Ask HN: Should I do a masters at Cambridge or start as a new grad at Amazon?

Avoid Amazon

I've not worked at Amazon, but work in other big tech. If you were my son, I'd tell you to pursue Cambridge. Amazon employment isn't that special.

(i've been in industry for 18+ years, went to a name brand school, and live in the heart of silicon valley. Cambridge, i'd imagine, gives you at the least a more interesting story, and at the most a different opportunity set. amazon is now the lower bar of what you should hope to attain after Cambridge.)

I'd chose Cambridge every time. But that's because I think I'd enjoy the time on the campus much more than in the corporate hell of Amazon. YMMV.

flip a coin, the option you want while the coin is in the air is what you should do.

Cambridge- for a few reasons: (A) Amazon would likely offer you another position if you still wanted to work there. (B) It’ll probably never be easier for you to go to, and do well, in school than at your current age / position. (C) You’ll meet a wide variety of people that’ll broaden your horizons.

Depends on your history, what team you're on at Amazon and what you are planning to study at Cambridge. In general, I would choose Cambridge, but if your undergrad was at a Tier1 university and you are working on a truly cutting edge team at Amazon, then you can consider Amazon.

Do what you want to do

I grew up in an environment that valued education over all else, so I pursued post-grad stuff starting 1997 or so and stuck to my guns until way after dot com crashed. Turns out I hated it and ended up wasting a bunch of time and missing out on the exciting stuff, so the advice I would give to my then-self is obviously to not do that. But would I give the same advice to myself if conditions were like today? Thinking maybe not, unless the Amazon thing was thick in the AI infra tech.

Reddit is full of desperate crabs pulling you down into the bucket. Go to Cambridge, that's literally a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Cambridge. Train the human, not the machine.

Amazon will still be there, if that’s what you decide for your soul afterward. If you made the cut now, you’ll make the cut again in future.

The world is so much bigger than commerce. Even if you choose to work the world of commerce, you’ll have a richer experience of it, and bring more subtle value to your professional career, entering into it with eyes that can see other hues in the outside world. And a cohort of smart thoughtful humans who are engaging with the world from other perspectives, as you all go into the decades ahead.

It depends on what you want to do with your life and career. You haven't said what your interests are or what your Master's is going to be in. If you want to be a software engineer then starting career early is better. If you want to go into research then going to university is better. If your Masters is going to be in liberal arts then your prospects of a lucrative job out of Cambridge will be less than having gained two years of professional experience. Since I don't know the specifics, I'll give general advise - decide what's important to you long term and choose the option that aligns with it.

5-10 years ago, I would have said to take the job, if you want to maximize the number in your bank account.

Today, if I had no pressure to start working, I'd do Cambridge. Due to AI, much is in flux in software engineering today and I don't think you lose anything by waiting a bit to see where the chips fall _and_ getting some valuable credentials in the meantime. Get experience with something that will be valuable in the AI business in the coming years.

No one knows what is going to happen in the long term. No one is going to know what is going to happen in the short term. I'd take the education and put off working as long as possible and see if the market sorts itself out.

Cambridge. The experience will be more enjoyable, the networking will be good, and seeing a Masters from Cambridge on a resume would make a bigger impression (to me) than seeing that you worked for Amazon.

Cambridge MS will open doors that will never open for you otherwise. Amazon will be there in 2 years, you won’t have control over your destiny, and things can go much more wrong there with toxic people and no recourse.

TAKE THE JOB OFFER.

You can always get your Masters if you get laid off. Jobs are precious especially for new grads. Do not make the mistake of passing over this job offer, it’s worth so much more than a masters degree. You can always get your master’s later on, for example if you get laid off from Amazon and can’t find another job.

Either way, I suggested you try to build and launch 1 product per month. For example, someone launched a SAAS for excel formulas that now makes +$2M.

It becomes much harder to go back to school after a while. Responsibilities pile up, you fall out of eligibility for funding.

I loved doing a masters as a mature student, but I was very lucky to be able to do so.

School won't always be so easy. Do school.

Also, Amazon are gross.

If the CS master is free(!), then go for it.

If you have to pay -lets say- 30.000 bucks, rethink.

The additional time of being student will open you newer doors, than if you are already working - assumption: IF the CS master is free, otherwise it may not pay off

Being a student is a huge privilege in most countries accordings to different costs/fees/taxes - so I recommend everyone to keep this status, as long AS IT IS FREE and legally possible.

Note that Amazon has some cultural misfeatures that require unlearning at other employers.

I've hired ex-Amazon engineers at Google who believe that your job is to fuck over as many other teams as possible in the name of delivering your feature as quickly as possible so you can climb the ladder, and who believe your manager's job is to back you up while you fuck over those other teams and steal credit from other engineers on them. They tend to struggle in Google's more collaborative culture, and I'd imagine they'd also struggle in other companies that are a little less sociopathic. The problem is particularly acute with people who have never worked anywhere but Amazon; older employees coming out of Amazon are more like "Well, that's just how Amazon is, I'll adapt myself to whatever culture my current job has", but junior engineers are often shaped and molded by it because they've never known anything else.

I'm often a big fan of going to industry early because a.) you make more money early which can then compound and b.) you actually do learn a lot of tacit knowledge working in industry, very often more relevant than what you'd learn as a student. But if the choice is between Amazon and Cambridge I would probably do Cambridge.

My general advice to students is to avoid big companies as your first job. You will be a tiny cog in a huge machinery and will drown in cooperate politics you don't yet understand.

If I was in your position I would try to combine masters with working at a startup or a small company.

I'd choose Cambridge, as I am sure that it provides the opportunity to meet a lot of influential people that you might be glad to have in your contacts later on in life, as well as a masters from there will open a lot of doors alone.

Well, that entirely depends on one's target career. Are you talking about the Cambridge MPhil in Advanced CS? If you do that, you're aiming for a Ph.D.

That's an entirely different direction from an Amazon L2/L3 or whatever. If you want to be a professional software engineer the answer is to take the Amazon job. The MPhil will not make you a better engineer. Experience will. As far as I know, you need to have a pretty strong Bachelors to qualify for that anyway so your basics are probably already good enough to the degree required for professional software engineering.

On the other hand, if you want a Ph.D. you are realistically closing your door to it by taking the Amazon gig. Once you start, you will find that the income you get is so much higher than you've had before and grows so much faster that you will be trapped by your now-very-visible opportunity cost.

The final thing, though, is that the market is in massive flux now. No one knows what the shape of jobs in the future will be like. Coding agents are already very good but no one has successfully managed to use them to lead frontier-grade research in software. They still hire Ph.D.s to do that.

In your position, I'd take the ramp on the Amazon ladder (and I did do a similar thing - going to industry over academia) but I will tell you that for those who I knew who did Ph.Ds the top few languished for 10 years (in comparison to those of us who went to industry) but then suddenly with the AI revolution in the last few they're doing well. A Ph.D. is far away from today. You've got your one-year MPhil to do and then the actual research. Long way to go and the intermediate step yields nothing.

Working at Amazon blows, especially as the bottom of the totem pole. If you can afford more college, go do that. You'll probably meet much more interesting people that way.

Aligning with your goals, take Amazon.

Over the long term (assuming the next 10-15 years) getting more experience with building, communicating, and operating systems that solve business problems will get you more cash.

In theory, that masters may boost your starting comp but in the longer term, your comp would likely end up similar. I've worked on numerous teams with a mix of all academic levels and it has never been a huge predictor of comp.

Take this with a grain of salt, it's all anecdotal :).

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Congrats on 2 wonderful options!