
Should I Resign from My Full Professor Job to Work Fulltime on Cocalc? - occamschainsaw
http://blog.sagemath.com/2019/04/12/should-i-resign-from-my-full-professor-job-to-work-fulltime-on-cocalc.html
======
ptero
This is a hard question to answer, but here are a few thoughts:

1\. Resigning from a tenured position likely means taking a one-way street.
The exception is a well-known scientist that can _easily_ switch tenure to 2-3
other school _today_. In many fields competition for tenure is brutal and once
you leave you may have some disadvantages in re-entry against a bunch of post-
docs. "Only losers leave academia" is still a widely held mindset. All this
does not mean not to resign; just be aware.

2\. Do you still need money? The fact that the company is not ramen profitable
in 7 years (including last 3 years of dedicated effort) means it may not be a
source of income for a while. If you are not set for life, how long can you
afford to not work? Will you be OK in industry (some professors thrive there
some are completely miserable with a manager who tells them what to do and
imposes deadlines)?

Unless you are set for life I would seriously consider your 50% option -- you
get another year to fully dedicate to your startup without teaching a single
day and still maintain tenure. In a year, re-evaluate. My 2c.

~~~
williamstein
> 1\. (OP here) I doubt I could easily get a tenured position somewhere else
> today, because I have not published much in the last few years, due to
> focusing on CoCalc. I also I have a 2-body problem (my wife is an academic),
> which would make getting another position in academia that much harder.

> 2\. Do you still need money?

Yes. In fact, I didn't save enough as a college math professor to retire while
living in Seattle (an expensive place)!

> The fact that the company is not ramen profitable in 7 years

The company is not profitable, but it is "ramen profitable" according to
[http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/ramenprofitable.html).
Without getting into details, the bank balance goes down a little each month
since we pay hosting and for four fulltime employees (we have about 2 years of
runway). However, we're close to profitable. If we instead had only three
employees (or paid ourselves less), then we would be profitable. If we had
just one employee (me), then I would be making a LOT more money than I made
working at UW, though I would likely be much less happy (the other three
people working on CoCalc are fantastic!).

~~~
ianai
Do not leave that tenured position!! The market has been pumped up so hard
that you should be making stability-reinforcing life choices. There’s also
just nothing comparable to the benefits of being a tenured professor in the
modern labor market short of winning the lottery. Find a way to make it work
with fewer people or look for other ways to increase your revenue/demand.

~~~
williamstein
> There’s also just nothing comparable to the benefits of being a tenured
> professor in the modern labor market short of winning the lottery.

Having a few million dollars in the bank is comparable to being a tenured
professor, at least in terms of guaranteed income. (Of course, I don't have
millions of dollars in the bank.) Maybe that's what you meant by "winning the
lottery", e.g., that phrase is sometimes used to refer to startup founders who
sell their company.

~~~
ianai
No I mean the modern labor market is horrible outside of the very hard to get
positions at the FANGs. Have you researched what working and work culture are
like? Read some of the Rachel by the bay blogs. You have a quality of life as
a tenured professor that you simply won’t anywhere else. Especially as a
“startup founder”. There’s a reason the valley takes them straight out of
college graduation.

Do Not Leave Your Professorship.

You will regret it.

~~~
war1025
This seems like a very warped view of the world. The US economy is doing
pretty well. The main worry people have is that it is doing too well and will
lead to a crash at some point. Unemployment is basically non-existent in many
parts of the country. Wages are finally starting to go up, after being
stagnant since 2008.

Putting up with poor working conditions is mostly poor decision making,
especially in tech.

~~~
ianai
Inverted yield curve

Decreasing job creation numbers

Looming Brexit

Recent Fed decisions to raise rates and more recently leave them unchanged.

Investment choices, “beta”, should reflect a heightened risk aversion for
people later in their careers. That’s just standard financial planning.

I could even make a case for stagnant wages suddenly increasing indicating
irregularities necessitating caution in financial and career decisions.

------
jrochkind1
> My third year of unpaid leave from UW is up. I have to decide whether to
> return to UW or resign. If I return, it turns out that I would have to have
> at least a 50% appointment. I currently have 50% of one year of teaching in
> “credits”, which means I wouldn’t be required to teach for the first year I
> go back as a 50% appointment. Moreover, the current department chair (John
> Palmieri) understands and appreciates Sage – he is among the top 10 all time
> contributors to the source code of Sage!

> I have decided to resign.

