WHO Cancer Agency Asked Experts to Withhold Weed-Killer Documents - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/who-cancer-agency-asked-experts-to-withhold-weed-killer-documents/ <comment><USER2> This has been coming for quite a while. The IARC seems to have its own agenda and it isn't always based on scientific integrity.

Good start for those who want to know what's been going on should check out David Zaruk's site. He's been following the machinations at the IARC (NGO activist engagement) for quite a while.

[https://risk-monger.com](https://risk-monger.com)

He also microblogs at his facebook site [https://www.facebook.com/riskmonger/posts/550309911838746:0](https://www.facebook.com/riskmonger/posts/550309911838746:0)

"...IARC is a mess. They do not represent a balanced membership of the research community (for their 50th anniversary event, of the 1000 guests, not a single cancer researcher from industry was invited). Rather than retract their biased glyphosate monograph, they have attacked other science institutions like EFSA and the German BfR; they have publicly criticised scientists, they have allowed an activist from the Environmental Defense Fund to advise their panel and campaign on their behalf, they have provided data to journalists to attack EFSA ... and now this! Wild, Straif and Guyton continue to attack - they don't see the scandal they have caused - they will not go nor will they retract the glyphosate monograph..."

</comment><comment><USER3> _Asked about its actions, the agency told Reuters on Tuesday it was seeking to protect its work from external interference and defending its panels ' freedom to debate evidence openly and critically._

Scientific studies in the public interest conducted by an organization like that should be open. Outside groups should be given the opportunity to verify your results. That's how science evolves.

<comment><USER4> I'm not arguing that the IARC made the right scientific call on this monograph, and in fact I think they are likely to be wrong since so many other organizations disagree. However, I think it's absolutely essential to protect the private deliberations in science.

What should be open is the final reasoning, the results and data that go into a conclusion. But the process of getting there should allow people to make all sorts of mistakes until they get it right, without facing undue scrutiny during that process.

There are far too many biased groups that will take any indication of a simple arithmetic error that gets corrected as a sign of corruption or manipulation.

In mathematics, a proof shows all the work, but you don't have to show all your failed attempts until you get to a proof. I don't think that these scientists should be treated differently.

<comment><USER3> Making the "final reasoning" open without also making the data that was used to reach that final reasoning creates too much room for speculation and conspiracy theories.

Show me the data!

If I can examine it and reach the same or a different conclusion, then we can begin a real discussion on why. That's science.

<comment><USER5> The data are public. [http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol112/index.php](http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol112/index.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Glyphosate was discovered by Monsanto and is one of the main components of roundup but it's not patent protected anymore and it's used in one form or another globally in 100's if not 1000's of herbicide products. So I don't understand why the focus on Monsanto other than it's an "evil" name that is more or less known.

This is also a weird request since the documents release was requested due to the fact that this was found to be unsafe, even tho quite a few other bodies found it to be generally safe even at pretty darn high doses (2000-5000mg/kg) including the EU Food Safety Agency which is a pretty strict organization.

<comment><USER7> > it's not patent protected anymore

Why does that make a difference? Monsanto makes $15 billion in revenue a year directly or indirectly from its glyphosate sales. They also sell GMOs that are glyphosate resistant, so they are helped by glyphosate sales whether it's sold by them or not.

Seeds and genomics $10,243 million 68.3%

Agricultural productivity $4,758 million 31.7% [1]

[1] [http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/05/26/how-much-money- does...](http://www.fool.com/investing/2016/05/26/how-much-money-does- monsanto-make-from-roundup.aspx)

<comment><USER8> They make their money from the glyphosate-resistant GMO crops, not from glyphosate itself.

<comment><USER7> Did you see the numbers I posted? They make 5 billion off of glyphosate.

Also, if the majority of their money comes from glyphosate resistant crops, isn't it obvious that they have a strong vested interest in glyphosate?

<comment><USER9> The numbers you posted suggest that they make a maximum of $5 billion off of glyphosate ("Agricultural productivity"). It doesn't show how much of that is actually glyphosate. You're free to assume it's 100%, but it may not be maximally wise to expect everyone else to make the same leap of logic.

I expect their ownership of the Climate Corporation, which is about climate and weather data, falls under "Agricultural productivity".

<comment><USER7> You ignored the second half of my comments, which is that the other $10 billion of their profits are directly dependent on the commercial viability of glyphosate, no matter who sells it.

<comment><USER9> You're right! I did fail to expressly address the second half of your comment. Please accept my apologies for this egregious oversight.

The other half of your comment suffers from the same flaw. The source you provide has high-level numbers, but it doesn't show how much of that is actually glyphosate-related. You're free to assume it's 100%, but it may not be maximally wise to expect everyone else to make the same leap of logic.

It is known for certain that the number is not 100%, because Monsanto is known to have revenue-generating businesses outside of glyphosate.

<comment><USER7> I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole that always seems to appear whenever Monsanto is discussed. You can see in Monsanto's own website and literature, (for example [1]), that the majority of their revenue comes from glyphosate and glyphosate related products. If you wish to gaslight and deny reality, then we can end this discussion now.

details strong revenue of their glyphosate-resistent soybean:

[1] [http://www.monsanto.com/investors/pages/letter-to- shareowner...](http://www.monsanto.com/investors/pages/letter-to- shareowners.aspx)

<comment><USER9> I'm sorry. I was unaware that it was gaslighting someone to suggest that perhaps numbers in supporting documentation should be involved when they make strong claims about verifiable financial questions.

I'll stop immediately. Please accept my deepest and humblest apologies.

<comment><USER7> You can be sarcastic and rude, but you shouldn't be lazy. We aren't talking about something abstract like whether alien life exists. You can visit the website of the company's brands directly. If you still decide to sarcastically ignore this, I will assume you have an agenda.

[http://www.monsanto.com/investors/documents/pubs/2007/ar_200...](http://www.monsanto.com/investors/documents/pubs/2007/ar_2007_glance.pdf)

Top products in the 10 billion revenue segment:

See references that each of these is glyphosate resistent

DEKALB [1] [2]

Asgrow [3] [4]

Deltapine [5]

Seminis [6]

[1] [https://www.aganytime.com/dekalb/specialty/Pages/Spring- Cano...](https://www.aganytime.com/dekalb/specialty/Pages/Spring-Canola.aspx)

[2] [https://www.aganytime.com/dekalb/Pages/default.aspx](https://www.aganytime.com/dekalb/Pages/default.aspx)

[3] [https://www.aganytime.com/asgrow/Pages/default.aspx](https://www.aganytime.com/asgrow/Pages/default.aspx)

[4] [https://www.aganytime.com/asgrow/weed-mgt/Pages/Roundup- Read...](https://www.aganytime.com/asgrow/weed-mgt/Pages/Roundup-Ready-Xtend- System.aspx)

[5] [http://www.monsanto.com/products/pages/deltapine.aspx](http://www.monsanto.com/products/pages/deltapine.aspx)

[6] [https://www.seminis.com/global/us/products/Pages/Performance...](https://www.seminis.com/global/us/products/Pages/Performance- Series-Sweet-Corn-Seed-Varieties.aspx)

<comment><USER6> No one doubts that Monsanto is making money of this, but they are really not the only ones Bayer and BASF SE are big even bigger than Monsanto you also have Pioneer (dupont) and quite a few other players which are of a similar size. You also have China which are doing their own thing probably violating every patent in the world in the process.

<comment><USER7> > No one doubts that Monsanto is making money of this

What? The whole point of this thread was to allay Kalium's doubts. Am I taking crazy pills here?

<comment><USER10>
      >  Am I taking crazy pills here?

If you are, then so am I. Could just be all the glyphosate though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Who demands these e-mails from IARC was not researched in the article. It's:

"Energy & Environment Legal Institute"

[http://www.desmogblog.com/energy-environment-legal- institute](http://www.desmogblog.com/energy-environment-legal-institute)

With "connections with "the Koch brothers, Art Pope and other conservative donors seeking to expand their political influence."

"The Guardian has described E&E Legal/the American Tradition Institute as having "a core mission of discrediting climate science and dismantling environmental regulations"

</comment><comment><USER12> The IARC has long since undermined their credibility with scientists, and I worry that their agenda driven publications will impact good work done by the WHO.

Injecting agendas into scientific reviews poisons the well of trust, and trust is half the battle when working to combat disease in foreign countries. The WHO really needs to reign in the IARC and soon.

</comment><comment><USER13> >> Monsanto's vice president of strategy, Scott Partridge, told Reuters he considered IARC's actions "ridiculous".

>> "The public deserves a process that is guided by sound science, not IARC's secret agendas," he said.

It's great to see a big player like Monsanto advocating for open science.

/deadpan

</comment><comment><USER14> FYI: I thought this were about marijuana after reading the title not some herbicide stuff.

</comment><comment><USER15> > [...] United States, Europe, Canada, Japan [...]

Hey America, Europe is not a country.

<comment><USER16> In most of the world America is not a country either, but a continent.

<comment><USER15> See? It's irritating, isn't it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone have any links to the various relevant studies mentioned in this article? I'm disinclined to take the word of a popsci rag on anything.

<comment><USER5> Here's the link to the WHO report: [http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol112/index.php](http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol112/index.php)

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the link. From the summary of findings on page 78: "Glyphosate is probably carcinogenic to humans (Group 2A)."

From page 22 of the preamble: the category Group 2A "is used when there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals".

