PhD in CS to Research Scientist Journey

We interviewed a client about his journey from completing his PhD in Computer Science at UMass Amherst to accepting a job offer as a Research Scientist.

In this interview, he walks us through his journey and takeaways from his final years in the UMass Amherst Computer Science Phd. program, the mistakes he made in his job search, and how he landed his job as a Research Scientist at a top VC backed startup.

Here are our top 3 learnings:

1. The opportunities for CS research might now be better in industry than academia. He decided to move into industry because he was motivated to build real products. He wanted a role where he could actually apply his research and get user feedback instead of spending years doing pure research without ever knowing if it was practical. He also saw that the tech industry was changing and that - somewhat counterintuitively - there were actually more opportunities for complex research in tech because of the availability of more resources and cost of compute.

It was also helpful for him to figure out how much research he wanted to do vs. how much engineering work. His current role is about 70% engineering and 30% research.

In case you’re interested - we had a similar discussion with a Machine Learning Researcher at Hugging Face (read their story here).

2. PhDs need to manage their time wisely. He was initially very overwhelmed with his job search, interview prep, and dissertation. His early interviews he didn’t do well because he hadn’t given himself enough time to practice and prepare. Looking back, it would have been more effective to dedicate his focus on either recruiting or his dissertation for periods of time rather than trying to do both. He started his job search when the tech job market was starting to turn downward in the fall of 2022. If you’re searching in a tougher market, plan to allot more time for your job search. He signed his offer in January 2023 - roughly 4-5 months after starting the process while also working on his defense!

A few specific notes on lining up and preparing for interviews:‍

3. Deciding between offers.  He ended up with 3 offers – 1 for a research lab, 1 for a big tech company, and 1 for a startup. 2 of these offers came from referrals he received through the networking process. The offer he accepted came from sending a cold-email his now-current manager.

Part of the reason he chose to join a startup is for the faster pace of work and the speed at which he expected to be able to learn and grow. In his experience so far, he feels that he has more autonomy and also gets feedback faster on his research so he can change course as needed.

The fear of negotiating is a common fear, especially in a daunting job market. Here are the three specific strategies that helped him manage his fear of negotiating:

1. Get more than 1 offer. Having multiple offers gives you negotiating leverage - however, it also gives you more confidence. He was less nervous about negotiating his offers because he had a backup plan in case an offer fell through (which none of them did).

2. Negotiating highlights your competence. Throughout his negotiation, he saw that negotiating can actually highlight your competence to your manager – and give you another chance to showcase your value. You’re not asking them for a favor – you’re asking them to compensate you fairly for the value and experience you would bring to the company!

3. Proactively ask the right questions. You should ask the hiring manager questions to increase your leverage. For example - asking “What’s the team’s hiring timeline?” can help you learn if you might have time to finish out other interview processes before needing to make a decision. Additionally, understanding the team’s goals can help you figure out how you can best add value.

Having a chance to get to talk with the hiring manager during the hiring process is particularly common at smaller companies. This may not happen until the offer stage at larger companies because you may not be matched with a team at a later time in the hiring process.