At big corporations you needs fame and "eminence" to land a job in a specialized field. You need to showboat and schmooze into these places. They want to hire the Sanjay Gupta of AI, writing code while also talking to refugees on CNN, or something.
edit: tell me why you think I'm wrong if you think I'm wrong.
Mostly wrong: You have described a way to stay afloat in essentially a paper boat driven by hype. Don't try such a boat on long trips over deep water in high winds!
Elsewhere on this thread I've outlined how business 'handles' new technology.
So, yes, maybe a big credit card company gets up on their hind legs about credit card fraud and wants to attack the problem with AI, big data, machine learning, optimization, etc. So they set up a group.
First problem: Some high executive looks at the group, doesn't see what he expects and respects, gets a headache, and kills the group.
Second problem: The group gets some really nice research done, writes a technical paper, and gives an executive briefing; some high executive gets a headache, concludes that the group is just engaging in 'theoretical nonsense', and kills the group.
Third problem: The group is making good progress, has some running software with good estimates that credit card fraud losses will go down by 75%, thus giving an ROI off the tops of the charts, with essentially no effect on non-fraud (false alarm) credit card operations. Some executives elsewhere in the company start to feel the heat of internal competition and work to shutdown the project.
Fourth problem: The project is rolled out in production and is fully successful. There is no more need for the group, and it is disbanded with everyone fired. The head of the group has his house foreclosed, and his wife leaves him. He sends 1000 resume copies and joins his brother's business mowing grass.
Lesson: Being a technical employee in a big company where 95% of the people and nearly all the executives are non-technical sucks, i.e., is a career long walk on a short pier.
Net, big, old companies are nearly always just unable to work effectively with new ideas. Exceptions are possible but rare in practice.
Larger lesson: Start a successful company and either run it and pass it down in the family or sell it for $50 million, $500 million, whatever. Don't be the factory floor worker. Instead start a company and be the CEO. Use special technical expertise as the advantage.
Can plug together one heck of a Web server computer for $1000 in parts. Heck, just in starting a pizza shop, one pizza oven might cost more than $1000. The pizza shop needs to pay attention to a long list of regulations, but a Web server doesn't,
One of the good things about the US is the relative ease of starting a new business. If want to use technical abilities to start a company and sell it for $50 million, then the US is the place to be. Thank the big, old companies because they are the ones willing to spend $50 million buying a company based on less than 100 KLOC!
