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Hmm, the essay does sound like it was written by a 20 year old indeed. Unfortunate then that she is maximizing learning by going to Quora. What exactly is she g

by _qc3o 12y ago

Hmm, the essay does sound like it was written by a 20 year old indeed. Unfortunate then that she is maximizing learning by going to Quora. What exactly is she going to learn at Quora? The industry has very little to offer in terms of learning unless you are in the top echelons of Google's, Microsoft's, and Facebook's research divisions. Most software and product engineering is mundane drudgery and even if there is room to learn and grow you still have to deal with workplace politics, credit stealing, jealousy, etc. All those things are detrimental to learning. Within the first 3 months she is going to learn everything there is to learn about Quora. By her own admission she will then move on to the next learning experience until one day she will realize academia is the only place that true learning happens.

mplewis 12y ago
"True learning"
- dkarapetyan 12y ago
  Where else are you going to be free from business and product pressures and get sustained periods of solitude or collaboration? In the industry where every decision lasts until the quarter ends and everyone is beholden to making metrics go up and to the right? Tell me what exactly are you going to learn by being under business pressures and goal posts.
  - ChuckMcM 12y ago
    You have a couple of assumptions baked into your world view that may not be valid. The most obvious being that people need "sustained periods of solitude and collaboration" to truly learn. I don't know if that assumption is warranted, it seems there are a number of people who learn quite a bit without those things. I could be persuaded to agree that you might maximize the rate at which you learn with those conditions however. Learning is a lot like exercise in that regard (not surprisingly for similar physiological reasons). Just as walking to and from your cubical to the bus is "exercise", and you do derive a cardie-vascular benefit from it, deconstructing a broken application deployment process and recreating it without the obvious defects is "learning."
    - dkarapetyan 12y ago
      Those are not assumptions. Historical precedent is on my side and there is no shortage of examples: Feynman, Einstein, Grothendieck, Newton, Pierce, Hamming, Margaret Hamilton, Leslie Lamport, Barbara Liskov, Rich Hickey, and on and on. I think it would be foolish to argue that those individuals have not contributed in significant ways and they have all accomplished those contributions in academic and non-industrial settings. Rich Hickey even has a talk where he explicitly mentions the fact of needing long hours of solitude to think about things.
- DevFactor 12y ago
  If "true learning" means making $9.25 an hour and slaving away 60 hours per week while a prof makes ~200k and takes all of the credit: I'd rather be ignorant.
madamepsychosis 12y ago
This reads like a parody of what grad students think.
- ad-hominem 12y ago
  "How could building a real business that people (want to) use possibly engender skills transferable to real life? Only when completely removed from reality can we begin to understand those forces which drive it"
- moab 12y ago
  No, it's pretty true if you've ever been through the average dev-shop in the valley. 95% of the eng work is the same problems you've seen a dozen times in the last year rehashed. The 5% of the interesting work is usually incredibly difficult and requires real skills (i.e. some sort of cv/dist-systems/PL skills) that can't be casually acquired without serious commitment. The people who do these jobs are either undergrads who worked incredibly hard to pick up these skills or phd's.
  - jak0bbbb 12y ago
    > The 5% of the interesting work is usually incredibly difficult and requires real skills (i.e. some sort of cv/dist-systems/PL skills) that can't be casually acquired without serious commitment. The people who do these jobs are either undergrads who worked incredibly hard to pick up these skills or phd's. Can you elaborate? I am an undergrad and this sounds incredibly interesting. What are those skills? How do you pick up them?
    - moab 12y ago
      It really depends on what you want to do. If you see yourself getting into programming languages, and want to work at a place like fb/google or even a trading-house like JaneStreet, most of the interesting work will be parceled out to folks who really tinkered with language design/logic/type theory at school. I can talk about each of the (few) areas I mentioned in detail, but I think I'd be leading you astray. The real question is: what are you interested in specializing in? Let's say it's field x. What will it take for you to become so well versed in x that a company will hire you to work on hard problems involving x? X can be anything - programming languages, graphics, kernel, distributed systems. And x doesn't just have to be something "hard in CS" - it can be any number of UI/UX/HCI related fields that are popping up these days. In terms of how you pick them up: figure out what your interests are and either find a professor at school that's into this and work with him/her, or start hacking on this stuff and getting your hands wet in your spare time. I'm a new grad myself, and I can say for a fact that the ~5% of my peers who are working on truly hard problems in industry are exactly those peers who worked on hard problems in their spare time at school.
sthatipamala 12y ago
Learning how to ship working software (however mundane) while subject to "business and product pressures" is a skill worth learning to some.
CaveTech 12y ago
What a horribly depressing view of engineering culture. I've dealt with very little politics, credit stealing, and jealousy as a % of my time since joining the workforce. They definitely exist, but to say they're so bad that they prevent you from learning is laughable. I still find opportunities to grow and learn on a weekly basis. I don't work at one of the worlds top research divisions, but that's never stopped me from improving/developing myself.
- dkarapetyan 12y ago
  Most work is what you make of it but don't fool yourself into thinking that you are going to learn and grow at an optimum rate in an industrial setting. Your emotional reaction to the reality of the situation does not change the fact that learning is maximized in an academic setting.
  - CaveTech 12y ago
    With what end goal? I could also never leave a library, ever, and maximize my learning that way. And I'd die alone and inexperienced. Of course there's some give and take... I trade my "pure learning" opportunities to be able to still grow and develop while earning an income that empowers me to live my life as I desire. I get to solve real world problems and challenges, rather than open ended ones. I'm not trying to take anything from academics, but the most useful result will always come from a combination of academia and business. Neither would exist without the other, and there's and endless amount to learn from either side.
    - dkarapetyan 12y ago
      Any end goal. The fact that there are no distractions to purely pursue a specific goal is what makes an academic setting special. There are no managers and business specialists hovering over every single decision being made.
      - icebraining 12y ago
        That doesn't jive with everything I've read - some of which here on HN - about universities. Grants, tenure, cost-cutting by administrators, ego, are all said to be sources of politics and distractions. And teaching, of course. Are they wrong?
amirmansour 12y ago
"academia is the only place that true learning happens." That is one of the most delusional perspectives I have ever encountered my good sir. I'm saying this after spending time in academia.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
austenallred 12y ago
> one day she will realize academia is the only place that true learning happens. I'd love to hear you defend that statement.
- dkarapetyan 12y ago
  Look at the historical precedent and the people that have contributed the most to human knowledge. There is no shortage of examples. Even Google would not have been possible without academics. If you want to argue the opposite side then we can agree on definitions and you can bring up examples of industry leaders that have contributed in some significant way to human knowledge.
  - greatergoodguy 12y ago
    You have not even come close to defending your point that 'academia is the only place that true learning happens'. All you did was give a justification that academia is a place that learning happens. In fact all that is needed to prove you incorrect is ONE counterexample.
mathattack 12y ago
By her own admission she will then move on to the next learning experience until one day she will realize academia is the only place that true learning happens. Ummm.... Academics spend a lot of time in non-learning activities. As do students. Learning is a state of mind. You can learn wherever you are if you want.
- dkarapetyan 12y ago
  I agree that it is a state of mind but maintaining it is much easier when you don't have to bow down to quarterly earnings and your manager isn't breathing down your neck about shipping that new shiny feature.
  - mathattack 12y ago
    I'm not an expert, but my views of faculty was that many spend much less than one would think on research. According to 1 study [0] "Research – 'and the external funding and recognition it brings' – makes up just 17 percent of the work week and 27 percent of weekend work," Based on personal experience, I gave up the idea of a Phd when I saw how much time the professors spent begging for grants. And I've learned the most within the first 6 months of a new position. (This is also why jobs that offer a lot of variety are nice) [0] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/09/research-shows-professors-work-long-hours-and-spend-much-day-meetings https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/09/research-show...

