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Comment by greendestiny | Hacker News Reader

Those downvotes seem harsh. I agree with you. While amazing, groundbreaking research is possible in academic computer science - the general lifecycle of research is some irrelevant poorly made prototype that ignores any number of real world concerns and leads to a couple of uninspired papers that noone reads.

The point of making game is actually in having an effect on people, mostly the point of writing papers is padding out an academic resume.

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At the end of my time in academia I had become, as one friend put it "hyper cynical". However, this actually made me much better at playing the publications game - pretty much every collaboration with colleagues involved some negotiation over where in the list of authors my name would go.

I left, co-founded a company, moved onto other things and have never regretted leaving academia - I much prefer building things people do use to writing papers about things that people will probably ignore (that being the fate of most academic research).

The only bit about academic life that I wouldn't mind having is the nice juicy final salary pension scheme!

Yeah I think the other comments in this thread are extremely optimistic about the nature of academic research. The incentives just don't line up to do great work, its not that its absolutely impossible though. I miss teaching, though I was only never an academic as such, just did a PhD.

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