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

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

#1

Post by Absolute0 »

To start with I have started to doubt if at all it is possible to have a career of a software developer/C.S. researcher without any glass ceiling.

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

2: I am doing Masters at top 7 school in C.S. (and by the time I graduate I would still be 22 years and 11 months old)

3: Even though I am interested in C.S. research, I am scared of doing Ph.D., if I dont get into top few universities.

4: I did my undergraduation in a hard engineering subject in a foreign country. (i.e. I am Fresh of the Boat Alien)

5: I am really good at C.S.,I have authored few papers in a reputed international journal (About application on machine learning in my undergrad field) + presented a poster in well attended C.S. conference, while getting an NSF fellowship for the same. Plus currently I have a cool internship at a billion $ market-cap Company, where I get to work on Hadoop and stuff.

Now here is my problem: I love solving problems, unlike people who got interested in programming by making websites, I got amazed by its ability to solve problems by computation. Hence I dont want a job which involves significant amount of (for lack of appropriate term) enterprise fizz-buzz programming. 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.

This leaves me with three fail-safe options: 1: Join a startup (I dont mind low salary, since my major objective is to pay back my loan + I am low maintainance person), however startup rarely take student on F1 [yet I can work in US for 29 moth post graduation without H1B]

2: Join a PhD Course after a year of job or right after the degree.

3: Work on Application development job for three years and then try applying for an MBA.

My Final Aim is to get an MBA from a really good university. This is in turn because over course of a year I have realized that except for the top 10 tech companies it is very hard to grow as an engineer/developer. I totally resent the comparison with the whole IT guy, which I routinely get in my current workplace, where I am doing far important and useful things.

Lastly I would love to get a Quant Job, however entry level jobs in Algorithmic Trading, even for developers seems to be missing. And all I can find are jobs that require an experience of 5 years in Java.

Please help me... Thanks

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

#2

Post by apu »

OK, let me try to answer/comment on what you said. Excuse me if some of these sound blunt.

1. Your age is irrelevant.

2. Working at a management consulting company as an analyst is almost the definition of enterprise fizz-buzz programming. I haven't met any real hacker who works at those companies, and on the contrary I know quite a few who resent their IT jobs at such companies.

3. Quant jobs are also mostly dull, although if you get in a good place at a higher level, you might work on interesting stuff. If you're on the systems side of things, then high-frequency trading places have interesting work on optimizing execution times. However, the high pay at quant jobs is like cocaine -- you'll find it very hard to quit, even if you see more interesting jobs.

4. If you actually want to be a technical person solving problems for more than just the next couple of years, there's no need for an MBA these days unless you're NOT at a top-tier technical place. The better places like Google, Facebook, etc. will let you get very high up the corporate ladder without an MBA, and not having one somewhat innoculates against being pushed into more management-y roles.

5. It's hard to judge what your abilities actually are. You didn't mention anything about programming projects you've done (COMPLETED), which is one of the biggest pieces of evidence that you are good and capable at hacking. On the other hand you do mention accepted research papers at a good venue -- if the journal is actually good, then this will be an ENORMOUS help in your getting into a PhD program. A quick recap, in case you're unfamiliar about what matters for PhD admissions:

* Evidence of research ability. This is basically the only thing the top schools care about. The way they judge this is:

    * Previous papers published, and the level of the conference/journal they
      were published in. You (perhaps) have this. You are automatically above
      90% of applicants.

    * Recommendations from good researchers. You're at a top 7 school, and you
      did research. Hopefully it was with someone who (a) got to know you well
      and (b) was impressed with your work and (c) are themselves known as good
      researchers to others in their field. If so, you're basically in at just
      about any place you want, as long as you don't fuck up in some other
      category.

    * Grades matter somewhat if you're at a known good school where the
      academic standard is tough. It's far less important than the previous
      two, though.

    * As long as you don't say something completely idiotic in your essays,
      they don't matter.

    * General GRE scores don't matter at all, as long as you're above some
      fairly low threshold. Subject scores don't matter at all, even if you're
      only at the 50th percentile.
In summary, you have a very good shot at getting into a good PhD program, if you're accurately self-assessing your publications/school reputation. Also, it's much easier to get into a PhD program straight from undergrad since your recommenders will remember you best, and often working for even a year really dulls your desire to go "back to school".

While theoretically PhDs are internships for becoming a professor, in practice less that 50% continue on to academia in CS, so you shouldn't view it as a negative even if you eventually want to go to industry. A PhD will open doors to top research labs like Microsoft/Adobe/Google/Mitsubishi Research, where you'd get to work on cool, tough problems. Getting a PhD at a top place also requires many of the same skills needed for startups -- self-motivation, getting stuff done, working your ass off, being able to present your work well and "sell it", being effective at choosing the right problems to solve, solving them, and being able to communicate your results, etc.

On the other hand, it is a large time-commitment -- at least 4 years and perhaps 5-6 -- and your experience is largely determined by the quality of your advisor -- both technically and at a personal level how well you get along with him/her.

6. Your visa issue shouldn't matter much for big companies, as they all routinely help their employees get better visas and some even start them on the green card process. However, for startups, this could be a problem, depending on how much risk you can handle. 29 months is not necessarily going to be enough, and I don't know how easy it is to get a visa upgrade while at one.

Reply to this comment if you need further clarification or have more questions.

