Moving from Corporate IT to Science?

EdinBear asks: "I've been working as a SysAdmin in an increasingly corporate internet services company, which has been hit hard by the fallout from the .com bust. When I started some years ago, I felt I was helping small and interesting companies get benefit from the burgeoning Internet through useful and attractive web services. However, since the Internet became 'normal', the focus has been purely commercial - and instead of helping an enterprise get exposure in an interesting way, it's all about money and finance. I now feel I want to move into Science to use my skills in a productive, 'big picture' kind of way, rather than just helping a client get more rich through financial services. I'm interested to hear if other people have found themselves in a similar position; is the transfer to Science/Research/Academia difficult? Is the grass greener on the other side? The money is less, but is the job satisfaction more?"

Comments

Science is like any other business

[electroniceric]

It has its ups and its downs.
On the one hand, most research scientists are not money-motivated people at their core - they are interested in ideas and in the development of knowledge. If you relate to those goals, which it sounds like you do, you will relate well to the academic community. The scientific operations I've worked in are also less hierarchical than most business, and you get a strong team spirit from those you work with - you're working together on the same quest, rather than battling each other for approval.

Academic organizations, despite being filled with free-thinking people, are incredibly staid - both in terms of being set in their ways, and in terms of not making the wrong kinds of waves. It makes straightforward negotiating about things rather difficult. This is a nuisance when it comes to doing things like introducing new software or migrating a server. A professor in my dept (I'm a grad student) still writes C and PostScript to make plots, and nobody can or will convince him otherwise. Furthermore, many scientists fancy themselves quite the computer expert by virtue of having written a model in FORTRAN or some such.
Overall it's not a bad place to work, but the pace of things is very different from the corporate world.

Moving from Corporate to Not-So-Corporate

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I have had a rather busy life as a programmer, sysadmin, and general hacker. I started off at a univerisity, worked at a major chip manufacturer, A Dot Com, and finally a science Museum. I have been at the science museum for 4 years, which is longer than any other company so far.

You will find many of the same pressures, personalities, and conflicts in the non-profit sector. Do not kid yourself for a moment that job satisfaction is instantly had by working for the right cause.

That said, why am I working for a non-profit? Well actually all of the tech companies I have ever worked for were running at a loss, so perhaps I should say 501c3 organization..

But I digress. I work at the Museum for one simple reason: I am a shark in the guppy tank. The Alpha geek. When something needs to be done, they ask me how to do it.

In 4 years I have redesigned the network, switched the datacenter to Linux, and introduced new concepts like Workorders, and Inventory Control. I can't think of a place in the world that would let me change so much in so little time.

Alright who am I kidding. I really took the job sysadmining at the Science Museum because they have 2 T1 lines, 3 class C subnets worth of IP addresses, a toplevel domain I can spell over the phone, and a window overlooking my apartment from whence I use 802.11 wireless to suck down bandwidth like a dwarf on a firehose!!!

Academic politics preferable to industry bullshit

[TekkonKinkreet]

I think you're going to get a lot of people giving you the Kissinger line: "Academic politics are so vicious precisely because so little is at stake". I have a different take.

Last week I had lunch with a friend in the academic fold, to which I'm poised to return myself, and she complained with some rancour about the abundance of talentless hacks that cop credit and brown-nose their way to the top.

After four years with a VC startup (now being lowered into the earth) it all sounded quaint to me. I'd rather have talentless hacks stealing my work for a few years than watch the PHB lie his ass off to the board quarter after quarter without even a concept of shame, while the entire ill-conceived edifice crumbles around us all.

That is to say, go for it. Your reasons are exactly the ones I'd give, extrapolated a bit: I'd rather contribute in some infinitesimal way to the progress of science, however political or tedious the realities of research (who said "most of science is about as glamorous as ditch-digging", was it Asimov?), than help one more heinous moron pay off his SUV.

