[littletimmy]

Professors have tons of leadership experience. They direct their own labs (attracting + allocating resources), train future leaders (graduate students + postdocs), collaborate with other labs, communicate their work to a general audience.... and so on. A tenured professor is also unbiased, in principle.

The academic world doesn't get the credit it deserves.

[rhino369]

All my personal experience with academia says the opposite. The only thing they do is chase grants, but they are awful at collaboration and people management. The whole thing only works because they get nearly free labor from grad students and post docs.

Unbiased? No more or less than anyone who quits their job to take a government job. People try to claim there is a conflict of interest in this case because Lee used to work in industry. Well, colleges are a huge user of the USPTO. In fact many schools patent troll nowadays.

[ouchy]

In principle, I agree with everything you said.

In practice? No so much. One could write volumes about how the wheels quickly come off the wagon in each area you listed, since they all happen inside of very specific, narrow, and rigid constructs, ones that seldom translate well.

The analogy that comes to mind would be claiming that having experience leading a team of first-year resident physicians prepares one to be good at motivating people from a broad variety of backgrounds to work hard and long hours.

Which isn't to say that all academics can't excel outside that environment, of course. Talented, gifted academics who would excel at almost anything in which they're engaged will also succeed outside of academia.

[wavefunction]

Isn't this more like "professors _can have_ tons of leadership experience"? Just because someone is "managing" or a "manager" doesn't mean they do a good job at it or know what they're doing.

[obstinate]

I would say it's just a little different to direct students, who are more or less completely powerless and captive, compared to industry leadership.