
Ask HN: Academics who switched to industry, what's your experience been like? - onuralp
Academics: junior academic researchers including phd students, postdocs and early career profs.
======
the_decider
When I was post-doc at a well-respected university, the Profs treated me with
a combination with disrespect and contempt (when they were not outright
ignoring me). I switched to industry; my pay went up 3X-fold, and my talented
colleagues praised those problem-solving abilities that I developed over the
course of my academic career. My advice to you; f*ck academia! Its a petty
pointless prison where you’ll never do anything worthwhile. Switch to industry
in order to work and projects that actually have some impact on the world.
Only then will you be treated with respect.

~~~
expertentipp
> the Profs treated me with a combination with disrespect and contempt (when
> they were not outright ignoring me).

That's my experience of working with PhDs in software development (Germany).
Yes, you are very smart Mr. Dr. Whatever. No, your PhD doesn't give you
authority on picking the building blocks for the front-end and devops stacks.
Now chill and bugger off, go back to the C++ image processing ML models (1
year of development and no release still).

~~~
KKKKkkkk1
I've worked with lots of PhDs from all over the world, and I've seen something
similar from the Germans among them. Trying to assign menial tasks to their
"lesser" colleagues; trying to meddle in their work and impose arbitrary
decisions on them. In fact, I've seen them do it _among themselves_ and not
just to the non-PhDs.

~~~
jarvist
The German academic system is extremely hierarchical. So the head of the lab
will be on all of the papers, in spite of having no academic input etc.
Possibly the German PhDs you've met have inherited this toxic system as being
the management style to aspire to.

------
tlarkworthy
I left academia in the UK as a postdoc in robotics, joined Firebase via H1B
visa to San Fransisco, got aquired by Google, worked for 4 years. I found
working for Google stressful, but lucrative and so it was the best decision i
made. It totally change the course of my life for the better. I learnt so much
about building teams, scaling impact, productionizing software, dealing with
public. I missed academic problems, they are fun, but knowing your software
has millions of users feels better and its nice having family vaguely
recognize what you do. The medical and financial stability let me start a
family without fear, not having to stress about money is a huge weight off my
shoulders. I feel very lucky.

Not sure how repetable that is. I was lucky to get a h1b, and i was lucky
picking a winner like Firebase early stage, but i genuinely beleived it was
the future of development. So great move, and i think i could go back into
academia if i wanted, so its left me in a stronger position.

~~~
samblr
Firebase is good platform and loved by many now.

What was your reasoning to join firebase in its initial days ?

~~~
tlarkworthy
I had failed to make a multiplayer computer game with traditional approach and
realized firebase solved all my concurrency and push problems in a much neater
way, and the security language didnt compromise too much expressivity unlike
many other SaaS dbs. So i saw it solved a real problem in a simple way, way
better with better ergonomics than i could do myself

I found out about it just by reading hacknews and noticed it seemed to be
posting a lot and well.

~~~
throwawaybbqed
Thanks. I missed one such opportunity in my life .. encountered guys at a YC
event and thought they were brilliant. Managed to get an interview but it
didn't work out (partially my fault, and partially because they had no idea
how to deal with PhDs). Such opportunities are so rare in life. It is almost
like winning the lottery.

~~~
tlarkworthy
Yeah i seized the oppertunity with both hands. I proposed and married my
girlfreind in 2 days to get the visa jointly.

I got a job offer becuase i wrote software to solve a particular issue with
firebase at the time, and posted it to their user group, then they offered a
guest blog post which i wrote here
[https://firebase.googleblog.com/2014/02/firesafe-add-
complex...](https://firebase.googleblog.com/2014/02/firesafe-add-complex-
security-logic-to.html?m=1) then i think i got the offer!

------
teacpde
I did my PhD in physics, and worked as a SWE right after graduation. Halfway
through grad school, I started to feel academia is not my thing, but I cannot
quit for all sorts of reasons (at least if thought so at the time). I used
Matlab/FORTRAN/python for data analysis in my research work and intentionally
looked into CS stuff along the way. I loved it, took a lot of MOOC and managed
to eventually get a job in the industry. I loved it in the beginning, spent a
lot of personal time doing work and had no complaints. The industry has
amazing stride of coming up new technology/ideas, there is always something I
can learn which never makes me bored. Most of the people seem generally smart
and love their job. Over time I start to realize work is work and there are
many factors in the play. I have to find a balance among interesting work,
nice colleagues and good pay, but it is not too hard given the amount of
opportunities the industry offers. Overall I am happy I made the move.

My academia background wasn’t in the CS field, so I am not sure how relevant
my experience is. I did often need to look up and read CS papers to help with
my job, obviously not the same way as in research. I hated paper reading in
grad school but start to enjoy it now, one of the reasons is the interest and
motivation are stronger and also the for-fun mindset. Strangely it came to me
that maybe things would work out as well had I stayed in academia.

