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Ask HN: Moving into Academic CS from Industry?
Hi all. I've been a programmer for about 16 years now. I've worked at a lot of different companies and I've mostly not enjoyed the career. At this point I think it's prudent to give up on churning through companies looking for a good fit, and consider more radical changes.
My interests tend towards the more academic side of CS - parsers, type theory, programming languages and so on. So I'm wondering how difficult it would be to transition into the academic career path.
Has anyone done it, or know how it might go from personal experience? What would be the actual steps involved?
- eimrine 3y agoIf you can learn something for 5 years in your 20s, then it is going to be 10 years in 30s, 20 years in 40s and so on.
- jhp123 3y agoI'm not concerned about my ability to handle the coursework or research, just the practicalities of entering the career
- gus_massa 3y agoDo you have a friend in any of those field? Sometimes academia ask for the number of published papers and if you can collaborate with a friend to publish a few papers it may help. It's also useful to see if you enjoy the process when you know how the sausages are made.
- lusus_naturae 3y agoGet on the speaking, lecture and conference tour on your topics of interest. If you have talks on youtube or online courses, that will help. Find people to publish some papers with and reach out to dept. heads with your CV. You don't need to show published papers if you're working in defense etc. In general though, get the research/papers conversation started with colleagues and start interviewing (and say you're working on publishing). Assistant/associate prof. bars are kinda lower at lower tier schools, but not by that much. In general, its better to apply to jobs that have listings as internally listed jobs often have a candidate in place for them. Good luck.
- jhp123 3y agomost job reqs for these positions seem to say that a PhD is required; are you saying that published papers, conference talks etc. could serve as an equivalent for the PhD?
- lusus_naturae 3y agoPer my understanding it depends on the field as experience may count in those, the position, and where you apply. Two-year colleges or community colleges certainly interview Master's candidates, and if your experience is extensive it can be helpful against PhD candidates.
- nextos 3y agoI think lots of European universities, where there is a high demand for CS/SE lecturers and engineers, may easily take someone with your profile for a lecturer (teaching-oriented) or (permanent) research engineer position (R&D-oriented). That is a good way to enter an academic career without a PhD, if you know where to find this kind of positions. The UK and Scandinavian markets are quite straightforward and will not have any local language constraints. Hiring processes are also simpler, without requirements that are hard to meet for an outsider. The Netherlands and Ireland are also worth considering. In the US, I think the market is a bit more competitive, especially at R1 institutions. Happy to provide more advice via email.
- highhedgehog 3y agoWhat kind of European universities do that and how do I find them? I've been a lab assistant at a university before and would like to evaluate this opportunity
- jhp123 3y agothanks, that's an interesting idea and I didn't realize those markets might be easier.
- clusterhacks 3y agoWhile it might be better if you better defined what you think the "academic career path" is, I'll throw out my experience . . . I work as a programmer at an academic/research institution. But the job is just normal IT and light programming. I think finding a role similar to mine would be easy for you. Your MIT math undergrad will probably be more than enough credential signaling for that type of job to go along with your professional experience. My path back to this environment for work goes roughly: earned MS in CS directly after BS in CS, two longer tenure jobs in industry (8-ish+ years total) after grad school, returned to academic/research institution because of personal network and also having skills needed for new role at institution. I have been here for 10+ years. Much of that time it seems like my earnings were at least 20% less than market rate for my region. But the pace of the job was easy and many people "settle in" to these jobs. There is some autonomy here and a little room to stretch your day-to-day work to fit personal interests. But much less than you may expect. The work environment is not THAT different than industry and I personally have found that it is oddly more political here than expected with respect to who gets to do what work. I have been able to be involved more directly with researchers as a "side gig" when my day-to-day job responsibilities allowed. I probably would have left this role but personal+family responsibilities made the flexibility of the job hard to move on from. I am also in an unusual position wrt to funding - our group is heavily funded by hard money, so we are significantly less dependent on grants than even some research/teaching staff at my institution. Your academic interests are probably going to be hard to fit in - those are "pure-ish" CS topics. I know some PhD applied math guys who do research computing support and their roles are often limited to helping with existing libraries with users of a research compute cluster. They aren't doing much applied math . . . Are you willing to pull an extra stint of time in grad school for a MS or PhD? Joining a good research team and publishing with them could build up your CV for the academic job market. It isn't super critical unless you want to be research faculty somewhere . . . Some CS programs have a "professor of the practice" job role that could be attractive but it usually involves significant entry-level teaching requirements. Not sure if any of this is helpful. Good luck figuring it out.
- jhp123 3y agoThanks for sharing your experiences. From what I understand, earning a PhD would take some 5 years or more, with minimal income .. it's hard to justify the lost income unless I could accelerate the process significantly.
- bjourne 3y agoNot impossible, but very difficult. Reading between the lines it seems that you are underestimating the effort involved. You say that you are interested in type theory. Do you know everything about Hindley-Milner systems, lambda calculus, System F, etc? Great! That's the very basics and what you will learn in a CS master program at any reputable university. But to actually do research in this area, you need to know about all major results published in the field since the 1970s. Learning all that takes a lot of time. Then you need to learn the practicalities of research, how to write papers, how to write papers that gets accepted, etc. Phd programs aren't multi-year affairs because academia wants to prevent students from progressing, it's just that these things take time. Then there is the financial side too. You're unlikely to ever earn as much in academia as you do now as a developer with 16 years experience. Phd and postdoc salary may be 1/2 or 1/3 of what you're making now. Then there is the age thing (16 years of experience implies you're 35+)... Your professors and supervisors might be younger than you. But if you fed up of writing crud apps or bug fixing the shittiest t-sql code in the world then maybe it is worth it. If you've done something you didn't like for 16 years then it is time to stop and reconsider.
- curiousgibbon 3y agoI'm an academic. I think you make valid points but get the effect size wrong. It's entirely possible to contribute to academic fields without intimate knowledge of 50 years of past results. Breakthroughs come from hard work, inspiration and luck in different amounts each time. An outsider perspective can be more useful than being highly trained in the dogmatic status quo as you see things differently. I'd caution that raw intellectual talent probably differs more than you tend to notice in industry. Academic field leaders can be frighteningly smart, and while some people enjoy being the slowest person in the room it can be tough to handle. Also, you may find that PhD salaries are MUCH lower than 1/3 of an experienced developer salary. If you do the standard thing of 20h per week GTA/GRA work and the rest (nominally 20h but likely 40h) independent study, you might get $25k per year plus meagre health benefits. If you're financially independent this is manageable, but relative to developer salary it's poverty in high COL areas of the USA (which is where the good universities are).
- 3y ago
- hnthrowaway0315 3y agoI'd say take a couple of courses first and see what happens.