Much better than research prototypes that go no where beyond a publication or two.
if everyone thought the way that you did, then we'd still be programming by submitting our punch cards to some gigantic centralized machine. think about how much basic academic research occurred before the invention of something like the iPhone became possible
EDIT: I'm not trying to say that pure science is universally unexciting. Few things are. But generally, more people seem to be interested in consumer products than pure science research.
This is why I'm not an academic.
I can respect basic CS research without wanting to do it myself. I use the fruits of it all the time. But when faced with a problem, I'd rather hack up something that's good enough to get something on the screen than spend the time necessary to cross all the Ts and dot the Is for a publishable paper. To me, the code and what you can do with it speaks for itself.
I would rather build novel games based on my ideas for the iPhone than do basic research.
"I know not what I appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell, whilest the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Quotations/Newto...
The point of making game is actually in having an effect on people, mostly the point of writing papers is padding out an academic resume.
I left, co-founded a company, moved onto other things and have never regretted leaving academia - I much prefer building things people do use to writing papers about things that people will probably ignore (that being the fate of most academic research).
The only bit about academic life that I wouldn't mind having is the nice juicy final salary pension scheme!
Which also raises the question whether there should be a similarly venerable(and compensated) position reserved for researchers who don't teach?
Being a staff scientist at a national lab is about as close as you can get to this in the US. Compared to being a professor you'll get similar money (sometimes more), less prestige, more time for research and slightly more annoying bureaucracy. There's upsides and downsides of each.
an academic research lab sponsored by a big company (note that this is not the same as a corporate R&D division) ... in the 1970's, this was epitomized by Xerox PARC and AT&T Bell Labs. today, Microsoft Research is currently the leader in this category.
I loved these classes because the profs were usually really passionate about the subject and that showed in their efforts. There was less droning on and emphasis on arcane, irrelevant minutiae and more "basic principles... now we build stuff and talk about the fun problems there". Those classes were so enjoyable that they almost made me pursue a PhD even though I am not right for that -- at least for now.
Being a pre-tenure professor is way more terrifying than being an entrepreneur was.
And, depending on the field, between 25% and 75% of your salary as a professor will come from being able to procure external funding.
If you can't convince the funding agencies to pay you, then tenure buys you an office, a teaching load and health care.
It's been terrifying for me because my hit rate is about the same as Matt's. I've had very little luck getting funding for my research.
And, at the last funding panel I served on, the funding rate was down to 5%. My own fund-seeking overhead is now at 60% of my time, and I'm still not getting any.
Either we have too many scientists, or not enough science funding. I don't think the current system is sustainable.
A little bit of both, to which I would add a third: the way we fund science is... I'm going to charitably say "sub-optimal"
Now you get to work for five years to earn your tenure. You work nights, maybe weekends. Your salary is better, but not that much better than your friends got out of university. At the end of the five years, you may be denied tenure. Are you going to give it another shot after that? Another five years?
Also, "and often times at / above industry (that's true at least in Canada anyways)", I do not see this to be true. Especially not for people of similar technical skill who work hard and long hours.
The biggest reason people do not pursue a tenure track position is a distinct lack of a safety net. The above only deals with the monetary aspect of it as well. The social cost is equally high: you never know where you will end up settling down.
The rewards are there (until someone decides that a restructure will get rid of all the deadwood - people who won the tournament then quite rationally began resting on their laurels) but it's not an easy game to play.
For first-time entrepreneurs I agree, but there are a lot of "serial entrepreneurs" who sold a company for multi-millions, and are now founding new companies. Millions in the bank definitely seems like a big safety net that insulates you from most real-world risk...
Is there any value in a PhD if you do your own startup, become a dev at a huge company like Google, or become a dev at a small company like Yelp? And if so, what does it get you over having five years of experience? I don't mean in monetary terms -- a PhD is obviously a net negative monetarily; what I'm looking for is the chance to make a living working on 'interesting' problems.
I probably don't want to become a lecturer because I see it as a service job - you're dealing with members of the public. But doing a post doc has paid as much as I'd get in industry, but with a lot more freedom.
If I could find an interesting startup I'd probably leave though.
For all the talk about costs of colleges going up, I have never seen a single explanation of where the money is going. And if it ain't going into research, then it's gotta be going somewhere.
But you can shift the balance of the various components if you go to different kinds of schools. To take the opposite end of the spectrum, if you're the CS prof at a small liberal-arts college, your job will involve a lot more teaching and mentoring undergrads, and a lot less grant-writing and research-lab management. It's unfortunately not true that there's a happy medium to fit every kind of temperament, but there are some options at least.
