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The U.S. is risking an academic brain drain

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Re: The U.S. is risking an academic brain drain

#161

Post by enraged_camel »

simplify wrote: post #152
e59d134d wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you say is so true even that micro-level. At my company, we were driven by by high code quality. We would try our best to minimize escalations, we will never release new code on Friday or late in a day because people have lives. We really made sure no one was working late or on weekends. And we were still competitive and profitable business. Then we get bought by a Fortune 500 company. Slowly new rules come in.…

Can you describe what you mean by escalations?

An escalation is an issue that cannot be fixed by a support engineer using regular troubleshooting methods and known fixes and has to be escalated to the development team. They are usually extremely costly and disruptive.

Re: The U.S. is risking an academic brain drain

#163

Post by devmunchies »

jacobush wrote: post #156
bussierem wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite the fact that all we can do here is argue using anecdotes, I'll toss mine in - I live in the US, not on the west coast (midwest for me). I make over 100k a year, I have excellent benefits, lots of vacation time, and when I leave work after 8 hours, nobody bothers me. I do feel incredibly lucky in this situation - I know not everyone gets the stuff I do. But I feel like maybe you might be mistaking "programmin…

But in Sweden almost EVERYONE (full time workers) gets 5 weeks vacation, 4 weeks contiguous, no questions asked. Not just engineers at great companies.

Sounds like high-school teachers in the US. Even the same pay scale.

From what people are saying (myself included) is that you can find those jobs in the US but possibly with double the salary. There's more variation.

Re: The U.S. is risking an academic brain drain

#165

Post by ptero »

ylem wrote: post #145
ptero wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government funding for research is important, especially for the pure science, but government should not blindly increase funding because some people are not finding academic jobs. With the (IMO pretty broken) tenure system in the US, research-track academic jobs can be very lucrative and with many researchers un-fireable regardless of what they do academically makes research both more expensive (folks goofing off) a…

I'm curious, what makes you think that people are goofing off? I suffer from selection bias, but most of the tenured faculty (in the sciences) that I know are extremely driven people who work nights and weekends...Have you seen any studies that would suggest otherwise? As for lucrative, I'm still biased, but I would say that academic jobs can be comfortable financially, especially given the stability of tenure, but o…

Mostly my observations when I was doing my PhD at one of the pretty good schools (one that considers itself in the top 20, but may actually be in the top 50). I might be suffering from the selection bias as well (as I decided not to pursue an academic career), but I did see professors who had no Ph.D. students, did not publish or present and just took it easy with a minimum teaching load. I do not doubt their teaching skill, but they were doing the job of, say, a senior lecturer at 2-3 times the salary and half the workload. There were not many (maybe 10-15%), but not a single case either.

My experience was on a "pure science" / paper and pencil side. Maybe it was the fact that one does not need grants for labs, etc. that takes pressure off as well. Among the grads (at least in physics) the split between experimentals and pure would be crystal clear any weekend: the first were in the lab, second played warcraft :).

Re: The U.S. is risking an academic brain drain

#166

Post by refurb »

dv_dt wrote: post #50
derping69 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is able to do this because the US subsidizes their existence. 1. Pharma companies develop drugs with US subsidies and make their profits off US citizens while European countries put price ceilings on their drugs. 2. US essentially defends the world, allowing other countries to spend money elsewhere. http://www.ibtimes.com/how-us-subsidizes-cheap-drugs-europe-...

Drug makers spend more in marketing than R&D, and I strongly suspect that most of their marketing dollars are spent in the US. So all we're really subsidising is more marketing to doctors via our high cost health care system. http://www.randalolson.com/2015/03/01/design-critique-puttin...

Drug makers spend more in marketing than R&D

Absolutely untrue. It's amazing how this "fact" continues to be shared even when shown to be false.

Re: The U.S. is risking an academic brain drain

#167

Post by dv_dt »

refurb wrote: post #166
dv_dt wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug makers spend more in marketing than R&D, and I strongly suspect that most of their marketing dollars are spent in the US. So all we're really subsidising is more marketing to doctors via our high cost health care system. http://www.randalolson.com/2015/03/01/design-critique-puttin...

Drug makers spend more in marketing than R&D Absolutely untrue. It's amazing how this "fact" continues to be shared even when shown to be false.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_marketing

http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/fact-sheet...

Re: The U.S. is risking an academic brain drain

#168

Post by QML »

Are scientists only valued when the United States is against a country of equal education?

I haven't had much time to read into this, but it feels like the advantage the United States has over other countries in terms of academic institutions has stagnated.

Where are the Bell Labs, PARC, Los Alamos Labs of the 21st century?

Where are the Neumanns, Heisenbergs, or Einsteins of this era?

Probably not here.

The agitation of identity politics and growing wave of anti-intellectualism is keeping our best minds apart.

Re: The U.S. is risking an academic brain drain

#170

Post by ahartmetz »

derping69 wrote: post #113
landryraccoon wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US chooses to do this though. The US can stop doing this anytime it wants to, nobody is forcing us to. If we don't like subsidizing Pharma companies maybe it should just stop doing it. It's not like Europe is asking us to. Similarly, I'm all for closing bases. If the US wants to close bases and cut military spending, who's stopping us?

Russia invading Europe is what's stopping us.

Fun fact: Russia has never once invaded Central Europe. Central / West European countries have invaded Russia a few times. Russia does not need space or natural resources and it would be difficult to conquer its way to the soft factors it is missing.

Given the strength of most European countries and their lack of natural resources, the chance of a large war being a net positive for Russia is small. Of course, sometimes there are internal reasons to start a war. Falklands and some US wars and, I think, most of Russia's small wars after the cold war come to mind.

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