Academia Vs Industry For Computer Scientists
Lately I’ve been exploring the possible career choices of having a graduate level degree (M.Sc. or PH.D) in Computer Science. For me, I’m interested in not only theoretical Computer Science, but also the practical applications of the field. I came across this blog post on scienceblogs.com where three different types of work for Computer Scientists are described and compared. It seems to provide a pretty good background on what you can expect with having a graduate degree.
“At least as a computer scientist, there are basically three kinds of work you can do that take advantage of a strong academic background like a PhD. You can go into academia and do research; you can go into industry and do research; or you can go into industry and do development. If you do the last, you’ll likely be doing what’s sometimes called advanced development, which is building a system where you’ve got a specific goal, where you need to produce something real - but it’s out on the edge of what people really know how to do.” (Mark C. Chu-Carroll)