How is academia unfair in that respect? "letters of recommendation, publication in prestigious journals, talks at prestigious conferences" are a reflection of your academic abilities in your field, no?

Sure, there is some noise; papers get rejected where they should not have been. And other papers that should have been rejected, do get in, etc. However, by the time you're applying for a professorship, you're abilities should clearly shine through that noise.

It's who-you-know, not what-you-know. I should mention, by convention, you do not get to see the letters of recommendation yourself, so you're at the writers' mercy. (At least in my field, mathematics; others might be different.) Papers and conference talks become harder to do if you're no longer affiliated. Your abilities will shine through if you're Albert Einstein, but the 99.99% of "rank and file" professors don't need to be Einstein.

I'm not intending this as an indictment against academia. They're faced with a hard problem: many more candidates than job openings. They couldn't possibly do whiteboard interviews like in software, just because of sheer logistics. I don't know how academia could do it differently. Software can do it better because there's a LOT more money in software.

Nepotistic practices are rife in tech as well. It’s quite possible to skip tech interview hazing by knowing the right people.

Who you know is very important for academics. The professors I know are always on the lookout for good collaborations and to discuss new problems. You can only be successful in academia if you have good ideas, can articulate them clearly, and know what other people care about.

Being smart and knowing your areas are only some of the requirements for being a professor. Having just those two is insufficient.

You imply that strong reference letters, strong publications and talks at top conferences are obtained unfairly. Why do you think so?

If you look at the batch of assistant professors that start every year at good schools, did they pick the wrong people?

>You imply that strong reference letters, strong publications and talks at top conferences are obtained unfairly. Why do you think so?

There's no implication that the letters are obtained unfairly, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the resulting outcomes are fair. The point is that if you find yourself in a situation where you can't get hold of these things and yet you are, in fact, really good, there's nothing much you can do about it short of waiting a few more years and hoping to build up a better professional reputation. In contrast, you can just show up at a coding interview, demonstrate that you can in fact code (at whatever level is required), and land a job.

Case in point: I moved from academia to coding by doing this (without any relevant qualifications or having worked professionally as a software engineer). There is no equivalent progression for someone who wants to move to academia from coding.

The equivalent to acing a code interview for an academic is submitting a terrific paper. Papers are typically submitted to open calls without any referrals. If the paper has an impact, the rest of it follows.

Prestigious invited talks don't come out of the blue, but usually as a result of consistent work that people care about.

If a researcher can't get their papers published, in an activity where that is a key metric of success and the key communication medium, what's the basis of the 'really good' assessment?

Look at the list of keynote speakers at any major conference you understand. Are those the wrong speakers? Did they get this privilege unfairly?

I finally got one of the papers I'm proud of published! It was in review at a major journal for over a year, and then was soft-rejected for being too specialized (nice comments from referees though). Then it went to another journal, and was most of the way through the review process when the entire board quit to start an open-access journal. So we withdrew the paper and submitted to the open-access journal. They finally accepted with revisions last fall, and so I think it'll get published soon. Only three years from start to finish, where "start" refers to posting the finished paper to the arXiv!

Every job application process has its own kinds of luck and failure modes. The time scales of academia lead to very different distortions than those in software engineering.

Congratulations! A three-year ride is a outlier. I hope your arXiv version got some citations to keep you going emotionally and professionally in the meantime :)

It's quite absurd to suggest either that (i) the review process is entirely fair or (ii) that it is possible to land an academic position merely by publishing papers. (If so, where are all the professors without PhDs these days?) I don't claim that the process by which hiring decisions are made in academia is notably unfair by the standards of life in general or in comparison to many other career paths. But when talking to another (ex) academic, you must know that you can't get away with those kinds of simplifications.

I don't understand your rhetorical questions. Clearly, yes, conferences choose bad speakers sometimes.

I didn't suggest either of those two points, which I agree are absurd.

I readily agree these selection processes are not perfect, and institutional nepotism in particular is an issue in academia.

>The equivalent to acing a code interview for an academic is submitting a terrific paper.

You can get a coding job just by acing a coding interview (and having basic social/professional skills). So this part of your comment did appear to suggest that merely publishing papers can be sufficient to obtain an academic position.

You have to be invited to interview before you can ace it. So you probably have either a relevant degree or experience before you get in the room.

It's very much possible to get a coding interview without either of these things.

I've hired many people and interviewed many more.

What possible reason would I have to interview someone if they had neither relevant experience, nor a degree? Should I just ask random people I see on the street to come in for an interview?

If they can write a good covering email, have a few github repos, and some other indications that they might be smart/capable. I know from experience that it is easy to get interviews on that basis.

If you're talking about people who have no experience in the sense that they've never written a line of code, then no, obviously not. But professional experience and relevant qualifications are not necessary.

As with any job application, you need to have something going for you. It just doesn't have to be any of those two things.

No, you ask random people on LinkedIn like every recruiter does.

I used the word 'probably' on purpose.

Ehh, I guess, but lacking relevant qualifications and experience doesn't even make it difficult to get a coding interview. It is no doubt the case that most people being interviewed have relevant qualifications and experience, but that's not because there's all that much of a barrier to people who don't. There is certainly far less of a barrier than there is in academia.