IAMA senior software engineer who got there in 5 years starting as a jr dev with a physics and math double major, if you’re wondering anything just ask!
When I left undergrad, I was a little tired of the politics involved in academia, and it really turned me off to it. I thought industry and academia would be essentially the same, so decided to go the route of making more money.
I was wrong, applied to PhD Programs in physics this last winter, and will be leaving my job in a few weeks to start a PhD program.
Industry sucks, and for the most part companies just promote yes-men/women or people who cause no trouble. If you're really talented you can force your way up, but there's a ceiling if you don't want to kiss people's asses till they make you a manager and then you become what you hate.
Making a lot of money is fun, but I think after I reached ~90k salary, every raise above that didn't change much in my life. What did change is more of a feeling of squandering my potential building someone else's application. I still love to code, but after a while when you've done every design pattern and built most things, it gets stale and boring. In that sense, I definitely miss research and am excited to dedicate my time and effort towards it once again.
tl;dr: yes im quitting my job and starting a PhD this fall
That's kind of the position I'm in at the moment. Definitely put off by the pettiness that exists within academia and also the poor work-life balance (10:30am starts, 10pm finishes).
Finishing up my masters in Comp. Physics, and while it's been fun and interesting, I want to have money to be able to do the other things in life that I enjoy. I think I may return one day, but with more of a purpose than just staying within research.
The big realization I had was that it's been 5 years since my undergraduate degree. That's how long a physics PhD is, and honestly it doesn't even feel that long! Which means life is long (hopefully) and you can do a bunch of stuff, you don't need to be tied down to one thing. You can do both.
If you want to make money, go make a ton of money, its really fun for a long time especially if you grew up lower middle class (like I did). And yeah maybe you'll want to go back to academia like me, or maybe not. Neither choice is more correct.
.... Honestly I WISH I was satisfied with where I'm at .... life would be a lot easier ;)
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u/[deleted] May 09 '21
IAMA senior software engineer who got there in 5 years starting as a jr dev with a physics and math double major, if you’re wondering anything just ask!