I'm so happy I left science for tech!
L64, $250k TC, PhD+4 yoe looking to get into tier 1 FAANG. Been very frustrated grinding LC lately as I can't still reliably clear tier 1 coding bar. To keep morale up, I compare to how much better it is to when I was back in science (have a hard sciences background in chemistry and physics, not CS). For those of you who don't know, we spent 5 yrs of our life at min wage $25-30k/yr, only to do endless postdoc shit $50-60k/yr after that. Whiny tech SJW think vendors and temps are exploitative but at least they get paid double at $100k/yr! All this slog for what? Do endless postdocs and maybe land a FTE job as professor or industry job that pays barely over $100k/yr and the opening are rare as fuck. To be in an industry where salaries haven't kept up with inflation because of cheap oversupply of gullible students willing to listen to their lying professors or desperate foreigners who know that education is only way to the promiseland (I'm one of the latter btw) I was fed up with job prospects and pivoted to data science (ML) back in 2015. Told my professor I wanted to leave academia because TC was too low and he disowned me. Before this I was golden boy because I published 15 papers in 5 years (most good students and postdoc can do 5-10 papers in 5 year). This was how bad it was back in the days! 2015: Searched for FTE jobs in chemistry/physics. Had only 10+ job openings that I was qualified for. Had only 3 interviews, 1 onsite leading to an offer $90k TC. Would not negotiate TC. Wtf. 2018: Searched for tech jobs and was LC neophyte. Applied to 100+ jobs. Had 20-30 interviews, 5 onsites, slaughtered by many onsites but got Microsoft and Amazon offer. Nego a 30% TC bump with Microsoft using Amazon offer. Felt good. 2021: Currently doing LC prep before going all out applied 200+ jobs. So far have given 50+ interviews, almost 20 onsites and almost 10 offers. All are tier 2 so not interested but TC is good. Gotta keep grinding and will make it to FAANG some day. Hope this will inspire some people and if you're a PhD in a shitty field with no jobs, dump that, starting LC and earn big TC. Even if you can only do LC easy there is more jobs and more TC than there will be in your shitty PhD.
Which school you got your PhD from? I'm surprised that professors still have that attitude equating industry to failure.
I feel you. 2 years Masters + 4 years PhD + 2 years postdoc. Now, I’m 38yo with 4yoe. Tc 450k.
Same here
How was the transition from science to tech?
People don’t do PhDs for TC, looks like you didn’t have your priorities straight
I did for TC. $100-200k per year with tenure job for life sounded like a good deal from where I started from
OP obviously doesn’t understand what a PhD is all about. As a PhD, you’re meant to contribute to the understanding of our mysterious universe, which should be much more fulfilling than a tech TC. With your PhD work, you’re forever immortalised.
Lmao people who claim don’t do PhD for money. Maybe you shouldn’t work for money either and do whatever is interesting to you and do it for free. I’m hiring
They are correct though. Doing a PhD for money is disappointing and will never leave the person happy. A PhD works for those who like research for the sake of it. No one is saying that’s what they deserve. Everyone is saying that’s the reality.
If governments want smart people to keep doing publicly funded research they need to pay them more. Do we really only want people who are willing to sacrifice quality of life to stay in academia? I got paid exactly what the government recommend for my post doc and not a penny more. It's also easy to be passionate about research when you're 22 and not realize how things will feel when you're 30 and getting paid 45k as a post doc and can't even pass an income check to get an apartment in the city your job is in.
forgive my naivety, but I’ve heard thisbefore and this seems like a gross failure of the market to allocate valuable domain knowledge productively. Why are there so few spots in academia, and why are job openings so rare? Seems like there’s an incentive alignment problem
The faculty job is to mentor multiple people. If all of those students get hired they need to do the same and with this exponential growth soon we run out of people to put in schools So they can’t all stay in academia but they need to be students to keep the machine working
Also professors successfully lobbied Congress to remove the retirement age, so they can essentially stay employed by the school on tenure without doing anything. Junior people have to wait for them to either die or voluntarily retire to get new slots.
Thanks for information. I'm also leaving 450k TC to join top PhD program to do research on quantum information system(quantum computing + quantum physics) and pursue a career at academy or in the worst case, come back to industry as a scientist. Money is not a motivation. Where did you do your PhD? It looks like grass is greener on the other side always. I worked in Facebook for a year, Amazon for 2 years and Google for almost a year as L5. I felt always a tiny rock in the mountain in all corporates. Easy a lot of money with easy job. But PhD pushes human knowledge boundry and it has more impact on society overall compared to the corporates. Have you felt any regret of leaving PhD?
I think a PhD is an end in itself. I personally enjoyed doing research, writing papers, giving talks etc. The problem is what comes after the PhD (in basic sciences). You have to do these shitty postdocs because nobody will give you a faculty position right away.
Lol at PhDs pushing the boundaries of knowledge, most dissertations result in incremental gains at most
Same reason I left academia. Thankfully my professor was very supportive. The post doc / tenure track system is broken IMHO. A postdoc position is an insult to someone who has spent 4-6 yrs doing a PhD. Zero job security and sky high expectations for minimal pay.
Congrats on taking the red pill. When I was in grad school my professor repeatedly said not to worry about the job market for academia. I watched his top students struggle to land temporary postdocs and I decided to pivot. I left with an M.S. and never looked back.
Did you apply for 200+ ML roles ? What is your current role at Microsoft- Applied Scientist or SDE ? Btw totally agree about using PhD to get that sweet TC in tech :) I think of my PhD as further training and a means to an end. I got really good at reading through dense technical documents quickly and planning work very methodically and iterate on ideas/experiments with data. With a little bit of foresight I pivoted to use ML for my thesis and did some applied ML in projects for other grad students' thesis from my department and one other department. I gave up on the rat race to publish a ton very early. I just wanted to have a few projects in an area that would get me a job. So, moved to ML. Took courses in the CS department and taught myself. Just got enough research output on my thesis projects to defend a thesis and got out.
Been there, done that. Completely agree. Also, keep working on coding. You'll get there.