Finished my PhD a year ago. Do it _only_ if you want to do research and you love the area you are pursuing. It is a _lot_ of hard, lonely work and the monetary

Finished my PhD a year ago. Do it _only_ if you want to do research and you love the area you are pursuing. It is a _lot_ of hard, lonely work and the monetary upside is no where near that of a startup or a Google job. Finally, the PhD varies a lot from school to school and from professor to professor even within a given school. If you do choose this route, choose the professor wisely. If I were you, I would try to get into one of the research areas of Google (if the team matching process has not happened already), e.g. Google Brain, they tend to have year-long fellowships. That way, you can experience research without the long term commitment. If it turns out you really like it, then your mentors at Google can give you a sense of whether going back to academia is a good plan or not. If you have not worked full-time for at least a year before, then I would take the Google offer regardless of whether it is a research area or not. No one should go to a PhD without first experiencing industry first.