NO, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?

~~~
bachmeier
To be perfectly honest, it's not that risky. It won't be hard for him to get
an academic job _somewhere_ if it doesn't work out. This is usually not the
case, but for someone with his background, finding another academic job won't
be difficult if he's willing to work outside of a highly-ranked research
university math department (and the probability of being able to get one of
those jobs is even good).

~~~
SiempreViernes
Well, they got to find a position for the wife too; prepare for trouble and
make it double.

------
Areading314
I saw Prof. Stein's talk at JupyterCon last year and was blown away by what he
had accomplished with CoCalc. It was one of the best talks at the conference
IMO. Very excited to see where CoCalc is headed and wish Prof. Stein all the
best.

Edit: here is the talk [https://pyvideo.org/jupytercon-2018/real-time-
collaboration-...](https://pyvideo.org/jupytercon-2018/real-time-
collaboration-with-jupyter-notebooks-using-cocalc-william-stein-sagemath-
inc.html)

~~~
fspeech
Thanks for the link. Watching it I can't help but feel a little sad. Prof.
Stein is a highly trained mathematician with a track record in establishing
successful software projects like Sage that many people benefit tremendously
from (watching the video I learned that he actually started Cython as well!).
It says something about the state of affairs -- the general lack of awareness
and interest in the development of math unless it benefits some business
directly -- when he could not find the resource needed to develop the math
software he loved the way he wanted to. Maybe he really enjoyed working on the
sync protocols, text formats, backend databases and file systems etc needed to
get CoCalc running smoothly. But I wonder if he had the resource he needed
would he make the same choice? I say this as I have a son who is double
majoring in CS and math. As a freshman he is already mostly done with upper
division math (3 A+ in honors real and complex analysis) and is taking
graduate math classes. Yet it seems prudent for him to at least put in the
minimum effort to get his CS degree to keep his option open. Eventually it
will be a hard choice down the road for him as well.

~~~
williamstein
> But I wonder if he had the resource he needed would he make the same choice?

If I had the resources I needed, I definitely would not have made the same
choice. Though I enjoy somewhat working on sync protocols, databases, etc., it
is only a means to an end. Mathematics software is much deeper and more
interesting me. If I had sufficient resources a few years ago, I absolutely
would have instead built a team to work fulltime on Sage, similar to how John
Cannon successfully built an amazing team around Magma, partly leveraging that
Magma is closed source and commercial --
[https://magma.maths.usyd.edu.au/](https://magma.maths.usyd.edu.au/).

------
daly
As lead developer on Axiom, an open source computer algebra system, I can
fully appreciate his funding problem.

One problem is that open source software can't really handle grants.
Government grants require accounting to handle receipts, and follow all of the
rules. We need a couple "open source accounting" people who can handle
managing grants (just like a school's bursar's office).

I have tried to find a funding stream for nearly 20 years, without success.

I am currently doing computer algebra research as a visiting scholar. That is
an unpaid position. Perhaps you can remain connected to the department as a
visiting scholar.

If there is some way I can help, please let me know.

~~~
cf
I know this isn't the most appropriate place to ask, but what are the main
feature gaps between commercial computer algebra systems like
Mathematica/Maple and systems like Axiom/Sympy?

~~~
daly
Several comments.

First, Axiom is a research platform (currently working on proving the
algorithms correct). It is no longer a commercial competitor to Mathematica
and Maple (as it was in the 90s).

Second, Axiom is based on Group Theory, giving it a reasonably sound
mathematical superstructure. Mathematica is based on rewrite semantics. You
can rewrite anything to anything. Maple is based on tree semantics. You can
re-arrange a tree in any way. Obviously, their computational mathematicians
are well-versed and clever enough to avoid most obvious failures. It is just
easier in Axiom.

Third, Axiom is open source. Consider what happens to computational
mathematics when the companies supporting closed source disappear. (Companies
die, on average, after 15 years). Macsyma (Symbolics) is gone. Derive (Soft
Warehouse) is gone. I am deeply concerned about the impact on computational
mathematics when this happens. Axiom, as open source, won't disappear as there
is no company behind it. It will, of course, probably stall once the key
developers stop maintaining it.

Mathematica and Maple are amazing systems. If you need what they provide I
strongly recommend buying a license. I know some of the developers from these
systems and they are extremely clever people.

If you're looking for competitive software, I'd look at Sage and CoCalc. This
is an open source alternative to Mathematica, Maple, Magma, etc. It is open
source and (mostly) free. I can strongly recommend it.

