Behind the Blog

I have experiences of both working in academia (at PhD level) and industry (for some of the big names). The transform between the two was a lesson for me and I would like to share it with the ones who are in the situation of the following:

  • Do not know if should choose academia or industry after undergraduate study or receiving Master’s degree
  • Thinking of leaving adademia (after completing a PhD - Congratulations! That is a huge achievement already :), or quiting a PhD) and go to the industry, but do not know if it is the right choice.

Academia Way of Getting Things Done

Academia way of getting things done is to learn first (learn things related to your research area), then try to find the breakthrough. That means, you will need some time to do the preparations before actually begin to do something.

All the secrets behind getting success in acedemia, either as a PhD candicate or a PhD degree owner who are in the way of getting a tenure, to sum up in one sentence is: finding a“niche” (i.e. the so called breakthrough).

So how can I find the “niche” ? You may ask. In my experience, that is two steps work:

  1. First, you will need to build solid foudation in the researcing area. Basically, you will need to have a solid understanding of the common theories in the area you are working on. The stage can be completed by reading a grate a mount of publishes, books… It takes time and is a must step. Imaging you are presenting in a conference, in the Q&A session, someone critisize what you just said by quoting a famous theory in the area, you do not know much about the theory and then you do not know “how to fight back”…

  2. Second, after harnesss yourself with the knowledge you need after stage 1, then you can begin to do your actual work: try to find something new or “breakthrough” in the area that can work on.

In short, in academia, you will be allowed time to ramp up before doing something.

Industrial Way of Getting Things Done

The industrial way of achieving something is not like the academia way. There is very limited time for praparation, it is more like learning by practicing.

While working in the industry, you will have to move much faster, build something tangible that can be evaluate by stakeholders, collect feedbacks, then improve it, then re-evalueate … Therefore, there is no time to do decent preparation, you learn things in the process of solving problems. The key in the industry is to have something that can prove the feasibility of an idea as soon as possible and push to the market.

Conclusion

Thinking about how the GoF Design Patterns was discovered. If it was in Academia, the way of find the patterns would be: tons of readings, then propose some hypothesis, verify it via experiments and finally publish the findings (i.e. design patterns). However, in reality it was not like that, the GoF reviews the previous practices in software industry, then found those patterns. Exactly, the patterns were invented by software engineers in practice without a deliberate purpose (they were found by “variable”. some of most impactful things was invented by accidents, check Anti Fragile.

There are not right or wrong in these two ways of resolveing issues. Because they are in different contexts. In industry, most of the time, we are dealing with practical problem and need to see impacts right away; but in academia, we are dealing with the issues for the future in many case.