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Ask HN: Academics who switched to industry, what's your experience been like?

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Re: Ask HN: Academics who switched to industry, what's your experience been like?

#71
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!

Re: Ask HN: Academics who switched to industry, what's your experience been like?

#72
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firebase is good platform and loved by many now. What was your reasoning to join firebase in its initial days ?

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 notice…

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.

Re: Ask HN: Academics who switched to industry, what's your experience been like?

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 notice…

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.

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... then i think i got the offer!

Re: Ask HN: Academics who switched to industry, what's your experience been like?

#74

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 a…

I'm sorry to hear that, I never had that experience in my post-doc phase. May I ask in what field/location that was?

Bionformatics in the Bay Area. Afterwards, I switched to Data Science and NLP. Many of my skills were extremely transferable.

Re: Ask HN: Academics who switched to industry, what's your experience been like?

#75

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,…

Why was working for Google stressful?

Re: Ask HN: Academics who switched to industry, what's your experience been like?

#76
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.

Re: Ask HN: Academics who switched to industry, what's your experience been like?

#77

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,…

Why was working for Google stressful?

Performance reviews, being compared to peers all the time (and all peers are high acheivers). Feeling that to excel, i would have to work long hours.
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