[mafribe]

There is some merit in the rant but it suffers from myopia, probably owing to the author's inexperience and subsequent lack of understanding how science really works.

Here's the secret: it is quite possible to get a permanent position with a reasonable teaching load at a reasonable university without lots of funding and without having to produce large numbers of publications in high-profile conferences/journals. Indeed the majority of the world's scientists do just this -- almost by definition, for otherwise selective journals/conferences/funding systems could not be selective: to be selective means to deny entry to the masses. The trick is to think long-term and build develop one's niche of science, until so much material of interest has been accumulated that something novel and substantial has become of it. In my experience, that takes a decade or two of an individual's labour. It's psychologically difficult to toil solitary for that long without positive community feedback (which in science really comes in form of grants and high-profile publications). But it is certainly possible. By the time you have created that niche, you can also create your own conferences/journals/prizes etc, and all of a sudden you are the eminent scientist in your field. That in turn makes it easy to get PhD students, grants etc.

Caveat: the above programme may not work so easily for pre-tenure academics at the top-prestige universities, or in fields that have very high start-up costs in terms of material and/or labour (e.g. high-energy physics). Fortunately, most of computer science is comparatively cheap though (needs only a laptop and an internet connection).

Given that this is a possible career path, and clearly many scientists who got famous only late in life, or posthumously, have had long periods of frustrating 'drought', one wonders if negative rants like that in the linked article, may not in part be a reflection of the authors lack of belief in his/her abilities.

[lgieron]

I guess what stops most people from pursuing that road is the risk that, after "a decade or two", it turns out that your intuitions were wrong and you've got very little to show for the years of toiling. It's essentially a gamble on your life.

[gsnedders]

At least in the UK I know there's a fair amount of rating academic staff by research grants they have received, which hurts anyone doing any long-term work with all the costs at the beginning or anyone doing generally low-cost research.