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Carnegie Mellon Struggles After Uber Poaches Top Robotics Researchers
ideonexus sends a report from the Wall Street Journal (paywalled) saying Uber has poached 40 researchers from Carnegie Mellon University in an attempt to jump-start development of autonomous vehicle technology. In February, Uber and CMU's National Robotics Engineering Center announced a partnership to work together on the technology. But according to the WSJ, Uber quickly offered massive bonuses and salary increases to simply bring many of the researchers in-house. The NREC's new director made a presentation a few weeks ago about strategies for rebuilding and recovering. The presentation said NREC’s funding from contracts to develop technology with the U.S. Department of Defense and other organizations was expected to sink as low as $17 million from the $30 million originally projected for this year. Some contracts scientists were working on disappeared when the researchers left, accounting for the drop in funding. And it appeared the center would have to raise salaries significantly to prevent more exits. A few scientists left NREC for other companies in Pittsburgh because of concerns the center might be shut down, said two people familiar with the departures.
on't get me wrong, Uber seem like scum.
But finally someone gets it! There is NO skills shortage, there's just a cheapass git excess. Uber have apparently realised that one flip side of the free market is you can just offer larger and larger salaries until you get to hire the people you want.
Score a huge WIN for the researchers who were poached.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
(disclaimer: CMU Employee). If someone offers a better salary and the person takes it voluntarily, that's not poaching, that's a "competitive market".
Most CS professors are paid market value. You can look up salaries at public schools. You'll find that at the ones that compete with CMU, the salaries are all in the range of what the researchers would make at a company ($100-250k). Bonuses are a little harder to compete with. But, in CS at least, grants cover a ton of travel. To publish in CS, you have to go to the conferences you're publishing in, unlike the rest of science which just has journals. That more than makes up for the lack of bonuses as far as fringe benefits go.
Now, the one benefit you get from industry is that you don't have to write grants. But, you also have more job security in academia. What worries me most about this is that when this bubble bursts, Uber will be one of the first companies to go (at least, research at Uber will go quickly). These researchers will now be stuck without jobs in a market that will be very hostile towards PhDs. For their sake, I hope they all vest quickly enough to get a nest egg before things go south. (it's going to happen, it always does)
-Chris
I think you have a little too romantic view of universities.
I run a small research-heavy business. Big research universities are now very disciplined about insisting on NDAs and not doing any work without a contract. They have very high overhead rates, pushing typical business costs covered by investment and sales onto R&D contracts. Last, and worst, high level researchers have insane demands on their time outside of research. There are professors I visit who don't make it into their labs more than once a month, and haven't performed meaningful lab work with their own two hands in years. Instead they spend their time raising money and marketing their results. Why has the university system has turned our best scientists and engineers into business development executives? Is that really helpful?
Many of the professors I talk to would love to get out of academia, not because there's more money in the private sector (there's not, really), but because there's more opportunity to actually do real work. The trick is finding a business or business partner you can trust.