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

#3

Post by LeBlanc »

My recommendation is to go the start-up route for the following reasons:

1) You will be able to solve interesting problems more so than a large company which at least early on will have you doing small iterations on what they already have

2) You will be exposed to the opportunity to get business experience of a type much more valuable than what you can get out of an MBA. Get an MBA for the network, not for the academics, and not if you want to solve interesting problems in the CS space

3) you will develop the type of valuable experience that all those job applications you are looking at want. Even if a start-up fails, you will be able to point to an interesting thing that you helped develop that will help with the job search in the future

Take this advice with a big grain of salt. Do what YOU want to do, like solve interesting problems that you have passion for without worrying about where it will lead you. If the problems are interesting, and the solutions are awesome, you will end up in a great place. If you go build something cool that you can show to start-ups, they will be much more interested in talking to you than if you are just a cover letter + resume combination.

Where are you located? If you are in the SF Bay Area I'd be willing to talk to you about opportunities around here.

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

#5

Post by Absolute0 »

apu wrote: post #2

OK, let me try to answer/comment on what you said. Excuse me if some of these sound blunt. 1. Your age is irrelevant. 2. Working at a management consulting company as an analyst is almost the definition of enterprise fizz-buzz programming. I haven't met any real hacker who works at those companies, and on the contrary I know quite a few who resent their IT jobs at such companies. 3. Quant jobs are also mostly dull, a…

HI, Thanks for your reply

1: Regarding PhD Programs, Getting in a good PhD Program wouldn't be that much difficult for me (I have a decent GRE score 1380) coupled with demonstrated research interest (via publication and paper).

However I have closely looked at life in the Academia (all my undergrad friends are doing PhD). And the Advisor problem is really terrible, since a lot is determined by your choice of advisor alone. Finally regarding working in a Lab of Google/MSFT/ or Academia is what I am trying to avoid.

I have this personal theory that I should couple my technical knowledge with Managerial one to obtain a position where I could solve practical problems. Research, Conference and Publications are fun, but over the years I have been amazed at large amount of publications that are hardly implemented in real life (if at all they are implementable). The other Post-PhD issue is that my stipend (with 50% saved) wont be enough to completely pay of my loans (my parents have enough money but I somehow dont wish to burden them), Also the current Visa rules do not allow me to start a Startup post PhD so The employment issue remains. At best I can hope is to get an Associate level jobs or Qunat ones at consulting firms Post-PhD.

Regarding your comment about Quant jobs being dry (conscientiously), sure they are but they are also exciting in a way You can literally see performance of your algorithms in term of monetary value.

Regarding my publication they were in a journal which is considered top in my field and published by an American non profit academic body, with its first issue being published around 100 years ago. About my programming skill, well I can tell you that I can understand and write code. Its hard to give out any information here without compromising my privacy.

Regarding 29 months figure, if i have a job for say 2 years I would be able to earn enough to pay most of the debt plus would gain enough experience required for a B-School. That how i did my mental calculation though it is likely wrong.

To summarize 6 years into the future I want to work at a position where I could be making significant decisions that would affect products / Services / lives of people. A perfect example would be Program/Project Mangers at Google or Facebook.

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

#7

Post by Absolute0 »

LeBlanc wrote: post #3

My recommendation is to go the start-up route for the following reasons: 1) You will be able to solve interesting problems more so than a large company which at least early on will have you doing small iterations on what they already have 2) You will be exposed to the opportunity to get business experience of a type much more valuable than what you can get out of an MBA. Get an MBA for the network, not for the academ…

no I am in Greater New York City area.

Yeah Startup is interesting prospects. Also my poster was mentioned by a VC in UK in one of his blog posts (After I pointed him out that i had similar published ideas with working code)

However startup as alien student is really difficult, I had talked with professor who teaches entrepreneurship at my school.

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

#8

Post by Absolute0 »

apu wrote: post #2

OK, let me try to answer/comment on what you said. Excuse me if some of these sound blunt. 1. Your age is irrelevant. 2. Working at a management consulting company as an analyst is almost the definition of enterprise fizz-buzz programming. I haven't met any real hacker who works at those companies, and on the contrary I know quite a few who resent their IT jobs at such companies. 3. Quant jobs are also mostly dull, a…

Sorry for second reply: When I say Analyst I do not mean I.T. Analyst or Technology Analyst. It is along the line of Management Consultant Analyst. Or Business Analyst.

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

#9

Post by j_baker »

The only advice I can really give you is to give working in the real world a shot before going to more school. You're probably already familiar with what it's like to be in school. Unless you get really lucky, finding out where you belong is more of a process of elimination than anything else.

So my advice is to try all three of the options that you ask about. Once you've given those fields a try, you'll know if that's the place for you or not.

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

#10

Post by vrikhter »

Absolute0 wrote: post #7
LeBlanc wrote: post #3

My recommendation is to go the start-up route for the following reasons: 1) You will be able to solve interesting problems more so than a large company which at least early on will have you doing small iterations on what they already have 2) You will be exposed to the opportunity to get business experience of a type much more valuable than what you can get out of an MBA. Get an MBA for the network, not for the academ…

no I am in Greater New York City area. Yeah Startup is interesting prospects. Also my poster was mentioned by a VC in UK in one of his blog posts (After I pointed him out that i had similar published ideas with working code) However startup as alien student is really difficult, I had talked with professor who teaches entrepreneurship at my school.

It may be difficult, but there are always exceptions. Shoot me your resume vladik at rikhter dot org. I know of a few startups around here that may be up your alley, if you're interested I can pass your resume along.
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