 What's happening guys? It's Shane here and in today's video I'm going to be interviewing an experienced senior level software engineer who works at a very prestigious company and he is going to be talking about his experience going to graduate school. We're also going to talk about the situations where you should go to grad school and when you shouldn't. Now the person that I brought on the channel is Chris and he is somebody who gives phenomenal career advice. He helps out in my discord quite a bit. He's also one of the main mods in a Facebook group that has a bunch of like engineers and people in the technology industry. I think over like 100,000 people and he basically just answers career and education related questions completely free. So he's honestly just a great guy and on top of that I think he gives really well balanced phenomenal advice. So I think you're really going to enjoy this one and honestly I've told Chris before he should probably make his own YouTube channel because his advice is really good. So I'm probably going to have him back on the channel in the future but go ahead gently tap that like button watch this video until the end because he gives great advice and let's jump right into it. Welcome back to the channel guys Shane here and today I have a very special guest somebody who has commented many times on my discord somebody who is very knowledgeable when it comes to college degrees careers and specifically I'm bringing them on today to talk about graduate school because they are a former PhD student and they well I'm not going to give it away but they have some certain opinions on graduate school. So thank you so much for coming on the channel today Chris I appreciate it. Well thank you Shane thank you for for having me over big big fan of the channel. All right so just to give some context I know a lot of people probably know you from the discord Chris but just to give a little bit of context could you maybe tell me a little bit about your background and your professional experience. Sure so I got my bachelor's in computer science from Brigham Young University a number of years ago while I was at Brigham Young University I got in contact with a lot of the professors there and I really liked the lifestyle they had so at one point I decided that I wanted to become a computer science professor. I finished my coursework and I applied to PhD programs directly from a bachelor's degree and I got admitted to Georgia Tech I got my shirt here. I started the PhD program Georgia Tech which was a great I worked with great people great school I learned a lot of things there they have really a lot of people that have a lot of expertise and they have a lot of they're they're very well established as experts in their fields. I worked with a lot of great grad students I enjoyed many parts of my time at Georgia Tech I enjoyed prototyping things but I noticed that I wasn't that great at research per se there were aspects of research work that were pretty they were pretty encouraging for me so eventually ended up not doing one in the program I did internships throughout with several tech companies and eventually I left the program about four years into it with a master's degree in computer science. I went to work in the industry I think it was a big blessing in the sky so I'm very happy you have things up turned out I've been a I've been a software engineer for over 11 years right now working for a large tech company that a lot of people brought you and yeah I'm very happy with how things turn out okay so Chris is very humble so let me let me just expand upon this a little bit. Chris works for one of the best companies one of the most prestigious companies first of all he's a senior engineer and then on top of that he specialized at Georgia Tech in probably the most complicated type of software engineering which is like virtual reality augmented reality and machine learning type stuff right so this is some seriously like big brain type stuff we're talking about here when it comes to like masters and phd programs so I just wanted to kind of put that out there as well so Chris is a very experienced software engineer next question I wanted to kind of get into is you you decided to go to graduate school and you did it originally because you thought you know the professors have a really nice cushy job and this is something I have talked about before if you are able to land a job as a professor and especially if you get tenure it is an awesome job like it is an amazing job but that's almost like saying if you're able to become a professional basketball player or if you're able to become like a you know own your own law practice or if you're able to become a professional actor who gets paid like millions of dollars or something like that like yes it's an awesome job but getting there is the problem it's very very difficult to get into those positions now I made an entire video called why you shouldn't go to graduate school and I highly recommend checking out that video I focused mostly on phd programs in that video at the end I say why you should the reasons you should go to graduate school as well so if you want more of like a point by point sort of thing rather than just somebody telling their story I would definitely recommend checking out that video but with that being said I wanted to ask you your opinions like on your experience of graduate school and how it was like I assume that most of you know how it works you'll have your bachelor's degree you're going to basically learn how to become an expert on a field get additional training and get to the point especially with the phd program where you're creating what's called novel research things that haven't been done before so that you can publish articles either either are journal articles or academic conferences basically trying to produce new work so you have to basically study quite a bit of things basically learn everything has been done about a particular subject up to this point and see what will be the next point that nobody in the world has done before that has very exciting parts to it I particularly love the the part where I am reading and learning and getting up to speed to what the state of the art is and maybe prototyping what the next step is there are other parts to it as well which I realized I wasn't that great at one of them was trying to come up with like the new next step if you're setting up an experiment have to iterate many times through it it gets very tedious many cases having to write submit it to a journal it'll get rejected so you change it a little bit submit it to a different journal it'll get rejected and you keep doing until you get to you get to publish it at a place and you get evaluated by how many of those things you get published how big the journal for conferences that you're publishing into is so there there are parts are people think oh you can invent invent and create new cool things but that's just one aspect of it there are parts our party wrote there are parts that are are very challenging and discouraging at times and