Comment by cs137 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cs137 | Hacker News Reader

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There are a lot of problems with academia, but this post shows such a rosy-eyed view of industry, I have a hard time taking it or its conclusions seriously.

An industry job is fine if you're protected from the politics and valued for your knowledge and intelligence, but that's rare, and it usually doesn't last. The people making major decisions don't value intelligence or curiosity and, worse yet, they often have malevolent intentions. Getting "screwed" in academia means getting a B because of a tricky question on a final, or having to publish in a less prestigious journal than you think you deserve. Getting screwed in industry means you lose your right to an income and might never get it back.

The thing is, people in industry (meaning for-profit businesses that expect every member to work on some line-of-business concern... I'm not talking about research labs) have better social skills than academics are used to, so a lot of ex-academics jump into it thinking they're getting into a non-toxic environment, because the corrosive behaviors are not immediately visible. It takes a few years before people realize they haven't just entered "industry"--they've gone into literal corporate America.

> Getting "screwed" in academia means getting a B because of a tricky question on a final, or having to publish in a less prestigious journal than you think you deserve.

Actually, getting screwed in academia is:

- Never getting a tenure track position because your advisor has bad mouthed you (common)

- Not getting tenure and never getting another chance at it.

> Getting screwed in industry means you lose your right to an income and might never get it back.

Everyone I know who got fired got another job and bounced back. Lose tenure? You'll only get a second chance if you are particularly good.

Most of the times, in industry, getting screwed just means not getting a promotion.

The obviously realistic assessment is: it depends. Sure, there are politics in industry, but most large corporations have large R&D organizations were politics are manageable and predictable, at least for individual contributors and team leads, simply because this is a crucial environmental factor and critical for retaining talent and getting products shipped. Politics primarily happen on higher levels and in particularly competitive parts of the organization (like Sales).

In academia (in contrast), the governance structures that are in place essentially ensure that with the exception of the particularly lucky (or: 'genius') few, one always has to watch one's back to ensure the fight for employment, funding, research time, top-venue acceptance, tenure, etc. is successful.

With academics, I think the problem is to some degree self-created. In the Boomer days, they copped the attitude that their research was the only thing that mattered and that teaching was unimportant grunt work to be delegated as much as possible. This resulted in under-educated, condescended-to politicians reducing their funding, and this combined with administrative bloat (another Boomer trick) to create a truly awful job market.

Government research labs tend to have decent cultures, but it seems like the replacement of old, decent noblesse oblige companies by new-style psychotic McKinsey-esque startup-culture ones is complete. What I've heard is that places like Google X are ultra-political (which isn't surprising, because all FAANGs are nasty places run by nasty people). I've had decent R&D jobs; the problem is that they're unstable. You are a resource to be pulled into someone else's war.

A lot depends on your field. The academic fields that are moderately OK are the ones where there's a lively job market in industry competing for talent. I know professors in CS and Medicine, who are quite happy.

In other fields, there's no continuity of work beyond someone's job. A professor studying X can be replaced by another professor studying Y. There's no reason to keep you, if someone else can be more productive. And beyond the undergrad level, you depend on the cooperation and goodwill of people who can deliberately or inadvertently make your career vanish in a nanosecond. And then unless you're a superstar, you get start from scratch and hope for a second lucky break amidst a multiple of brilliant competitors.

I got out right after grad school, so I don't even qualify as an academic refugee. My parents had both been industrial scientists, so that career path wasn't foreign to me, and I planned for it while working on my degree.

When I got "screwed" in industry, I was quickly back on my feet. Turning things around, a company making X can hire someone away from a company making Y.

> Getting screwed in industry means you lose your right to an income and might never get it back.

Why is this? It really easy to get hired in industry after you've been fired from one job -- especially if you've been there for awhile. I've seen many postdocs or non-tenure-track professors forced entirely out of academia if their contracts aren't renewed. If they don't have skills valued by industry (not uncommon if you spent 5+ years post-PhD in academia), I've seen former colleagues never get a good job again.

It depends on which industries etc, why you got fired. Blacklists are a thing, and if you're on one and it affects you, it's pretty hard to tell.

I have had the complete opposite experience. I was in academia for 15 years, and have never seen such a lack of humanity. I was at a small, highly regarded liberal arts college.

I now work for a multinational American corporation - something I never thought I would do. It has been a dream come true. A recent thought: if one wants to experience true diversity, take a job with a multinational corporation!

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