[http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol112/mono112-F06....](http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol112/mono112-F06.pdf)

<comment><USER12> Also :

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_2A_carcinog...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_2A_carcinogens)

Something may also be classified as 2A when "Exceptionally, an agent may be classified in this group solely on the basis of limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans." Which I think Glyphosate falls into.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Glyphosate is a key ingredient of the herbicide Roundup,

That's right.</comment>


New programming jargon you coined - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2349378/new-programming-jargon-you-coined <comment><USER2> I have one, at work and amongst friends, named after me :(

"Flakey Tom" - which basically is when someone (usually me) writes some code, tests/debugs it, runs compiler test, ensure it works etc.... and then adds "one extra quick line of code" ( _it will be fine guys!_ ) before checking it into the main branch.

And subsequently everything breaks for about 3 hours.

<comment><USER3> I'm lucky enough to currently not work with collegues that could coin names for my failures, I'd hate to imagine what a 'jam' looks like. It might be 'idiot move to add one item to a firewall access list that locks out the idiot _and_ the rest of the internet, requiring a live body to transport himself to the hosting facility'. Of course this never happened. I wish.

Shit happens, don't worry about it.

And I think that there are a lot of 'Flakey Toms' on HN, even when they're named George or Sally :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My favorite: "Barack Obama - An account in Redmine that we assign our most aspirational tickets to, i.e. the stuff we'd really like to do with a project but will probably never get approval for."

</comment><comment><USER5> My favorites:

Doctype Decoration: When web designers add a doctype declaration but don't bother to write valid markup.

Object Oriented Pasta: Used to describe spaghetti code wrapped in classes to make it look like an object.

Hooker Code: Code that is problematic and causes application instability (application "goes down" often).

<comment><USER3> These are really funny. Especially the Object Oriented Pasta.

I've seen some of that and had to clean it up, it made me wish for a shotgun and some ammo at times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My favourite: Megamoth.

Stands for MEGA MOnolithic meTHod. Often contained inside a God Object, and usually stretches over two screens in height.

Megamoths of greater size than 2k LOC have been sighted. Beware of the MEGAMOTH!

<comment><USER7> What's worst, these usually contain mission-critical code. I have had to tackle a 6k line one, in PL/SQL.

You open up a package, the line count reads 6k. You shudder. Then, you notice that the structure tree has only one entry. One procedure. Feeling of absolute defeat sets in.

Fortunately, it was only about 4k of actual LoC, because the previous developers had created a ghetto version control using comments.

Still, it took me the better part of the day to find what I was looking for in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having a shared vocabulary is critical for communicating and new terms are always being invented as technology progresses. Reading this actually helped clarify my thought process in some areas. A million internets to OP.

</comment><comment><USER9> When coding in LabView I like to call the wires and blocks spaghetti and plates because it's always spaghetti code and it looks like two waiter collided on a busy day.

(i.e. <http://www.dieterb.de/ccdlockin/diagram.png>, not mine)

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm coining "speed chess programming".

Getting a bunch of programmings together to hack out a quick project with limited time to think about your next move.

</comment><comment><USER11> My favorite:

Bloombug: A bug that accidentally generates money

<comment><USER3> I have one just now, it inspired this comment:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1332560>

I noticed a certain bug actually caused me a bit of extra income so I left it in place. It still is, it still makes money, and has been going for about 5 months now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Uh-Oh Programming

I coined this as a play on "OO Programming" to refer to code that is Seriously OO With Lots of Design Patterns, many layers and too many abstractions such that what could have been a fairly simple and smaller program has become a huge mass of files, classes, interfaces, methods, each of which does very little, and is almost impossible to tell exactly what it does without stepping through it in the debugger. Whenever I've seen Uh-Oh code, it is almost always Java (because the OO/DP/injection craze was not in full bloom back when I worked with C++ a lot), almost always wired up at the very top with Spring XML, and maintained by a large number of salaried programmers in an enterprise development environment (where IT is a cost center, not the actual product they sell.) -- can you say, job security?</comment>


First open-sourced budget - <AUTHOR> http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/02/02/five-new-things-about-the-fy2016-budget <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm nitpicking, but using the word "open source" for anything but source code (this project is a collection of Markdown and CSV files) sounds odd to me, and a bit like a meaningless buzzword. We've had the word "public" for at least 2000 years, and the complete US budget has always been freely available and in the public domain, even online in recent previous years. I hope Github doesn't _completely_ turn into a marketing tool like every other aging social network because I actually quite like using it.

But here's the Github repo page. [https://github.com/WhiteHouse/2016-budget- data](https://github.com/WhiteHouse/2016-budget-data)</comment>


Goodbye Academia - <AUTHOR> http://anothersb.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/goodbye-academia.html?m=1 <comment><USER3> These kinds of things are daily discussions in laboratories all over the world. Everyone knows there's no future in academia, and so everyone is looking for an exit plan. I actively discourage people from doing a PhD. Academia is a horrible feudalistic system that doesn't pay well enough to keep the bright minds it attracts. There is no sense in being a post-doc for life. Much better to take that hedge fund job.

The really concerning potential consequence of this is that it could result in a dearth of innovation in cures for diseases, and we won't see the affect of losses until 5 or 10 years down the road. No one will fund a biotech startup that's not backed by MDs or PhDs and academia-approved proof-of-concept results. Good luck getting that when everyone is running for the lifeboats.

<comment><USER4> > I actively discourage people from doing a PhD. Academia is a horrible > feudalistic system that doesn't pay well enough to keep the bright minds it > attracts. There is no sense in being a post-doc for life. Much better to > take that hedge fund job.

Underlying your comment is the assumption that every one wants the hedge fund (or other) job. One of the allures of academia is the prospect of doing fundamental research. You ignore that many people derive satisfaction from doing fundamental research that has the potential to be widely used across the research community (and possibly, for product development, e.g. industry labs, some government labs). It is simplistic to dismiss academia as a feudalistic system. There are merits, demerits, and other nuances.

Also, there are, figuratively speaking, thousands of academic fields, each with its own system and culture. For example, academic jobs are plentiful for PhD graduates in these areas (in my experience): information technology/information systems (as opposed to computer science), management, accounting, finance, organizational behavior, etc.

A summary dismissal of academia as 'feudal', especially when such an assessment underlies 'advice' is an unnecessary exaggeration.

<comment><USER5> _One of the allures of academia is the prospect of doing fundamental research_

It's also a false allure: the problem is that fundamental research requires funding, and the OP is pointing out that he can't get it. He'll be in essence locked out of research _and_ not make a lot of money at it.

This is like saying, "One of the allures of acting is the prospect of being famous and sleeping with lots of fans." On the one hand it's true; on the other, it's very unlikely.

<comment><USER4> The analogy does not make sense. I know many colleagues who got into academia and were able to find plenty of funding. It wasn't a lucky break that helped them, but hard work and talent. The system is far from perfect, but it is not 'feudal', etc. as the parent comment claims. Systematic hard work can get you results in academia. From what I understand about show-biz, it requires a lot more than just talent and hard work.

Also, your comment ignores the fact that OP is in just one nook of academia. Further, OP is one data point in that one nook of academia. That he is the top institutes doesn't 'weight' his opinion either way, in the grand scheme of things.

<comment><USER6> I got a PhD in computer science, and I landed a research job in industry where I get to do both research and development. So, half production, half academia.

I consider myself _extraordinarily_ lucky. I can point to many different instances of luck that enabled me to be where I am now. Hard work and talent are a given, but among those that work hard and are talented, there's a lot of blind luck that determines who gets the few positions that are available. I continually remind myself not to fall prey to the narrative fallacy, and think that I was somehow "destined" for my current position, and that I got here entirely because of my own work. I was not, and I did not.

I know people who did _not_ land those academic positions, and are either in industry not doing research, or stuck in the post-doc waiting room.

<comment><USER4> This is not about the philosophical debate of luck vs. effort. In my opinion, show-biz vs. academia analogy is not valid (Though there are no Jaden Smith's in academia, I won't use that as a counter-example. Doing so would perpetuate this analogy.). The metrics on which actors are judge are fuzzy and subjective at best, and spurious at worst. Academics, OTOH, (excluding China and a few other offenders) are mostly judged justly- whether in grant applications or in job applications or for tenure.

<comment><USER7> There are indeed Jaden Smiths in academia. I personally know people who did their first degree in (humanities subject) and got a PhD position in (top 5 world school) doing (in-demand science subject) and followed by a postdoc in a great institution based entirely on their father being very important in the subject.

These people got funded graduate spots in the best departments in the world, beating out others who obtained first-class degrees (4.0 for the North Americans) and worked their entire lives towards this dream.

How does this happen? Do you want to be the guy who refused to supervise the daughter of the nth most important person in your field? A man who has given you important references in the past and may do so again? When this relationship could get you even closer to the Will Smith of your field? This is good old fashioned corrupt nepotism for all the good old fashioned reasons.

Now, these people are both genetically and environmentally predisposed to be much better than average at this work. Sometimes it works out well. It is possible that this is a good outcome for science. But is it fair? It is not.

(Written as a working prof who had no academic connection advantages. I acknowledge that being white, male and having English as a first language was not a a bad place to start from).

<comment><USER8> > Do you want to be the guy who refused to supervise the daughter of the nth > most important person in your field?

