[duaneb]

The difference with academia is that what qualifies as 'meritorious' is far less pragmatic. Many people get PhDs based on work that will never see engineering use. In this sense, they're very qualified at producing interesting, useless observations. The tech industry is less inclined towards this.

However, we are more inclined towards hype investing, leading to useless companies (snapchat) getting insane valuations, and people utterly without merit becoming rich overnight.