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A comment on The Real Silicon Valley. Parent comment

Re:The Real Silicon Valley by michaelochurch on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @10:27PM (#4940992)
I don't think it's an unreasonable possibility, actually. What I'm describing is an R&D like environment. There's no reason autonomy has to come with the extreme and mostly random income volatility of the VC-istan ecosystem.

It's not that I want zero income variance. How many people would want to live in that world? I don't. It's that I'd be willing to give up the upside over $50 million in exchange to never have to worry about being unable to support a family.

There has to be a way to structure that kind of insurance plan without requiring a compromise of autonomy.

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Re:The Real Silicon Valley by hazov on Tuesday December 18, 2012 @10:52PM (#4941054)
Academia is like that if you choose your field of research well.
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Re:The Real Silicon Valley by michaelochurch on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @06:48AM (#4942167)
Academia is not like that. You don't have much immediate job risk, because jobs have defined lengths of time (2-year postdocs, 6-year tenure race, indefinite tenure) but the career risk is intolerable. Academia has a terrible job market; it has sold out a generation and a half and I don't see it being able to unwind that.

Academia has almost no financial upside but a lot of downside.

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Re:The Real Silicon Valley by rgbrgb on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @09:04AM (#4942589)
I've had a lot of CS professors that consult in industry for huge payouts (particularly in more applied fields like biometrics and graphics) and I know there are applied math people doing the same. It looks incredibly hard to get a tenured academic job, but I think once you're there in an applied field, your title can be very lucrative.
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Re:The Real Silicon Valley by trhtrsh on Wednesday December 19, 2012 @07:23PM (#4945636)
That's the same as saying post-IPO/acquisition founders are well-positioned for future life. It's not an answer the question of "is it worth taking the risk of putting in a decade of effort?"
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