I never witnessed literal nepotism where family relations were involved. But, this definitely does happen when it comes to academic "family"\- a famous advisor's "son" or "daughter" usually has a significant edge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's worth noting that this guy is running a kickstarter campaign re: " _A free, up-to-date, crowdsourced protocol repository for the life sciences_ ". If we are sending tons of traffic his way, maybe we should send some to his kickstarter too.

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1881346585/protocolsio-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1881346585/protocolsio- life-sciences-protocol-repository)

</comment><comment><USER10> I quit my second postdoc to launch a nonprofit research institute (we did not get funding, and are retrying later this year). I currently drive for lyft - and make more money than I did as a postdoc, with far fewer hours and better working conditions. This makes economic sense; it's not clear to me that what I was doing as a scientist was really doing society any good, at least as a late night driver I'm 1) giving people what they want and 2) keeping drunk people off the streets (a social good).

My Academic path has been tortured; graduated from a really good undergrad, went to an even better grad school (my cohort is basically placed as faculty at places like Berkeley, Stanford, UCSD, TSRI, etc). But in grad school I lost time cleaning up after an irresponsible grad student (who, btw, is faculty at UW) and only published two papers that aren't flashy but are solid, and in second-tier journals. Did an amazing first postdoc actually possibly helping the world (pushing forward a drug candidate), at a third-tier school - <USER2> due to the economic collapse, was hard to get a job/good position in 2009. One publication, second-tier journal. Did a more amazing second "postdoc" (actually hired as a BS biologist, via craigslist) under a nobel laureate, at an institution where publishing isn't a priority, and the resources available are somewhat orthogonal to doing the comprehensive set of experiments necessary to get a cell/nature/science paper. My efforts resulted in improving an enzyme - three times (there are very few people who can claim to have done that even once), again, second-tier journals (two are papers-in-work, even though I've quit, i'm still going over there to get them written up). I'm not really ever going to get a faculty position (tried, two years running). I see crappier postdocs and grad students get their run, but you know what? I don't care anymore.

<comment><USER11> The question is - would you continue to do science if you could remove all of the current broken system? Is doing science what you love? Is it possible that there can be a way to continue doing science without being a part of that machine?

<comment><USER10> answer:

[http://indysci.org/projectmarilyn](http://indysci.org/projectmarilyn)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is almost exactly my story as well.

One point he doesn't mention is that there are _many_ interesting problems in the "real world". Lots of academics just point to industry in general and say, "no freedom, no thanks." I've held a few jobs and all of them presented with unique, interesting, and challenging problems. I've had the freedom to choose my own approach to solving problems and met up with other academic-minded people to have good lab-meeting style discussions about how to tackle a project. Industry positions can be pretty attractive.

<comment><USER13> I'm currently in the middle of a PhD, and you've touched on the exact fear I have. I intend on finding a job in industry after I graduate, and the biggest fear I have is a restriction on freedom. I totally get that there are jobs out there that still give you some amount of freedom to pick your own tools and/or approach a problem in your own way.

Every now and then, I casually leaf through job ads and I have _no idea_ how to tell which are which. I think _that 's_ what scares me. I get this feeling that when it comes time to join industry, it's just going to be a crapshoot--- maybe I'll get lucky and maybe I won't.

(Note that this isn't a criticism lodged in comparison to academia. I've already made up my mind that I'll be leaving once I graduate.)

<comment><USER14> Ask your supervisor if (s)he supports you doing an industry project for a month, (s)he might even get you a position with collaborators.

I worked with a huge crop science company for four weeks and got some valuable insights (mostly, I had to justify every little step, and the local boss was a huge fan of micromanagement: meetings, meetings a few a day. But they did have a lot of money and were willing to throw it at possibly not profitable projects; and people did proper 9-5, not 9-5678910 like academia)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yet another worrying sign is that at my university (and I've heard similar stories from colleagues at others) is now deciding that instead of hiring 2 or 3 junior faculty positions (new academics straight out of a postdoc into their first faculty job), instead the priority is to spend the same money on one mid-career "poach" from a competing institution. Double the salary, and bigger startup package. Their rationale is that mid-career scientists will bring larger and more research grants (and will do so faster after arriving) than junior scientists. Essentially, let someone else take on the "risk" of the new faculty members and we poach the proven ones.

It's a jungle out there people. If you care about salary and upward mobility for god's sake don't go into academia.

PS I am a full professor at a large research oriented university in north america. Most of my contemporaries from high school and undergrad who have spent similar numbers of years amassing expertise in their chosen fields, but in the private sector, are now making approximately 5x to 7x my annual salary (not including their annual bonuses).

<comment><USER16> Most are making 5x to 7x? If we estimate that a professor in a low-paid field makes maybe $60k (ignoring the possibility of grants to pay for additional salary during the summer) this would mean most of your high school friends are now making $300k to $420k. It's rare that most of a high school or college's students go on to become 1 percenters.

<comment><USER17> He said contemporaries, not friends. Meaning that other successful PHDs/Scientists that put in the same amount of work that he did, but in the private sector, are making that much money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is a really thoughtful post highlighting many of the deeply-rooted problems in securing funding as an early-stage academic. It's depressing for bright young scientists to be looking forward to lives as assistant professors submitting grant after grant with an expected ~10% success rate.

But what surprised me most was that at the end of the essay, after having described his fear of facing such uncertainty in NIH funding, the author mentions that he left academia to co-found a startup making software for life scientists.

Wait a minute — don't small software startups have equally poor success rates? (e.g. [http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-truth-behind-9-out- of-10-st...](http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-truth-behind-9-out- of-10-startups-fail))

If uncertainty of success was his major concern, hasn't the author chosen a pretty poor next step in life?

<comment><USER19> Indeed, I left academia for a startup. Securing funding for ZappyLab is by no means easy ([http://anothersb.blogspot.com/2014/03/hello-startup- sequel-t...](http://anothersb.blogspot.com/2014/03/hello-startup-sequel-t...)) But as hard as it is, there are many VCs, angels, and there is crowd funding (we are running a Kickstarter campaign now). Certainly not easy, but there are more options. You run a genetics lab and lose your NIH grant - where do you go?

<comment><USER20> Wherever you go, whatever you do, do this: quadruple your effort and input into your relationship with your wife.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It isn't just that research funds are drying up. There's also a growing number of Ph.D.s fighting over the shrinking pot of money [0]. I usually advise students not to pursue a Ph.D. because the life of the median academic is pretty awful. But at the same time the general job market for new grads (in most fields) isn't all that great either, meaning that in relative terms the Ph.D. route hasn't fallen too far in the rankings of post-graduate plans.

[0] [http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/2012/data_table.cfm](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/2012/data_table.cfm)

</comment><comment><USER22> Trying to become a successful academic seems about as insane as trying to become a rock star.

Here's Peter Higgs on the subject of how academics today compares to the past: [http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter- higgs-b...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson- academic-system)

Most people I know who went down the academic route have left the world or are seriously thinking about leaving. I know a couple people with positions at top universities, and around the age of 30 their careers are just starting, with tenure being potentially a coin flip.

And it always traps the most _brilliant_ people. That's the worst part.

<comment><USER23> Here's a contrary point of view: by his own admission in that article, Higgs has published "fewer than 10" papers in the last _50 years!_ What has he been doing since 1964?

Raw metrics like papers and citations are easily gamed, and not great ways to evaluate productivity, but surely there are limits...

(And before you say, "but he gave us the Higgs!", several other researchers did closely related work at the same time [1], so humanity would still know about a mass-producing scalar boson.)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_PRL_symmetry_breaking_pap...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_PRL_symmetry_breaking_papers)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've left academia and returned, then left and am returning again. Thanks to the sequester, the NIH and NSF funding situation is bleak--I know successful PIs who currently have zilch. They're pursuing consulting contracts to make ends meet--at least in engineering this is possible. At this point it is trolling--pure sadism--to suggest that confidence and hard work will overcome the destructively competitive working conditions many academics look forward to every day. (I suppose I could be confident, for an additional charge.) Why is it trolling? Because the troll will never ever acknowledge his expectation that scientists (and science along with them) should thrive in a plutocracy as if it were a meritocracy [cf. Leiter, Brian, The Truth is Terrible (February 22, 2014). Daniel Came (ed.), Nietzsche on Morality and the Affirmation of Life (Oxford University Press, Forthcoming). Available at SSRN: [http://ssrn.com/abstract=2099162](http://ssrn.com/abstract=2099162) or [http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2099162](http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2099162)]

I happen to be returning to academia after leaving a non-academic job a few months ago. I spent the intervening months working an application with a friend. Over the past decade we have been attempting to solve a certain problem for ourselves. After dead end upon dead end, we have a prototype. Now, on the verge of re-joining the academic precariat, a potential customer has asked us for how much we would license our software. We'll see how that goes.

The probability of my landing a tenure-track position anywhere is less than the probability that the software venture succeeds (perhaps this isn't surprising, judging from my posts online here). One tires of playing zero-sum games for diminishing payoffs against people who should be your collaborators. This is the kind of the cost-benefit analysis one doesn't do explicitly that seems to underlie decisions to leave. (I am rational, according to a cost- benefit analysis I haven't done.)

</comment><comment><USER25> On the one hand, it is sad that good, forward-looking academics are being denied funding.

On the other hand, during my time as a PhD student doing research for a top tier university, I saw quite a few projects where I was disturbed by the fact that we were contributing any taxpayer dollars to the project at all.

