Not just startups, but any worthwhile project really. From an interview with Rich Hickey:
"I started [Clojure] while on a sabbatical I had given myself. Not a break from work, but a break to work, as a completely free person. I gave myself leave to do whatever I thought was right, with no regard for what others might think, nor any motivation to profit. In releasing it, I had the normal expectations for a new language—that ten to a hundred people might use it. Maybe I would get some help or code contributions. It has taken off, and subsequently demanded far more time than the sabbatical I planned. So, I’m trying to recoup some of the investment I’ve made. Had it been a financially motivated undertaking, I’m sure Clojure would not exist, but I don’t regret having invested in it."
Until the past few years when Galois folks and bos did a lot of library work.
Btw, what's the source of that consultant bit?
As the other comments said, Tcl and Lua are designed by phd guys. As were C++, Java and Erlang. I guess we've got a pretty good track record. I should use my phd in programming languages to do something useful. ;-) maybe later.
Just a few wild ideas, what do you think about these alternatives:
1. A more socially-responsible business environment, so that startups aren't the only icon to pray to?
2. Different funding schemes for research on high-arcing topics?
3. Reducing the "everyone NEEDS to get a degree" hype?
A lot of the instant gratification behind phenomenons like the startup culture is responsible for much today's bullshit in academia (I've seen a ton of it before I left it). IMHO, the issues run a lot deeper than how academia is (disastrously) managed.
1. The funding for research is increasingly scarce, and the ones who decide how big they are and to whom they should go are increasingly clueless. This means that ideas are funded less and less based on their scientific merit, and that more and more funds are handed over based on personal relations than on true selection.
This is an incredibly important problem. The retards running it are (like most retards) too arrogant to realize that we, as a race, suck at making predictions about what we can do. Both in terms of being too optimistic (remember thirty years ago when people thought we'd write these posts from a base on the Moon?) and in terms of missing obvious things, like electricity, which was intensely studied for several decades before it got any reasonable application.
There are many ways to avoid handing money over to crackpots. The focus should be on those, not on trying to judge the merit an idea might have in practice. We're too stupid to do that yet.
2. The bulk of the work is carried out by underpaid people, in bad working conditions. This makes smart people bitter, kills their productivity (in the short term) and their lives (in the long term). I distinctly remember my first workplace after I dropped out: it was a start-up where we were routinely pulling 60-hour weeks before we managed to hire enough people. This felt like a lot of free time to me. 60 hours is a free week for a PhD working on something worth a fuck. 120 hour stints are rare because of the physical strain they put on you, but you end up doing one every two months or so. Don't get me started on what that does to your life.
This may work if you have a bunch of Steve Jobs wannabe pretending they're scientists, researching how to sell things. Turns out, it's disastrous when trying to do real work. A lot of the jokes we played in the office revolved around that. They stopped being funny when we pondered how many drowsy PhDs were simply too tired to realize they could do <this thing> and bring us five years closer to treating cancer.
3. A lot of the undergraduate classes are becoming less and less fundamentals-focused, because academia is increasingly becoming the place where you're trained to work in the industry. Consequently, as people finish their senior years, they are increasingly less adept at research -- though, sadly, increasingly proud about their can-do attitude and so happy they have a Computer Science degree to prove that they can design websites, as if you actually had to fucking go to college for that.
Turns out these people are good enough for the wonderful world of startups. They're just as clueless about the real world as the people who pay them, their self-esteem is bad enough, and they are so utterly inept at learning anything mildly complex that they are easily sucked into the industry vortex. This isn't true only about CS and CompEng, it's happening in fields like EE and Mechanical Engineering, but the proportion of mission-critical applications in those fields is slightly higher, so most of the hipsters get cured after their first months on the job.
Turns out this system, while being almost satisfactory for the industry, breeds very bad researchers. Turns out it's hard to do research into web communication if 90% of your graduates have mad CSS skillz but still have trouble explaining what O(log n) means.
