>When times get bad, hackers go to grad school. And no doubt that will happen this time too.
I am going to graduate with a bachelor's in EE in less than a year, and had been planning on going to grad school for CS. Is this a bad idea?
I am going to graduate with a bachelor's in EE in less than a year, and had been planning on going to grad school for CS. Is this a bad idea?
The other poster said it right, consider your reasons for attending in the first place.
The final point that PG makes is investing in your own startup. If you have a solid team and execution skills, then by giving up on grad school and investing your youth and energy into your startup could yield better returns relative to "investing" later when the market is hot.
I don't see how I can fit startup employment or even creation into the path I chose 4 years ago. If only I could talk to myself 4 years ago.
Since you're in EE, I'm sure you have have the basics of coding down. Even if you're kinda shaky now and don't know any of the hot stuff a lot of startups are using (Ruby/Python/etc), you can absolutely get to the point that startups would want you in a year of playing around on the side. Once you know the basics of coding, it's not all that hard.
I'm not sure what the market will be like in a year, but right now everyone is desperate for talent. You don't know how to seek out such employment? HN has a jobs section. Almost every startup you use has a jobs link in their footer, and they're all hiring. Check out GitHub jobs, StackOverflow jobs, 37signals job board, etc. Get yourself a little bit of exposure via open source contributions, blogging about technical things, Hacker News, etc. and they'll come to you.
As for student loans, though startups pay less, they still pay pretty high salaries, especially now when all the companies have cash and competition for talent is insane. As long as you keep living fairly cheaply (which can still be a couple steps up from a dorm, but may involve sharing housing, especially if you end up somewhere expensive like the Bay Area), I'm sure you can get an offer that would allow you to live and pay your loan payments. And then you're actually decreasing how much you owe instead of just pushing it off.
If you really want to go to grad school, go to grad school, but if you want to work for a startup but feel like you "can't", take steps to make sure you can.
So although I sounded pessimistic in my post above, I am trying to turn myself into someone desirable to startups. But I still have the feeling it is too little too late. Here's to hoping I am wrong though.
I have a BSEE and went to grad school for EE after a two year break. I forgot how much I loved software over my break and wish I had majored in CS for grad school. I dropped out of an MSEE program after one year, got a job writing software and haven't looked back.
As far as the "grad school" or "startup" question, I'd think it involves several things. Where is your startup now? If it's moving along, maybe you should stay with it. Where is your heart at? If it's not in grad school, or the work you might do after, then why stay? My heart wasn't in my master's program. What grad school are you in? If I got accepted into <insert prestigious school's name here> and had funding, I'd consider giving it a shot. But that's just me.