I have recently been told that PhD peeps have to concur an opportunity cost of $ 400-500K ( assuming 50% savings of $200 TC of fresh Masters grads). Losing $500K dollars for the first five years seems alright if a PhD guarantees, from what I heard starting at 250K TC and unbounded growth, while the MSc guys(even with all their work-ex) are stuck at a 300K TC doing menial data analyst/BI jobs. Is it better to have Masters or PhD if the long term career goal is to succeed in the core(ML DL)/ applied data science roles and generate the Big Bucks? (Especially at FAAANG companies) Does the lack of a PhD restrict one's growth into senior/lead roles? Will the Masters grad ever find work which is not the trivial BI roles ?
I don't agree with Microsoft's comment. It's getting increasingly hard to get interview calls for real data science/ML jobs without a PhD, even if you have experience.
Yeah true. The huge bet that you'd be gambling on is that PhD peeps would still be in demand 5 years down the lane. Personally, I'm not very much interested in the highly research oriented academic work but rather something along the lines of a machine learning engineer is the sweet spot.
Yeah same. I don't want to go for a PhD, it's a huge investment in terms of time/effort and I don't want to do research. I want to be industry oriented but I can see a shift where the industry is keen on phDs What's your skillset?
Yes, it appears PhDs are more in demand for super technical ML positions. Perhaps, Masters students doing BI work who have good SWE skills can pivot into ML Engineering roles?
Maybe. But seems unlikely. Haven't really seen any anecdotal evidence for that. Personally, machine learning engineering is the sweet spot for me.
Hmm, but then who else is going to land MLE roles? We either have SWEs without ML knowledge or we have BI people with MLE knowledge but don’t know algorithms and leetcode.
Phd may land u a good initial offer, however, once u are at a firm, ur bonus and promo depends only and only on your perf