As for "feature gaps", there are many. If what you want are "features", Axiom
isn't for you. But if you want answers that are proven correct, stay tuned.
Computational mathematics IS mathematics. You can rightly demand that the
results are proven correct. That seems to me to be a required "feature".

~~~
cf
Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I am 100% in support of software like this being open-source. Not just because
companies go out of business and disappear, but for scientific-computing
software, it's important to be able to extend these systems. When I talk about
features, I often mean can I rewrite this integral into something more
computationally tractable? Or is there some reparameterization of this
function into something differentiable?

I know this are very much how someone might pose a problem coming from
Mathematica or Maple, but really I hope it's clear the end goal is still the
same. Discover an equivalent mathematical representation of my problem that's
more amendable for further work.

------
raphlinus
This post resonated with me strongly. Yes, resigning sounds like the obvious
best choice. I hope it works out well!

I can certainly understand why Prof. Stein doesn't want to trash his
colleagues, but I'll come out and say it: if academia wasn't completely
dysfunctional, it would find a way to support this work.

For my own work (which is nowhere nearly as academically relevant as CoCalc
and Sage) I'm planning on doing it myself without worrying too much about
funding. I can use a combination of savings, random consulting gigs, Patreon,
etc. I can imagine doing more "company" kinds of things, but only to the
extent it supports the work. This is not an easy problem, and again I wish
Prof. Stein well.

~~~
selimthegrim
If Jim Simons wouldn’t play ball it’s hardly only academia that’s implicated

~~~
hopler
Jim Simons doesn't understand open source and open access, because the source
of his $15Billion net worth (proprietary hedge fund strategy) depends on him
not understanding it. And also perhaps because he doesn't understand software
very well. He could have made Magma free for everyone, but instead he bought a
license only for his chosen elites to use.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10175563](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10175563)

------
adenadel
I'm really disappointed (with my impression) that UW doesn't seem to
appreciate what has been accomplished with Sage and the value of a major open
source competitor to Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, etc. I hope William and
Cocalc are tremendously successful.

~~~
treis
If I'm reading the article right, he's only done work for UW for one out of
the last 5 years. That seems to me to be an enormous amount of flexibility on
their part.

~~~
jpatokal
Yes, but you'd think the university could find a way to directly support
building the software.

~~~
williamstein
I used to think that too. I only started CoCalc when I realized after a decade
that this probably wasn't going to happen (for me).

------
heinrichf
Professor Stein is an active HN member by the way:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=williamstein](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=williamstein)

~~~
keithnz
not only that, his actual post of this blog post is here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19665027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19665027)

------
tptacek
I wish I could come up with a more helpful comment, but, as someone with 1-3
terminal windows dedicated to Sage pretty much at all times on my machine: no,
giving up a tenured professorship for Cocalc sounds like a bad plan.

------
throwaway5752
Yes, you are absolutely correct in your decision to resign.

It's - if I'm being honest here - painfully clear you are much more interested
in your side project (from the prospective of UW) than your ostensible job.

I think for your sake and theirs' you should resign and try to commercialize
this, or you will fail at both. Either that or completely hand off or abandon
the project.

~~~
tashi
It's not inherently a side project, it only has to be one because his
department doesn't view this work as a contribution to pure mathematics. Seems
shortsighted for a field where progress is often measured in centuries.

------
aralisza
Wow, I just went to the Cocalc website, and it's truly shocking. It seems like
an interesting service, but terribly marketed. Do you have any designers? I
know your service is targeted towards technically minded people, but it still
needs to be able to market itself. Have you done any user testing on how
people use your marketing website? Here is my experience so far:

The first thing I see is a NINE minute long video. As a first time visitor who
doesn't know anything about this service, that's too much time to invest.

The second thing I see is that it supports a lot of stuff. Cool, but why is it
better than what I have now? I see that I can share things privately. I can
already do that. I can "time travel". Yes, version control is a thing. I can
publish it online. Great, I already do that. These are the only thing I read
because they are the only thing that's bold. To be honest, this is where I
would have clicked away.

It also doesn't help that the navigation is unusable at half-laptop screen
width, let alone on mobile.

Only after scouring your website do I realize that it's basically Google Docs
but for math, which is cool! But this was not clear at all when first visiting
your site.

If you're interested in more feedback feel free to reach out.

------
azhenley
UW is a prestigious university and you already earned tenure. Even if you quit
your job and the project fails, you're going to be just fine. Probably still a
scary decision, but in my eyes you have already "made it".