~~~
anonytrary
> I hated paper reading in grad school but start to enjoy it now, one of the
> reasons is the interest and motivation are stronger and also the for-fun
> mindset.

You're not alone! I found reading papers for the sake of reading them to be
boring. I'm not smart enough to read papers for fun like that. I need
motivation. As soon as I'm actually working on software, I can cut through
relevant papers and documentation like butter. Anything that isn't relevant to
a problem _I 've created for myself_ is very hard to get through.

------
alex-mohr
Matt Welch has written extensively about switching from tenured Professor at
Harvard to Software Engineer at Google: [http://matt-
welsh.blogspot.com/](http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/), with the initial post
[http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvar...](http://matt-
welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvard.html) Matt's blog is great
because (a) he writes it, (b) he's still connected to academia via program
committees and (c) you can see how his thinking has evolved over the last 8
years.

And there are of course a number of other former faculty there too, but none
that I know of who've blogged as much as Matt. In the systems space, off the
top of my head: Amin Vahdat, Mike Dahlin, Steve Gribble, Craig Chambers, David
Patterson, David Wetherall, Eric Brewer.

Personally, I've had way more impact (and fun!) building Compute Engine and
Kubernetes than I had in academia. If in doubt, try industry for a summer or a
year -- nothing we write can replace personal experience.

~~~
wanderfowl
Given that he put "teaching" in with "overhead", there's no shock that he
left. The precise reason I chose to push to continue into a professor position
was my love of teaching, and my willingness to sacrifice lucrative pay and
work-life balance for it.

To me, hearing this is like an architect talking about loving the job, but not
caring for all the designing buildings it seems to entail. And it's part of
the reason that I never advise my students who dislike teaching to even
contemplate the academic job market and trying to get a faculty position. If
you don't love teaching, go get actually paid elsewhere.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
At a tier one, you are paid to do research, not teach, unless you are a
clinical or adjunct. So it’s not just the professor binning teaching as
overhead, but the universities as well.

If you love teaching, then being a professor at a top tier CS program might
not be the right choice.

~~~
robotresearcher
Teaching, research and service is the traditional job description for tenure-
track professors.