I think the existing academic model is unfair to both professors and especially to undergraduate student. Allowing the very top professors to focus on research, while making the rest take teaching seriously could remedy the situation.

<comment><USER26> > _I saw quite a few projects where I was disturbed by the fact that we were > contributing any taxpayer dollars to the project at all._

Research has to happen somewhere. Where research happens, there will always be bunk projects. Some will fail despite good intentions, some due to negligence.

Given that there will always be _some_ waste, you can do a lot worse than putting the $ towards academia. The alternative being a research institution, where researchers are paid actual living wages.

There are pros and cons to both models, but academia is undeniably cheaper. Thus, the cost of failure is lower. I didn't mention the third alternative, which is to remove public funding from research altogether. I don't think this is a good idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Not to sound like some crazy person with the word SOCIALIST written on the inside of my forehead in neon colors, but:

It should be possible for WhatsApp to get "only" $18 billion and scientific research gets the remaining $1 billion. About a 5% tax.

That way, venture capitalists could claim to fund innovation and would actually be truth-tellers.

<comment><USER28> It's funny to me when people call companies like Twitter "tech companies". What technology has twitter invented? There are open source clones with 70% of the features in < 1k LoC. Bootstrap? give me a break.

It's time we got rid of this misnomer. Just because part of your company revolves around a piece of software you wrote doesn't mean you are a tech company. Writing software is not necessarily creating technology. Otherwise anyone who's written their own html site has just progressed technology.

<comment><USER29> "What technology has twitter invented?"

[http://twitter.github.io/](http://twitter.github.io/) currently lists 101 public repositories. Highlights include a SPDY library for iOS, Zipkin (a distributed tracing system), flockdb (a distributed, fault-tolerant graph database), Finagle (their own highly concurrent RPC system)... a TON of stuff.

<comment><USER30> No offence meant but that is like saying "Kia is also a car, does the same work. Why the hell even BMW exists"

May be BMW is doing things on the back that make it a better choice. Same is the difference between twitter and its thousand clones.

<comment><USER31> Do you have any idea the amount of engineering effort required to handle the scale of Twitter's service?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My brother is leaving industry and going into the ivory tower later this year. He says that it's not just the DoD or the academy, its all government funding. He says the PhD is like a union card now. Lockheed just fired 4000 people[0] and NASA's average age is about 53 [1]. The entire DoD is aging and about to retire, with no-one in the 25-50 year old range, effectively. You'd think that they would then start hiring people in those age brackets, but no. It seems that the idea is to just let government funding die a slow death, that or transition to drones somehow. Its increasingly likely that the good jobs are going to be from private funding due to decreased tax revenue. We can see this in the Valley right now. This means you gotta know people to get the work, not just be 'good.'

[0][http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article- xml/awx...](http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article- xml/awx_11_14_2013_p0-636944.xml) [1][https://wicn.nssc.nasa.gov/c10/cgi- bin/cognosisapi.dll?b_act...](https://wicn.nssc.nasa.gov/c10/cgi- bin/cognosisapi.dll?b_action=powerPlayService&m_encoding=UTF-8&BZ=1AAABgNNr_f942m2PQWuDQBCF~8yOaS9hdlTUgwd1DRHamEahZ6NjCTFuUFOaf981KYTSzu7wHm__gV2ryJdFme~STIXjpAfO1BMQHSShS5TK2I89x~NXsYt24AfKd4Mg8mLHMM~WvJtGu2S9jcp1CLSqdT9xPxnX6q7hAdwYHOyrE4OtFttBt4eOgTC57HlcgKsMea7qY~XBv9F3PRxbPdQz~LM245YqkmWSbzZpUmZGotc0~Ae14rewRRQSEaVEIQQKFwWhmI8QUdcZOD2dO31lHgGDvDeBukxXI0DtPP0yP2m4MfaFq082kADygWwDsATaAwX3QD4C8afk7c7m~qBbP_obQJNj2A%3D%3D)

<comment><USER33> Um, FedGov tax revenue continually increases in current dollars, short downturns caused by the stock and housing bubbles notwithstanding. Tax revenue for 2013 is expected to be over 50% higher than 2003, for instance: [http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Doc...](http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200)

And tax revenue for 2018 is expected to be nearly 50% higher than 2013. The idea that tax revenue has somehow "decreased" is folly. It's just not being spent on what this particular special interest group (academics in science- related disciplines, it seems) would prefer.

<comment><USER34> Have you adjusted those numbers for inflation?

<comment><USER33> Both my comment above and the label on the chart refer to "current dollars."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Many of the recent 'goodbye acadaemia' that I've come across seem to be from people in molecular biology, which has a reputation for being a particularly competitive field for funding. I wonder whether academics in other fields are dropping out at a similar rate..?

</comment><comment><USER36> "How should we make it attractive for them [young people] to spend 5,6,7 years in our field, be satisfied, learn about excitement, but finally be qualified to find other possibilities?" \-- H. Schopper

Indeed, even while giving complete satisfaction, they have no forward vision about the possibility of pursuing a career at CERN.

This lack of an element of social responsibility in the contract policy is unacceptable. Rather than serve as a cushion of laziness for supervisors, who often have only a limited and utilitarian view when defining the opening of an IC post, the contract policy must ensure the inclusion of an element of social justice, which is cruelly absent today.

[http://staff- association.web.cern.ch/content/unsatisfactory-...](http://staff- association.web.cern.ch/content/unsatisfactory-contract-policy)

In my three years of operation, I have unfortunately witnessed cases where CERN duties and educational training became contradictory and even conflicting. This has particularly been the case when the requirements of the CERN supervisor conflict with the expected time dedicated to a doctoral student's thesis.

[http://cds.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2013/27/News%20Artic...](http://cds.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2013/27/News%20Articles/1557868)

</comment><comment><USER37> I turned down an opportunity to do a really interesting Ph.D in machine learning / biologically-inspired computation because I wasn't either willing or able to take the vow of poverty required. Since then I've consistently made many times what most scientists make doing programming and even IT work that is far below my abilities.

Basic research is economically worthless-- you can't patent a concept or a law of nature, nor can you sell understanding of nature's principles to anyone. The transistor may be worth billions, but the understanding that enabled the transistor is worth $0 as there is no way to monetize it.

The economic worth of scientific understanding seems to obey an extreme hockey-stick graph: it is worthless until it nears the instant of delivering a marketable technology, at which point it skyrockets. As a result, the market only rewards the last few people in a very long line of innovation that began with basic principles. Mark Zuckerberg is worth billions. How much is Tim Berners-Lee worth? How about the communications theorists before him that pioneered the idea of hypertext? (Do we even know who they were?) ... and so on, with each step back in time being worth exponentially less.

Why do science, except as a hobby?

</comment><comment><USER38> Can someone post some numbers please?

How many people are getting doctorates (probably increasing)?

How many faculty positions are there over time (probably increasing much less)?

How much money per researcher is out there (probably shrinking RAPIDLY)?

How can we measure if we are getting more lenient with giving out PhD's? Shouldn't only the cream of the crop get to do research, not just the ones who claim to love it.

<comment><USER36> The numbers make the problem clear. In 2007, the year before CERN first powered up the LHC, the lab produced 142 master's and Ph.D. theses, according to the lab's document server. Last year it produced 327. (Fermilab chipped in 54.) That abundance seems unlikely to vanish anytime soon, as last year ATLAS had 1000 grad students and CMS had 900.

In contrast, the INSPIRE Web site, a database for particle physics, currently lists 124 postdocs worldwide in experimental high-energy physics, the sort of work LHC grads have trained for.

The situation is equally difficult for postdocs trying to make the jump to a junior faculty position or a permanent job at a national lab. The Snowmass Young Physicists survey received responses from 956 early-career researchers, including 343 postdocs. But INSPIRE currently lists just 152 "junior" positions, including 61 in North America. And the supply of jobs isn't likely to increase, says John Finley, an astrophysicist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, who is leading a search to replace two senior particle physicists.

<comment><USER39> _The numbers make the problem clear_

Right, so the problem is that there are way too many students. Is the burden on the upcoming students to discontinue their track or on the universities (etc) to slow admissions and hiring postdocs?

<comment><USER40> The problem facing universities is that if they slow the rate of new PhD students and postdocs, they will quite simply have to shutter the labs. The entire system is built on the backs of very cheap research labor. That superstar researcher you see on television talking about the big new breakthrough from his or her lab hasn't written a line of code or laid hands on a beaker in 20 years. His or her job is to get a grant, hire students and postdocs to do the work, and immediately start chasing the next grant. Universities run on the 40% cut they get from these grants, which is why there's so much pressure to get funding in the first place.

Everyone knows we have too many PhD students, but no one can afford to be the person who doesn't hire more of them, since that would mean your lab has one person working, writing papers, and chasing funding, and the people you're competing with have an army doing the same things.

<comment><USER39> offering phd programs and granting phds is ultimately the responsibility of the university/institute.

although grad students get paid little, the total cost to a lab of a grad student is higher than a tech[nical assistant]. if there were less grad students, labs would hire more techs.

<comment><USER40> I imagine it depends a lot on the field. I'm in computer science, and while a few academic research programs need lots of programmers, mostly there aren't a lot of things that a relatively untrained tech can do. We need PhD students and postdocs to actively do novel research, publish papers, and chase grants.

