I never had interest in research and was drawn to software engineering in the real world. But after a year in the industry it feels like the cool projects go to those folks and I’m stuck with fixing bugs. I feel like I’ll always be the dumbest guy in a room full of PhDs or MS from top schools. Worth it to get one?
What you’re not seeing is the armies of PhDs also doing shit work, or at least work anyone could do, but only after wasting six years. That said IMO a strong PhD (Top 3 school, top lab, top field) will open doors for a lifetime. Otherwise, not worth it.
I don’t have a graduate degree, but I’ve been able to work on plenty of cool stuff. More recently I was bored at work and looked for some ways to switch it up, grabbed a new position that will involve a lot of learning and cool projects. Where do you want your career to go? Management or stay IC forever? If the latter, grad school makes more sense.
Haven’t decided yet since I haven’t really been exposed to “creating” the cool stuff, only fixing/improving. But management is more attractive to me long term.
Going to grad school will put you a few years “behind” in your career. If you ultimately want to manage, this is a disadvantage. I didn’t give any thought about management until a couple years ago. Thing is, if you want to be a good/great manager, you need to start thinking about it and working toward it. Train for it. To do otherwise is how we end up with so many bad managers. Begin with the end in mind.
It goes both ways. If you don't capitalize it early in your career, it doesn't matter.
In the BS and MS programs, one learns to solve hard problems but they are solvable and have been solved before. Think LeetCode hard or IOI/IMO problems.
It's actually smart not to waste time in grad school. Try to learn the courses on your own. Only go for it if top 4 school.
In a PhD program, one has to solve open research problems that might not have a solution, or they might remain unsolved for a long time (think trying to prove Fermat’s theorem).
if you want to work in industry as opposed to Academia, it is a waste of time.
If you want to work in ML research, someone having a BS only typically works as a support engineer.
Most top PHDs go to academia. It is more of a prestige thing from the people whom I have interacted with. The ones who cannot make it to academia *generally* seek industry opportunities.
Not true anymore, since 2012_2014 that companies started to pay top dollars for ML PhDs.
Yes, duh.