I'm at a career crossroads right after graduating college. I can work in the bay, but 110K is pretty poverty from what I see on here especially considering rent in (say) Fremont/Miliptas would be 30% of my income. The quality of work + team at the company (non-FAANG) is excellent.
I can also move to the east coast and do an MS at either Columbia, Penn, or Cornell hoping it would increase my TC right after. Downside is that I would be ~60K in debt at the end of my two-year program.
What should I do?
TC: 110K
YOE: 0
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save those precious 2 years and a debt. leetcode instead and jump for a higher TC.
people who voted for masters clearly doesn’t know how industry works…
Doesn't make sense to go way into debt and not work because you think 110 isn't enough. Just start working and upgrade jobs soon.
What do you want to do during your MS?
It won't increase your TC unfortunately. MS/BS mostly go to the same bucket. E.g., E3 for Meta, L3 for Google. TC differences are virtually none.
Nonetheless if you're really passionate about learning advanced classes, and potentially learning specialized skills, say some core ML network design, a system-level specialty. Then it might help. But still ROI isn't good.
Note: I have a PhD in CS. It's really hard for me to recommend doing a PhD :)
If I'm doing an MS, I would spend ~80% of it doing research. I don't need a visa. But then again, the high bar for ML research at FAANG seem like an indicator that I should do SWE instead of ML research.
Really appreciate the words of wisdom.
If money doesn't matter in short term, you should do this MS program.
1) Publish paper(s). Theses days too many candidates have top tier ML papers.
2) Get a research-ish intern position during your MS.
3) At the time of graduation of MS, try both top PhD programs and ML research positions. The downside is that a strong candidate directly joins a PhD program without a MS. If you convert your MS program to the PhD program at the same school, you could shorten your time. PhD as you know well would take 5-6 years.
And you said that you'd do more research during your MS? Which MS program offers such RA opportunities? Are you really sure? If so, you'd get a RA, which includes tuition waiver. So, you don't need to make a debt.
Also the research isn't that beautiful as you might think :)