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Ask HN: Industry job for 1+ year or try directly for grad school?

4 points by cybernoodles ↗ HN
Curious about what your thoughts would be on the pros and cons of the two options and whether or not going into industry for a bit would hurt or improve someone's chances. My real passion is research. I've been told working at one of the top tech companies could only help me get into my desired program (CS, possibly ML/AI).

6 comments

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forward_number
Having a year of experience may help you to define your research interests with a more pragmatic goals in mind. A complaint that I frequently hear from friends who have got into academic research is that there are very few people in the world who can understand the area where they do research. Presumably, if one can focus one's research one the area that is of interest to the real world, one can find many more people to talk to, get motivated, etc.
codegeek
You can always go back to school. But nothing beats real industry experience specially if you can work at one of the top tech. companies. So I would say go get a job, work for a year or 2 and then decide if you still want to go back to school to continue research etc. You will have a much better idea.

On the other hand, if you feel that your chances of getting into one of the top. tech companies is not that great right now but you can get into a top grad school program, then go for the grad school. You will connect with top companies there.

cybernoodles
Sorry. Forgot to mention, I have an offer from one of them. Would it be a bad idea to try to negotiate the "non-negotiable" starting salary since the stocks and signing bonus wouldn't be much use to me? (I need to be there for probably 4 or 5 years for all the bonus and stock stuff to be dispersed. I'd say about 25% of it would be dispersed before I went off to grad school without needing to be repaid.)
narwally
I'm going through that same decision right now. I'm currently doing an internship at a startup that is allowing me learn machine learning and data analysis in a production setting. Like you I eventually want to do research, but I think grad school is just one way to get there. I'm going to spend another year or so in industry, see if I can make it into doing the kind of research I'm interested in, and if not I'll head back to school.

I see grad school as taking a massive pay-cut over 2-6 years in order to further my education. However, If I can get a similar education while being payed at market value, then there's no competition.

cybernoodles
How could you get that same education while being paid market value? Don't these companies require a post-grad degree in order to be considered for research positions?
elmarschraml
Go work in industry for a bit before you go to grad school.

Why?

You already know academia, but not industry. There is a good chance that you will like working in industry, and after a year or two will think that going back to school would have been a waste of time. And if not, you can always go to grad school later.

Even if you are already set on going to grad school, having worked in industry will give you a much better idea of what really matters to users and applications in the real world and will probably give you good ideas about what direction to take your research.

And on the practical side, you can make more money in an industry job, so you can save up some money, and spend the time in grad school not having to worry about finances.