[tombert]

My dad used to be a full time professor of aerospace engineering. He liked the research, and he didn't mind teaching, but he quit after a few years because he absolutely hated having to play "salesman" all the time. He found himself seeing everyone as "potential funding", and he personally found it kind of hard to turn that mentality off.

He went back to industry after that, which has its share of legitimate problems, but at least they don't typically expect their engineers to also be sales people.

Also universities pay shit.

[fritzo]

Is that true that aerospace engineers are not expected to act as sales people? I've certainly found that in software, engineers who don't sell their work get reassigned or laid off.

[tnecniv]

It’s really all a professor does. You’re the boss of 5-10 people that are researching your half baked ideas Turing them into quarter baked ideas. Managing them + other obligations take up all their time. Very little is spent getting their hands dirty.

[robwwilliams]

Why all of this cynicism? Science research at many universities is awesome and efficient. And in biomedical research and CS it is kicking ass. We are a gloomy bunch here in HN.

[exmadscientist]

That does not match my experience with multiple universities and national labs, as a grad student and a member of research staff. Not at all. Where the heck are you at where it's actually working out for once?

[infamouscow]

Define many.

[GabeIsko]

I do get the sense that it wasn't as bad in the past. My grandfather, as an aerospace engineer would talk about how the entire culture changed around the 80s, and it came at the expense of diligent engineering. I looked at some of the management reports from his heyday. The management structure has it's own problems - it's pretty inscrutable waterfall management. But, I definitely know they weren't working on sales.

[BeetleB]

Professors - particularly newly hired ones, need to spend almost all their time selling. Between that and teaching courses, they have little time for research. That's off loaded to their grad students.

When I was in grad school, the refrain of "I'm not going to become a professor because I actually want to do research" is common. They usually try to go to national labs, etc instead.

[tombert]

I can't speak for most engineers (and I really can't speak for my dad either), but I think my dad is in a more researchey position at a BigCo. I think he does do proposals but I think a majority of his time is research now.