It's also really unlikely that we'd find anywhere near enough techs to make up the difference anyway. In CS, your options as a bright student are to go into research or go make a fortune for Facebook. We can compete with industry only because we're offering the promise of a career in research. If we had to staff the labs with people who had no desire to join academia, the costs would go up substantially.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I made lemonade from the lemons: came out of an MIT postdoc with a Science paper, the academic track didn't pan out (2 application cycles) but I saw that there was a need for a great online organic chemistry resource, so I started building one. 4 years in, it's self-supporting, and I have many of the advantages of an instructor with very little of the red tape I'd be experiencing if I were teaching in academia. Miss the research sometimes, but I'm sure someone would accept me as a visiting researcher for a year if I ever wanted to get back into it.

<comment><USER42> Link? As a fellow chemist turned software engineer I am curious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> _However, one aspect of being a professor has been terrifying me for over five years now – the uncertainty of getting funding from NIH. No let me rephrase that. What is terrifying is the near-certainty that any grant I submit would be rejected. I have been waiting for the funding situation to improve, but it seems to only be getting worse. I personally know about ten scientists who have become professors in the last 3-4 years. Not a single one of them has been able to get a grant proposal funded; just rejection, after rejection, after rejection. One of these is a brilliant young professor who has applied for grants thirteen times and has been rejected consistently, despite glowing reviews and high marks for innovation. She is on the brink of losing her lab as her startup funds are running out and the prospect of this has literally led to sleepless nights and the need for sleeping pills. How can this not terrify me?_

Why does MIT require funding from the NIH? Isn't this what endowmnets and tuition is for? Imaginge of google or GE hired people and forced them to raise money from the federal government to actually build their next project? Notwithstanding the mis-appropriation of the profits, purely from a managerial perspective this is highly flawed.

The flipside is also true, Universities are sturctured to leverage outside capital rather than their own (despite having gobs of it). MIT has $11B in the bank, they are not desperate for cash. To do "science", or otherwise.

<comment><USER44> _Why does MIT require funding from the NIH?_

Because research nowadays is very expensive. Seventy years ago you could win the Nobel Prize with a cyclotron half a meter in diameter, nowadays you need the LHC at CERN to do that. And it isn't just high-energy physics, it's biology, chemistry, even computer science. Big data requires big storage.

Research grants go to research and upkeep of facilities (the dreaded indirect costs), tuition and endowment is for salaries, building projects and startup grants.

It's accepted that the mission of universities is to conduct research on behalf of the taxpayer, and that these results are public. Google is not serving the taxpayer, and that's why what falls out of their research is a trade secret.

<comment><USER45> At many universities grants for the sciences subsidize other university functions. In computer science, at least, you may have to pay your own salary out of your grants after the university has taken their (substantial) cut for keeping the lights on. Also, all of your graduate students and postdocs must be paid out of your grants (if they don't have their own money); the universities won't pay them to do research in your lab, though they will happily claim the IP they generate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> There are several alternatives to the current funding giants, and I think they'll offer superior returns. If they do, NIH and others will change.

My favorite example:

Janelia Farm - I believe they expect 50% of their projects to fail.

A Janelia recruitment excerpt is illustrative (and you don't have to have done a post-doc even to lead a lab):

"We invite applications from biochemists, biologists, chemists, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, neurobiologists and physicists who are passionate in their pursuit of important problems in basic scientific and technical research.

 _All laboratories are internally funded without extramural grants._ Scientists at Janelia have no formal teaching duties and minimal administrative responsibilities. Janelia labs are small groups of postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and technicians tackling challenging research problems that are expected to have transformative impact. Group leaders are expected to engage in the direct conduct of research in a highly interactive and collaborative environment."

It's not the only way - and I doubt Janelia thinks it should be - but this style could be good for science in general. Even if funding levels return, I think they should probably return in a different form. Janelia might offer a blueprint for that.

[http://www.janelia.org/](http://www.janelia.org/)

</comment><comment><USER47> It's not just the US, it's internationally. Last time I was interviewed for an academic position the interview feedback I got made no sense whatsoever. A different (ivy league) position doing some really interesting work fell through for bureaucratic reasons around the same time. It was around that time that I FYIQ'ed myself.

If you're technically minded, open source software developer provides many of the good things about academic work without many of the downsides.

</comment><comment><USER48> What a weird comment at the end about ending his relationship with his wife, even if it is in a hypothetical context. He could have stated that differently and not ended on such a dreadful tone.

</comment><comment><USER49> One of the major issues in academia is the total abuse of the postdoc system. Instead of doing a postdoc for a 1-2 years, you can now see people in postdocs for 5+ years. It's a horrible half-way existence. You have your PhD, but you don't have your own lab so you get paid like crap. Instead of PIs paying staff scientists (which would demand 2X higher salaries), they just load up on postdocs because they are available and cheap.

Unfortunately, we have way too many highly trained scientists and not enough research funding. Realistically, the only way out of this is increased government funding, and that's not happening anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER50> It is indeed sad what's going on in the U.S. with regards to Research funding. Maybe you can go directly to the public who sympathises, for example maybe a kickstarter of sorts for researchers?

<comment><USER51> [https://experiment.com/](https://experiment.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I'm curious about what areas of academia are more or less affected by these trends. I'm planning on starting a PhD program this year in computer science (emphasis on graphics research), and I had been under the impression that the state of funding was not so dire in CS as it is in the other sciences (the sciences that are more science than engineering), but I'd certainly be interested in any perspectives about academia in my field in particular.

</comment><comment><USER53> My own theory is that it will take academia another generation to figure out what it has done to itself. With entry-level conditions becoming more and more terrible, the best students will increasingly seek careers outside the academy, and academia will become populated by the second tier. At that point, it will have lost a prestige which will take another century to repair.

<comment><USER40> One reason that may not happen is that unless something drastic happens, supply for faculty positions will continue to outpace demand by a couple of orders of magnitude.

The average professional baseball player spends his life in the minor leagues, never making much, never seeing any real security. But the upside of being one of the lucky ones is such that you'll never have a lack of talented people trying to play in the big leagues. Academia's upsides are not financial, but the dynamics are basically the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I declined a PhD offer (full-ride even!) for a start-up

It wasn't the money potential, but the lack of opportunities in the field. You can work for less pay if you're compensated for something else in terms of opportunity cost (social status, privilege of doing what you love etc) but right now there's zero incentive and it's so bleak

A lot of my professor friends don't rely purely on salary even if they're tenured. There's other ways like speaking engagements, book royalties etc. I know some tenured professors who don't use grant system at all (especially in humanities) instead they get funding through collaborations and other sources

<comment><USER55> Just fyi, you would have been getting robbed if your PhD wasn't paid for.

<comment><USER54> yes that's what my professor/mentor told me. It was just hard to turn this one down since the university did not usually offer scholarships (nyu)

<comment><USER55> Well, it's not even scholarships in the traditional sense necessarily, but the department covers tuition and you get a stipend. I'm eyeing a PhD down the road, swapping with my significant other when she finishes hers, and I would also turn down any non-stipend positions.

It's really surprising to me that a wealthy university like NYU would charge PhD candidates. If you don't mind sharing, what field/topic were you considering?

<comment><USER54> Nah this was a traditional scholarship with research funding inclusive. It was difficult to turn down because of that

NYU and other private universities (Saas-fae etc.) will charge PhD candidates because they can. They have prestige, more applicants than they can deal with and the whole snob-appeal. I was going to join their Media Studies/Computer Science department

<comment><USER55> Ahhh, that is a tough situation. Oh, there it is, I completely forgot they are a private university. Well, best of luck with where you're at now!

<comment><USER54> thank you! I'm hoping this thing works out.

It sounds super idealistic, but nowadays I think the only way to get real research out is to leave academia... which is why I decided to form a startup with my research partner. We aren't really into the whole get-acquired!money thing, it's more like; non-profits rarely work because people don't listen, using productizing techniques spreads ideas faster and research funding is dwindling. In the offer I was given, I was lucky to be fully funded but all the work I did would belong to NYU/Intel....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I'm an (ex-)academic myself and can really understand the author's position and concerns, but I wonder if this situation has been so much different in the past. Academia has always been a highly competitive field with a high workload and comparatively low salaries as compared to industry, so it obviously is not for everyone. I think though that the article omits many of the benefits of positions in science, so I want to list a few (of course not all of these apply to all positions in science):

-You don't have a boss that yells at you and tells you what to do.

-You can work on your own projects and ideas (if you're capable of developing such).

-You can't get fired , or at least the likelihood of you being fired is pretty low.

-You can do a lot of traveling (conferences, summer schools, workshops, exchange visits)

-You can work with very intelligent and motivated people.

-You can work on hard, interesting and (sometimes) important problems.

Personally, what I miss most since leaving science is the possibility to work on really interesting, hard problems, because although most companies will tell job applicants that they're working on really cool and important stuff, most of the work consists of pretty boring, uninspiring things (this is not necessarily different in science, but at least there there are some really cool things mixed in between the boring parts). As one of my colleagues once put it, "the problems are hard and complex in an uninteresting way".

So, I think if people would have the choice between a well-paying position in industry and a position as a research scientist, many would choose the latter even if it meant a lower income and a higher workload. The author is of course absolutely right about the fact that there are not enough "B-level" positions in science (i.e. permanent researcher positions situated somewhere between post-docs and professors), which really has to change in my opinion. Personally, it makes me sad to see so many brillant PhDs leave university and work e.g. as data scientists in companies where they basically try to make people "click more on stuff".

