5 ms·

There’s probably a middle ground given how little phds are paid. Consult as a software engineer for 1/3 time, make double janitor comp, 2/3 time on research.

varjag 6y ago
It never ends at 1/3 time.
- andrewstuart2 6y ago
  I feel like at 1/3 time you'd spend most or all of it catching up on what happened in the 2/3 of the week you missed. Unless you're not on a team.
quickthrower2 6y ago
I think you would miss out on having a supervisor and peers to learn from. You’d need to replace that. Might be possible with IRC etc. but I don’t know.
- sushshshsh 6y ago
  Imagine learning from a supervisor, yikes. It is almost always the individual contributors who have to explain things to the supervisor, who might as well be a child at that point.
  - dmd 6y ago
    I’m sorry your PhD supervisor was so terrible. I promise you that’s not universal. I typically learned more in any given ten minutes with mine than in a week with anyone else.
btrettel 6y ago
I've thought about this general approach for funding my own research. Unfortunately it seems hard to do in practice. If the goal is consulting specifically then it's going to take a while to build up the client base needed. I'm just starting consulting myself and I don't expect this to get me more than a couple thousand dollars over the next year. Generalizing a bit, one could make money running a business, consulting being a possible example. The problem with this is that starting a business is usually more than a full time job. This is only viable in the long-term once all the hard work is done, and only if the business gets off the ground. There are no guarantees. Another possibility is to work a more conventional job that offers reduced hours and still decent pay/benefits. I don't know of any such jobs and would welcome any recommendations.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I've known people who (typically) transitioned from being a full-time employee to part-time. Though at that point, they're usually classified as a contractor which tends to have implications for bonuses, RSUs, etc. I agree with your assessment of consulting. I'd add that, except under special conditions, you pretty much have to keep your hand in or you lose touch with current practices etc. Yes, there are people who are real experts in some specialty. They can semi-retire and "parachute in" for a week to solve some problem that no one else can. But that is, as I say, pretty much the definition of a special case.
blackrock 6y ago
Is it really worth it to consult anymore? Considering some FANG engineers are pulling down $300,000 to $400,000 USD? That translates to between $144/hour to $192/hour, respectively. Even senior engineers at other non-FANG companies, that makes less than that, still has a high hourly rate. And what ends up killing you, are taxes, either self employed taxes, S-Corp taxes, or health care costs. The health care insurance costs are perverted, if you don’t have an employer paying for it.
- fractionalhare 6y ago
  > Is it really worth it to consult anymore? Considering some FANG engineers are pulling down $300,000 to $400,000 USD? Good question. It's tough. Anyone who has 5+ years of experience and works at one of FAANG or Lyft, Uber, Square, Stripe, Airbnb, etc in NYC/SFBA/SEA is almost certainly earning $300k+, yes (probably closer to $400k now). That being said if you are qualified to work for one of those companies and they're paying you for expertise in a specialty, you definitely have the technical skills needed to earn more as a solo consultant. For example, leading projects in distributed systems as an L6/E6 engineer at Google/Facebook would neatly set you up to start a boutique consultancy like Jepsen/Aphyr. At that point whether or not you earn more becomes a question of your network, because you have everything else going for you. Very experienced security consultants can also make $500k+ at a 70% utilization rate by charging as much as the larger shops, doing better work and pocketing the spread on the weekly rate. Speaking as a former consultant who earned more than a FAANG salary at equivalent years of experience: full time work trades off autonomy and uncertainty for lower but relatively guaranteed pay. You're never paid what you're actually worth at these companies, in the sense of value contributed. You're paid according to the cost of labor in your area. Sorry to ramble, this is something I like chatting about.
  - blackrock 6y ago
    Thanks for your input. Industry insights like these are gold. The reason I ask is because it’s starting to appear, to not be worthwhile anymore. Yes, some people want the autonomy and independence. But it seems securing the gig itself is tough. For large companies, with millions of dollars budgeted for a project, they seem to want an off-the-shelf system from a vendor, for a technology qualification selection, with another large company behind it. Because that customer “feels” safer that the larger vendor will not go out of business. It’s the old adage: “No one ever got fired for selecting IBM/Microsoft”. So, it seems unlikely that a company will hire an expensive consultant, to do something, when they can hire cheaper senior level programmers, and put them on the clock full time. Granted, some companies do operate at that level, where they try to bring in a specialist to work on something, and get rid of them after a few months. But, they tend to hire these specialists via a contracting agency, where the specialist is deemed an employee of that agency. Hence, the specialist here is not really a consultant, but an employee of a 3rd party. And instead of getting consulting rates, that employee just gets a normal hourly salary. Also, this allows the customer company, to not have a full time staff, and allows them to easily get rid of people, without violating any lay-off laws. Or having to make some embarrassing lay-off announcement publicly. They just silently kill their staff. Although I heard some states like California, is trying to crack down on this, with new laws, but I’m sure companies will find some ways around it. Although now, it seems the most expensive hired guns, are the new experts in some deep learning library, or someone pawning off knowledge in some AI or Machine Learning solution. This appears to be the new valuable gold rush. So if you’ve kept up on this, then it’s time to sell shovels to the desperate prospectors.
cgshep 6y ago
Sadly, this omits a hard truth that impactful research requires near-total dedication. The payoff is highly non-linear versus time invested; conducting research part-time is a recipe for underperformance, which is (partly) why research funders often contractually cap the hours one may work externally while a staff researcher or PhD student.

