Quote:
Originally Posted by lapka
Good point with trying to find their financial records.
As a prof I have to read some lectures and a huge chunk of time is not in doing any research myself but organizing funds to be able to have few phds and post-docs to do research.
In this company I would to investigate various claims and problems in the chemical plants industry.
I find the second task more interesting. From my experience I do really well in finding out what caused this or that problem. But I have to take into consideration that it is specialized and if I take it then i will have problems afterwards to change the tracks.
So........ for now I have to try to find out their financial records. I am not sure if they have to disclose it, because the size is so small, but I am going to find it out.
lapka,
I don't know what the small company does, so maybe this is off-target. But I would not assume that you would get to "investigate various claims and problems" for them in the same way that you can do it as an academic. Depending on who the company represents, it may turn out that you're responsible for developing evidence to support a pre-determined opinion, rather than determining the "truth". If you're an academic, you might find this completely distasteful and biased and not real problem-solving.
(The analogy for me is litigation consulting, where an academic might be approached by one party to a lawsuit and then the job is to prepare supporting evidence for that party, regardless of whether you think they're in the right.)