3 ms·

Ask HN: Take job adjacent to goals or go to get masters?

3 points by m1nz1 5y ago

Hello everyone, I am in a bit of a pickle. I just graduated as a math major with some experience as a data scientist at a small startup. I have been trying to get work as a software engineer or data scientist, but I lack some experience and knowledge of the former and the latter seems to primarily be looking to hire masters/phds. It isn’t ideal to me, but this has me considering applying to get a masters in CS. I went to a good school, had a strong gpa, and will score well on the gre. The tricky thing is that I am likely about to be offered another job. The job is part of a consultancy and I would be given the title data engineer. Based on the client list, I am expecting that my work would mostly be migration to the cloud and dashboard building. That is not exactly where I want my career to go, but it would be really nice to make money and work for a real company. I’m trying to weigh taking this role against continuing to self-learn while applying to jobs and grad school. Factors I’m considering about the job: - The company appears to be just starting its US operation. There are 900+ employees in UK. - There isn’t a very clear guarantee of where I will be staffed. It says New York or tristate area… - The training program is 4 months in another country while getting paid (great!) but if you leave sooner than 2 years you have to pay back a large percentage of the salary you received during training (very odd to me). - The training will likely be somewhat repetitive for me and I could/am learning that stuff online for free already. - The pay is standard entry level consultant pay. Factors I’m considering about grad school: - I haven’t actually gotten into one yet and I dont have strong research - I can only start next year at this point which would mean a year long gap on my resume unless I can get an internship or I take an unrelated job - I worry that I will exit my masters as unattractive to employers as I currently seem to be I’m really struggling with this and would appreciate any guidance from more experienced people. My main concern is that I end up stuck in this job I don’t like that leads me away from the career I want and ultimately ends up with me going to masters anyway. Alternatively I’m worried that if I don’t take this and then fail to get into a masters program I am really done for. I came very close in an interview for a company I really want to work for and the recruiter said to try again in 6 months because I was so close and they all want me there, but just need a bit stronger technical skills. She said to focus on personal projects and take more classes if I can. Taking this other job sortve feels like closing the door on those kinds of opportunities for at least a few years to me.

sjg007 5y ago
Go for what you want. The consultancy sounds fishy but that's just me. It might be a body shop for programmers. That being said working a real job for a few years can do a lot of self confidence and self sufficiency. School will always be there but I think it is the better option if you can swing it financially you can find lots of interesting things to do and research projects etc... Take advantage of the opportunity the University program provides.
tboyd47 5y ago
You don’t actually have any offers on the table so you have no opportunities at the moment. Don’t get ahead of yourself, but don’t get discouraged either. If the places you want to work at require higher technical skills, then getting a masters degree won’t help you achieve that. I don’t know why you would even consider going for your master’s at this point. Give 2 years of slave labor and take on massive debt just to get your name on a paper no one will ever read and stick your toe into various disciplines you’ll probably never revisit. If you’re really set on data science then you will need a PhD to be competitive in that field. There are a small number of seats with many highly educated people trying to sit in them. Don’t listen to the recruiter about why you didn’t get the engineering job. Recruiters are only useful for getting short-listed. They usually aren’t part of the hiring committee. The team probably just chose someone else with more working experience for less pay. You can never predict whether you’ll get an offer based on how you felt the interview went because you don’t know who else is interviewing and what rate they were submitted for. Sorry if this advice sounds like a lot of “Don’ts.” The reason is because you’re doing mostly the right thing — hitting the pavement and maximizing your options. Keep doing that and eventually you’ll get an offer, ideally 2.
- m1nz1 5y ago
  99.9% of the reason I am considering the masters is because I figure it fills a gap in my resume and makes me eligible to far more internships. I don't really want to do data science. I sort've drifted towards it because my major was computational math and it was such a hot field (still is). I don't think that I missed that job because of the pay or experience on my resume. I had a bit of an anxiety attack during my final interview of the onsite. It isn't the first company I lost out on due to last second freeze ups either sadly. If I understand you correctly, you are suggesting that I carry on working on side projects and applying to jobs. I am fortunate enough to be able to survive doing this, but my feeling is that the longer I remain the fewer callbacks I will get due to the gap. Do you disagree or is there some way I can mitigate that effect?

Jugurtha 5y ago

>I came very close in an interview for a company I really want to work for and the recruiter said to try again in 6 months because I was so close and they all want me there, but just need a bit stronger technical skills. She said to focus on personal projects and take more classes if I can. Yeah, fuck that. As someone on the hiring side in a tiny consultancy that builds machine learning products for enterprise, I like when someone has worked on a personal project that mattered to them, end to end, not some portfolio building bullshit where they strap a half-assed Flask app on top of a sklearn model. However, I won't tell them to focus on that and retry in 6 months, and if I really want them, I won't care: there's a trial period of 6 months where they get paid full-time salary. I mainly reject lazy, assholes, and people who have no curiosity. If they're an engineer and it takes them a full minute to get to their working directory, it tells me things I don't like. We've hired 3rd year students with full-time employee contracts identical to everyone's. We're very flexible when they have to take exams or prepare or do homework. They work full-time only in the summer or during breaks. Our best hires were electrical engineers and physicists, even before I was involved with hiring (trained as an EE, taking bias into account). Anyway, I'm on mobile that recently went through a factory reset. I have no idea how much you will be paid, but the field is in flux. It's the wild west out there and there's the emergence of MLOps, where every asshole is building a platform (we built one internally not to die that we now offer to others. Yes, I'm an ML platform building asshole; but an agreeable one). Joining a consultancy/small company allows you to define your role. Everything is to be done and someone ought to do it. You probably will be expected to do some things, but won't be prevented to do more things depending on the complexity you can take on. You can learn a lot in terms of pretty much everything, and can use it like a launchpad. Again, not knowing how much you're paid and your opportunity cost. >The training program is 4 months in another country while getting paid (great!) but if you leave sooner than 2 years you have to pay back a large percentage of the salary you received during training (very odd to me). Fuck that, as well. I think I've seen it in the energy sector where they spend a good chunk of money on each candidate and train them on proprietary tech flying them around. You can find better, less stringent psychopathic. What are they going to teach you anyway ? How to train an sklearn model or something? You seem too balanced for that kind of cringe or to publish a thankful post on LinkedIn for the backpack, laptop, and CD-ROM they gave you and how much it means to you. Look, you went to a good school and seem motivated. Just don't associate with psychos for now. Then, whether you do a masters or not, I have no input on that.