[code4tee]

A long time ago the best talent from PhD programs tended to stay in academia. That was considered the “prize.” Over the last 15 years or so the tables have really turned. Not saying top people don’t stay, but I now see much if not most of the top talent continuing their careers in the private sector or elsewhere. We’re in an era where the most cutting edge and impactful research increasingly does not take place at academic institutions. Between that and the vastly different compensation structures in the private sector it’s not too surprising top people want to go elsewhere.

As someone mentioned to me recently “Success in academia is defined by publishing papers mostly read only by a few other people that define success as publishing papers. Success outside academia is defined by doing amazing $&@! that has a measurable impact on the world.”

[bonoboTP]

That's a bit biased. I could argue the other extreme by highlighting the quest for truth aspect in academia, the freedom from market influence and safety to pursue wherever the interesting research takes you etc.

Contrast that with working at an adtech giant to increase measurable engagement by applying some amazing $&@! that make users addicted and miserable, your workers burned out and the upper classes even richer. Or work on some prototype that never gets in the hands of users, either because it's just a PR stunt pet project for a higher-up or it gets killed off for internal company politics reasons.

You can pick your narrative by picking which academic and industry position to focus on. You can do awesome stuff at both and be miserable at both.

The top of the top usually do both at the same time. They spend part time at a top university, but also advise top companies with top research groups.

[ichbinwiederda]

You are confounding two things. The impact of research and the impact of the researcher. Increasingly more research is done in publicly funded academia, not the opposite at you claim. OTOH the relative impact of individual researchers has gone down, but this is mostly due to problems being tackled being increasingly harder. In industry you can have relatively more impact because you are not doing research but you are building things using knowledge somebody has already collected for you. Maybe that is what you wanted to say.