Something I&#x27;ve seen at every large tech company I&#x27;ve worked at (which includes the author&#x27;s company), is that some people do the work for something cool. The next step for them will be to prepare a slide deck so that some big name can give a talk at a conference. That doesn&#x27;t always happen, but it&#x27;s common.<p>Depending on the managers and team leads involved, that kind of thing can also happen when promotions come around. At every place I&#x27;ve worked, a common complaint is that the TL for the project got promoted despite not doing much because they were TL. Of course that&#x27;s not supposed to happen, but it happens all the time.<p>The post seems to compare the worst case in academia vs. the best case in industry. You could just as easily flip things around and make industry sound bad.