As for the money, I bet I'm not the only one here prepared for noble poverty, if such a thing still exists under the sun. Go, don't look back!

Re:Of course, I did the opposite...

[swb]

I worked in the administrative department of a University and moved out to corporate IT.

Crap aspects of the Univerisity:

• I worked in the administrative area, so there was no academic politics but there was politics, often hostile and highly personal.
• There was never enough money, we ran our systems until they broke, without software that would have made many jobs much easier. The lack of resources often made who got what resources *intensely* political.
• The paychecks were small and the standard bennies lame, especially the manditory state employee pension plan and the group death, er, health plan made all the bad things I've heard about Britain's National Health sound good.

Good aspects of the University:

• Lots of campus discounts and freebies. Classes could be taken for next to nothing, if they weren't out-and-out free. Deep discounts at the bookstore on software and computer bits (this meant something 15 years ago).
• Awesome internet connectivity and network access. Our office's specific technology sucked goat nuts, but campuswide there was a shitpile of stuff that could be utilized and lots of smart people.
• A really relaxed atmosphere -- from the bucolic surroundings, to pretty easy work and no slave hours.
• I got laid A LOT. Time, place, people, general zeitgeist? Who knows, but it was sure easy.

I moved to the corporate world because I kept getting told by lifers that if I didn't soon I wouldn't be hirable in the private sector, as gummint employees were seen as having too much lead in their asses. I also moved to the corporate world because I just wasn't making enough money to live on. I was sick of working a second job, sick of having to share a hovel with others. Poverty motivates.

There I days I miss the easy aspects of the old job -- better hours, nicer people -- but then I remember that I drive a nice car, have a nice house, travel at will and don't worry about money like I used to and it seems worth it.

Re:boring and repititive

[Mercaptan]

See, I've got a microbiology degree and a good deal of computer science under my belt. I'm working a research technician job that's 50% wet lab work and 50% bioinformatics computation work. The job is great really because I get to do both and the people I'm working with are very enthusiastic and young, plus I think doing the wet benchwork is very key.

You're right, the lab work can be very boring, but by the same token programming on big projects can be pretty mind numbing too. It's when you can live on the edge of both that it gets interesting, but that's a rare combination to find in one person.

I've been around a lot of different people trying to get into bioinformatics. You have biologists who are trying to learn the programming and software skills. They have a hard time adapting to thinking in binary and not fearing computers in general. Then you have computer science and IT people trying to pick up some molecular biology. They have a hard time grasping the messy world of genetics and cell biology.

It boils down to this. If you have the wet lab skills, you have cred with the molecular biologists. If you can program, you have cred with the computation people. It pays to have both.

I did it

[trandles]

I was a coder in industry for 4 years before going back to the university department I graduated from...physics. I went back as a linux/unix systems administrator and the department webmaster and have loved every minute of it.

The past 2.5 years have been bliss as I've been able to develop really great working relationships with several research groups and have even participated in their research from a computing perspective. My boss let's me develop my own projects. A university's organization is a lot more flat, with greater flexibility in picking/choosing/developing the work you'll do. Industry just doesn't have the luxury of time that a university does. You can take months really doing a project right without having some PHB breathing down your neck wondering why your deadline is slipping. Besides, an academic setting is totally tailored to the development of new ideas and research...

Some references

[Davorama]

I had a master's in engineering and was ABD with good career prospects when I finally realized that I was only moving towards being successful at becoming a miserable cog in the system

I came to the conclusion that for all but the true geniuses and egomaniacle sub-geniouses (the majority) happiness and job satisfaction were rare in the scientific community. Of course this is a gross generalization and I've gotten over it for the most part sence then but there is an element of truth to it.

Here's two references to give you a clue as to how I got so cynical about this.

Ziolkowski, T. (1990). The Ph.D. Squid. The American Scholar, 59(2), 177-195.

Imposters in the Temple, by Anderson, Martin