by _qc3o 12y ago

mplewis 12y ago

"True learning"

dkarapetyan 12y ago
Where else are you going to be free from business and product pressures and get sustained periods of solitude or collaboration? In the industry where every decision lasts until the quarter ends and everyone is beholden to making metrics go up and to the right? Tell me what exactly are you going to learn by being under business pressures and goal posts.
- ChuckMcM 12y ago
  You have a couple of assumptions baked into your world view that may not be valid. The most obvious being that people need "sustained periods of solitude and collaboration" to truly learn. I don't know if that assumption is warranted, it seems there are a number of people who learn quite a bit without those things. I could be persuaded to agree that you might maximize the rate at which you learn with those conditions however. Learning is a lot like exercise in that regard (not surprisingly for similar physiological reasons). Just as walking to and from your cubical to the bus is "exercise", and you do derive a cardie-vascular benefit from it, deconstructing a broken application deployment process and recreating it without the obvious defects is "learning."
  - dkarapetyan 12y ago
    Those are not assumptions. Historical precedent is on my side and there is no shortage of examples: Feynman, Einstein, Grothendieck, Newton, Pierce, Hamming, Margaret Hamilton, Leslie Lamport, Barbara Liskov, Rich Hickey, and on and on. I think it would be foolish to argue that those individuals have not contributed in significant ways and they have all accomplished those contributions in academic and non-industrial settings. Rich Hickey even has a talk where he explicitly mentions the fact of needing long hours of solitude to think about things.
DevFactor 12y ago
If "true learning" means making $9.25 an hour and slaving away 60 hours per week while a prof makes ~200k and takes all of the credit: I'd rather be ignorant.

madamepsychosis 12y ago

This reads like a parody of what grad students think.

