Ask HN: Has anyone worked at research institutes like Simons or Allen?

15 points·actinium226··2 comments

There's a thread about national labs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34414527

But I feel like there's more options out there besides NLs and FAANG. I wonder if anyone here has worked at some sort of private research institute and could essentially compare & contrast it to FAANG, as OP requested in the linked thread?

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I had the pleasure of working at SRI International, in the ,lab created by the late Douglas Engelbart, on the CALO project. I'll offer a few comparisons to other tech companies for whom I worked. Firstly, SRI was collegial; an example, at a prior tech company, the DBA was insanely concerned with what I might be doing; at SRI, DBAs and others would ask "how can I help you?". As to compensation: certainly SRI, being a non-profit, did not offer stock options; I did well on those at a previous employer. Salary scales might be lower, but not that much lower. Unlike Google and other employers, we did not have a free catered meal option, but that was not something about which I cared. What I cared about was the opportunity to grow personally; SRI was that opportunity.

I did. My places were wealthy (endowments), which means good offices and equipment. But, it also means that bad apples can cause a lot of trouble without getting fired.

Money not quite FAANG, but solid, and didn't depend on employer stock prices, which is a big plus. Some tech was cutting edge; some was many years out of date.

As always, the devil is in the particulars of position. If possible, don't move your family, sell your house, etc., until you're six to twelve months in. It's like one of those Sherlock Holmes stories--it can take a while to realize just how bad a bad situation is.

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