Which tier one school does not expect and pay CS profs to teach?

~~~
barry-cotter
Carnegie Mellon has no problem with you not teaching anything but grad courses
if you bring in enough grant money to cover your salary and I’m not sure they
care if you teach grad courses either.

------
georgewfraser
I finished my PhD in neuroscience, then went to work for a new biotech startup
in the Bay Area. I did a mix of programming and chemistry automation there.
Then I started a software company with a lifelong friend and after a couple
years we found product market fit and it took off. We’re almost 100 people
now.

The work I do now has nothing to do with neuroscience, but I have zero regrets
about my PhD. It was a fascinating period for me and I view it as an adventure
I did in my 20s. I loved the work I did and it didn’t need to lead into
something else.

------
salty_biscuits
An education :) Two start ups after phd and postdoc. Liked academia but
couldn't afford it with two young kids. Joined a well funded start up. Was
great for the range of problems I got to engage with. Was eventually sold to a
multinational and very quickly turned into a soul destroying journey into the
abyss. So much dreadful politics and nastiness. Left for another start up and
am enjoying it. Have been involved in more of the business side this time,
which is also interesting (and maybe depressing). I think I like the early
stages of making something new. Supporting production systems and generally
being "in operations" isn't my cup of tea. Your experience may vary...
Strangely mostly miss teaching rather than research. I do more research now,
just don't publish it.

------
brian_spiering
I earned a PhD in Neuroscience. Then suffered through a couple of postdocs and
was not advancing in that career. I jumped ship to tech, working at startups
and big-ish companies in San Francisco. The money was nice but working style
did not match my preferences (frequent interruptions, projects decided by
others, and hierarchies).

I decided to go back to academia (and stay in SF), primarily teaching Data
Science. I realized that teaching is my passion. I took a pay cut, but it is
more joyful for me. I can pick the courses I teach and get to mentor students.
As I long I deliver, I can manage my time how I please. I still consult with
tech companies.

I realized that I had to make my own way through my life. I found my niche
which is 75% academic and 25% industry.

------
cinquemb
No degree, worked in lab for 1.5 years writing software for neuralfeedback and
data analysis for eeg/fmri systems in the NE area using a variety of
programming languages/hardware. 1 co-authorship for a paper and 1
acknowledgement in another.

I dont find industry nearly as interesting subject wise, but pays way better
than a research assistant with no degree. I worked remote (live in SE asia
now, and traveling some from ME to Japan) for the past 3 years from one
hedgefund to pharmaceutical data company (an arm of a hedgefund), and some
random work. Now I algo trade my own funds and work on neuro related
software/hardware side projects.

Only complaint is that too many employers still want people on site, but I
dont care about it that much as I used to now that I’m doing my own thing and
contract work if someone brings me something that interests me.

Don’t see myself going into academia again in the same way, not intersted in
the lab politics nor grant-paper hamster wheel.

------
dekhn
I was an academic on track to being a professor at a second-level university,
or a principal investigator at a National Lab. Moving to industry was a great
move- I didn't realize how badly compensated I was (2-3X income), had much
more support and freedom for exploratory research, and people paid much more
attention to my work (granted, I worked at Google, not all industry gives you
this level of freedom). I also learned a ton of better software engineering
and how to generally spend less effort to get better results.

If I had stayed in academia, I'd be spending all my time writing grants and
papers and getting scooped by less scrupulous but more fecund authors.

------
stakhanov
One of the things that really struck me is that after you drop out of academia
to go into industry there is really no going back. I hadn't expected that; I
thought I'd just give industry a shot since I can always go back to academia
if I don't like it. Not so. The people hiring for academic roles see it as an
act of high treason punishable by lifelong exile.

~~~
bem94
I don't think that is universally the case. I transitioned back into academia
after being in industry. Admittedly, I was only out in industry a couple of
years and I've not found academia to my liking.

My background is microelectronics, and in my experience there is still a big
skills gap inside academia which I think only people from industry can really
fill. There is no substitute for practical/applied engineering experience, and
that experience goes a very long way in informing how realistic or
implementable a piece of new research is.

