Ask HN: Requesting HN'ers to give me Career advice

Regarding laundry list of jobs: I dont think there is anything wrong in determining what I feel is the best suited job for me (based on my current self (mis-)appreciation. Plus never have I stated in my post that I am Good enough to become a Google Engineer or FB Engineer. [I just mention it is really hard]

Finally Open Source is a good alternative to display your capabilities. But the fields in which I currently work [Machine Learning/Data Mining], writing a correct code is just a primary and non-significant step. While coming up with a novel algorithms is considered as a significant contribution.

I recently tried implementing an algorithm which I felt was interesting in my favorite language and distributed on git-hub. however I still felt [note I might be incorrect] that this sort of work was not valuable enough in my area of interest [again not expertise to be humble]. I can try to show my programming skill via my grades. But Open Source isn't that much important in my case.

Thanks again for your views

You're right that a PhD is probably not for you and MBA later on might in fact be what you want.

So I'd suggest you maximize your chances of getting into a good company right now that you could see yourself in for a few years, which would let you get into a good B-School.

Also, since you need the money to pay for loans etc., joining a startup is not for you either. Most startups will not pay a high salary for employees, and the visa issue will remain. Also, unless you start a company yourself, I'm not sure how much of a management role you'd get, since typically the founders will be the ones directing the major decisions.

I can't really say much else as this career path is quite different than the ones I know best, but I wish you all the best.

P.S. Regarding research being implementable -- it depends a lot on the field you're in within CS. A lot of graphics advancements do in fact get picked up by industry, and fairly fast as well (6 months to an year). However, in general the commercialization of research happens in one of three ways:

1. A researcher is at a research lab (MS/Goog/etc.) and passes it to a dev team at their company. Examples are PhotoSynth at Microsoft or Adobe's Seam-Carving paper.

2. An academic researcher starts a startup with their research to commercialize it. Example: google.

3. Some company seeks out and implements promising papers they see from academia. This is rarest, but for startups could provide a huge competitive advantage.

I think it's unrealistic to assume that other academics should implement and/or commercialize their research -- it's a very time-consuming process and that's generally not how they want to spend their time. Coming up with new ideas is their job, and naturally they will try to optimize for that.

> Here is my case: 1: I am 22 years and 3 weeks old

> by the time I graduate I would still be 22 years and 11 months old

Why are you so concerned with your age such that you think it is somehow important to be precise to the level of months and weeks?

> I am really good at C.S.

yet...

>I am scared of doing Ph.D., if I dont get into top few universities.

Why would this scare you? If you are as good as you seem to think you are, your degree will be a footnote on your resume within years.

> I love solving problems, unlike people who got interested in programming by making websites

It seems to me that is an insulting statement..are you not (loosely) implying most(?) people in CS programs are there because they want to "build websites", or in other words, aren't nearly enlightened as you.

> Hence I dont want a job which involves significant amount of (for lack of appropriate term) enterprise fizz-buzz programming.

Yes, this is a totally valid point, no complaints here.

> I would love to become an Analyst in company like McKinsey or Bains or BCG etc. Though such jobs are extremely hard to get My beloved other option is to join any of Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Microsoft. These again hard if not harder than above ones.

My honest interpretation of this is, you want to get wealthy, ie: you're not in this field for your love and passion of it, but because of greed. That's the feeling I get from what you say, reality may be different.

> My Final Aim is to get an MBA from a really good university.

My personal opinion, but this is not a particularly honorable goal in life, at least a first goal....especially considering some of the stellar ideas MBA's have burdened the world with in the last 5 years.

> Lastly I would love to get a Quant Job

Again, just my opinion, especially at your age, and especially if you are as smart as you think you are, can't you aspire to something more than this?

Maybe I have the totally wrong interpretation of you, and I honestly don't mean to be rude, but from what you've said, you seem to me to be the type of person that has specific career goals and I would be afraid that you would walk over top of anyone that stood in your way to achieve these goals...like someone that wants to climb the ladder to the top and anyone that gets in your way better watch out.

Maybe I read it wrong.

You see, as the parent post stated, there are young kids who are knocking balls out of the park, so to speak, in the actual real world of open source. These are the people you are competing against. If it is your perfect marks in school vs someone that is pumping out good code on a real-world open source project, and (perhaps in an interview) you give me any sort of a feeling that you don't respect his work, or consider it not particularly relevant, I would send you packing in a heartbeat.

I think you are missing the most important point, massively.