Matt Welsh

> "the latest wisecrack about Harvard"

"Latest" in this case means "over 5 years old, but the author recently heard about it." Eg, the following 2010 comment at http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/05/secret-lives-of-professors.html uses the exact same phrase:

"It is complicated, but one way to look at it is that Harvard is a very large hedge fund with a university attached to it (which gets a tiny fraction of the fund's payout each year)."

And earlier 2007 piece titled "Goodbye, Princeton University" uses a similar construction, at http://www.nassauweekly.com/goodbye_princeton_university/ :

"Princeton University has ceased being primarily an institution of higher learning and is, like Goldman, a huge hedge-fund with a university that it runs as a side project."

We also see it in several previous HN threads (see https://hn.algolia.com/?query=harvard%20hedge%20fund&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story ). The oldest is from 8 years ago, referencing a 2008 article titled "Is Harvard Just a Tax-Free Hedge Fund?" at http://theamericanscene.com/2008/05/12/is-harvard-just-a-tax-free-hedge-fund

> Viewed purely in terms of economics, Harvard is really a $40 billion tax-free hedge fund with a very large marketing and PR arm called Harvard University that has the job of raising the investment capital and protecting the fund’s preferential tax treatment.

This post reminds me of a favorite passage from Lord of the Rings, when Frodo is debating whether he should wait for Gandalf in the Shire, or press on:

“… The choice is yours: to go or wait.” [Gildor said.]
“And it is also said,” answered Frodo, “Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.”

“Is it indeed?” laughed Gildor. “Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill. But what would you? You have not told me all concerning yourself; how should I choose better than you? But if you demand advice, I will for friendship's sake give it.”

The problem is, most of your advisers probably didn't know and, more importantly, couldn't know if the IBM sale would pan out. If they said stop, and you did, and failed anyway, what if they felt bad at whether the IBM sale might've worked?

The world is big and unpredictable and replete with stories of people advising others that something can't be done or shouldn't be done that way, only to have the advisees ignore the advisers and do great things. Hell, see this post: http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2009/02/how-i-almost-killed-facebook.html for an example of well-meaning advice that, if taken would've been wrong.

I've run into people with great private-sector positions, but they seem to almost all be ex-academics who first established themselves in academia, and then jumped to something high-level and researchy, like a position at Microsoft Research, or a senior position at Google with considerable freedom [1].

For a junior person, academia does have a lot of downsides, not least because of the massive move towards rationalization, metrics-counting, and a focus on how much grant money you bring in. But the junior people I know in the private sector have even less freedom regarding what they spend their day doing, and much less freedom when it comes to formal working conditions, such as choosing to work from home or a coffee shop a few days a week.

Is there a way to find positions with research freedom in the private sector without first becoming established in academia?

[1] Matt Welsh is a good example of someone who did the senior-academic-to-industry transition. He went into academia, got tenure, got promoted up the ranks through to Full Professor at Harvard, and then left for a senior position at Google with considerable freedom: http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/

Matt Welch has written extensively about switching from tenured Professor at Harvard to Software Engineer at Google: http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/, with the initial post http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvard.html Matt's blog is great because (a) he writes it, (b) he's still connected to academia via program committees and (c) you can see how his thinking has evolved over the last 8 years.

And there are of course a number of other former faculty there too, but none that I know of who've blogged as much as Matt. In the systems space, off the top of my head: Amin Vahdat, Mike Dahlin, Steve Gribble, Craig Chambers, David Patterson, David Wetherall, Eric Brewer.

Personally, I've had way more impact (and fun!) building Compute Engine and Kubernetes than I had in academia. If in doubt, try industry for a summer or a year -- nothing we write can replace personal experience.

> 'But the reality is talented people are able to sustain a high level of productivity at long hours.'

This, in my opinion, is the flaw in the argument. I don't think it's true for writing code, unless what you're writing is boilerplate which requires no mental effort.

> Some of the best engineers in the world work insane hours at Google, Apple and facebook and put out great products.

Google doesn't have fixed working hours: http://www.quora.com/Does-Google-have-fixed-working-hours

From what I've heard, you're expected to get things done but no one cares how you do it. Some people work crazy hours; that's fine for them. Some people probably work 10-4 and then a little bit in the evening. Matt Welsh seems to work 9-5: http://matt-welsh.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/day-in-life-of-googler.html

Competitive, yes, certainly. But is it competitive in the same way?

I’m other words, do “cracking the coding interview” style questions play as big a role?

EDIT: I figured, why not do a quick web search. I found this link:

http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2014/01/getting-job-at-google-for-phd-students.html

Just one POV, but it does confirm that PhD graduates do have to go through the same kind of coding exercises (at google) as anyone else. It is worth noting that this is the case if you're applying for SWE positions, where a PhD might not really confer that much of an advantage. Again, I'm not sure if this would be the case if you were, say, getting hired as an AI researcher for a lab.

So, this link sheds some light, thought I still don't know about research positions specifically.