Research Career in Industry or Academia

Posted on August 27, 2006  Comments (1)

In, Working in Industry vs Working in Academia, a computer scientist (software engineering) shares their experience and opinion on research career options. He discusses 4 areas: freedom (to pursue your research), funding, time and scale, products (papers, patents, products).

In academia, you’re under a huge amount of pressure to publish publish publish!

In industry, the common saying is that research can produce three things: products, patents, and papers (in that order). To be successful you need to produce at least two of those three; and the first two are preferred to the last one. Publishing papers is nice, and you definitely get credit for it, but it just doesn’t compare to the value of products and patents.

Related: post on science and engineering careersGoogle: engineers given 20% time to pursue their ideas

One Response to “Research Career in Industry or Academia”

  1. Curious Cat Science Blog » Second Life for Scientist
    July 17th, 2007 @ 10:52 pm

    “A farewell to academia and hello to Second Life – a professor of Physics and Astronomy moves on the the second act of his professional career…”

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