Hacker News Reader

>> ...universities are increasingly run by administrators. Faculty have more service requirements and less autonomy than in the past.

I teach one course at a local university. I have near-total academic autonomy but I also have six different bosses, none of which actually teach. A new term just started. I show up at the staff room to learn that I cannot get on the wifi or classroom podiums until I "accept" my latest contract, which has yet to be sent to me. I taught the first class on my laptop wired (hdmi) to the projector and tethered to my phone. Too many people being paid to creating silly rules and pointless systems.

I'm starting a new job in another city next month (government). After explaining to my students that a different prof will cover the last half of the course they couldn't care less about the subject of my lecture. They wanted to hear about how I actually "got a real job". Interview processes and resume writing are more important to them than actual knowledge.

> Interview processes and resume writing are more important to them than actual knowledge.

This should be unsurprising. For many, many jobs, the actual knowledge requirements are dwarfed by the importance placed on interview skills and a polished resume.

and likewise, college's role as somewhere to learn stuff is dwarfed by its role as a mandatory credential for employment

I think you should probably congratulate them on interrogating a first hand source on a topic that's important to them.

Your last point reminded me of some old days for me. I too taught as an adjunct when I was younger. I would try to bring industry insiders to visit for the Software Design course. Students loved these as well as sessions on how to get a real job. I was a bit surprised too.

>Interview processes and resume writing are more important to them than actual knowledge.

No surprise there! Look how much content on these forums is about, implicitly or explicitly, gaming coding interviews.

Id say that these forums are dominated by people with too much time on thier hands, a group where the underemployed are probably overly represented.

Knowledge does count in a non-saturated market. Only where there are thousands of qualified applicants do the interviews count for so much. My new job required two interviews, and one of those was basically just about making sure i wasnt a felon. There were aptitude and medical checks, which took months, but none of the extensive "culture fit" sillyness.

There's a massive brain drain to look forward to in the next couple decades, especially in the US. Pretty much none of my best peers went in to a PhD program for many of the reasons you described. One of my roommates got his PhD in optical physics and is essentially living the life of a monk. Its so much easier to cash out for a pretty basic engineering role and get a lifetime (hopefully) of easy, stable income. Many skilled jobs are leaving the US (ie CGI leaving Hollywood for Canada and elsewhere) and political instability (ie immigration) is cutting out a big chunk of the upper quartile as well.

In addition, the average individual has most of their life decisions made for them via simple, accessible tools and the lower half has a fraction of the competence of their predecessors. I'd guess maybe 5% of my friends/peers spend any time reading. Maybe 60% over my friends outside of tech are seriously struggling financially.

Almost all of my coworkers are immigrants on O-1 visas and there's really nothing here for them long term, especially if they feel unwelcome. The moment another country provides a better offer, I bet 95% of them will go there instead. Probably many that are here now will go too.

Couldn't agree more.

On the other hand, the research salaries some of my friends are pulling in at the big companies are substantial. And everyone on this site knows what some of the premier software devs are pulling in. Similar dictomy in law, and I suspect many other fields.

This is why I'm currently obsessed with cyberpunk. There is a massive bifurcation happening in society right now. Haves and have-nots. Some who are reaping massive gains, and many who are barely getting by.

Why is CGI heading to Canada?

I know its common for TV to film up there for tax / government arts funding reasons. Is it a similar situation or something else?

CGI, like the rest of the film/tv industry, will go where the money is best. There is nothing in film/tv production that cannot be loaded into a truck and shipped elsewhere overnight ... people included. Work is moving to canada for the tax credits but you'd be surprised at how many "canadian" productions are actually filmed overseas. TheBorgias was canadian. Versailles, filmed in france with brit actors, is supported by the canadian government and RBC (my bank) no doubt for some tax advantage. Even the first season of the Doctor Who reboot in 2005 was a joint production with the CBC. Check the credits. No matter where it is filmed, canada supports it.

> There is nothing in film/tv production that cannot be loaded into a truck and shipped elsewhere overnight ... people included.

Once you include people, how many other industries would be any different? Mining, tourism, oil drilling seem tied to a set location, but assembling something? Tech or not, seems you could just ship the people and parts anywhere.

All reasource extraction. Tourism. Financial services (tied to jurisdiction). Much of the defense industry. Health care. Live entertainment. Hospitality (hotels). Transport. Infrastructure construction and maintenance. Environmental services. Real estate. Space launch. Government. .... not everything fits into trucks.

Space launch can be done in many different places, but the higher the latitude the more fuel you have to burn. But even staying at the lower latitudes, there's still a bunch of popular launch locations to choose from.

Real estate isn't worth much if your country's economy goes down the tubes.

Space launch is positioned first on the basis of local infrastructure. It requires massive local manufacturing facilities and extensive range equipment. If orbital mechanics was the primary driver every pad would be on the equator and russia wouldnt launch much of anything.

