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Its a dream of mine to get a PhD in computer science or even mathematics. I only have my undergrad in CS and 7-8 years of software engineering experience. Due t

Its a dream of mine to get a PhD in computer science or even mathematics. I only have my undergrad in CS and 7-8 years of software engineering experience. Due to some bad decisions Im also quite broke. Im also thinking of doing a masters at georgia tech or something, or just diving in, but not really sure what to do. I just know Ill regret it if I never do it.

dehrmann 3y ago
> Its a dream of mine to get a PhD in computer science... I...have my undergrad in CS and 7-8 years of software engineering experience. You've put a PhD amount of work into industry. Unless there's a specialization you have a passion for, what are you hoping to get out of it? Or is it that you just liked school?
- andoando 3y ago
  To clarify I meant Im not sure what to do in terms of how to proceed. Im near broke so ideally Id make some savings before plunging another 4-6 years with little income. I genuinely just enjoy thinking about theoretical concepts. Its the one thing I found to be a natural driver for me, where I can find myself walking in circles thinking about something days on end. Ive put an unhealthy amount of the last 3-4 years or so for example thinking about pattern composition with no practical benefit. Never wanted to work in corp in the first place, but I wasnt a super achiever back then and the money was good. I do miss school and think Id be happy learning abstract mathematics, but my real interest is in knowledge representation. On the other hand, I have little interest in tech, and even less interest in working in industry and after 8 years I can build pretty much any application and scale it to millions of users which is good enough for me. Not interested in promotions, making more money, being CTO or whatever
  - dehrmann 3y ago
    I haven't been there, but I'm not sure how much of this you'd actually get from a PhD, and it doesn't give you an answer for what to do once you get the degree. It halfway sounds like you want to be a professor, but read some of the comments on other posts about what academia is like. It has all the politics of industry, but the lower stakes somehow make for more drama. If it's just the learning you enjoy, you can do that in your free time for free. > I can build pretty much any application and scale it to millions of users Can you build the cloud it runs on? Can you write a database? An OS? Design a motherboard? It's hard to run out of things to learn in this industry.
    - andoando 3y ago
      Yeah I heard that a lot. You can definitely learn on your own but I think there is a lot of appeal to a structured program, access to professors, and being around people with common interests working on the same things as you. Id also have to quit my job to be able to study anything meaningfully so might as well. As to your second point, no I cant do any of that. Theres a million things for sure. If I could pivot from being a backend/web engineer to writing OSs or compilers or something thatd be another story, but its hard to make that kind of change. 99% of the jobs on the market are for some kind of consumer application, and I literally have zero interest in learning snother framework or tooling.

dehrmann 3y ago

> Its a dream of mine to get a PhD in computer science... I...have my undergrad in CS and 7-8 years of software engineering experience. You've put a PhD amount of work into industry. Unless there's a specialization you have a passion for, what are you hoping to get out of it? Or is it that you just liked school?

andoando 3y ago
To clarify I meant Im not sure what to do in terms of how to proceed. Im near broke so ideally Id make some savings before plunging another 4-6 years with little income. I genuinely just enjoy thinking about theoretical concepts. Its the one thing I found to be a natural driver for me, where I can find myself walking in circles thinking about something days on end. Ive put an unhealthy amount of the last 3-4 years or so for example thinking about pattern composition with no practical benefit. Never wanted to work in corp in the first place, but I wasnt a super achiever back then and the money was good. I do miss school and think Id be happy learning abstract mathematics, but my real interest is in knowledge representation. On the other hand, I have little interest in tech, and even less interest in working in industry and after 8 years I can build pretty much any application and scale it to millions of users which is good enough for me. Not interested in promotions, making more money, being CTO or whatever
- dehrmann 3y ago
  I haven't been there, but I'm not sure how much of this you'd actually get from a PhD, and it doesn't give you an answer for what to do once you get the degree. It halfway sounds like you want to be a professor, but read some of the comments on other posts about what academia is like. It has all the politics of industry, but the lower stakes somehow make for more drama. If it's just the learning you enjoy, you can do that in your free time for free. > I can build pretty much any application and scale it to millions of users Can you build the cloud it runs on? Can you write a database? An OS? Design a motherboard? It's hard to run out of things to learn in this industry.
  - andoando 3y ago
    Yeah I heard that a lot. You can definitely learn on your own but I think there is a lot of appeal to a structured program, access to professors, and being around people with common interests working on the same things as you. Id also have to quit my job to be able to study anything meaningfully so might as well. As to your second point, no I cant do any of that. Theres a million things for sure. If I could pivot from being a backend/web engineer to writing OSs or compilers or something thatd be another story, but its hard to make that kind of change. 99% of the jobs on the market are for some kind of consumer application, and I literally have zero interest in learning snother framework or tooling.