Re:The Illustrated Guide to a PhD
by xanderlewis on Sunday January 12, 2025 @08:48AM
(#42673499)
Right. That's a shame, but it seems like that's just life. The idea that it helps to constantly emphasise (or, as you say, exaggerate) the importance of your work if you want to have a career is certainly not restricted to academia. It seems to apply to most industry engineering jobs too — from what I've heard. I guess in that context funding isn't the issue, but being promoted (and, conversely, not being sacked) certainly is.
Well in most engineering there is a market and going out into the market and selling is not the job of the engineers
Academia is rare for having the engineer also be the salesman
My wife is the lead mechanical engineer at a small company and she definitely doesn’t have to go around convincing customers they need her products
Physics may be in some sense more falsifiable, but it is absolutely subject to politics and social norms, both in how it lies about itself for money, and literally in which theories are chosen (since we can rarely empirically distinguish between them)