

Ask HN: Should I work for a few years before grad school? - chetan51

A bit about me: I'm a third-year at UC Berkeley, and I'll be graduating next academic year. I'm a learning entrepreneur, and I founded a profitable software company last year. However, I'm much, much more interested in the technical aspect of building new products than the business side (although I know I'll have to get my hands dirty anyway).<p>I eventually want to run my own company full-time, or work at a company that would give me a certain level of responsibility and ownership over a product.<p>My question is: I have a bunch of ideas for startups that I would love to start work on, but I also want to attend grad school to higher my education (and ensure a higher starting salary ;)) I would love to take a break for a few years after graduating and gain some experience and work on my ideas on the side before going to grad school. Is this recommended, and what are the advantages / drawbacks to this approach? How would it affect my admission chances?<p>I really appreciate your advice!
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mechanical_fish
Grad school will wait. Grad school will always wait.

It is a great time for working in the software business -- lots of stuff
happening, lots of demand for talent.

My impression, back in my school days, was that the people who had done
something else between undergrad and grad school had a certain purposeful air.
They tended to know why they were there, and know what they wanted to learn or
to do, and they navigated more directly to their goal and graduated faster.

Do not fret about admissions. You want to go to engineering or science grad
school, right? Then having some work experience will not hurt you. You might
consider lining up some recommendation letters now, while you're still fresh
in your professors' minds, but three years from now you'll still have the GRE
scores, you'll still have the GPA, and you'll presumably still be willing to
sign up for _N_ years of being worked like a slave for low wages. You'll be as
qualified as ever. ;)

(As for "higher starting salary"... one reason to try a job or two first
before going back to school is to figure out exactly how much of a premium
that advanced degree is going to be in your favorite field. You may find that
it doesn't pay off -- you'll spend several years earning grad-student wages,
and then discover that at a young startup nobody really cares if you've got a
Ph.D.)

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mathgladiator
I found the primary benefit of graduate school is mentorship; this helps in
dealing with the unwritten aspects of mathematics and computing.

Beyond that, I would say doing start-ups is more valuable. However, you are
trading personal development for product development. You are trading hard
intellectual problems for difficult business problem. To differentiate:

A hard intellectual problem is proving that a simple curve divides a plane
into two sides.

A difficult business problem is figuring out in real-time why the machine
isn't working with angry clients everywhere calling "our shit isn't working".

Either direction, it will be fun.

