wfhbata

Yes, I worked in academia up until recently, and keep up with the literature.

My comment was on the historical status of academia in the US as a whole (think last 120 years), not just the current state globally.

You’re lamenting the quality of academic publishing in particular. The US now publishes less than 17% of science and engineering papers, but its papers are often the most highly cited. So yes, there has been a huge increase in the number of papers, and number of low-quality papers, but this isn’t necessarily being driven by the US, as the original comment would have implied.

You claim researchers don’t really trust articles anymore, and I agree that it takes a lot more work to filter out the noise now, and I’m less optimistic that authors are presenting an honest, objective appraisal of their results. But significant research is still happening, and academic publishing is still the primary way that information is disseminated. People seem to rely more on name recognition (author, school, journal) now. It probably varies field but field. I’m in a field where results are often proof-based and that tends to be harder to fake.

> when most of the "non-profit" hospitals are essentially for profit institutions anyway

This sounds worse than a for-profit institution declaring itself as a for-profit institution.

What is it about the chain that is “super, super shady”?

Yes, it’s a bit like saying, “My favorite colors are blue, green, and a potato”.

But a potato is not a color!

“Which is why I included blue and green.”

Is this really an American thing?

At least in academia, American universities (and Western universities in general) have had a good track record overall with academic integrity, and it has set them apart. This seems to have degraded recently, perhaps because of the increasing pressure of the “publish or perish” system (or dozens of other potential causes).

We do celebrate people who excel academically seemingly effortlessly. But we don’t celebrate bullshit artists so much in school. In business, and particularly tech, it’s another story.

Yes, that is exactly my point.

On the other hand, if you spend your early career as a researcher making five digits a year in the Midwest, then move to SV in middle age to increase your earnings, you probably won’t ever catch up and be able to live very comfortably given the cost of housing.

This is just a possible counterpoint, learned the hard way, to the common advice to “pursue your passion.” My advice to those who have the option: make some money first, then pursue your passion.

Have you been able to maintain a similar level of compensation?

I started my career in scientific computing, and was paid a pittance compared to what a PE is paid at a big tech company.

I’m wondering if moving to scientific computing is a luxury afforded by putting in time at AWS.

You can’t really compare it to Irvine, which is almost completely suburban and has 1/15th the population.

They won’t try because an arrest is pointless if the DA refuses to prosecute.

Elect a real DA who respects the law and law-abiding citizens, and the police will be able to do their jobs. Until then it’s a lost cause.

The soft-on-crime approach taken over the last decade under Gascon and now Boudin coincided with San Francisco having highest property crime rate of any major US city.

Maybe that’s coincidence, but the onus is on those who brought us to this point: Where are the results that were promised? Where is the evidence that we should continue down this path, when by all metrics, it appears to be a disaster?

Is there any evidence that being soft on crime has been effective at reducing crime or improving quality of life in San Francisco?

Our DAs promised “restorative justice” but in practice criminals get caught in released without consequences or rehabilitation. Is there evidence that this approach hasn’t emboldened organized criminals and contributed to the rise in property crime in recent years?

It’s a terrible precedent to let people prolong a pandemic and endanger innocent people’s lives in the name of their personal liberties.

If you don’t want to take measures to protect others, you can sit home for a while. It won’t kill you, and it won’t kill the people around you.

“3 days in, 2 days out” is what they’ve been saying for a while.

The news here is that they’ll allow some employees to work in remote offices, and some to go fully remote.

> Your concern should be with any method of travel, not air travel per se.

The U.S. was extremely slow to restrict travel from India. Are many people traveling to the U.S. from India via car, bus, train, or boat? Flights are the concern because that's how people travel between continents.

I moved too from DoD to FANG, and I’m not sure how you can say this with a straight face. Nothing FANG does on its worst day is comparable to what DoD does on its best day.

That’s not to say the DoD is inherently evil from the bottom up. It’s just that the things activists love to hate about FANG (potentially contributing to border control, selling technologies to foreign governments, data collection), the DoD does ten times over.

> I felt a surprising surge of freedom.

Same, it was like a big weight lifted off of me. Felt great, and feels great except for the company’s return-to-office date looming over me.

If we’re making that comparison, absolutely. Both are in the ads business, but I get actual utility from one company’s products and the other company’s products make me feel worse at the end of the day.

I realize that many people love social media and derive happiness from FB, but it’s just not the case for me and the main reason I couldn’t work there.

I’ve told myself I won’t go back to the Bay Area. SF is a joke and the peninsula is ridiculously overpriced even on a tech salary. I’ve loved the last year living outside of the Bay Area.

On the other hand, the thought of whiteboard interviews at this stage in my life or taking a massive pay cut to work at a local company is not enticing either. So we’ll see what happens in a couple months when forced to decide. I realize the path of least resistance might win out for me and others.