Confused research scientist

HPE
acJu25

Go to company page HPE

acJu25
Dec 4, 2021 11 Comments

I’m a research scientist and been working for a couple years at the same company. The projects that I am working at my current company mostly end up taking a lot of time for developing infrastructure and leaves me with little time for analysis/research. I’m starting to get concerned that I am becoming more of a infrastructure developer and less of a researcher. I just want to be able to dedicate more time for doing research and I feel like I’m not doing it currently. I do understand it is very crucial to develop infrastructure but I don’t want to spend majority of my time doing that.

I want to climb up the ladder fast and become a Sr. Researcher in the next year and a principal researcher in 4-5 years from now. I don’t see that happening if I spend most of my time developing infrastructure. I have seen a couple of people in my company grow that fast and I see them as my current role models. But they are so high up in the hierarchy that I don’t get to have this type of conversation with them.

I would like to hear if someone had similar experience and would really like to know how you accomplished it. I think your experience/stories would greatly benefit me. Thanks!

TC : 🥜 (I read here that if your Tc < 200k, it’s 🥜)
YOE : 2.5

#tech #career #CareerSuggestions #experience #research #growth

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TOP 11 Comments
  • Google
    axhe2

    Go to company page Google

    axhe2
    What's your research area? Most of CS research, particularly practical topics in industry, involves spending 90% of your time on developing infrastructure. If you're a junior researcher, I wouldn't worry about that.

    Also, I wouldn't worry too much about climbing the ladder fast and instead focus on personal development. To put it bluntly, being a senior or principal researcher doesn't mean much at HPE. It's better to jump ship to a more prestigious lab.
    Dec 4, 2021 5
    • HPE
      acJu25

      Go to company page HPE

      acJu25
      OP
      I’d say HPC, without giving too much of info. I agree with your 2nd comment. I feel like I’m doing a lot of grunt work
      Dec 4, 2021
    • Google
      axhe2

      Go to company page Google

      axhe2
      Yeah, isn't HPC primarily about writing efficient parallel code (MPI, etc)? What would you do if you weren't writing code? Seems like the only thing left is to run experiments, which is even more boring grunt-work than writing code.
      Dec 4, 2021
  • HP
    !dealth

    Go to company page HP

    !dealth
    Time to jump ship
    Dec 4, 2021 2
  • I was a research scientist myself some time ago (but then switched to engineering). Have you had a conversation with your manager to discuss this? Or if they aren’t interested in a change of your priorities, maybe you could ask for a 1:1 with your skip level? Also, I always in my career tried to reach out to people much higher in the hierarchy — and was never turned down for a chat with them. Just send them an email saying that you would love to take 30 minutes of their time for a chat.
    Dec 4, 2021 1
    • HPE
      acJu25

      Go to company page HPE

      acJu25
      OP
      I did try to have this conversation with my manager a couple of times. He tried to convince me that it would get better in future projects, but nothing has changed. I’ll try to email the higher ups and see how it goes. Thanks for the suggestion!
      Dec 4, 2021