In my 35 years of working with both engineers, corporate researchers and academics, I have not experienced this divide you describe. Research isn't something that happens at startups. There is no revenue to support research in a startup. The entire focus is on product.

You have a lot of angst to work through, my friend. Really, you have built up some divide between research and engineering that simply does not exist.

I have no clue why your are being down voted.

My take is that you seem quite intent on painting him as petty. His statements seem quite reasonable and rational, especially in the face of the over exuberant reactions we mostly see about chatGPT.

> Mostly on the research side which immediately puts him very hostile against engineers... It's a classic case of a researcher-engineer beef

Seems like you have had some bad experiences that led to these feelings. There is no built in animosity between these groups. Just different goals.

The top four snowiest places are all on the west coast (Wikipedia). They are all significantly higher total average snowfalls than any other places on the east coast. If you had a special color for the very top end of the gradient, this would be much clearer. Oddly, you have this at the low end already