(I'm a tenure-track first year prof.)

~~~
winter_blue
Is it really that easy to get tenure all over again, after a failed
project/startup?

~~~
azhenley
Many, many schools would hire him with tenure if he decided to go back to
academia. Or he could choose to go to industry and make plenty of money.

Plenty of lucrative and fulfilling options.

~~~
ptero
Can you elaborate? Is this field-dependent? This is completely against my
(very, very limited) experience:

I got my PhD ~20 years ago and saw a few tenured professors (math and physics)
leave academia. While I have no first hand experience I did hear through a
grapevine that some explored options for coming back, but could not. This is a
sensitive topic with little data and so my info is certainly suspect.

~~~
azhenley
I'm coming from a CS perspective.

If they are successful at a top university and leave to try other things
(usually startups), then they will have no problems going back to academia.
Sometimes it is even viewed positively.

For example, right now Carnegie Mellon has been seeing a flock of their
faculty leave to go to tech companies or to do their own startups. Other
universities would fight over a successful ex-CMU (or UW!) prof to come to
their institution.

Depending on their level of success, they may not get back to a top 5
university, but some other R1 university would gladly take them!

~~~
broken_symlink
I bet he could get tenure in a CS department if he tried.

~~~
williamstein
(author of blog) If I were to attempt to return to academia, I would consider
departments other than pure mathematics. E.g., the last place I interviewed at
(about 10 years ago) was Emory University's department of Mathematics _and_
Computer Science, and I remember being excited by computer science being part
of the same department. I just checked, and see that it's now split into two
departments:
[http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/site/home/](http://www.mathcs.emory.edu/site/home/)

I would likely have a lot of trouble re-entering academia due to lack of
recent academic publications; I've been on many hiring committees over the
years in pure math, and we never considered hiring anybody who wasn't already
in academia.

------
primitivesuave
I worked at Wolfram Research and I have sideline knowledge of how hard it is
to successfully commercialize a CAS. I personally would wait for NSF funding
to improve (it is an unfortunate reality how funding is prioritized nowadays),
and perhaps get resourceful about developing your system further in an
academic setting- I’ve done similar work as a university student looking for a
resume booster.

------
lmeyerov
Brutal, but:

Either:

1\. Do it -- You're ok with this failing and being locked out of academia --
then go for it! Maybe, if it fails, you'd be happy joining cloudera or another
placing building notebooks!

2\. Do it -- You're on track for paying living wages, both for yourself and
future employees, say within 6mo organically, or with outside investment (from
your post... you're still before then). Maybe live abroad for a year to
further cut down!

3\. Go back for a year -- Let it grow a bit more, and push any income you'd
have taken to others who are earlier in their career

In both 'do it' scenarios, get ready to pivot/expand to areas that will do a
better job of keeping food on the table for your employees families, and to
keep failing at it until something works. If you can't stomache that, wait
till you can hire someone who will, or keep it as a hobby.

I normally wouldn't offer to chat w/ someone over the internet, but I'm close-
ish to this space, and a stage or so ahead wrt commercialization, so would be
happy to do so

------
sjg007
That you are asking this question.. then No. And you should bootstrap this
with UW or carefully manage your obligations. There are many profs with a foot
on both sides.

I would not leave until you've achieved escape velocity.

------
anbop
Looking at the full scope of things here it seems like it would be batshit
insane for this guy to resign his professorship (on the economic calculus). Of
course if he hates every day at the university it’s different.

------
broken_symlink
Since he brought up he may have been in the wrong place being in the math
department, did he ever actually try to switch to the CS department?

~~~
jhbadger
In UW's case, that would be even more difficult than usual because of its
organization. The mathematics department is in the College of Arts and Science
and the CS department is in the engineering school. These are practically like
separate universities within UW.

~~~
williamstein
Indeed -- CS is now the "Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and
Engineering", so it's not just a department. I never tried to move to CS, and
I have no idea if there would have been a path to do so. When I first got
hired at UW in 2006, some faculty in the CS department were very supportive of
Sage, even giving me some temporary office space in one of their old
buildings.

~~~
broken_symlink
I would have tried to explore that option before leaving completely. I know
two professors who have switched fields, one was physics professor who did
work in string theory, switched to genomics and got position at a medical
school. Another was a CS professor who actually went in to math.

You sometimes see CS professors who have degrees in pure math just browsing
different department's websites.

------
quotha
Flip a coin, when it's in the air, you will know what side you hope it lands
on.

~~~
yathern
He's already decided, and is resigning, as per the end of the post.

