
Grad school four months out - zaveri
http://www.umbrant.com/blog/2013/grad_school_4_months_out.html
======
wybo
I went to work at a startup after an MSc. I was there for little over a year,
and now I am back in Grad school (the same where I was, in the UK).

Most of the differences you describe I experienced as well, except that
holidays could be planned at a much shorter notice at our company, even though
workdays were considerably longer (10 hours).

I also had to argue for, and then introduce, automated testing, and some other
good practices that I'd expected to be industry standard (was nevertheless
nice there was room for this, and it was appreciated in the end...).

After a while, though, I missed the research, the self-development, the
thinking about broader problems, and also, even though the team was great; the
social side of things (especially as the hours left me exhausted in the
evenings and even into the weekend). I guess I'm someone who is happiest and
most creative when working 8 hours or so, and not tired. I also missed my
friends in Europe, and the life-style there (walkable cities, no abject
poverty, etc).

As for working on important problems, yes I loved what the product tried to
accomplish, and our company mission, but 80-90% of most peoples time was spent
on bug-fixing, repaying/circumventing technical debt, and at best relatively
minor features that most users probably would/should never notice. So on
balance spending 10-20% of ones time on a new real-world problem, versus, say
70-100% on a theoretical one, might still end up in favor of the latter as for
making a difference...

Everybody should make their own decision on grad-school vs industry, but
trying both is definitely a good idea.

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GuiA
Great post, thanks for taking the time to write it.

I took a similar route– quit my PhD program to join a startup at which I had
interned the summer prior– and slowly find myself missing many aspects of grad
school.

Will probably end back there at some point– if only there was a magical place
with the best parts of grad school and the best parts of the startup world...

~~~
robryan
That is the premise of research arms in industry, such as Microsoft research?
No idea whether they end up being co opted by business pressures or not?

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EnderMB
I dropped out of grad school to work in a start-up, which also turned out to
be my first proper full-time job after graduating from university. I had
worked before, in internships and before university, which made me attractive
to the company that offered me my get-out offer from grad school.

At the time, I was super stressed. I was working three days a week to pay for
grad school and having to work pretty much every single day with barely any
money to live on was hell. Start-up life, for me, was almost like a holiday. I
was working regular hours, and although there were times where I was working
hard and long hours it felt structured.

That being said, I absolutely loved grad school. The idea of it is what made
me do it. My bachelors in CS left me wanting to know more, so a step-up was
required.

I let my university know that I was struggling to make ends meet and that I
would be leaving as I couldn't afford the next term. The university where I
got my bachelors was as tight with money as possible, so I expected nothing,
but they refunded EVERYTHING and wished me luck. I effectively got almost
three months of education for free.

For that reason, I will return to grad school, and I will definitely continue
it at the same university. Sadly, the price of a Masters degree in the UK has
almost tripled, so it won't be any time soon. It if goes down to around £5k
I'll definitely do it again.

~~~
jdotjdot
That's absolutely incredible that your university refunded everything, and I'm
glad to hear.

Maybe you should consider pursuing fellowships or work at companies that would
pay for you to get a higher degree and also provide a reasonable living
stipend. Seems to me like someone with the drive you have, clearly hoping to
pursue it but financially unable to, is the perfect candidate for one of those
positions.

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lgeek
Nice read, I always enjoy reading about the grad school experiences of people
with similar background to mine.

> The main issue was that I never crisply understood all the use-cases and
> requirements for the systems I was building. I felt weird making assertions
> about how people wanted to use something, when I had never operated or used
> it in the real world!

I think that if you're interested in building systems that actually get to be
used <in the real world>, the industry is a better place. Personally, I enjoy
doing a PhD because I have fewer restrictions which allows me to focus on the
things I really find interesting. For example, I don't have to worry too much
about making software user-friendly since it will only be used by myself or a
handful of people, I don't have to handle tricky corner cases unless I'm
actually hitting them on my data, etc.

You also get to work on problems that will only become relevant in the future,
e.g. people who have been doing research relevant to many-core systems for
quite some time.

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sbuccini
It's good to hear that Cal's grad program is good. I'm in undergrad here right
now, and I plan to start researching next semester so I can integrate myself a
little more into this side of things. Any advice? If you haven't left yet I'll
buy you lunch if I can pick your brain.

~~~
umbrant
I'm no longer at Berkeley, but I'm sure there are any number of professors or
grad students who'd be happy to talk to you. I'd talk to Armando Fox if you
want to get into research, he works with a lot of undergrads. He also runs a
website (Research Match? something like that) which lists projects looking for
undergraduates.

The CSGSA also hosts an undergraduate "research mixer" which is a chill way of
speed dating a bunch of projects.

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anxx
I am about to return to grad school after working a bit in industry; so this
article is very relevant to me. I will be doing a Masters right now, but I do
plan on doing a PhD afterwards.

I am constantly splitting my brains about how I can work on an "important"
problem; something where my expertise will be relevant years after grad
school, too. And I don't want to become a professor and there is a chance I
might choose to go back to my home country (not much of compsci products, but
very good e-commerce and banking); so my expertise should be of value even in
a consumer-of-technology (not producer) economy.

If anybody has ideas about how to pick an area for research, I'd love to hear.

~~~
SatvikBeri
If you want to make an impact on an important problem, I'd focus on the
advisor first, not the area of research. Pick an advisor with a track record
for strong publications in quality journals. Someone who produces quality
research will typically have the best sense of what problems are and aren't
important, and can guide you much better than bystanders who don't know your
skills. In addition, a strong advisor will have the contacts necessary to get
you in touch with other top researchers in your field, which is extremely
important in producing high quality publications.

~~~
pekk
Depends on what you need.

The one with lots of publications in big-deal journals may or may not be
running a sweatshop. And they may or may not be doing actually interesting
science, because that game requires so much attention to fashion, fundability
and grinding out large quantities of papers (contrary to common belief,
prestigious journals do not mean journals publishing the highest quality
papers).

But if you want to learn that particular trade then find the advisor best at
it to study under.

