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Goodbye Academia

anothersb.blogspot.co.uk

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Re: Goodbye Academia

#161

Post by rflrob »

Fomite wrote: post #154
_delirium wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the problem is that fundamental research requires funding In biology, yeah, although I think what a lot of people here are doing is reading stories about high-capital-cost fields (experimental physics, biochem, etc.) and then applying it to their own field, which on HN is mostly computer science. CS research really does not require a lot of funding, outside of specific areas (mostly hardware and robotics stuff). Al…

The biggest cost of my computational grants are funding for people . They don't go away just because you can pay for AWS on a credit card.

True, but that's not necessarily the case in biology, where the people are no cheaper, but the experiments are a lot more expensive. Assuming $N of grant is as easy to get in CS as biology (ha!), you'll be able to fund way more people in CS.

Re: Goodbye Academia

#162

Post by tibbon »

rwallace wrote: post #146
tibbon wrote: post #108

My girlfriend right now is trying to figure out her postdoc in neuroscience. While I fully support her passion, the industry of academia seems completely irrational from almost every sense and full of traps. While the end goal of a tenured professor is exceedingly stable, getting there requires heroic acts of risk, going with the flow and instability that even when compared with the world of startups seems insane. Af…

> While I fully support her passion This is not a criticism of you; I understand you're trying to do your best for someone you care about, which is laudable in itself; but there is something I think needs to be pointed out. You did not say "I fully support her rational and well-informed career choice". Probably you would love to be able to say that but, well, it wouldn't be true. There is a meme floating around at th…

True.

She's well informed about it, and honestly better than the majority of people in the field, but it still doesn't make the field in general a rational decision. In the end her goal isn't to make money or have tenure, but to do science that changes the world; which I admire greatly.

I could say the same about my friend pursuing music professionally (I myself went to school for music, but I'm now in software and far happier)- I went to school with people who probably haven't made $500 in the past year on music, and also with people who won Grammies recently and are at the top of Pitchfork and Billboard's charts. By no means does it make it rational; its a broken system that hasn't caught up to the 21st century, but overall there are still people in it who will do well no matter how hard it is.

On average, you're right however that the best choices are often somewhere in the middle for most of us.

Re: Goodbye Academia

#163

Post by mbreese »

One of the major issues in academia is the total abuse of the postdoc system. Instead of doing a postdoc for a 1-2 years, you can now see people in postdocs for 5+ years. It's a horrible half-way existence. You have your PhD, but you don't have your own lab so you get paid like crap. Instead of PIs paying staff scientists (which would demand 2X higher salaries), they just load up on postdocs because they are available and cheap.

Unfortunately, we have way too many highly trained scientists and not enough research funding. Realistically, the only way out of this is increased government funding, and that's not happening anytime soon.

Re: Goodbye Academia

#164

Post by Fomite »

rflrob wrote: post #161
Fomite wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest cost of my computational grants are funding for people . They don't go away just because you can pay for AWS on a credit card.

True, but that's not necessarily the case in biology, where the people are no cheaper, but the experiments are a lot more expensive. Assuming $N of grant is as easy to get in CS as biology (ha!), you'll be able to fund way more people in CS.

Agreed (I'm not a C.S. person, I'm a computational epidemiologist). This was mostly addressing the notion that because you don't need the LHC, or banks of PCR machines, or to enroll a couple thousand patients, that C.S. is somehow cheap, has zero costs, and zero pressure to get grant money.

Postdocs, and computing time, and grad students, and your salary are all things that need to be supported by grant money.

It might be easier, but to assert it's easy is flawed.

Re: Goodbye Academia

#165

Post by porlw »

cma wrote: post #152
prirun wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The medical / pharma industry is not interested in cures for diseases; they only want lifelong treatments. True capitalists, seeking maximum profit.

What's the distinction? Whether they sell a thousand symptom suppression pills over a lifetime at $20 or 1 cure pill at $20,000 what does it matter? Are you saying people literally pay by pill count? Patents are monopolies, they don't charge the marignal production cost of one pill while they hold a patent, they charge what the market will pay.

It makes it easier to price discriminate between rich and poor customers.

Re: Goodbye Academia

#166

Post by [deleted] »

cma wrote: post #152
prirun wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The medical / pharma industry is not interested in cures for diseases; they only want lifelong treatments. True capitalists, seeking maximum profit.

What's the distinction? Whether they sell a thousand symptom suppression pills over a lifetime at $20 or 1 cure pill at $20,000 what does it matter? Are you saying people literally pay by pill count? Patents are monopolies, they don't charge the marignal production cost of one pill while they hold a patent, they charge what the market will pay.

[deleted]

Re: Goodbye Academia

#167

Post by rachellaw »

I declined a PhD offer (full-ride even!) for a start-up

It wasn't the money potential, but the lack of opportunities in the field. You can work for less pay if you're compensated for something else in terms of opportunity cost (social status, privilege of doing what you love etc) but right now there's zero incentive and it's so bleak

A lot of my professor friends don't rely purely on salary even if they're tenured. There's other ways like speaking engagements, book royalties etc. I know some tenured professors who don't use grant system at all (especially in humanities) instead they get funding through collaborations and other sources

Re: Goodbye Academia

#168

Post by rachellaw »

mjn wrote: post #145
bradleyjg wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called the tournament model. Big law firms are the classic example. A related theory is that technology and globalization has, and will, make more and more industries 'winner take all'.

I wonder if there are high-profile areas that don't follow that model currently? Given that we're on HN, startups are another example that comes to mind, with the entire VC industry based around trying to hit those rare 100x (or 1000x) exits, and plenty of people happily willing to work towards the small odds of being the one.

any inelastic demand markets will not follow that model. tournament-systems rely on incredible elasticity of demand so any small change will cause ripple of larger magnitude (i.e. if a new VC joined in the supply of VCs, it will cause 1000x more startups to be funded in order of magnitude)

Equity/stock traders is one of them because of legislation that fixes the commission price per lot (so the banks cannot really use information asymmetry as an advantage) Not all banking is as profitable as people think it is

Re: Goodbye Academia

#169

Post by balladeer »

Such news are no less than scary and disheartening for a (third world) programmer who is applying for a master's and then intends to do a PhD and enter academia. My belief is there's always two sides of a coin, I hope I don't end up with a biased one.
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