Ask HN: Should I work for a few years before grad school? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Should I work for a few years before grad school?

2 pointschetan512 comments

A bit about me: I'm a third-year at UC Berkeley, and I'll be graduating next academic year. I'm a learning entrepreneur, and I founded a profitable software company last year. However, I'm much, much more interested in the technical aspect of building new products than the business side (although I know I'll have to get my hands dirty anyway).

I eventually want to run my own company full-time, or work at a company that would give me a certain level of responsibility and ownership over a product.

My question is: I have a bunch of ideas for startups that I would love to start work on, but I also want to attend grad school to higher my education (and ensure a higher starting salary ;)) I would love to take a break for a few years after graduating and gain some experience and work on my ideas on the side before going to grad school. Is this recommended, and what are the advantages / drawbacks to this approach? How would it affect my admission chances?

I really appreciate your advice!

Grad school will wait. Grad school will always wait.

It is a great time for working in the software business -- lots of stuff happening, lots of demand for talent.

My impression, back in my school days, was that the people who had done something else between undergrad and grad school had a certain purposeful air. They tended to know why they were there, and know what they wanted to learn or to do, and they navigated more directly to their goal and graduated faster.

Do not fret about admissions. You want to go to engineering or science grad school, right? Then having some work experience will not hurt you. You might consider lining up some recommendation letters now, while you're still fresh in your professors' minds, but three years from now you'll still have the GRE scores, you'll still have the GPA, and you'll presumably still be willing to sign up for N years of being worked like a slave for low wages. You'll be as qualified as ever. ;)

(As for "higher starting salary"... one reason to try a job or two first before going back to school is to figure out exactly how much of a premium that advanced degree is going to be in your favorite field. You may find that it doesn't pay off -- you'll spend several years earning grad-student wages, and then discover that at a young startup nobody really cares if you've got a Ph.D.)

I found the primary benefit of graduate school is mentorship; this helps in dealing with the unwritten aspects of mathematics and computing.

Beyond that, I would say doing start-ups is more valuable. However, you are trading personal development for product development. You are trading hard intellectual problems for difficult business problem. To differentiate:

A hard intellectual problem is proving that a simple curve divides a plane into two sides.

A difficult business problem is figuring out in real-time why the machine isn't working with angry clients everywhere calling "our shit isn't working".

Either direction, it will be fun.

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