If professors are insightful enough to see the skills which engineers from
industry can offer academia, then it's a benefit to everyone.

~~~
stakhanov
Did you get hired in a proper research and/or teaching role though in the
subject area that you previously worked in when you were in academia? Or did
they just pay you out of a research grant for a role as a technician of some
kind? Big difference there, as the latter are, in my experience, treated as a
"lower caste" and get paid neither as much as other academics nor as much as
they would get paid in industry.

------
boulos
I'm a PhD dropout, but I did do lots of (somewhat poor) research leading up to
that. For me, I was always a practical type, which made me less good as a
researcher and more focused on engineering. Throughout my time in school
though, I'd worked on the side (first commercializing our raytracing work,
then consulting for Sony Pictures Imageworks).

I still stay involved in research, as I attend SIGGRAPH every year and often
go to HPG. But, fundamentally, I'm sort of bad at imagining what will be a
problem several years from now, and much better at solving something that's
right in front of me. That led me to doing fairly systems-ey hardly research
work, and then doing that as a full-time job :).

------
jekrb
A former co-worker of mine gave a lecture about what it was like to go from
academia (Ph.D. in Classical Literature) to working in the tech/creative
industry.

[https://youtu.be/4-wNv9FHLqM?t=232](https://youtu.be/4-wNv9FHLqM?t=232)
(timestamped to just before he starts speaking)

------
RhysU
In the US. Undergrad degree included CS. Spent a few years in software
engineering industry. Left industry to pursue a PhD in computation _al_
science. Returned to industry right after completing the degree. At a hedge
fund for 4+ years now. Dunno if that counts as "switching". Anyway...

I love it. Interesting problems with demonstrable business impact when you
find a good solution. Software in an environment where robustness can be
critical but, too, overpolishing work can be full of opportunity cost. A
chance to keep reading/using academic literature. I hit a conference about
once a year. Great coworkers from a myriad of backgrounds. I can afford to
have a family, to spend time with that family, to give them a nice quality of
life, and to save for the future. I have been lucky/blessed/etc.

------
CyberFonic
This is a great question. Would be helpful if respondents could at least
indicate the city/country of their experiences.

Living in Sydney, Australia I am not finding much interest by potential
employers in my knowledge and experience in the field of software engineering.
From discussing the situation with people I meet at international conferences,
it would appear that the employment opportunities vary greatly across Europe
and USA.

------
rawland
The answers to this question will be as spread as possible, as a PhD is hardly
comparable to another PhD.

Academic experience varies as much as the experience of working as a toilet
cleaner compared to a man of independent means (= someone who stopped working
for his/her money) - had to look this up (German: Privatier). It seems to me
that there is no word for this in the English language which transports the
true meaning [1]. Prove me wrong, please.

[1]: [https://dict.leo.org/german-
english/privatier](https://dict.leo.org/german-english/privatier)

~~~
kaybe
I think that's generally called financial independence in English.

~~~
rawland
Thanks, kaybe.

After discussions with my SO she suggested to checkout wikipedia, and guess
what we found:

    
    
      Privatier ([pʀiˈvaˈtjeː], also spelled Privatus, with the feminine forms
      Privata or Privatière, meaning "private person") is a French word that
      was used from the 19th century in Germany and some other countries as
      a title by members of bourgeois families of substantial financial means
      in lieu of another professional title. Much like rentier, it denoted
      someone who did not have to work to make a living, and who lived off
      their assets of some size, e.g. interest, profits from investments, real
      estate and current assets.
    

sources: [0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privatier)
[1]
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rentier](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rentier)

~~~
dharmab
"Privateer" has two more common meanings:

\- State funded sea pirates, esp. during the 17th and 18th centuries

\- In motorsports, a team which is funded by a private individual or group
instead of a public corporation

"Financial independance" is the correct modern term.

------
Azrael3000
I did my PhD in Civil Engineering and a 2 year postdoc in Austria (home
country). I saw absolutely no future in academia, chances to get a permanent
position were really slim and you could only go from one project to the other,
which you had to hope to get funding for. Additionally, I was not happy with
the group I was at.

So I decided to quit and found a new job at a small start up that is
developing and providing consultancy for a CAE software. It was the best
decision I ever made. I also did simulations during my academic life, but the
pace has picked up significantly. I'm still at the forefront of research, but
instead of pondering forever over minuscule details I'm now making stuff work.
While the pay has not increased a lot, it's still better and I don't have to
worry about getting funding, even though we do some research project, but if
we don't get them it's not a huge issue. I have quite a diverse range of
responsibilities including some managerial duties and I have grown and learned
a lot in the past two years.

To sum up, it was great to leave and I wouldn't return unless I would be
offered a professorship. I was extremely lucky with the company I work at and
I think being in a small company allows to not just be another number in the
system but actually contribute in many different ways. Obviously you need to
have the right kind of people (incl. bosses) for that to be possible. Clearly,
in a small company the human component is a crucial one.