varjag 6y ago

It never ends at 1/3 time.

andrewstuart2 6y ago
I feel like at 1/3 time you'd spend most or all of it catching up on what happened in the 2/3 of the week you missed. Unless you're not on a team.

quickthrower2 6y ago

I think you would miss out on having a supervisor and peers to learn from. You’d need to replace that. Might be possible with IRC etc. but I don’t know.

sushshshsh 6y ago
Imagine learning from a supervisor, yikes. It is almost always the individual contributors who have to explain things to the supervisor, who might as well be a child at that point.
- dmd 6y ago
  I’m sorry your PhD supervisor was so terrible. I promise you that’s not universal. I typically learned more in any given ten minutes with mine than in a week with anyone else.

btrettel 6y ago

I've thought about this general approach for funding my own research. Unfortunately it seems hard to do in practice. If the goal is consulting specifically then it's going to take a while to build up the client base needed. I'm just starting consulting myself and I don't expect this to get me more than a couple thousand dollars over the next year. Generalizing a bit, one could make money running a business, consulting being a possible example. The problem with this is that starting a business is usually more than a full time job. This is only viable in the long-term once all the hard work is done, and only if the business gets off the ground. There are no guarantees. Another possibility is to work a more conventional job that offers reduced hours and still decent pay/benefits. I don't know of any such jobs and would welcome any recommendations.

ghaff 6y ago
I've known people who (typically) transitioned from being a full-time employee to part-time. Though at that point, they're usually classified as a contractor which tends to have implications for bonuses, RSUs, etc. I agree with your assessment of consulting. I'd add that, except under special conditions, you pretty much have to keep your hand in or you lose touch with current practices etc. Yes, there are people who are real experts in some specialty. They can semi-retire and "parachute in" for a week to solve some problem that no one else can. But that is, as I say, pretty much the definition of a special case.

blackrock 6y ago

Is it really worth it to consult anymore? Considering some FANG engineers are pulling down $300,000 to $400,000 USD? That translates to between $144/hour to $192/hour, respectively. Even senior engineers at other non-FANG companies, that makes less than that, still has a high hourly rate. And what ends up killing you, are taxes, either self employed taxes, S-Corp taxes, or health care costs. The health care insurance costs are perverted, if you don’t have an employer paying for it.

fractionalhare 6y ago
> Is it really worth it to consult anymore? Considering some FANG engineers are pulling down $300,000 to $400,000 USD? Good question. It's tough. Anyone who has 5+ years of experience and works at one of FAANG or Lyft, Uber, Square, Stripe, Airbnb, etc in NYC/SFBA/SEA is almost certainly earning $300k+, yes (probably closer to $400k now). That being said if you are qualified to work for one of those companies and they're paying you for expertise in a specialty, you definitely have the technical skills needed to earn more as a solo consultant. For example, leading projects in distributed systems as an L6/E6 engineer at Google/Facebook would neatly set you up to start a boutique consultancy like Jepsen/Aphyr. At that point whether or not you earn more becomes a question of your network, because you have everything else going for you. Very experienced security consultants can also make $500k+ at a 70% utilization rate by charging as much as the larger shops, doing better work and pocketing the spread on the weekly rate. Speaking as a former consultant who earned more than a FAANG salary at equivalent years of experience: full time work trades off autonomy and uncertainty for lower but relatively guaranteed pay. You're never paid what you're actually worth at these companies, in the sense of value contributed. You're paid according to the cost of labor in your area. Sorry to ramble, this is something I like chatting about.
- blackrock 6y ago
  Thanks for your input. Industry insights like these are gold. The reason I ask is because it’s starting to appear, to not be worthwhile anymore. Yes, some people want the autonomy and independence. But it seems securing the gig itself is tough. For large companies, with millions of dollars budgeted for a project, they seem to want an off-the-shelf system from a vendor, for a technology qualification selection, with another large company behind it. Because that customer “feels” safer that the larger vendor will not go out of business. It’s the old adage: “No one ever got fired for selecting IBM/Microsoft”. So, it seems unlikely that a company will hire an expensive consultant, to do something, when they can hire cheaper senior level programmers, and put them on the clock full time. Granted, some companies do operate at that level, where they try to bring in a specialist to work on something, and get rid of them after a few months. But, they tend to hire these specialists via a contracting agency, where the specialist is deemed an employee of that agency. Hence, the specialist here is not really a consultant, but an employee of a 3rd party. And instead of getting consulting rates, that employee just gets a normal hourly salary. Also, this allows the customer company, to not have a full time staff, and allows them to easily get rid of people, without violating any lay-off laws. Or having to make some embarrassing lay-off announcement publicly. They just silently kill their staff. Although I heard some states like California, is trying to crack down on this, with new laws, but I’m sure companies will find some ways around it. Although now, it seems the most expensive hired guns, are the new experts in some deep learning library, or someone pawning off knowledge in some AI or Machine Learning solution. This appears to be the new valuable gold rush. So if you’ve kept up on this, then it’s time to sell shovels to the desperate prospectors.

cgshep 6y ago

Sadly, this omits a hard truth that impactful research requires near-total dedication. The payoff is highly non-linear versus time invested; conducting research part-time is a recipe for underperformance, which is (partly) why research funders often contractually cap the hours one may work externally while a staff researcher or PhD student.