Welcome to the “Adventures of a researcher in an industrial lab” blog. Let us assume you have a freshly minted PhD or a MSc from a university and have started to work in an industrial lab or are a student who is currently in a university and wants to know how it is working in an industrial setting then this blog is for you. In this blog I will cover some of the technical and non-technical challenges one has to overcome in order to succeed in an industrial lab setting. In industrial labs you will be evaluated with respect to your product, patent and paper contributions (3Ps). Here in this weekly posting I will muse about both technical and non-technical things that will a) help you enjoy your daily work b) will discuss some new upcoming disruptive technologies and c) will discuss some best practices that will help you satisfy the 3Ps requirements. In my first blog entry, I will talk about how to consistently publish a paper in a top conference as a researcher working in an industrial lab.
Most of the researchers in universities and in industrial labs aspire to publish papers in top conferences. Nowadays, papers are published in journals for either archival purposes, or there are those rare papers whose content cannot fit (without compromising quality) in the space typically allotted to a conference paper. Thus, publishing paper in a top notch conference is the desire of most researchers. SOSP, OSDI, USENIX, FAST, SIGMETRICS, VLDB, SIGMOD, ISCA and DSN are some of the top conferences in which storage researchers like to publish papers. What are some of the unique challenges that a storage researcher faces in comparison to a researcher in a university lab with respect to publishing papers, and how can one overcome them.
One of the fundamental problems is that ideas have to be cutting edge and novel in order for someone to be able to publish them in a top notch conference. Top conferences also require an implementation (prototype is acceptable) and thorough experimentation based on real workloads. Nowadays "NO IMPLEMENTATION means NO PAPER". In many cases, these cutting edge ideas are not mature enough to be put into a product. Thus, it takes a lot of extra work to make them ready for products. Industrial researchers have to make a conscious decision with respect to whether they want to spend their energy in trying to productize their idea or whether they want to spend their energy running the necessary experiments and writing the paper. Furthermore, in some cases, the product environment is not ready for these cutting edge ideas. Thus, many researchers pursue less risky ideas that have a higher probability of getting productized in order to not show a goose egg in the product impact column at the end of the year, because many organizations give higher marks to product impact in comparison to paper impact.
From my past experience most storage researchers fall into either the paper impact camp or the product impact camp. That is, the researchers in the paper camp focus more on publishing papers at the expense of making product impact, and vice versa. The order of importance between papers, patents and product impact varies from on research lab to another (actually it even varies from manager to manager). An industrial researcher can always publish a one-off paper but is there a formula for an industrial researcher to publish papers (while also making a product impact) on a consistent basis? The answer interestingly enough is “YES”.
There are the following three types of paper that can be published by an industrial researcher (each paper should be evaluated on its technical merit, and thus, I do not like to rate one category of paper to be better than other categories):
- Product related: A product related paper corresponds to either the product work the industrial researcher is actively pursuing, or has complemented in the past. The difficulty in publishing papers in this category has been already discussed above. It is important to note that as an industrial researcher this is not the only category of papers that one can produce. One has to be realistic that a researcher can produce one product related paper once every 2 to 3 years. One should set realistic expectations and plan accordingly for writing product related papers.
- Collaboration with Universities: Industrial researchers have access to real workloads and they have problem databases that contain information about failure rates, and customer usage/configuration patterns. Industrial researchers also get an opportunity to interact with real customers, and thus, they are privy to many real customer problems. Collaboration with universities leads to a synergistic win-win situation where the universities bring their technical expertise and graduate student manpower to the table, and the industrial lab researchers bring the above mentioned knowledge to the table. Provided that the patent issues can be worked out between the two groups, this arrangement can lead to some good publications. The time commitment on the industrial researchers’ part is not as much as in the product related paper case, and thus, they can still work separately on making a product impact via a different idea.
- Collaboration with a summer intern: A good summer intern can really help the industrial researcher publish a good paper by providing relief with prototype implementation and experimentation efforts. The paper idea does not necessarily have to be related to the product related work that the industrial researcher might be actively pursuing. Summer internships typically last for 3 months, and thus, the research problem has to be a priori identified before the summer intern’s arrival, and the intern must have some background in the selected area in order for one to realistically have a shot at success. Getting a good summer intern is not easy. One has to cultivate relationships with the faculty at good schools in order to get the referrals. Ideally, one wants a student who is good at implementing, conducting experiments and writing papers. It is very rare to find a student who is proficient in all three aspects. Thus, an industrial researcher should have the patience to train a student. In some cases, it might take multiple summer internships with the same student to provide the necessary training. In some rare cases if the student can intern for longer than 3 months or has time to work on the same problem even after returning to the university, then one dramatically increase the chance for good publications.
Making both product and paper impact simultaneously is not impossible. As discussed above, one should systematically plan and try to write at least one paper belonging to either one of the above categories every year. In addition to smart planning, and hard work, one also needs luck in order to be able to publish in top conferences. Thus, to keep the industrial researchers motivated, some partial credit should be also given to them for submitting good papers to top conferences. Team work is very very important in order to publish papers in an industrial lab setting. Don't worry about who is the first author or the second author of a paper. As a PhD student it is important to be the first author in order to get full-time employment, but once you are in the industry, it is more important to co-operate and operate as a team in order to share ideas and the required effort, and this is the first required step towards publishing good papers. Having a good team will cut down on the amount of time one has to individually spend, and that saved time can be used to make other product and patent related contributions. Also, do not over extend yourself by simultaneously working on too many papers. You will end up doing a crappy job on all of your papers. Always think "Quality over Quantity". Finally, work with experienced people with good publication track records. There is nothing better than learning from a good "Guru".
