
Academia or industry? - ot
http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2014/09/15/academia-or-industry/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+daniel-lemire%2Fatom+%28Daniel+Lemire%27s+blog%29
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GuiA
One more thing this guy might want to consider adding to his list if he's
intent on exploring that landscape: working in a research-y position at a
large (> few thousand employees) company.

I was in academia for a bit, and eventually dropped out of my PhD because it
didn't feel right. I was in startups (both as founder and early employee) for
a while, and while I learned a lot I was mostly miserable. I also did some
freelance work, and worked for a small web agency/consultancy.

I am now working in a R&D-like group at a very large company. In many ways, it
combines the best of all worlds: large corporation, academic research,
startups. I like reading papers and thinking about the future. I like the
scrappy hard working startup attitude. I like working in a team with people
that have been there for more than two decades. I like not having to worry
about my job because the company is large and printing money. I like having a
HR department I can go to if I encounter unethical behavior (I did not have
that luxury in startups). I like having an office of my own without people
talking about their life while I'm trying to work or my boss breathing down my
neck every 30 minutes (open floor plans have scarred me). The list goes on and
on; the gist of it is that I find it to be the best career move I've made so
far.

~~~
roskilli
MSR per-chance?

~~~
j2kun
"Best of both worlds" isn't the best description of academic work at MSR right
now...

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FlyingLawnmower
What's wrong with MSR right now, out of curiosity?

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kcanini
They just closed down the Mountain View office last week. Most of the ~75
people were laid off, I believe.

~~~
tobinfricke
Out of "more than 1,000 scientists and engineers" employed in total at MSR.

~~~
Mandatum
5<x<7.5% is pretty large when talking about employees.

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yellow_and_gray
_Overall, freedom is something you earn._

 _A real test of freedom is to look at what people do when they retire._

 _it is often more satisfying to serve others than to cultivate your own
egotistical freedom._

 _Being useful is hard. It means accepting people’s requirements._

 _Tenure is overrated._

------
Lewisham
I personally haven't found the paycut from Industry to Academia to be as
minimal as he implies, at least in Computer Science. I am making easily twice
as much working for Google as I could have hoped for landing a tenure-track
position. That's a significant difference.

~~~
collyw
Google have a reputation for paying above market rates, do they not?

~~~
VLM
Analyze the overproduction of PHDs vs open tenure track jobs. Comparing a
tenure job to working at google would be a fair apples to apples comparison.

The situation is not as bad as the liberal arts where being one of the
thousands of resumes picked for a tenure track job would be like getting one
of the few Nobel prizes in a hard science.

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cli
"Academic and government positions require you to work in a bureaucratic
setting, maybe for the rest of your life. In industry, you can be a lone wolf
if you want. In this sense, there is greater freedom in industry."

Can someone please elaborate on the industry part of this quote?

~~~
joshvm
Bureaucracy is directly dependent on the size of the business. Universities
are amongst the largest businesses around, hence the nonsense you have to go
through to get anything done. On the other hand, you do have backup if
something goes wrong which you may not be afforded in a smaller company. It's
the kind of thing you'll despise until you actually need to exercise your
rights.

My experience, as a PhD student with industrial sponsorship.

Big company:

\- stable job

\- stable pay

\- lots of bureaucracy

\- some freedom, but if you're a small cog in a big machine your efforts may
go unseen

\- potential to become a drone

\- likely to be standard 9-5 hours

\- usually good benefits e.g. insurance, pension.

\- freedom is having a life outside the office

\- routine can be rewarding and many people really require it

Academia:

\- stable job after 10-20 years

\- pay is meh until you get tenure. £30k nominal, up to £60k for a
professorship

\- lots of bureaucracy (LOTS)

\- potential for institutionalisation

\- limited freedom in choosing where your research goes, provided you're in a
position of power in your group (otherwise forget it)

\- hours are flexible within reason, potential for travel if your research is
hot.

\- researchers are petty as hell

\- scientifically rewarding. You probably won't change the world in your
lifetime, but that's OK because you love what you do

Note that while it looks like I've made academia sound arduous, that last fact
makes up for it for many, many people.

Small company:

\- stable job if the company is low risk

\- little bureaucracy

\- pay strongly linked to company performance

\- high responsibility

\- working hours depends on who you work for (tech industry is normally good
here)

\- benefits can be amazing

\- freedom is the potential to really affect the company's direction

\- can be very rewarding because of the responsibility

Industry can provide the ultimate freedom - working for yourself.

