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Comment by stakhanov | Hacker News Reader

One of the things that really struck me is that after you drop out of academia to go into industry there is really no going back. I hadn't expected that; I thought I'd just give industry a shot since I can always go back to academia if I don't like it. Not so. The people hiring for academic roles see it as an act of high treason punishable by lifelong exile.

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I don't think that is universally the case. I transitioned back into academia after being in industry. Admittedly, I was only out in industry a couple of years and I've not found academia to my liking.

My background is microelectronics, and in my experience there is still a big skills gap inside academia which I think only people from industry can really fill. There is no substitute for practical/applied engineering experience, and that experience goes a very long way in informing how realistic or implementable a piece of new research is.

If professors are insightful enough to see the skills which engineers from industry can offer academia, then it's a benefit to everyone.

Did you get hired in a proper research and/or teaching role though in the subject area that you previously worked in when you were in academia? Or did they just pay you out of a research grant for a role as a technician of some kind? Big difference there, as the latter are, in my experience, treated as a "lower caste" and get paid neither as much as other academics nor as much as they would get paid in industry.

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