</comment><comment><USER57> One guidebook to the archeological site of ancient Troy, starts with, "Having solved the money problem, Heinrich Schliemann turned to archeology." (For a bio, see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Schliemann.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Schliemann.)) Perhaps rather than starting in science and then bailing to industry, academics might follow Schliemann's path and earn their funding first. This won't work for many very expensive fields, but it's unclear how well the funding lottery is working for those fields now.

</comment><comment><USER58> Loved your article - inspiring and I can definitely see your point! Sharing my personal experience I left academia a year ago (leaving a promising neuroinformatics career) to what it seems crazy starting my own company! I now make at Lear ten times more money that what I used to make, I work only half weekends, I can sleep at night without the Need of drinking alcohol before bed ( yes it was necessary with the stress of publications) and I enjoy my friends and family! I don't know if company will go well but I know I am now happy! Very well done to you and good luck x

</comment><comment><USER59> This is one of my biggest fears as a physics student graduating in two months time. I love to learn and from my previous summers work I love to research. I've gotten into one of the top schools to research my dream subject. Despite all of this there is the overwhelming feeling of dread that I will dedicate myself for five years and than not be able to find a career afterwards in something even tangentially related to my research and be able to support a family. Not to mention the large debt I will still have from my undergrad.

</comment><comment><USER19> Indeed, I left academia for a startup. Securing funding for ZappyLab is by no means easy ([http://anothersb.blogspot.com/2014/03/hello-startup- sequel-t...](http://anothersb.blogspot.com/2014/03/hello-startup-sequel-to- goodbye-academia.html)) But as hard as it is, there are many VCs, angels, and there is crowd funding (we are running a Kickstarter campaign now). Certainly not easy, but there are more options. You run a genetics lab and lose your NIH grant - where do you go?

</comment><comment><USER60> I stopped reading at the first paragraph. What an inflated sense of self to think that ones' own feelings after leaving academia imply a dire situation for all of academia.

</comment><comment><USER61> Universities and large schools prices go up and up, so does the amount of loan assistance. Where in the heck does all that money go if not to these people?

</comment><comment><USER62> This is so dead on. I recently left my post-doc position from a top school, and it evoked such a reaction of "take me with you" from my fellow labmates when I was leaving. The hopelessness is palpable in a lot of grad students/post-docs. Everyone seems to be shopping for a way out. Sad, but very true...

</comment><comment><USER63> Such news are no less than scary and disheartening for a (third world) programmer who is applying for a master's and then intends to do a PhD and enter academia. My belief is there's always two sides of a coin, I hope I don't end up with a biased one.

</comment><comment><USER64> Apparently, its not possible to leave academia unless you write a detailed blog post about it.

<comment><USER65> I like to think if it as a last call for attention. Remember academics are attention addicts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Years ago I was an engineering post-doc in the US, and happened to meet this science post-doc (you can guess at which institute) at an airport. I was amazed to learn this person was spending 2X my hours in the lab at 0.5X my salary.

</comment><comment><USER67> I wanted to be a scientist until the Superconducting Supercollider got killed by politicians, in a way which actually cost more than finishing it. After that, I stopped being interested in any grant-funded research career.

</comment><comment><USER68> My girlfriend right now is trying to figure out her postdoc in neuroscience.

While I fully support her passion, the industry of academia seems completely irrational from almost every sense and full of traps. While the end goal of a tenured professor is exceedingly stable, getting there requires heroic acts of risk, going with the flow and instability that even when compared with the world of startups seems insane.

After 4-7 years on a PhD (which is fraught with the possibility of your PI losing funding, vets shutting you down for weeks on end, the university messing up shipping of things that need to stay frozen, strange policies of academic journals, endless bureaucracy, the university threatening to cancel health insurance or not pay you for a few months despite them wanting you to work) you exit with the ability to make _less money_ at a Postdoc than you had with just your undergraduate degree, and certainly less than you'd make if you had just stayed as a lab tech for that term.

In admission to a Postdoc program, you've gotta deal with PIs who seem to check their email in more archaic ways than RMS and seem to play games with you with their intermittent responsiveness. The chances of you getting into a place doing the research you'd like in a geographic region that has any semblance of culture or livability. Of course, all the pitfalls of your PhD are still present, as funding is constantly on the brink and your PI might die or retire without notice- which essentially ends your academic career.

Then _maybe_ after a postdoc (or two), you find a tenure track position (again, where this is... you seem to have little control over), which also seems to pay crap considering the amount of knowledge and experience you have.

All of these funnels seem to have a 20:1 (or worse) completion rate. Something always seems to screw up. Fortunately, my girlfriend is almost done with the PhD part, and the Postdoc part is looking more promising than it is for most.

Whatever relationships, life, family or culture you'd like to maintain through this seem nearly impossible. Now, I'm aware that 'softer' subjects are a little more flexible on parts of this. You don't need a lab with a half million a year funding to write the next great american novel or study the culture of people on 4Chan.

In comparison, startups seem much more certain. Move to SF|Boston|NYC, program awesome things, get funding, etc... no one's going to ask you suddenly to move to Alabama to work with the one startup in the US that does Haskell programming, but in science academia that's entirely possible. Worst case scenario, you go work for Google or similar. And after working for 10 years, they aren't going to pay you barely livable wages.

Unless you're running a center (which probably less than 0.1% of people entering into a PhD program ever will), the monetary reward almost _never_ catches up. The risk of failure is high, and the alternatives for leaving are grim. Whereas if you leave your CS PhD, you can get a job at a startup... there are few places that are dying to hire PhD dropouts.

<comment><USER69> > While I fully support her passion

This is not a criticism of you; I understand you're trying to do your best for someone you care about, which is laudable in itself; but there is something I think needs to be pointed out.

You did _not_ say "I fully support her rational and well-informed career choice". Probably you would love to be able to say that but, well, it wouldn't be true.

There is a meme floating around at the moment that _passion_ should be the deciding factor in career choice. Every society has its characteristic errors, and this seems to be one of the more harmful ones of 21st-century Western society. In reality, emotion should be _an input_ , yes, but not the only or necessarily decisive one; our emotions evolved in a very different environment, after all, and they don't actually know very much about what's going on today so it's hardly surprising that they often make bad decisions.

Another common wording of this meme is "do what you love". Put that way, it's easier to see why it's bad advice for most people. If you love doing something, probably lots of other people do too, and they'll bid down income and working conditions in that field until your life degenerates into miserable slog.

The obvious reply is that if you end up in a job you hate, your life will also degenerate into miserable slog, which is true. You don't want to end up in a job you hate if you can avoid it.

The best career choice is usually somewhere in the middle: try for something you _don 't mind_ doing that will pay a decent wage for no more than forty hours a week without unreasonable demands. If your passion doesn't offer a realistic prospect of that, then it's probably time for reason to overrule passion.

<comment><USER68> True.

She's well informed about it, and honestly better than the majority of people in the field, but it still doesn't make the field in general a rational decision. In the end her goal isn't to make money or have tenure, but to do science that changes the world; which I admire greatly.

I could say the same about my friend pursuing music professionally (I myself went to school for music, but I'm now in software and far happier)- I went to school with people who probably haven't made $500 in the past year on music, and also with people who won Grammies recently and are at the top of Pitchfork and Billboard's charts. By no means does it make it rational; its a broken system that hasn't caught up to the 21st century, but overall there are still people in it who will do well no matter how hard it is.

On average, you're right however that the best choices are often somewhere in the middle for most of us.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> There's only as many grants as there are money. If he and his brilliant friends can't get grants, maybe they shouldn't have their own labs like they are trying to have. Maybe they should just work for someone else's lab, or god forbid, industry. It would be great if we had unlimited money for everyone that wants to run their own lab, but it just isn't going to happen right now.

</comment><comment><USER71> It seems to me that there is an enormous amount of negativity towards academia, here. I think it's very unbalanced. Let me redress this a little.

It is true that young academics are not well paid, don't have good job security, and that the academic system is run from the top in the wrong way. Grant-chasing is a fact of life, and administration can distract you from your work.

However, being an academic can be great. I've worked in industry and academia, and I found academia to be less stressful, more rewarding, and more intellectually challenging.

Here are a few great things about academia:

* You get to work with really smart, creative, intellectual, people. Probably the smartest people you meet in your life will be colleagues. It's a very stimulating environment.

* You get to work with young and enthusiastic students and researchers, who constantly challenge you and bring new ideas to the table. It keeps you young.

* You see ideas and technologies that most people don't. For example, I recently saw a bunch of robots in development at another UK institution.

* It's an opportunity to continue learning, with access to great resources (huge libraries, experts on a wide variety of disciplines and sub disciplines down the hallway / across campus).

* You are not constrained to thinking about product development or the short-term. You can think on much greater timescales, and propose and investigate ideas with no direct application.

* When you make a real contribution, find a great result, or inspire other researchers, it's hugely rewarding.

* You're part of a machine that has generated enormous progress. Often people don't recognise it, particularly in Computer Science, because commercial companies appear to have "invented" things that they actually developed from work in academia. The most incredible discoveries and theories have come from academia.

* Every day can be different. You don't repeat the same research twice, so it's a constant progression. This can be really exciting and stimulating.