#1 and #3 above may be subjective, and there are a lot more points that I didn't want to bring in so as to maximize the chances of keeping the discussion civil. #2, on the other hand, while also being something I am quite subjective about (actually, it's the one I'm rather heartbroken about) is the one that escapes the scrutiny of people who are otherwise quick to cry out against the likes of Walmart.
Part of my dropping out of academia (see below for disclosure) is that I'm really not that smart. I'm good, but not scholarly material; I'm good at bringing together various technologies and finding atypical solutions to practical problems, but I suck at pounding on the same important issue for years and years at a time. I also suck at math. My brain isn't wired correctly for that. So, even if the working conditions hadn't been the way they were, I'd have left academia at some point, simply due to my sheer incompetence.
However, I had a lot of colleagues who were incredibly smart. People who could think of a problems in way I could never have possibly thought, and who were genuinely better at what they studied (electromagnetism) than I'd ever have been (I ended up doing research in EE by sheer chance anyway; I got into EE because I thought it would make be a better programmer -- which it did).
You wouldn't believe the way they changed in five or six years of working 10-12 hours a day, not only weekdays, but weekends too. I've heard more stories of wrecked relationships than I can think about, and too many of them are struggling with depression.
Most of them don't regret it at all. They're happy with what they discovered and genuinely feel they made the world a better place, but having been there, I honestly can't help wondering if it was worth it. I never bring it up with them, for obvious reasons, but it's very sad, especially since I can relate with that.
(Almost) full disclosure: I am an academia dropout. I dropped out during my MSc studies, despite being on a fairly good track (several articles, in several important journals (important as in "people who aren't scientists have heard of them") with my name on it, prior to me earning my BSc).
Of course you still need to get a basic understanding of how computers work with a software engineering degree, but knowing how to mathematical prove some algorithm is O(log n) is pretty pointless for most (not all) jobs in industry.
One of the things that is not taught well across the board in computer science programs is how to actually write code that is readable and maintainable and how to work with a team using source control, bug trackers, etc. Just to be clear, I am sure there are programs that do this well, but based on my experience they are not the norm.
I agree, but IMHO most jobs in the industry that don't require you to prove that an algorithm is O(log n) shouldn't need a degree at all.
In the area of the world where I live, if you want to be an electrician, you can do that after you finish high school. You have to take a course and get a certificate for it as a legal requirement (which is true of any profession where you can get people killed) but it's pretty straightforward, and the course only involves pretty basic stuff.
And don't look down on electricians. My degree is in EE and when I need some work done on the installation in my house, I call an electrician. I could do what they do, but sloppily and with far more dangerous results.
The CS equivalent to an electrician would be people who do basic IT support (i.e. tell someone to reboot their Windows machine) and easy programming like creating a blog.
And they can do their job just fine. This isn't 1995, when writing dynamic websites was a pioneer's job. What they do is enough of a commodity that it can be outsourced to college freshmen at the end of the world. People don't need a degree to do that now, just like they didn't need one back then, only for different reasons.
Also, no, doing electrician's work is far more complex than IT support. For one thing, the chances of dying because of doing it improperly are quite disproportionate, and the amount of theoretical knowledge you need in order to be an electrician is not negligible at all. Your average hipster who's proud of the amazingly cool things he's hacking on his Arduino knows a lot less about it than your average electrician, even if the electrician isn't so obnoxious about it.
What should an intelligent person do? What did you settle on? What advice would you give to young people?
Yeah, this is exactly why I changed my mind halfway through that long post :-).
I honestly love the startup environment. I'd much rather work in start-up than a large company. What I do denigrate is starting up for the sake of starting up. Finding an (often otherwise legitimate) need, pounding at it for six months while it's still hot, and coming up with a technologically half-assed product to sell for a reasonable price.