ad-hominem 12y ago
"How could building a real business that people (want to) use possibly engender skills transferable to real life? Only when completely removed from reality can we begin to understand those forces which drive it"
moab 12y ago
No, it's pretty true if you've ever been through the average dev-shop in the valley. 95% of the eng work is the same problems you've seen a dozen times in the last year rehashed. The 5% of the interesting work is usually incredibly difficult and requires real skills (i.e. some sort of cv/dist-systems/PL skills) that can't be casually acquired without serious commitment. The people who do these jobs are either undergrads who worked incredibly hard to pick up these skills or phd's.
- jak0bbbb 12y ago
  > The 5% of the interesting work is usually incredibly difficult and requires real skills (i.e. some sort of cv/dist-systems/PL skills) that can't be casually acquired without serious commitment. The people who do these jobs are either undergrads who worked incredibly hard to pick up these skills or phd's. Can you elaborate? I am an undergrad and this sounds incredibly interesting. What are those skills? How do you pick up them?
  - moab 12y ago
    It really depends on what you want to do. If you see yourself getting into programming languages, and want to work at a place like fb/google or even a trading-house like JaneStreet, most of the interesting work will be parceled out to folks who really tinkered with language design/logic/type theory at school. I can talk about each of the (few) areas I mentioned in detail, but I think I'd be leading you astray. The real question is: what are you interested in specializing in? Let's say it's field x. What will it take for you to become so well versed in x that a company will hire you to work on hard problems involving x? X can be anything - programming languages, graphics, kernel, distributed systems. And x doesn't just have to be something "hard in CS" - it can be any number of UI/UX/HCI related fields that are popping up these days. In terms of how you pick them up: figure out what your interests are and either find a professor at school that's into this and work with him/her, or start hacking on this stuff and getting your hands wet in your spare time. I'm a new grad myself, and I can say for a fact that the ~5% of my peers who are working on truly hard problems in industry are exactly those peers who worked on hard problems in their spare time at school.

sthatipamala 12y ago

Learning how to ship working software (however mundane) while subject to "business and product pressures" is a skill worth learning to some.

CaveTech 12y ago

What a horribly depressing view of engineering culture. I've dealt with very little politics, credit stealing, and jealousy as a % of my time since joining the workforce. They definitely exist, but to say they're so bad that they prevent you from learning is laughable. I still find opportunities to grow and learn on a weekly basis. I don't work at one of the worlds top research divisions, but that's never stopped me from improving/developing myself.

dkarapetyan 12y ago
Most work is what you make of it but don't fool yourself into thinking that you are going to learn and grow at an optimum rate in an industrial setting. Your emotional reaction to the reality of the situation does not change the fact that learning is maximized in an academic setting.
- CaveTech 12y ago
  With what end goal? I could also never leave a library, ever, and maximize my learning that way. And I'd die alone and inexperienced. Of course there's some give and take... I trade my "pure learning" opportunities to be able to still grow and develop while earning an income that empowers me to live my life as I desire. I get to solve real world problems and challenges, rather than open ended ones. I'm not trying to take anything from academics, but the most useful result will always come from a combination of academia and business. Neither would exist without the other, and there's and endless amount to learn from either side.
  - dkarapetyan 12y ago
    Any end goal. The fact that there are no distractions to purely pursue a specific goal is what makes an academic setting special. There are no managers and business specialists hovering over every single decision being made.
    - icebraining 12y ago
      That doesn't jive with everything I've read - some of which here on HN - about universities. Grants, tenure, cost-cutting by administrators, ego, are all said to be sources of politics and distractions. And teaching, of course. Are they wrong?

amirmansour 12y ago

"academia is the only place that true learning happens." That is one of the most delusional perspectives I have ever encountered my good sir. I'm saying this after spending time in academia.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

austenallred 12y ago

> one day she will realize academia is the only place that true learning happens. I'd love to hear you defend that statement.

dkarapetyan 12y ago
Look at the historical precedent and the people that have contributed the most to human knowledge. There is no shortage of examples. Even Google would not have been possible without academics. If you want to argue the opposite side then we can agree on definitions and you can bring up examples of industry leaders that have contributed in some significant way to human knowledge.
- greatergoodguy 12y ago
  You have not even come close to defending your point that 'academia is the only place that true learning happens'. All you did was give a justification that academia is a place that learning happens. In fact all that is needed to prove you incorrect is ONE counterexample.

mathattack 12y ago

By her own admission she will then move on to the next learning experience until one day she will realize academia is the only place that true learning happens. Ummm.... Academics spend a lot of time in non-learning activities. As do students. Learning is a state of mind. You can learn wherever you are if you want.

dkarapetyan 12y ago
I agree that it is a state of mind but maintaining it is much easier when you don't have to bow down to quarterly earnings and your manager isn't breathing down your neck about shipping that new shiny feature.
- mathattack 12y ago
  I'm not an expert, but my views of faculty was that many spend much less than one would think on research. According to 1 study [0] "Research – 'and the external funding and recognition it brings' – makes up just 17 percent of the work week and 27 percent of weekend work," Based on personal experience, I gave up the idea of a Phd when I saw how much time the professors spent begging for grants. And I've learned the most within the first 6 months of a new position. (This is also why jobs that offer a lot of variety are nice) [0] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/09/research-shows-professors-work-long-hours-and-spend-much-day-meetings https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/04/09/research-show...