The story of a graduate school in the United States. Part 4.2: What next? (continuation and special version for IT specialists)

In the previous article I talked about what would happen if a PhD student decides to go to the academy. And in this post we will consider the option with the choice of the industry and a few additional features. So, if you're interested, welcome under the cat!


The second standard way for a PhD student is industry, i.e. research laboratories. At the same time, the laboratories themselves can be both public (Argonne, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, NIH, etc.) and private (each self-respecting corporation has a serious R & D department with several laboratories, and there are also many small firms that make - any innovative product and more like a laboratory than a company).

Suppose you decide to go into the industry. Unlike an academy, each office has slightly different job titles. You can get posts like Postdoc, Researcher, Research Stuff Member, Scientist, etc. Over time, words from Principal, Senior, Distinguished will be added to your post, indicating your advancement and increasing your salary. Speaking of salaries, in contrast to public companies, no one ever gives anyone data on salaries in such organizations, but, in general, the salary in the industry corresponds to the salary at the academy. Here you can also see the official statistics on salaries in each state and each position (and nobody forbids looking at Glassdoor, although the data there may differ significantly from reality).
')
So, if the salaries are approximately equal, then what are the differences?

1) In the industry do not need to teach. There are exceptions: you can be a professor and not give lectures, but you can work in the industry and give lectures, but on average, few people teach constantly.

2) It is necessary to write articles and publish at the academy (although sometimes companies give orders for the development of quite specific commercial technologies and cannot publish them, but this is rare). But in the industry there are two main ways: the pursuit of basic science (state laboratories and part of the corporate laboratories of large companies) and the development of commercial products (corporate R & D and small firms). In the first case, it is necessary to publish (write articles and patents). In the second case, it is impossible to publish (although it may be necessary to make patents).

3) Most often, any industry works in one way or another with some real products and sooner or later it is necessary to apply the developed technologies in practice. And this means that it is necessary to solve not scientific, but engineering problems, since the technology should work in the real world, and not on paper. In an academy, publishing in a journal is usually sufficient, and many study spherical horses in a vacuum without knowing whether it will work at all in practice.

4) In the industry, you create what real users will see (with a relatively high probability) in 10 years, at the academy you create something, on the basis of which scientists from the industry will begin (with a fairly low probability) to do a project in 10 years.

Again, all this is not absolute ultimate truths. Universities do real-world practical projects (sometimes for commercial products), and in corporate laboratories they do basic science, but the general trends are similar to those described above.

The two paths described above (academy and industry) are not the only ones. There is another interesting, but unlikely, way: opening a business. Here you can say that for this you do not need to receive a PhD and spend time on it. But let's look at it in the context of graduate school. It so happens that a research project was so successful and realistic that it can be used in real products. In this case, it makes sense to create a company that will create such a product. The advantages in this case are simple: you get a unique product (otherwise why did you do such research, which competitors already have) and a lot of money. Here you can immediately choose the color of the new Porsche and start thinking about how to make this world a better place. And everything would be fine, but only the statistics say that the overwhelming majority of research projects, at best, turn into several publications in journals and conferences. A number of projects turn into open-source software and libraries. And very few people turn into successful companies and interesting products. Those. this is quite possible, but very unlikely, so you should not count on it, rather this option is a pleasant win in the lottery. You also need to remember that even with a well-functioning technology, it may turn out that the problem is not so much in technology, but in people.

As you may have noticed, what I described earlier is suitable for any specialty, and not just for IT. But since I publish it on Habré, then we can assume that this is exactly what the IT specialists are reading. And here the most interesting begins ...

The IT specialist has an alternative and rather strange, at first glance, option - to score on the PhD. It would seem, why spend so much time on graduate school, so you do not do what you learned. There are several reasons for choosing this option:

1) During his postgraduate studies, a person understands that writing articles for him is not the most pleasant occupation and he does not want to do this in the future. (This is an option from personal experience, although, oddly enough, I sometimes like to write something on Habré. But traditional journals seem to me a relic of the past for one simple reason - there is no quick feedback). One solution in this case is the transition to industry and work on commercial products, i.e. where there is no need to write articles (although you may need to write patents).

2) A person does not like to lecture and manage students. In this case, the solution is similar to the previous one - the industry. (The only option for this list, which is not a personal experience).

3) Salary. Yes, yes, oddly enough, but at the start the salary of a programmer (where a PhD or even a Master is not required) may turn out to be significantly higher than the salary of a professor or a researcher. And whatever people say, and the extra money makes you think hard about what you want to do.

4) Fast feedback. The results of the work of programmers reach users with each release (ie, every week, month, half year). The results of the work of corporate laboratories come to users in 5-10 years. The results of the work of the Academy usually do not get to the users :). It is possible that I was too used to the fact that everything happens too fast in IT, and for other industries a long development and support cycle is normal, but the fact remains.

5) Young team. Professors and scientists are usually much older than programmers. What can be a plus or a minus depending on the point of view.

So, what options does an IT person who has received a PhD?
1) Academy: to lecture, look for grants, write articles, do pure science, manage students. This is the closest option to pure science.
2) Industry: engage in research for real products, create new technologies, make patents. There is rather a mixture of engineering and science.
3) Programmer: no comment, everyone already knows everything. Here most often pure engineering.
In reality, all these three directions will be mixed and it is worth mentioning that each direction allows you to become a manager at some point, but this is another story.

PS1: The first photo is taken from here .
PS2: Write about errors in lichku.