This is, in my opinion, destructive both intellectually and technologically. It teaches bad habits and gives little time to learn both adequate technologies and the fundamentals of their trade to programmers. I'd be a very rich man if I had a penny every time I told a colleague who was enthusiastic about a new technology he'd discovered on kickstarter or here on HN that <this operating system from the 70s/80s/90s> or <this thing from the 70s/80s/90s> had this. You know something is wrong when so many new things are so similar to old things -- so similar to the point that they repeat the mistakes.
As for academia, I still keep in touch with some of the people I worked with there. It's the most intellectually stimulating place I've ever worked in, and contrary to popular belief, one of the most refreshing feelings a professional can have is walk into a roomfull of people and realize they're the dumbest in there. I miss being the dumbest man in the room.
> What should an intelligent person do?
I honestly have no idea.
> What did you settle on?
I didn't settle yet, but if I were to look back, I'd say what I'm doing now is better than what I had back then.
Now I'm working for a large-ish company. Their business is entirely software, but they want to start doing hardware and they brought me in to help. They pay me well and I can come in the office at 10 AM, which is good (I have some sleep issues). The work itself is shit; there's a long ladder of managers who are increasingly clueless about what embedded development means, but each of them has to deliver results (no matter how irrelevant) because they made promises. Consequently, most of what I do is pointless, but not entirely uninteresting. In the last month or so, I dabbled in a USB driver in the Linux kernel, hacked on an HTTP proxy, helped a colleague build a PCB... it's useless, but not entirely devoid of fun. I intend to leave as soon as someplace where they actually need me to build stuff, not massage egos, shows up, but until then, I can bear it.
That being said, it also leaves me enough free time to do some hacking of my own, enough time for my hobbies, enough time for family and friends. I have enough time to brew beer with my girlfriend, read whatever books I want, learn Go and post crap on Hackernews. I'm far more unhappy with what I do than I was in university, but overall, I'm a happy person.
I'm taking a bunch less coursework this semester, and then I find out I need 30 points coursework to finish my MSc instead of 18. I would have been done with 18 this semester. I have to publish a thesis either way; it's a matter of whether they accept a non-Technion four-year-degree as a four-year degree or a three-year degree. I hate these anal, bureaucratic requirements; I just want to concentrate on research and in-depth issues rather than continually taking courses!
I just want to add one more issue:
4) In both teaching/coursework and research, academia is extremely detail-obsessed, constantly burrowing away from larger, important questions towards small, easily-answerable ones. For a good example, look at how many different kinds of differential equations the average engineering major at a really good university is required to learn to solve, and then check how often they actually solve those equations in either original research or in their jobs. Sometimes, yes, they do, but enough to justify having two or three distinct courses in just differential equations versus, say, a single full course in fundamental statistics? Oh, but there are a thousand different approaches to statistics!
The result is a system that, seen from the outside, appears to be trying to actively avoid tackling truly major scientific problems. Sure, it can give you a seminar on the latest approach to convex optimization problems or pure subtyping theories, but ask us what problems these solve and we academics will look at you sort of blankly.
In the research circles, this is simply because smaller, easily-answerable questions are the ones that fit the short-term grant applications. It's very unfortunate, indeed.
In the teaching circles, there is a slightly related case, which manifests through this:
> For a good example, look at how many different kinds of differential equations the average engineering major at a really good university is required to learn to solve, and then check how often they actually solve those equations in either original research or in their jobs.
This is because the mathematics courses need to reach a compromise between teaching enough fundamentals to be meaningful as math courses, and enough "practical" applications to warrant their presence in an engineering curricula.
I was also annoyed by taking math courses for three. Fucking. Semesters. But looking back to it, while I have forgotten much of the actual details they taught me, the type of reasoning they taught me stuck with me, and it's ok. I'm not sure if there's a better way to teach that.
> Oh God. You just described my life last year.
I hope it gets better. Cheers!
Academia has been a force for stagnation well before the 1900s. e.g. Einstein wasn't working in Academia when he released his 1905 General Theory of Relativity paper. He spent 1901-1908 working in the patent office while releasing papers outside of Academia. Only in 1908 he was appointed lecturer in acknowledgment of his existing works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Patent_office
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_Papers#Special...