* You get to travel the world to collaborate, to attend conferences etc. Sometimes you can extend these trips to holidays; I've travelled more since I became an academic than anyone I know outside of academia. You have the opportunity to move overseas and work at foreign institutions.

* You have flexibility in terms of what you wear, how you work, where you work, who you work with -- you get to choose much of the time.

* You have an enormous amount of freedom to organise your time as you see fit. Your hours and holidays are incredibly flexible.

* The money, whilst not great, is enough to live on. If you progress up the ladder to be a senior lecturer or professor (UK), the money is good.

<comment><USER72> I'd like to present an alternative viewpoint based solely on my own personal experiences at a middling institution. (I should note that I have no industrial experience to compare to)

> I found academia to be less stressful, more rewarding, and more > intellectually challenging.

I've found it to be quite stressful, unrewarding, and intellectually smothering. Reasons include overlong hours, jerks and bullies in positions of power, territorial battles, arrogance and shortsightedness.

> You get to work with really smart, creative, intellectual, people. Probably > the smartest people you meet in your life will be colleagues. It's a very > stimulating environment.

Some of the people I work with are really smart. Others are also really smart, but don't care (deeply about what they do). Most are pretty smart, but not very interested in anything outside of an extremely narrow focus. Since most people have no interest in or knowledge of what others do, or desire to learn, I find it decidedly un-stimulating.

> You get to work with young and enthusiastic students and researchers, who > constantly challenge you and bring new ideas to the table.

As a young and enthusiastic student bringing new ideas to the table, I'm on the other end of this. Ideas are met with resistance, mockery, endless rounds of meetings and debates, and intellectual laziness (i.e. "I could spend some time thinking about this idea and give meaningful feedback, but instead I'll just axe it"). It's incredibly demotivating.

> It's an opportunity to continue learning, with access to great resources > (huge libraries, experts on a wide variety of disciplines and sub > disciplines down the hallway / across campus).

Partly agree -- the free access to academic journals is great (although, arguably, they should be free to everybody since the studies are typically performed with public funds, but that's another debate). It's also great to have the freedom to pursue topics I'm interested in, solely because I'm interested in them.

However, I haven't really gotten much benefit from being physically near to experts. Perhaps that's my fault.

> You are not constrained to thinking about product development or the short- > term. You can think on much greater timescales, and propose and investigate > ideas with no direct application.

This has not been true in my experience. We're forced to focus on what is publishable (often, in the short term). Also, negative results (i.e. disproving a hypothesis, or showing that there's no link between two variables) -- which can be significant, applicable data -- aren't publishable. We're also forced to focus on what is likely to bring in grant money.

> When you make a real contribution, find a great result, or inspire other > researchers, it's hugely rewarding.

Wouldn't know. My work has been crap-covered crap, with a side-helping of crap. I feel that the current trend to focus only on extraordinarily meaningful results has actually made it tougher for people to make real contributions -- because if you don't sell it (in the sense of over-hyping it), even if it's going to make a real difference, it'll be tough to publish in a decent journal, or to get grant money.

> You're part of a machine that has generated enormous progress. The most > incredible discoveries and theories have come from academia.

I don't want to be part of a machine that has generated enormous progress, if 1) it's not currently generating enormous progress, or 2) I'm not helping it to generate enormous progress.

> You get to travel the world to collaborate, to attend conferences etc. > Sometimes you can extend these trips to holidays; I've travelled more since > I became an academic than anyone I know outside of academia. You have the > opportunity to move overseas and work at foreign institutions.

Agreed. Conferences are awesome.

> You have flexibility in terms of what you wear, how you work, where you > work, who you work with -- you get to choose much of the time.

How, where, with whom -- I have little control over these.

> You have an enormous amount of freedom to organise your time as you see fit. > Your hours and holidays are incredibly flexible.

This has been somewhat true for me. However, doesn't really matter how flexible the hours are, if they're way too much (and they are).

> The money, whilst not great, is enough to live on.

Agreed. However, the number of hours worked must be taken into account. I expect that it would be extremely tough to afford a family.

<comment><USER71> ok, to clarify: I was talking about academia as a job, not as a PhD student. Also, I think your points were interesting and I didn't disagree with a lot of them, but I'd like to add a little more, don't know if this helps at all...

> I've found it to be quite stressful, unrewarding, and intellectually > smothering. Reasons include overlong hours, jerks and bullies in positions > of power, territorial battles, arrogance and shortsightedness.

I know plenty of PhD students who struggle to cope with the stress. Not so many academics, to be honest. The academics who complain about stress would also likely struggle in industry.

Also, I did say _less stressful_ than industry. I can assure you my industrial job was a lot more stressful - if only because I had responsibility for major systems that affected 10000s of people directly. Basically, being terrified of messing things up or trying to fire fight when things went wrong. Overlong hours are rife in the tech industry, and you won't find the other complaints to be any different, I'm afraid. So, it's a relative decision. Most jobs carry some stress. But for me, the wins of academia far outweigh the downsides. It's not for everyone, but I felt it important to point out that the academia- backlash we're seeing at the moment is not necessarily an objective viewpoint.

> Others are also really smart, but don't care (deeply about what they do).

That is far more common in industry, because people turn up for the pay cheque more than anything else. I know few academics with this attitude.

> Most are pretty smart, but not very interested in anything outside of an > extremely narrow focus. Since most people have no interest in or knowledge > of what others do, or desire to learn, I find it decidedly un-stimulating.

I guess this depends on the institution you're at. The two I've worked in within the UK are quite highly regarded. Colleagues tend to love learning.

> As a young and enthusiastic student bringing new ideas to the table, I'm on > the other end of this. Ideas are met with resistance, mockery, endless > rounds of meetings and debates, and intellectual laziness (i.e. "I could > spend some time thinking about this idea and give meaningful feedback, but > instead I'll just axe it"). It's incredibly demotivating.

This just sounds like bad supervision. A lot of PhD students complaining on the web seem to have had poor supervision. It's not uncommon either, and something I think academia really needs to work on. FWIW, the people I work closely with dedicate a huge amount of time to their PhD students and the feedback we get from them is overwhelmingly positive. It does take a lot of time though, and we do go above-and-beyond somewhat.

> However, I haven't really gotten much benefit from being physically near to > experts. Perhaps that's my fault.

Could it be the stage in your career? Have you never walked into a seminar on something completely different? Or sat down with a colleague over coffee and had them explain (say) the current state of cancer research, amidst their cutting-edge discoveries? Those opportunities are priceless.

> This has not been true in my experience. We're forced to focus on what is > publishable (often, in the short term).

This is true, to some extent. But you _can_ spend significant time looking further ahead, that's the difference. And what may be regarded as "short-term publishable" doesn't have to be something you can deploy in a product. It could be something insightful and far-reaching, but ready for publication. Or just a great idea. Or something that inspires people. Most companies are not going to say "that's a great idea that will never make us money, do some more of that!"

> Also, negative results (i.e. disproving a hypothesis, or showing that > there's no link between two variables) -- which can be significant, > applicable data -- aren't publishable.

They're actually _less publishable_ , rather than unpublishable, and there's plenty of research on the relative publishability (to coin an unwanted phrase). See "Bad Science" for a summary.

> We're also forced to focus on what is likely to bring in grant money.

This is true to some extent. But really, you have to find a balance. The greatest, supersmart researchers I've met have to follow the money too -- to an extent. But they get a balance, do their bit, contribute some money that often supports PhD students through their study (as someone once pointed out to me when I made the same complaint as a PhD student!), and then get back to working on their research.

> Wouldn't know. My work has been crap-covered crap, with a side-helping of > crap. I feel that the current trend to focus only on extraordinarily > meaningful results has actually made it tougher for people to make real > contributions -- because if you don't sell it (in the sense of over-hyping > it), even if it's going to make a real difference, it'll be tough to publish > in a decent journal, or to get grant money.

Selling is indeed part of the job -- it also has been. Communication is really important in academia. Collaboration and dissemination are key.

I'm sorry you don't feel that your work has been great :-/. Sometimes this can be a problem of judging your own position; it's really hard to see the big picture wrt your work. You may be your own worst critic. I don't know your situation, but I've seen others students feel the same and it wasn't true in those cases...

> I don't want to be part of a machine that has generated enormous progress, > if 1) it's not currently generating enormous progress, or 2) I'm not helping > it to generate enormous progress.

ok, (1) is clearly false, if you're objective.

(2) is more difficult. I don't think you can expect to see how your contribution fits in without looking back over a long period. And much of research is about 10 people trying something and one person's idea comes off - the kind of reason why industry doesn't do the work we do. I still think the other 9 people made a worthwhile contribution. Also, you don't have to change the world to help. If you're involved in teaching; if you're part of the wider academic environment; if you contribute a tool that helps others; there are many ways to contribute to the overall, phenomenal, progress that academia has provided. And it takes time to learn how to do important work. It's not as straightforward as it sounds!

One problem PhD students often have is that they don't realise that the purpose of their PhD is research training. Most of the real research contributions come from postdocs, at least in the UK. Lecturers and Professors are busy and mostly act as supervisors/managers. PhD students are very much learning their craft, and as my assessor said to me "you can forget about your PhD work now -- the best things you do will be in another 10 years and you'll have forgotten what your thesis was about by then" ;-). She was being facetious, but there's a grain of truth there.

> Agreed. Conferences are awesome.

:-) I would add perhaps that "some conferences are awesome"! btw, I find conferences to be a larger and more specialised example of the environment of academic life in general -- so maybe you have been a bit unlucky with your environment, if you haven't found the same experience at your uni.

