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As a PhD graduate, how much easier it to get a job at a research lab like the ones at Microsoft, Intel, Google etc. compared to getting a job as a Professor at an R1 university?

Is it possible to get a job at an R1 university, if one spends a period of time publishing papers at an industry research lab?

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It is much easier to get a job in an top-notch industry research lab than an R1 professorship for one simple reason: there are vastly more such research lab jobs available.

To illustrate this, let's consider an illustrative example. The Stanford Computer Science faculty has 55 professors. To sustain a department of that size, they'll probably be hiring 2-4 people per year, depending on what fraction fail to make tenure. Meanwhile, right next door is its cousin, SRI International, with about 2100 employees: most of those don't have PhDs, but a lot of them do, and a quick search on their open job postings finds more than a dozen that are looking for a PhD-level candidate right now. That's just one company, and one you've probably never even heard of. There's a lot more big ones out there, and far more than that if you start considering the smaller ones as well.

Now, getting back into a professorship, that's a different story. It most certainly can be done, if you maintain a good research presence. For most people, however, the trip to industry is a one-way trip, simply because you generally don't have to publish. Many research companies like it when you publish, and many strongly encourage it---but the fact that they have to encourage it should tell you that the incentives are just not there the same way. At a company, you are not measured primarily by your ability to publish, and so it tends to get triaged in favor of other things, like writing proposals, delivering demos to customers, or product development. There's nothing against publishing, but there's no "publish or perish" and so there's a lot less publishing.

Bottom line: you can move in either direction, but it's a lot easier to move from university to industry than the reverse.

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  • Excellent answer (+1). I think that what you describe is applicable to other fields, too, mostly hard sciences, but, perhaps, to a lesser degree, social sciences as well.
    – Aleksandr Blekh
    Commented May 22, 2015 at 5:29
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    It's also very dependent on the lab and on the area in Computer Science that you're in. You mention Microsoft Research, Google, and Intel lumped together but in a lot of cases industry research labs can be very different in terms of size, turnover rates, and hiring practices. For example, Microsoft Research can be comparable or even more difficult to get into than an R1 depending on the year and what the institution/company is looking for.
    – Zai
    Commented May 22, 2015 at 5:59
  • @jakebeal: Is publishing in industry not required due to the quality of research in industry, or such a formality is not required once you join industry.
    – motiur
    Commented May 22, 2015 at 18:16
  • @motiur Industrial research varies in quality just as much as university research. There are "R1 companies" just like there are "R1 universities" (just much less systematized). Similarly, publication can be very useful in industry, helping to obtain external funding just like at a university. But an industry researcher is not building a tenure case, and so "enough publication" is a much more balanced and less anxiety-inducing concept. Also, some industrial projects may not be allowed to be published, either due to internal IP restrictions or external funder restrictions.
    – jakebeal
    Commented May 22, 2015 at 19:02
  • Is there list of such R1 companies - I found a list of R1 universities, I am just curious.
    – motiur
    Commented May 23, 2015 at 15:28

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