>>12259304I have a Masters in Materials Science and Engineering. Did pure academic research for a while, but eventually went over to R&D materials engineering for several reasons:
1) Money. The pay is better, and my labs have much more funding.
2) Tangibility. The things I work on now go into production. It's satisfying to make something real instead of just writing papers.
3) Work/Life balance. Not possible in academia.
3) No professors. Academia has become a bit of a scam for the most part. My undergrad professor was an unethical, thieving bastard. And my grad school advisor had zero business sense and was constantly on the verge of running out of money.
Your OP image is funny to me. Yes, the penny solution is the most elegant. But the duct tape solution is the most idiot-proof (which is more valuable than elegance in the real world). And of course, both are utterly useless. An excellent image for this discussion.