Yes, but my point is, there are already many different launch sites around the world, many of them outside the US. The US does not have anything approaching a monopoly on space launches.

Physical stuff needs transportation, rail, river, or ocean. Small, expensive, intensive things like processors Can be made wherever.

Well, after you invest the millions or billions to build the fabs and cleanrooms and other infrastructure needed to build them. That capital expenditure tends to location-lock that business pretty good.

Fabs are spread out over pretty much all the world. Americas, Europe, Asia, Russia etc. all have a bunch of them. Africa perhaps not so much.

And while it may be true that the investment in a fab locks that fab in place, the next fab can be again built wherever.

Even mining is in the process of reducing the number of people needed at the mining site by moving to autonomous control from a central office.

For example, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-18/rio-tinto-opens-worlds...

>Many skilled jobs are leaving the US

Where would you (or other interested commentators) say the skilled jobs are going to?

India & China, where else? Here's a personal anecdote: my graduate supervisor retired a few years ago, and there was a reunion. His first students did extremely well, they were at places like Dow their whole lives. It went downhill from there, except for his last graduate student, who returned to China and started a contract research organization over there. The government with all its wisdom wouldn't issue him a visa, though.

The more I think about it, the more I come to the realization that academia isn't really a great place to be. Thankfully I'm at the start of my PhD and don't have a MS (I can drop out with the MS), so I'm not exactly stuck for the long run.

The thing is, I'd really like the option to "retire" as a college professor after a decade or so in industry. Having a PhD in hand from early on in my career will make that much, much easier.

I still have a lot of thinking to do!

Don't let me totally discourage you! Far from it, just be sure to have realistic expectations.

I absolutely loved my PhD work and I'm happy I did it. But I'm also happy I was careful to consider how this degree might help my employment down the line. Which it did. I've got an absolutely amazing research position that is well supported in the research arm of a BigCo now. I wouldn't expect that the pay is optimal versus other paths, but I'm well compensated, the work is stimulating and I'm highly autonomous.

And as you implied, to is absolutely possible to come back to Academia after spending time in industry.

You directly contradict your sibling post, which claims coming back is nearly impossible. Do you have many examples of people who have done this?

Only anecdotally.

I know that at Texas, in engineering (where I got my PhD) we had many, many professors with previous industry experience. I remembered thinking it was not nearly as terminal a decision as I had expected.

Just one example: My PhD advisor went directly to industry after their PhD, stayed there for 10 years, and then went back to academia. Six years later they had tenure. "I got lucky" was frequently said, though.

This is probably one of those things that varies a lot based on what your field is and how close to academia you stay while in industry. It's going to be a lot harder to come back to doing experimental physics if you spent 5 years as a software engineer.

Right but someone who has a realistic chance at being hired as a professor won't be working as a commodity software engineer, they'll be in some sort of specialist/research role. Any of the job offers I've seriously considered leaving were to be a computer scientist.

I did it. I went straight from my PhD to industry (actually my own startup) and then 5 years later I went into academia and tenure. I left academia in 2012 back to industry. This is the biological sciences (Molecular Biology / Microbiology).

I should say I am the only person I have ever met in the biological sciences that has done this so it must be relatively rare.

I'm trying to break away from commodity software dev roles for research positions. Is a MS/PhD advisable? Is this a better shot than trying to get people's attention via a neat project (is that even a thing)?

Currently I'm working toward getting into an MS program for my own curiosity.

More than recommended, it is often required for research positions.

Just be sure to pick a program that has a research topic that will be of interest. Easiest way to see if this is the case is by looking at previous students from that research group, and where they ended up.

Yeah, I noticed. Hard to get them to notice you without it. Wished I'd started down this path sooner.

Appreciate the advice.

What's your field? In most hard science fields it's impossible to get a professorship if you take a break from academia. (Unless you were somewhere like Microsoft Research / IBM Research, which are basically parts of academia.)

Electrical engineering. It happens, especially if you worked in R&D and continued to publish over the years. One of the professors currently teaching me spent 5 years at a startup and came back to his alma mater as an assistant professor. He's an expert on botnets and quite active, so that might be an exception haha!

During my undergrad I definitely had a handful of professors that came from stints at corporate research labs.

Returning to alma mater and being an expert in a niche is an extreme exception, on the orders of magnitude down level.

I am aware of that. I guess it was just a bad example. I'm sure you can find other less exceptional instances though.

That is, of course, a very silly cultural thing they'd be better off without. My supervisor spent a decade in industry before returning to academia, and he's a pure mathematician/logician.

You have a very low chance of getting to prof status in academia after a decade away post PhD. Only your academic contributions are considered.

From my perspective as someone who's moved from academia (mathematics) to industry (driverless taxis) to startup founder (Overleaf), it felt to me like all of my transitions were one way only. Whilst I admit I'm not at the point of looking to go back into academia yet, I can't honestly see a path back.

I've written more about this here if you're interested: http://johnhammersley.com/?p=381

Just wondering... which field did you do research in?