> How, where, with whom -- I have little control over these.

If you're a student, I could imagine this may be the case.

> This has been somewhat true for me. However, doesn't really matter how > flexible the hours are, if they're way too much (and they are).

Again, compare to working for Google and the like...

> I expect that it would be extremely tough to afford a family.

The average household income in the UK is £40k, where two people work. A senior lecturer or a professor is going to be earning more than that on their own, and it is not uncommon for professors in particular to earn much, much more than that. I don't think academic wages reflect the sacrifices we make, particularly the time and money sacrificed during a PhD; however, I love what I do and I feel I'm contributing to society in a way that my previous work in industry didn't allow.

<comment><USER72> Thank you for taking the time to reply. I'm glad you've found a way to make science work for you -- and shared your experiences -- and I wish you the all the best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I wish I can say the same!

</comment><comment><USER74> tldr; I get a lot of satisfaction/happiness[0] from being taught by good teachers and talking to people doing research in CS and that's why I got back to academia. Not sure what will happen after this.

</comment><comment>=

I first entered industry as a software engineer after my Master's from a good university in the US. I felt the job to be very structured. By `structured` I mean - goals were well defined; best practices of SE were applied; at times there was confusion of what exactly the requirement meant but we all had it sorted since meetings with managers and product managers were regular. Research there meant to dive into existing code and/or ask experienced developers around. After having spent ~10 months, I decided to apply for a PhD program. The reason I gave to a lot of my friends at the time of leaving industry was, `I didn't have enough meat to chew`. IMO the company's structure hampered my ability to learn deeper concepts of Math-CS, and made me lethargic (probably due to the compensation). Of course, had I stayed there long enough, I could have probably defined the structure, but at that time I thought there were more interesting things to study.

I was fortunate to get accepted for a PhD program. Having an average Math background, I struggled in my first year studying mathematical models behind CS, for instance queuing theory. Everyone around me had a better intuition to such things and I felt really awkward. I survived the first semester, and in the second managed to handle more than a course.

I am currently in my second year. Most of my classes are theory based and not at all intuitive to me. However, I spend hours to understand the proofs. There are some amazing theoretical work which goes in developing algorithms[1] and concepts like these this keeps me going. Of the some I understand, I feel excited. Of the ones I don't, I hope to get my head around them some day. I meet people who are great researchers. Class projects are a great way to sow seeds of research ideas and challenging since I have to compete, in some cases, with a few classmates who have a lot more knowledge in the subject. With all classes till now, I am able to do mediocre research which aligns with the research grant given to my advisor. However, in the future, I hope to do much concrete research. My advisor knows that my current focus is on courses and he's fine with me investing more time in them as opposed to research.

Till now, all this has been challenging, and exciting. I don't know whether I'll end up in the steady state[2] of research as OP pointed out or may be I am already there :)

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philomathean_Society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philomathean_Society)

[1] [http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/mmds.html](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/mmds.html)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_state](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_state)

</comment><comment><USER75> not sure why such a mundane story got such a huge outpouring</comment>


Adopting a new programming language - <AUTHOR> http://www.annema.me/adopting-a-new-programming-language <comment><USER2> Maybe another way of saying "Staying Idiomatic" is "What made you great before won't this time."

I had to do a C++ project a while back and got my hands on "Advanced C++ Programming Styles and Idioms" by James Coplien through a friend's recommendation. Best thing I ever did to really understand the soul of the language.

I am sure there is such "soul identifying" book for each language. What would those books be? If you know of one, reply here. I'd love to know them (Go, Haskell). Not just books that show you the syntax, but which show you the soul.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the "Advanced C++" tip. "Eloquent Ruby" did the same for me when i was looking into ruby.

"Effective Java" is a similar book for Java.

<comment><USER4> If you want an amazing book on Design Patterns for ruby, [http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Object-Oriented-Design- Ruby-...](http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Object-Oriented-Design-Ruby-Addison- Wesley/dp/0321721330)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To the author's points of committing and staying idiomatic, I'd recommend rewriting an existing application in your new language of choice. It doesn't need to be a 1:1 port, but by porting over the basic/foundational pieces, you really learn a lot about a new language and its idioms. For me, it's a much more concrete way of learning a new language.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's definitely a good way to get started with learning, but you have to be even more careful that you're not just copying patterns from one app to another.

I had this experience when I started working on Karma's Android app. I basically started out by copying the entire iOS architecture to Java. It helped me get started quickly without having to make too many hard decisions early on, but I did have to rewrite some things after I became more experienced and learned there was a better, more Android idiomatic, way of doing it.

The thing that helped me the most is that I became part of the community. Some of them explained to me why I was wrong and then taught me a better approach.

<comment><USER5> "you have to be even more careful that you're not just copying patterns from one app to another" Absolutely. I hope my post didn't convey the opposite. The way I see it is that the designers of the language know more than the (new) developers using it, so it pays to rewrite existing applications in the way in which the language designers intended.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think learning the frameworks isn't nearly as important as trying to learn the standard library.

If you start to rely on frameworks, it's entirely possible you'll bypass some pretty spectacular features built right in to your new language.

<comment><AUTHOR> When I said framework I meant standard library. The most important thing to learn is not the syntax of the language but the standard library. They know everything the language can do and will most likely use all of it's features somewhere.

Thanks for clearing it up, I think standard library is a better term :)

<comment><USER7> MUCH better term! :) I'd submit that learning a framework will actually do you a disservice as far as learning a new language goes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I definitely agree. Furthermore, I think being multi-lingual in terms of spoken languages also helps understanding and being open to new paradigms and idioms. And this works both ways. After spending a semester programming in Scheme, I was much more open to the idioms and syntax of Chinese. I think this effect is super exciting and not discussed enough.

</comment><comment><USER9> Cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sT1c5m_...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sT1c5m_RsBgJ:www.annema.me/adopting- a-new-programming-language+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. My blog is rather old and still runs on app engine. First time I ever hit the free quota.

Should be up again.</comment></comment>


A people-centric view of your email life - <AUTHOR> https://immersion.media.mit.edu/

<comment><USER2> This is amazing, and a bit scary...</comment>


Ask HN: Help plan my Silicon Valley trip - <AUTHOR>

After 13 years as a software engineer, I've outgrown Indianapolis.  The time has come for me to move to Silicon Valley.
Since I've never actually been there, I'm planning a weekend trip, March 9-12, to take a look around.
Are there any meetups, bars, or locations that are "can't miss"?
Is San José the whole show, or should I get out to other cities?
Is there any advice you can give me? <comment><USER2> Eat in downtown mountain view, drive around the googleplex, walk around stanford, visit the cantor art museum at stanford, eat on university ave in palo alto, hike up to windy hill, find twitter and walk around that neighborhood in SF, eat in north beach, drive to point bonita.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks andyl, that's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> When you say youre coming to take a look around, what exactly do you mean? Are you trying to network, figure out where you want to work or just sight-see? Because you will have different destinations for different visit purposes

AFAIK, there are several startup "epicenters" in the Bay Area and San Jose is generally not one of them. San Francisco SOMA and Financial districts are home to a number of startups. Larger Software companies are sprinkled all over Bay Area though.

If you are planning to move, I recommend researching the some of the top companies u might want to work for and then look around for areas that might reduce your commute to a minimum.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks codenerdz. I missed your reply. I guess, the purpose of the trip is to validate that this is something I am going to make happen. I had wanted to do some networking, but the few connections I'd come up with fell through the last second. Eh, c'est la vie.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For some ideas, have a look at:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/seesv.html>

[http://scobleizer.com/2010/10/04/silicon-valley-places- that-...](http://scobleizer.com/2010/10/04/silicon-valley-places-that-paul- graham-cant-get-into/)

[http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/things-to-do-and-eat-in- silico...](http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/things-to-do-and-eat-in-silicon- valley/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks itsprofitbaron, those really help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.paulgraham.com/seesv.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks staunch, I wasn't aware of the essay. Not sure sure how I missed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I dunno, it's just some suburban sprawl.

<comment><AUTHOR> I get that it's not really different than the rest of northern California. I suspect that it might be like, at their core, the Beatles were just a band. That's why I want to get out there myself. So start to separate the hype from the reality.</comment></comment>


CAN-SPAM act applies to postings on Facebook, says 9th circuit - <AUTHOR> http://westlawnews.thomson.com/California_Litigation/News/2011/03_-_March/SUMMARY_JUDGMENTS__Our_daily_legal-news_aggregator_for_March_30,_2011/

<comment><AUTHOR> The article is the 4th on the list, but the page it links to may be paywalled. The opinion hasn't been published yet, but the decision seems like it might be relevant to HN readers. The case is Facebook Inc v. MaxBounty Inc, if you want to read up on it: [http://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/candce/5:2010cv0...](http://dockets.justia.com/docket/california/candce/5:2010cv04712/233063/)</comment>


How to Tell a Bird's Age by Its Song - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/smithsonian-tropical-research-institute/2019/09/09/how-tell-birds-age-its-song/ <comment><USER2> Yesterday I was biking with a friend from Italy, and he was telling me how in certain parts of Italy they "hunt" birds by taking a bird, making it blind so it sings continuously, and therefore attracting other birds to enter a large set of "nets".

This practice is mostly illegal in Italy (and I guess elsewhere too).</comment>