------
valgor
I know this isn't exactly related, but as someone interested in numerical
analysis, what is the difference between working on Sage, Octave, and Julia?

~~~
williamstein
Sage is primarily developed to support pure mathematics research (and
undergrad teaching). Probably the main possibly unique thing Sage brings to
numerical analysis is good support for arbitrary precision and interval
arithmetic. Beyond that, Sage is written in Python, so it inherits the
standard numerical functionality from that ecosystem, namely numpy, scipy,
pandas, etc. Sage also has excellent support for Cython, since much of Sage is
written in Cython (I even made up the name "Cython").

------
untangle
I was going to counsel that you retain your tenure but I guess you've already
decided to resign. (If so, why ask?)

The rationale for my recommendation is largely captured in other comments so
I'll be brief: Winter is coming (macroeconomically). And it sounds like cocalc
lacks: a strong balance sheet, a scalable sales model, and a story that would
interest outside investors. As such, I personally would view the company as
lifestyle/earnings supplementation and not core sustenance. It is also
synergistic with your day job.

------
formalsystem
TBH I feel like there's very little risk with quitting to work on a project
that already has users.

It seems like he's a good enough programmer that he could always find a job at
a big tech company, make a bunch of money and then quit once he has enough
saved up. And that's assuming he doesn't find any paid users or get any source
of funding which again is hard but not impossible or that unlikely given that
he already has a product with users.

I think he'll be just fine and I wish him the best.

~~~
dman
Job market for programmers will not always be what it is today.

~~~
formalsystem
Curious what's your reasoning behind this? If anything I see programmer jobs
as one of the only professions that will survive the next couple of decades.

------
originaloctopus
I took a number theory class from you almost 10 years ago, and it changed my
life. So, thanks. :)

------
noisycircuit
I am commenting because I have read parts of your algebraic number theory book
and used Sage extensively. The book helped me but did not significantly change
anything about my life. It is possible to learn the same topics by reading
other books. I love many parts of Sage and it has changed what I am able to
do.

It seems like the options are

tenure: a path where you make incremental progress on narrow problems with the
benefit of low stress and an excellent standard of living.

company: a path where you get to continue changing the world in a meaningful
way. The cost is high stress and a less certain standard of living in your
current city.

You provide a lot of details about your situation but I don't think they are
relevant. The details would only matter if the worst case outcome of either
path was a life that you could not bear to live. Given your many
accomplishments this is not a problem.

I think people should try to minimize the regret in their lives rather than
maximizing their average daily happiness. It sounds like you would regret not
continuing to work on your company.

------
ridgeguy
I view economics as the gating factor. If, as you posted downthread, you don't
have lifetime financial security, don't drop your tenured job.

This is like the preflight "put on your own oxygen mask before you assist
others with theirs" instruction. IMHO, you'll be far less able to contribute
if you're scrambling to pay basic expenses.

------
kevinventullo
It seems to me that a more flexible university would be lucky to have you.
"William Stein" was a household name among the number theorists I knew.

------
alain94040
The subtext I get from reading your question is that you are overwhelmed with
the support issues. Problems can arise at any time, and need to be fixed
within hours. That's not a way to run any kind of product. If you can solve
that problem (lower expectations for support), then you should be able to go
back to your 50% position and still make progress on CoCalc.

------
alexdong
I find it interesting that nobody has asked this question: what is your life
situation?

Do you have a family? House/mortgage? Health insurance? You mentioned that
CoCalc hires some engineers, some hat’s the burn rate? What do you need to
keep working on it?

If you have got your baseline covered, William, i’d say go for it. Your heart
is clearly on this path.

~~~
williamstein
> Do you have a family?

Only a spouse, who has an excellent job.

> House/mortgage?

Yes, I bought a detached house 12 years ago in Seattle.

> Health insurance?

Yes, through my spouse.

> You mentioned that CoCalc hires some engineers, so that’s the burn rate?

Yes, we employ 4 people (including me). If we employed three instead, we would
not be losing money...

------
Hydraulix989
You have a 10% chance of success even if you are accepted into YCombinator
(honest feedback: I wouldn’t invest in your company). Stay a professor, and
don’t regret not wasting time as an entrepreneur. It’s overrated.

------
jchallis
Most important question: what will minimize your future regrets?

------
SubiculumCode
If you are a developmental neuroscientists then yes. I need your job. The job
market is not great, as you'd know.

~~~
ska
Should I reply to the title of a posting without reading it?

No, I probably shouldn't.

