings that smart people usually are in their early 20s (and usually grow out of by age 25-30). However, because it's full of socially inept people who are terrible at making a case for their own value, the resource pool declines over time, and we're now at the point where the academic job market is kaputt. There are a few star professors who manage to work their way out of the hell that is academia for the bottom 99+ percent, but the irony is that to do that requires a great deal of social ability anyway.
Academia's promise is that you don't need to be socially skilled and you'll keep being rewarded for being smart. First, that's a stupid promise in the first place. Those skills aren't hard to learn (unless you have a hard neurological deficit, but that covers maybe 1% of the population) and you just need to grow up. Second, in the cutthroat environment you get amid dwindling resources and social investment in academia, it turns out that you need those skills to survive, making a joke of that promise.
- untilHellbanned 12y agoWhy do you always get downvoted to hell? I thoroughly enjoy your posts. HN, what is wrong with being provocative? This place has too much buttoned-down, fear of the downvote (FOD, kinda like FUD but for geeks). Ironically, the HN crowd would make perfect academics. Such reason, much facts! note: i'm an academic deciding on whether to take or bail on a tenure-track academic job.
- DiversityWorks 12y agoHN is getting less and less tolerant of anything that isn't boiler plate valley tripe.
- Dewie 12y agoI don't know about provocative. Everyone knows what O'Church's opinions are at this point. Can the same tune really be provocative?
- throwawaymaroon 12y agoJust because you're tired of it doesn't mean his niche isn't provocatively positioned.
- michaelochurch 12y agoIn mid-2013, I was put on "rankban" which meant that my comments fell to the bottom (actually, the middle-bottom). I went from seeing 30-50 upvotes on a typical comment to being lucky to get 2 or 3. I spoke to dang about this, last fall, and he was very reasonable and took me off rankban. I think he's trying to do a good job with Hacker News. I have no problem with him, and I realize that moderating a board like this is a hard and often thankless job. Then, I pointed out a rather obvious pay-for-play story, taking advantage of the Sony hack, about Evan Spiegel in December 2014. (A journalist was, almost certainly because I know how these things work, paid off to say good things about him based on emails that were lacked in the hack. He was trying to protect his reputation, although it's unclear from what.) Since then, I would repeatedly get exactly 5 downvotes to pretty much every comment, all around the same time. Sometimes it would be obvious; it would be a 36-hour-old comment that went from +3 to -2, even though that story had fallen off the front page a day ago. I don't know if this was one person using multiple accounts or different people (Snapchat employees?) I think it's likely that they have some connection to Evan Spiegel himself but I can't prove it. That said, the Spiegeloids seem to have laid back, because I'm not seeing every single comment get hit with 4-5 downvotes at the same time anymore. (Either that, or they downvote me at different times, making it less obvious.) Maybe they're gone. I can't be sure. I have still noticed that Hacker News has much more of a willingness to downvote over disagreement. Back in 2010, it had to be a pretty low-quality comment to get downvoted. These days, I see a lot more good comments (and I'm not talking about my own, because I'm a weird special case) that end up light-gray. It's an irksome cultural change and it may be part of why Hacker News doesn't really seem to be growing any more (although it may be that Hacker News doesn't want to grow).