Comment by linguae

Interestingly enough, even non-monopoly large corporations once had labs where researchers had a good deal of freedom and where the projects were not required to be directly tied to business objectives. Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Fujitsu, Sony, NEC, Toshiba, and Hitachi, just to name a few, had labs back in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. As late as the early 2010s, a PhD graduate in computer science had options in industry to do research that wasn’t tied to short-term business priorities.

Unfortunately these opportunities have dried up as companies either got rid of their research labs or shifted the focus of their research labs to be more tied to immediate business needs. Many of my former classmates and colleagues who were industrial researchers are now software engineers, and not due to intentionally changing careers. Academia has become the last bastion of research with fewer commercialization pressures, but academia has its “publish or perish” and fundraising pressures, and now academia is under attack in America right now.

I once worked as a researcher in an industrial lab, but the focus shifted toward more immediate productization rather than exploration. I ended up changing careers; I now teach freshman- and sophomore-level CS courses at a community college. It’s a lot of work during the school year, but I have roughly four months of the year when I could do whatever I want. Looking forward to starting my summer research project once the semester ends in a few weeks!