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From: uselton@orville.nas.nasa.gov (Samuel P. Uselton)
Newsgroups: soc.college,comp.edu,misc.jobs.misc
Subject: Re: Academia vs. Industry (for CS PhDs)
Summary: It depends on your goals, but... I'm at NASA now
Message-ID: <7354@amelia.nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 13 Jul 90 23:32:22 GMT
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Sender:  Sam Uselton
Reply-To: uselton@orville.nas.nasa.gov (Samuel P. Uselton)
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Organization: CSC at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
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I've got some relevant (IMHO) experience, but as always, your mileage
may vary.

I spent 5 years as a full time grad student at Univ of Texas at Dallas,
started teaching full time (Instructor) at Univ of Houston before the
dissertation was done (**mistake**).  I spent 3 years at Houston, and did
finish the dissertation, then spent 7 years at Univ of Tulsa.

I know the question asked to compare "top" university and industry labs,
and I know these aren't, but I'm going to have my say.  (You can hit "n"
any time :-)  )  UH and Tulsa are both in the "great middle" of universities
they each have some good researchers and good departments.

I like teaching and I enjoyed that aspect of university life.  Grading
is a drudge, especially in large classes with insufficient TA's.  
Curriculum design, both in the large sense of what courses to offer,
to require, in what order, etc, and the small sense of what material to
try to cover in a particular class (the first time you teach it) takes
a lot of time to do well.  In most cases, computing resources are not sufficient
to allow students do implement / try out everything you would like,
even in the places where there are sufficient resources for research.

Politics varies WIDELY from places to place.  Some departments are made of
of groups that amount to armed camps that can never agree about anything.
The more camps the less gets done.  Other places can be friendly and harmonius.
The only way you really discover this is by your own or someone else's
experience.  The political environment outside the department can be as
important as within.  (My promotion was shot down by a dean, not my department)

The political environment (both acad. and industry) can change fairly abruptly,
but stability can be estimated based on reputation, visits and scuttlebutt.

The higher the research quality of the U., the more pressure to get grants
to support (1) equipment (2) grad students to actually get work done, 
(3) salary (especially summer, but also course "release time"), 
(4) administrative "overhead", (5) travel, conference attendance for self
AND grad students....
This pressure also increases as one gets more senior (close to tenure).

I didn't think I would like industry as well, and never really considered it.
I now work for Computer Sciences Corp., on a contract supporting NASA in 
the area of scientific visualization for Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
at the Ames research Center.  This is a great job.  The equipment is good,
th eproblems to be worked on are interesting, there is sufficient freedom 
to pursue them in your own way, and the colleagues are good scientists.

There are (of course) some hassles.  Reporting to both bureaucracies is a 
nuisance.  Government rules to avoid the APPEARANCE of impropriety are
some times absurd.  I miss teaching and getting to know new crops of students
and the chance to get on my soapbox now and then (can you tell :-)  ).


About money,....
My experience is that on a monthly basis universities pay almost, but not 
quite lab pay scales.  But they only pay 9 months salary.  You have to
hustle for the other, and some sources (eg NSF) will only pay 2 more.
Real "industrial" labs probably pay better than government labs, although
by using contractors rather than civil servants, gov't can at least get in
the game.  Real jobs pay 12 months salary including paid vacation.  On the
other hand the vacation doesn't match Thankgiving, Christmas, Spring Break,
between semester breaks, ....

What are YOUR priorities?  location? pay? freedom? collaborators? interesting
problems? .....

Sam Uselton			uselton@nas.nasa.gov
employed by CSC		working for NASA 		speaking for myself