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I agree I would recommend industry to almost everyone. In fact, engineers ask me about grad school several times per year and I almost always discourage them. T
by lewis500 8y ago
I agree I would recommend industry to almost everyone. In fact, engineers ask me about grad school several times per year and I almost always discourage them. Too many people think of grad school as sort of a vague "next step" that will "open doors" or else a way of "leveling up" as though life is an RPG and a grad degree is a special badge or skin you can get. I encourage them rather to think concretely about what academia specifically entails: reading abstruse papers, writing papers with little chance of being appreciated, debugging software, writing grants, giving presentations, etc. Academia is only appropriate for a rare type of person, like being a classical musician.
- goalieca 8y agoI really love research but here I am stuck in a coding job. I tried my shake at academia but I got depressed at the lack of stability. I wanted to start having a life but there was just no stability in any of it. It's hard to plan long term when you're always 6-12 months away from having your income dry up. Moral of the story: there's always someone willing to sacrifice more than you whether its their health, money, life, ethics, whatever.
- mattkrause 8y agoAlong with the personal cost, this instability can't be great for producing good science either. My lab has learned and lost some techniques over and over again, as people churn through. If it were up to me, I'd convert some MS/PhD slots into staff scientist roles with longer contracts. I think you could probably do this in a way that increases productivity, and makes more people more happy to boot.
- james-mcelwain 8y agoOne of my friends who is a graduate student complains about the difficulty of collaborating with other scientists who lack strong coding skills. They are so focused on the science that there's no time to learn or practice good code hygiene. If often wondered why labs don't hire regular developers to increase research veliocity. I have no interest in research, but would happily work in the context of academia doing thing like handling merges, ensuring code modularity, maintaining infrastructure, writing unit tests, etc.
- i_am_proteus 8y agoSome labs do this! I've seen places where the ratio of engineers to grad students and postdocs was about 1:1. The engineers were salaried and could take courses at the university if they chose to (for free, but on their own time).
- mattkrause 8y agoTell me more, please! (Especially if they’re hiring)
- i_am_proteus 8y agoA common thread was that these were labs that were joint between the university and a UARC or FFRDC. Academic grant funding doesn't usually include engineers, only PI and students, but FFRDC/UARC funding is different. So look at Johns Hopkins/APL, Penn State/ARL, Georgia Tech/GTRI, then (very importantly) look for labs run by a PI with a faculty appointment at the university. A friend of mine worked at Hopkins for a few years, did interesting stuff, and walked out with a (free) MS afterwards.
- mattkrause 8y agoAh, those are a bit of a special case. I visited APL a while back and loved it. The job didn’t work out (federal stuff has been....turbulent lately), but hopefully it’ll work out one day. Thanks for the pointers!
- i_am_proteus 8y agoI really do think lab composition's tie to grant wording (if the grant says support for three grad students, you get three grad students, not two grad students and an engineer) has a huge influence on how labs are structured, including why grad students end up doing jobs engineers "should" be doing.
- mattkrause 8y ago
- ambicapter 8y ago> Too many people think of grad school as sort of a vague "next step" that will "open doors" or else a way of "leveling up" as though life is an RPG and a grad degree is a special badge or skin you can get. I have a Masters, and all the interesting jobs I want to do are held by PhDs (sometimes with a couple years of postdocs). And everyone who's on that team has a PhD and they're definitely not going to let anyone lesser than that onto their team.
- cortesoft 8y agoCan I ask what field you are in? I work in software, and many of my colleagues have PhDs... and many of my colleagues never went to college. They all seem to get along fine, and the ones who have PhDs are usually playing down their credentials.
- wpasc 8y agoI can't speak for the person to whom your replying, but at any big tech company doing anything with recommendations, machine learning, etc. will have teams where having a PhD is huge especially when being considered for promotions
- ambicapter 8y agoIn software, not at a FAANG, but in ecommerce.