
Ask HN: How valuable is a position as Academic Research Fellow? - yulaow
I try to keep this long story very short. Note: I am right now living in Middle Europe and I am in my late 20s.<p>Basically I was gonna change job in these months and as soon as I wrote on Linkedin that I closed my position with my previous employer, the university Professor with which I made my dissertation for my bachelor degree some years ago informed me they want to offer me a position as Research Fellow.<p>It is well paid (not industry level &quot;well paid&quot; but it&#x27;s good enough and it&#x27;s 3 days a week remote work + flexible hours and I get _A_LOT_ of tax deductions that I usually would not get... basically I should not pay a single euro of taxes. Also they promise to improve it year over year) and they offered me to &quot;sponsorize&quot; my master degree + eventually a phd because they have a lot of research projects right now (especially related to blockchains projects + virtual reality + augmented reality) and not enough researchers.<p>Note that since some weeks ago I was working as web&#x2F;mobile developer, so this is a very different skillset.<p>Now, I don&#x27;t really know if I am interested in a phd, but the master degree seems a good opportunity.<p>What I don&#x27;t know, at all, is: how well is seen in the eyes of the industry and HR-people a position as researcher in academy? I mean, do I risk to go back in a sw dev position in the next years and see my salary&#x2F;perceived_value&#x2F;expected_skill downgraded? Do you have any experience, stories, knowledge about this?<p>Thank you a lot.
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landon32
If you're working on a really hot research topic, you can come back to
industry with a much better resumé + probably pay check. I know for ML
research if you want to ever 'make it big' you basically need to do a phd at a
top university.

I would look into the specific field you're doing a research project and then
see if that field looks promising ~3-5 years out. For instance, if Coinbase
and Ethereum are huge in 3 years, I'd imagine they'd love to talk if you've
done important foundational work on blockchain related tech. AWS also released
their quantum ledger DB suggesting they're interested in blockchain-related
ideas.

It probably wouldn't make the most sense to just go back to being a web
developer at randomTechcorp after this, but you could have potentially even
more interesting opportunities.

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keiferski
That honestly sounds like an incredible deal. If you have any entrepreneurial
aspirations, try building them on your two days off. Just make sure the
university doesn’t automatically own them.