If you want to figure out what's wrong with Academia I suggest asking economists who deal with incentives and market forces as a subject of research as opposed to the anecdotes of a few well-meaning physicists. Yes, the physicists are clearly smarter. But with few exceptions they're just not trained or equipped to asses these problems.
Special relativity. On general relativity he worked from 1907 to 1915.
Speaking of which:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_general_relativity#...
Seems he had most of the concept nailed down by 1907 but was struggling with the math. So, he worked the module step-by-step only adding gravity in 1915 after learning about Riemannian manifolds.
What's really getting at me is the arrogance of established "experts." It's kind of baffling (because it should be about curiosity, not certainty), and when you come across someone who has made it through the academic system and still retained curiosity, independent-mindedness, etc., it's a really refreshing sight.
That being said, a lot of what I do is unfulfilling and I've discussed several times leaving the academic world for some kind of tech startup life, although I'm not sure if that is a pipe dream or grounded in reality.
Years? a lot of great research is done as the culmination of baby steps, and papers can be published at midpoints. Even Einstein, from his patent office published at least 5 papers in 7 years. That's a pretty decent rate considering it wasn't even his fulltime job, and a PhD student working as such would probably be considered proficient(then again, I'm not aware of the paper rate of physicists).
I've met a lot more people in research who would just do nothing without deadlines than hidden geniuses that are hindered by their deadlines. Granted, I've met few geniuses too.
I'm really curious as to what task really requires years of uninterrupted work that cannot be segmented and presented for feedback.
"He dedicated all of his research time to this problem for over 6 years in near-total secrecy, covering up his efforts by releasing prior work in small segments as separate papers."
You know what? You just made me feel a whole lot better about my life. Thank you.
Gottlieb/Sennesh [childish, mentally unstable, anime]
Actually I don't think von Neumann or Curie had anything wrong with them in chasing the embrace of another. And yes, there is a major double standard in reputations. Curie after all chased love while von Neumann, it appears, chased sexual opportunity. Thanks for pointing it out. But the post was not insensitive. Most of these people are my heroes and I'm proud of all their accomplishments.
Eric Weinstein wrote that, "We have spent the last decades inhibiting such socially marginal individuals or chasing them to drop out of our research enterprise and into startups and hedge funds. As a result our universities are increasingly populated by the over-vetted specialist to become the dreaded centers of excellence that infantilize and uniformize the promising minds of greatest agency." [1]
Weinstein's "deviants and delinquents" include "von Neumann [skirt chasing], Gamow [hard drinking], Shockley [bigoted], Watson [misogynistic], Einstein [childish], Curie [slutty], Smale [lazy], Oppenheimer [politically treacherous], Crick [incompetent], Ehrenfest [murderous], Lang [meddlesome], Teller [monstrous] and Grothendieck [mentally unstable]."
Higgs's observation suggests that the systematic stamping out of non-conscientious non-conformists is a byproduct of over-scheduling them. (Scheduling has to be considered independently of effort, ability and experience. [2]) Weinstein's deviants benefited from a historical period during which they had sufficient time and freedom to pursue their greatest work (von Neumann, who didn't need any time, is an exception).
But I imagine that time is a luxury even for the deviants and delinquents who find themselves displaced from academia into startups. So what is really needed is a startup culture that provides for years of uninterrupted development and focus. (Not to mention a hiring process that actively selects for displaced deviants, but that's another post.)
[1] http://www.edge.org/responses/q2013 Edge 2013 : WHAT SHOULD WE BE WORRIED ABOUT?
[2] http://www.nber.org/papers/w16502 Don't Spread Yourself Too Thin: The Impact of Task Juggling on Workers' Speed of Job Completion. Decio Coviello, Andrea Ichino, Nicola Persico. NBER Working Paper No. 16502