undefined | Better HN

story

0 pointscratermoon3y ago0 comments

I have experience working in academia. I started out working for a medical school in fact, on bioinformatics. It's been a while, so I have kind of forgotten the problems, but I'll do my best.

1. Academic code. Not one institution would pass the Joel Test[1]. You pretty much covered some key points in your first paragraph, so I see not much has changed. The best predictor of how something will perform in the future is how it has performed in the past. Just hiring good software engineers won't change the system in which they work.

2. Academic bureaucracy & administration. I've worked for large Fortune 500 companies with less byzantine org charts. I've been matrix-managed. The siloing in academia is crazy.

3. Advancement. Because it's academia, advanced degrees are everything. My first boss in academia had a PhD. His job? He ran the student computing lab. My second boss was an MD/PhD. Great guy, but treated everyone like a lab assistant. I went to graduate school for one year and realized it wasn't for me.

4. (added after reading other comments). Completely unrealistic understanding of what developing robust, complex software is like. You touched on this by mentioning how many projects have 1 maintainer. I remember seeing a doctor shopping around his project plan. I'd say it would be a challenge for a high-performing 5-person team. He thought it was a job for a single entry-level programmer.

1 https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s...

0 comments

pclmulqdq3y ago

If you don't have a PhD, don't touch academic jobs with a 10 foot pole. They all got one, and they value the credential to a ridiculous degree.

When I last worked with academia, they essentially thought of me as the same as the guy who maintains the lab equipment, not an actual collaborator on their research.

cjbgkagh3y ago

The academic elitism doesn’t end at PhD. A friend asked a Nobel prize winner their thoughts of different person who was recently awarded a Nobel prize in the same field. Their response “Ah, yes that was one of the lesser Nobels”