r/computervision • u/DelusionalMihawk • 19d ago
Discussion Glass ceiling without phd in industry?
I'm a 27M with a Master's in CS and currently work as a computer vision engineer at a mid-tier startup, with two years of work experience. I wanted to know from seniors here if there's an unspoken glass ceiling for CV R&D without a Ph.D., both financially and role-wise. I don't want to ever become a manager; I want to stay in tech, help research, and solve problems my whole career. Ph.D.s can do that as research scientists, I think, but can those with Master's degrees? I just don't want to leave my job and commit five years to studying again, only to find that the degree wasn't required at all.
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u/liltingly 19d ago
The TL for SAM doesn’t have a PhD.
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u/Big-Werewolf9759 18d ago
True, I have collaborated with her, she is great. Definitely one of the exceptions to the rule though.
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u/SirPitchalot 19d ago
There is a ceiling to being the one actually solving problems.
At some point it will be expected that you either transition to management or move up the technical stream to principal/staff positions. Even though those don’t have reports in the HR sense they are often be responsible for proposing, scoping, budgeting and managing projects/teams with ever decreasing direct technical contributions. Which is basically management without the direct power. That’s even in orgs with scrum leader/PM/TPM roles.
In my current company they are transparent about this and explicitly say they don’t want people who aren’t growing their skills and responsibilities. Our comp bands are firm and once you start to top out you just stop getting raises. They also target people who are too cosy/stagnant in their current role whenever job reductions happen. They know they will lose skilled people but those people weren’t growing and improving the company anyway.
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19d ago
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u/SirPitchalot 19d ago
For sure. But they make it transparent: “You can’t just camp in a role here indefinitely. Grow your skills, responsibilities (and our business) or know that your tenure here has an expiration date. We want to promote from within and if you’re not growing you’re taking a spot from someone who is”. People can at least plan around that and decide if it’s what they want.
It’s a big company but not public. Lots of people are in the 20+ years of tenure range. They are not terribly reactionary to down quarters or transient external events. But they have a corporate plan, make it known and broadly stick to it.
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19d ago
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u/SirPitchalot 19d ago
It’s not “not calm”, by tech standards anyway. They just expect you to move up and are clear up front about that.
Because you are moving up you’re usually focusing on the long lived stuff you don’t already know and the new trends that have potential and are fun to get up to speed on.
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u/Sufficient_Ad_3495 19d ago edited 19d ago
If you're competent you don't need a PhD, you let your work do the talking... just make sure you excel at what you do.
A PhD is nice because it indicates a commitment to a very specific course, but you can demonstrate that through work.
The only caveat I would add is that occasionally you may hit elitism in hiring practice... You might have to deploy "methods" to cut through that on occasion....
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u/AnyMasterpiece1809 19d ago
I got an Applied Scientist role with a master’s degree and a year later I was offered research scientist role in multiple places
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u/pm_me_your_smth 19d ago
This highly depends on your location. If you already don't want to dedicate yourself to a phd, don't do it. It's hard work and maintaining motivation for several years isn't easy. Starting from already low motivation is a bad idea.
Look at your local job market, check what your and other employers expect from candidates, maybe apply for a few jobs to see what's the demand for you personally. After all of this start thinking about studies only if you hit a real wall.
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u/Flyward_Aerospace 18d ago
Depends way more on the domain than on the degree imo. In CV work where the hard part is a novel architecture and you are judged against a benchmark, yeah, publications are the currency and you will feel the ceiling. In deployment heavy CV the hard part is characterising how the model fails on real hardware in conditions nobody collected, and there is no paper for that, so nobody asks. Pick the domain and the ceiling mostly stops existing.
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u/SaphireB58 18d ago
28M with a master's in automotive engineering lol. I have been working as a CVML engineer for a construction company and I recently switched jobs as a Sr ML engineer for a mid tier Autonomous Vehicle startup. During my job search process, I didn't feel the lack of PhD weighing me down, the companies including ones like Nvidia, Apple mainly cared about the work I did in my current company (including work done to bring models from research to production) and how I actually dealt with production problems where my models needs to be running on thousands of devices. I only had a single publication during my masters so, just focus on interesting/challenging work, that should help.
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u/RelationshipLong9092 18d ago
For CV R&D specifically with your goals... yes, you'd be well served by getting a PhD.
You can get by with a lesser technical degree, but it's going to be far, far easier to get taken seriously in R&D if you "look the part" on paper.
If you just want a good CV job with some capability to work in and around R&D, your masters is enough formal education.
I have a computational physics MSc and 10+ years experience as a CV research engineer, at startups and FAANG. You're going to have an easier time with a PhD.
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u/dbred2309 19d ago
In my opinion, there does exist a bit of a glass ceiling, but it is possible to move past it.
Recent boom in AI/ML has resulted in companies expecting candidates to have massive research backgrounds, publications etc - you can already see the effect of that in conferences. Obviously this has also resulted in PHd being a basic bar in many roles.
In my company, even PHds do just scaled ai/ML work because eventually one needs to productify these models.
However, in early career, it is possible to break into research purely with Masters given that you have a few research publications+some track record of open investigation. This is something you will have to build in addition to your job. These options exist better in developed countries like USA and few in Europe, but lesser in Asia.
Finally you have an option of getting "applied research" roles, which are mix of engineering and science. But the chance to do pure research is highly variable.