It's hard to get those numbers, because of questions regarding how R&D is defined, but:
* Decent academic jobs have become extremely rare in the past 30 years.
* Blue-sky corporate R&D has been slashed.
* Worker autonomy is decreasing in most companies, resulting in low job satisfaction.
No one in the R&D world debates the contention that this contraction has been going on for 30+ years and that it's immensely destructive.
I agree with the engineers vs suits sentiment. But I think that has more to do with bureaucracy as the result of mega-corporations gaining dominance, bigger universities, population growth and the government growing in size - than it has to do with government (or university) R&D investment.
The startup scene shows engineers and innovations still reign outside of large organizational structures.
The startup scene shows engineers and innovations still reign outside of large organizational structures.
Disagree, at least if by "startup scene" you mean VC-istan. The VCs hold all the cards, and most of those startups aren't very interesting or innovative.
VC-istan is a postmodern tech company. A fairly good one, but more like a large bureaucracy than a research center. The CEOs are semi-independent PMs who are still beholden to their VC bosses.
The only way to turn VC-istan into something decent would be to impose strict regulations over communications between VCs in order to restrict their ability to collude on terms or blacklist entrepreneurs who piss them off.
Ugh, regulate communications? That means they'd have to monitor communication.
You can prevent collusion by creating more market options (removing barriers to entry) and promoting greater transparency in the industry.
I'll never understand why people don't look for solutions involving freedom first but instead always look to the government to add restrictions and regulations by force.
That would just make the VC's use encryption and other means of evasion, further pushing their negative activity underground and making it harder for new VC's to get started due to more costs in following regulation.
* Decent academic jobs have become extremely rare in the past 30 years. * Blue-sky corporate R&D has been slashed. * Worker autonomy is decreasing in most companies, resulting in low job satisfaction.
No one in the R&D world debates the contention that this contraction has been going on for 30+ years and that it's immensely destructive.