------
ykevinator
I left a research lab, started a BE company, failed, started a dev shop, which
has had some success. I am glad I left, but there is very little opportunity
to do research, or work on anything related to my phd. In retrospect, my
opinion is academia is a toxic, low productivity environment that punishes
ambition.

------
malshe
Not many professors from business schools leave academia in the US partly
because in business schools the salaries are much higher compared to other
fields. Of course they are still lower than in the industry. However, many
b-school professors do consulting and executive education which pays really
well - anywhere between 2K to 10K per day. Btw, you can look up salaries of
b-school professors in state universities in most states. (This usually
excludes other income though) Some of the top professors make more than a
quarter million a year. The highest I know earns more than a million a year
only from salary.

I know a few people who quit business schools to join industry. Their reasons
were mostly personal (spouse didn't get any job or the weather was terrible).
They joined different companies in the Bay area. One of them said he is very
happy with the transition in terms of money and dynamism but he rarely sees
his kids now!

------
timkpaine
There's a few options in between, namely the "industry professor" and the
"industrial researcher". Many universities will hire someone with suitable
industry experience who has previously adjuncted to teach classes and
occasionally do research as a "Visiting professor" (but you have to be good at
both sides, think
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjarne_Stroustrup](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjarne_Stroustrup)).

There are also numerous roles in industry which do research (even Oracle has a
research lab!). This is probably the easier route, especially if you're not as
keen on teaching, and more and more companies are open to people doing
speculative work and publishing papers (note that i'm making the assumption
we're generally talking about software development, ML, hardware development,
etc).

------
apohn
I've got PhD in a quantitative social science from an R1 university, so my
experience may be different than others with PhDs in CS, Engineering, or the
Physical Sciences.

In my view moving to industry was one of the best decisions I made in my life.
Much(!!) better salary, much easier to find jobs, lots of choices of where to
live, and better work/life balance. Having a decent salary and job choices
also helped to stabilize my personal life as well.

The big reasons for leaving academia were job and money. Some of the brightest
people I knew were fighting to get $40K postdocs jobs in high cost of living
cities. Others were taking adjunct professor jobs in towns they didn't want to
live in. All of it to hopefully one day have a tenure track job. One of the
research jobs I was a finalist for had a terrible salary in NYC, but they
provided subsidized housing in what was basically student housing for faculty.
Not getting that job was one of the last rejections before I gave up academia.

The small reasons were all around being disillusioned with academia, both with
research and teaching. The more honest professors would tell students to
explore life outside academia. The ego-manics would boast about how they had a
great tenure process and great retirement benefits, but all that was gone for
new graduates. Some of the best and worst human beings I've met in life were
in academia.

I was lucky that before my PhD I was a developer. So I had a some credibility
when I applied for roles in software companies.

Just for a different viewpoint, it's really hard to evaluate the life you
didn't live. When I looked at my PhD cohort 1-5 years after graduation it
looked liked academia was a terrible decision. 5-10 years out the folks who
wanted to stay in academia are doing well and the ones who left are also doing
well. By well I mean with life, not just money. So maybe in the long run
things work out, but the first few years after graduating can be awful.

------
replicant
As soon as I finished my PhD in computational science, I left to the Bay Area.
I did consider some positions in academia, but as others have described, the
low impact of the problems I was working on and the path to permanent position
didn't really motivate me. I have been one year in industry and though I am
doing something different, filtering and sensor fusion, I would describe my
overall experience as very positive. I still get to read a lot of papers, work
with very intelligent and motivated people and every now and then I get some
praise from my coworkers on my maths knowledge, which is nice. Deadlines are
tighter and the metrics in which my work is judged on are very different.

------
merraksh
Got a PhD in Europe and later moved to the US for postdoc, then visiting asst.
prof. then tenure-track asst. prof. All of these were very positive
experiences, teaching- and research- wise.

I switched to industry while in 3rd tenure-track year and moved back to
Europe, though the topic is the same (nonlinear discrete optimization). Most
of the work is software development.

Enjoying a better paycheck and working 9to5 Mon-Fri (rarely had a non-work
evening/weekend while in academia) but the research is still great and I get
to publish articles and go to conferences. Miss teaching a lot and clearly I
can't pick my own research topics, but the switch was definitely worth it.

