<story><title>The Death of Corporate Research Labs</title><url>https://blog.dshr.org/2020/05/the-death-of-corporate-research-labs.html?m=1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>linguae</author><text>As a (non-PhD) researcher who works for one of the last traditional industrial research labs in Silicon Valley, I&amp;#x27;ve noticed this trend for years.  I&amp;#x27;ve seen industrial research labs either close or become increasingly focused on short-term engineering goals.  I also have noticed that newer Silicon Valley companies have adopted what Google calls a &amp;quot;hybrid approach&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;research.google&amp;#x2F;pubs&amp;#x2F;pub38149&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;research.google&amp;#x2F;pubs&amp;#x2F;pub38149&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;) where there are no divisions between research groups and product groups, and where researchers are expected to write production-quality code.  I&amp;#x27;ve noticed many of my PhD-holding peers taking software engineering positions when they finish their PhD programs, and I also noticed more people who were formerly employed as researchers at places like IBM Almaden and HP Labs switch to software engineering positions at FAANG or unicorn companies.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, as someone who is also working toward finishing a PhD, I&amp;#x27;ve seen very little guides for CS PhD students that reflect this reality.  To be honest, I love research and I&amp;#x27;d love to stay a researcher throughout my career, but I don&amp;#x27;t have the same love for software engineering, though I am comfortable coding.  Unfortunately with these trends, traditional research is now largely confined to academia, which is very competitive to enter and where COVID-19&amp;#x27;s effects on its future are uncertain at this time, and federal laboratories such as Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore.  I fear losing my job (nothing lasts forever) and having to grind LeetCode since there are few other industrial research labs, though given the reality maybe I should start grinding LeetCode anyway.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>xtracto</author><text>When I was doing my PhD (CompSci) in the late 2000s I looked forward to join Microsoft Research because it seemed they were doing really cool stuff, even at a time when &amp;quot;corporate&amp;quot; Microsoft was the bad kid (me being very pro-Linux at the time).&lt;p&gt;One thing lead to another and I ended up going to another Research Assistant role and then getting fed up with research and going into industry.&lt;p&gt;But the idea of the Xero lab, Sun Microssystem and later Microsoft research was something I always really dreamt about. Nowadays I think startups doing autonomus vehicle technology is what looks similarly disrupting to me, but I am too much down into the SaaS rabbit hole.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Death of Corporate Research Labs</title><url>https://blog.dshr.org/2020/05/the-death-of-corporate-research-labs.html?m=1</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>linguae</author><text>As a (non-PhD) researcher who works for one of the last traditional industrial research labs in Silicon Valley, I&amp;#x27;ve noticed this trend for years.  I&amp;#x27;ve seen industrial research labs either close or become increasingly focused on short-term engineering goals.  I also have noticed that newer Silicon Valley companies have adopted what Google calls a &amp;quot;hybrid approach&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;research.google&amp;#x2F;pubs&amp;#x2F;pub38149&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;research.google&amp;#x2F;pubs&amp;#x2F;pub38149&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;) where there are no divisions between research groups and product groups, and where researchers are expected to write production-quality code.  I&amp;#x27;ve noticed many of my PhD-holding peers taking software engineering positions when they finish their PhD programs, and I also noticed more people who were formerly employed as researchers at places like IBM Almaden and HP Labs switch to software engineering positions at FAANG or unicorn companies.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, as someone who is also working toward finishing a PhD, I&amp;#x27;ve seen very little guides for CS PhD students that reflect this reality.  To be honest, I love research and I&amp;#x27;d love to stay a researcher throughout my career, but I don&amp;#x27;t have the same love for software engineering, though I am comfortable coding.  Unfortunately with these trends, traditional research is now largely confined to academia, which is very competitive to enter and where COVID-19&amp;#x27;s effects on its future are uncertain at this time, and federal laboratories such as Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore.  I fear losing my job (nothing lasts forever) and having to grind LeetCode since there are few other industrial research labs, though given the reality maybe I should start grinding LeetCode anyway.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>smeeth</author><text>You only mentioned the DOE national labs in passing-I encourage you to give them more thought. I’m currently a researcher at one of them, and if you land in the right group&amp;#x2F;application area it can be truly meaningful work.&lt;p&gt;If you’re in the bay I encourage a closer look at LBNL and LLNL, if you’re open to moving, NREL is in a great location too. Obviously Sandia, LANL, ORNL, and PNNL all do good applied CS work as well but the locations are a little more remote and options are better if you can get&amp;#x2F;hold a clearance.</text></comment>