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>> The tar pit of being able to use my brain to make money instead of navigating politics inside academia... happened for most of us a long time before AI.

Anecdotal evidence to support your point.

Have a degree in Anthropology. Took copious amounts of philosophy classes as part of my major. Took some CS classes just to stay on top of the stuff happening in tech.

I wasn't able do what I wanted in Anthropology, so I took the same route and ended up in SWE. To a degree, I have monetized my degree because everything I learned while obtaining my degree I use almost every day in SWE. I was jaded by the toxic politics of academia and it finally pushed me out as well.

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Good news, you can become jaded by the toxic politics of corporate software development now, too!

When I worked at Google it was the thing that drove me nuts the most. It was very much a "publish or perish" kind of environment with performance and evaluation structures very obviously inspired by academia. (And just like academia, there was sometimes a culture of stealing other people's projects to get credit, with credit and kudos more important than any kind of monetary success since the company was run by an absolute firehose of revenue anyways... )

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