------
travjones
I graduated this past semester (Fall 2018), but I started working in industry
a little over a year ago. I knew in my second/third year that academia wasn’t
for me. However, grad school gave me a paycheck (albeit small) + tuition and
time to develop other skills that I did not have after undergrad. Further I
had an awesome PhD advisor and enjoyed my research.

My experience in grad school wasn’t bad and I think it only benefited me when
transitioning to industry. At my job, I thoroughly enjoy my work and team
(it’s important you find your fit). The compensation bump was also nice
compared to a PhD student stipend.

------
pinheadaa
Pharmacology PhD (6years), post-doc(6 years), despite excellent publication
record, not flashy enough to get grants or a tenure-track position after post-
doc, continue as super post-doc(RS at our institution) for 7 more years until
funding finally ran out. Gravitated to big data analytics, learned coding,
learned ML and more math, looked for job. Total unemployment time == 1.25
years. Found current position (almost a year now) after about 200
applications. Happy as a clam and not the old bitter scientist of old.

------
k__
Better payment and people didn't care about proofs anymore.

It's okay to leave a few edge-cases out if it simplifies the solution
drastically and doesn't lift the error rate too much.

------
qznc
I don't think a general answer is possible. Academia and industry both cover
such a huge range.

For example in my case, I did a PhD and then went into embedded industry. We
did better engineering in some research projects than in the industry project
I'm currently in. In both cases the projects are not representative though.

In general, I can only say that I enjoy building stuff which gets actually
used. The chance for that is much higher in industry.

------
jillesvangurp
I completed a Ph. D. in software engineering between 1998 and 2003. I started
out in Sweden (Blekinge Institute of Technology) and finished it in Groningen
(NL). After that I continued as a post doc and then decided to quit the
academic world.

My main reason for this was that the paths to success in academia are
basically to be a glorified manager (aka. a professor) or a teacher. Doing
research seems to be mostly not on the table for either path as that is
outsourced to Ph. D. students and post docs on temporary contracts. The path
to professorship is long and hard and involves dealing with organizational
politics to establish slow progress via post doc positions, an eventual tenure
track position to maybe a professorship. Over the course of this career you
have progressively less time to do research and you get bogged down in
bureaucracy, budgets, and other management stuff.

The alternate track of becoming a teacher seems reserved for those that fail
the first path. This has always felt a bit wrong to me as an important
function of a university is teaching. But the reality is that as a teacher,
you do no research and you report to professors that are mostly interested in
doing research and regard you as a second rate citizen. This seems to be more
true in Europe than in the US where quality teaching is key to university
revenue and thus your career.

I was well on track with the research path having a steady stream of
publications and options for continuing. But neither path appealed to me and I
found the prospect of dealing with university politics, funding, and
publications for the next forty years to be unappealing. Teaching could have
been appealing to me but not as outlined above where you are essentially
treated like a career failure.

So I left university to work for a small software company (for the first time
practicing what I had been preaching) and later rebooted my academic career
for a few more years in industry by joining Nokia Research in Helsinki. In
there I found myself doing a lot of the same things as a post doc but with a
decent salary and career options. I had a lot of fun and worked with some
smart people on some cool projects. Unfortunately Nokia did not last and I
transferred out into the maps unit in Berlin. After a few years, just before
it turned into here.com, I joined the startup scene and have also done some
freelancing.

I haven't really looked back. I enjoy building software and learning new
things while doing that. I'm currently in a CTO type role and I haven't
published anything this decade. So, my academic career at this point is pretty
much over. I don't miss it but it is definitely been educational and
formative. IMHO the most important function of a academic education is
learning to think for yourself and the ability to learn new things. That
doesn't really stop when you leave academia and they don't have a monopoly on
this. Especially for computer science related fields, a lot of the progress is
actually made in industry, not academia.

------
dgzl
It depends how well you enjoy your work. Some business feels like a dream,
some business feels like hammer+nail=your life.