~~~
dmpk2k
_pay is meh until you get tenure._

More like _if_ you get tenure, which is increasingly rare nowadays. I think
it's a poor gamble.

~~~
joshvm
I think that's often overlooked. Simply going by the numbers, it's impossible
for all PhD students to eventually get tenure. Plenty of people end up being
fairly well paid research scientists until jobs become available. Tenure is
definitely a job of dead man's shoes.

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analog31
I have a slightly different view of what freedom is. It doesn't mean freedom
from responsibilities. It means freedom to choose the direction of your
research, but whatever direction you choose, you still have to work at it.

~~~
PeterisP
His point is that if you have freedom to work at whatever research direction
you choose, then it doesn't mean freedom from the other 60% or 80% of your
workload (as shown by surveys of tenure track researcher time allocation) that
is not really related to research as such, much less your chosen direction of
it.

Teaching, administrative duties, grad student supervision, grant proposals,
committee work etc make up the majority of the workload; primary research was
(IIRC) something like 20% of total working time.

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plg
one of the biggest differences between academia and industry, in the context
of salary, isn't just the salary per se but the increment in salary that is
possible. in academia your salary is very much fixed. no such thing as a
bonus. you bring in a 3 million dollar research grant with an additional 2
million dollars in indirects (that go right into the University's pocket)?
"thank you!" but your salary doesn't go up. no bonus for you.

~~~
_delirium
It's actually quite common for people in academia to get a large raise if they
bring in big grants in competitive areas, at least in the U.S. (in Europe it
varies a lot by country).

One mechanism is that you can pay yourself summer salary: official university
salaries in the U.S. are 9-month salaries, and if you have a big grant, you
can give yourself effectively a 33% bonus by becoming a full-time employee on
the grant during the summer. (Many grants not only allow this, but require
it.)

The other mechanism is the same as in industry: get a raise by getting outside
offers. A professor with a big new grant in a hot area, but a low-ish salary,
is an attractive target for other universities to poach. The person can then
either let themselves be poached, or present the offer to their university and
ask for a retention counter-offer. Either way, a raise around ~$20-40k/yr is
common in that case, although there is a bit of a soft cap on salaries, so
raises are easier from lower starting points. A raise from $90k to $120k is
easy-ish to negotiate, and a raise from $120k to $140-150k is fairly common
for people with a high profile, but one pushing you much above $150k is
difficult (and only a handful of superstars at top universities can get offers
over $200k).

If you do really need more than that, though, tenured professor in a
science/engineering area is also a reasonably good platform to develop
additional income streams (consulting, speaking gigs, etc.), if that's your
thing, since the employment contracts are typically much more liberal on
allowing that than is the norm in industry. Though imo that's not _really_ the
best use of the platform.

~~~
plg
that's a good summary, the figures you quote are accurate

the question is, then, what are the salary possibilities for a person with
similar experience, stature in their chosen field of work, in the private
sector?

my guess is there is a large range but I wouldn't be surprised (from what I've
heard from friends and colleagues) if the answer is, integer multiples of
academic salaries (if not 10x)

for example in Law, the equivalent of a tenured Full Professor at a large
research-based university, might be a partner in a top law firm in the city
they live in (a large city).

or in medicine, a specialist at a major hospital

or in engineering, a principle at a large engineering firm

etc.

~~~
_delirium
In areas like medicine and law I can believe that's true. However I don't
think it's that common in CS or engineering. I know quite a few people who've
moved from academia to industry and vice versa, and the pay difference is
definitely not 10x multiples. When a professor making low six figures jumps to
Google, he or she gets a pay raise, but more like 20-50%, not 10x: Google
isn't making $1m+ salary offers. For engineers afaict it varies by line of
work. I don't know a lot about areas where being a principal is a thing (civil
engineering?), but I can imagine those are lucrative. In areas like aerospace,
if you compare full-professor salaries at research institutions, to senior
engineering staff salaries at places like Lockheed, they're pretty comparable.
If anything it's easier to make more in academia, because you can consult on
the side, whereas big engineering companies typically disallow that in their
employment contracts.

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Daemon404
> It is not difficult to get some kind of honorary position with a research
> institute when you work in industry.

I think this statement is uh... a tad misleading. This depends _a lot_ on your
particular field of interest/research and companies you work for. Also,
notoriety.

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mc_hammer
my 3rd job in industry paid 109k per year, imo you would be foolish to pass up
industry now.

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dschiptsov
Theory or practice? Both!)