I mentioned this because not because I don't want people to do research at all I'm just saying it's important people get a complete picture everybody that comes into this come with this like rosy colored glasses where they they think it's all easy and everybody just going to congratulate you tell you how smart you are and and that's the end of it and and it's not quite like that so just giving my personal experience on this just to get a little bit of an input I know quite a few people who tried phd programs and I know a few people who actually completed them and almost nobody in private will tell me that they thought their phd program was worth it like just about nobody the only people who really think that it's worth it are ones who become professors in my opinion or ones who get like a you know a job in the government that requires a phd program like a job at NASA or something right like that which again not the easiest thing to do so that's just my personal experience and then when you look at the numbers again I broke the numbers down in that video phd programs on average take over eight years to complete when people begin them so those are the people who started off with a masters as well as the ones who went straight into the phd programs and so if you you know did four to five years of undergrad that's an additional eight years so that's 12 to 13 years to complete a phd program typically the average student is graduating with $106,000 in debt or it might be median again check that video out yeah and so it's important to know that when if you're going for a phd program you have other alternatives I mean at any point you can just leave with a masters like it was in my case I left with a master's degree and get a good job and what happens after the phd is a part that a lot of people don't oftentimes don't do their their homework on I mean a very small portion of people that graduate with a phd actually going to become a tenure professor a tiny fraction I can't remember what the percentage but I'm pretty sure it's in the the single digit percentage um a lot of people that graduate with a phd will have to go on to further try to get more publications to really be competitive for a attaining track position by number one um go and do a postdoc program somewhere where you go work for someone for two three years for a professor kind of like an extension of your phd to some degree and you get paid but you get paid just a little bit more than your your phd stipend is just not that much money basically what I determined and I looked very deep into this I looked at the stats and everything is from a financial perspective it's almost never worth it to do a phd program like you can find like you know 0.1 percent maybe 0.5 percent of people it can be worth it from a financial perspective but if they would have just gone a different way and then they were actually making money during those you know eight years whereas you know the other their friends their cohort maybe was was in a phd program they probably would have made just as much money if not more and when I give advice to people like even if it's like that gold star advice like I give practical advice that that is my number one thing like even if it's something that I hate like the gold star certificates or if it's like a degree where it doesn't teach you anything but still most companies require it that's I'm going to tell you get the degree right even if I think it's like the dumbest thing in the world I'm going to tell you get the degree because I give practical advice on this channel like I give advice that's going to in my opinion from my experience going to give you the best chance at having a positive outcome what I tell the the people in the in my group say look our group for the most part most part is a bunch of stressed out ginsers that are all stressed out and anxious about about school if you really want to know how grad school is I can point you to a couple of Facebook groups for grad students where there's a bunch of millennials basically drowning in alcohol drugs and nihilism and depression so go compare how it is this is so this is grad school it's yeah it's yeah it can be tough it can be tough on the mind it was tough on mine and that's what I would recommend to everybody like like the most basic advice is only go to graduate school if you are sure that that is required to get you to your goal right so if your goal is a job that requires graduate school like if you want to work at NASA for instance right you want to work at NASA as a as a rocket scientist probably going to need some graduate school experience for that right so you really want to seek out people who are either in the position that you're going for or recruiters for that position hiring managers for that position people who would know what you need to do in order to land that job and then make sure you get several different opinions don't just get one opinion get several different opinions from those people about you know the best possible course of action you should take in order to get into that position and I'm telling you right now 99% of the time you are not going to need a PhD 99 probably over 99% of the time so really you want to make sure that you need it I can further tell you that's also something that I advise a lot is that is that a reach out to people with the type of careers of the type of jobs that you want and ask them how they got there how the preparation was like how they're a day in the life is like and this has three big purposes one is they've been through this they can give you the actual steps in a way that would be much better in the actually much more factual that whatever career counselor tells you sometimes even more than what your your PhD your advisor tells you because these are people that actually went through it second ask them how their job is because again many people come with these ideas that still very you know rosy color grass glasses and many times the expectation might could be wrong so if you ask them exactly I mean if I feel that the job that I'm looking for oh I'm going to have this amazing work life balance but then you talk to them say you know yeah I mean half of the year is pretty good the other half of year we need to put in 70 hours a week okay doesn't mean you don't have to do it but now you got accurate information and third and this is my favorite one it's a formal networking if you can reach out to 20 people on LinkedIn and maybe three of them reply and you get to ask them about them well that that's flattering you're all of them they're good grace in fact I do this a lot people people approach them happy to talk to them I don't know if I'm too vain but the thing is is that it's a chance for them to get to know you and sometimes they might even ask for your resume but even if they don't later on after you graduate you're in the apply for jobs at that company you can reach out through email to the person that you talk to and say hey I'm looking at this particular job requisition number blah blah blah do you happen to know the hire manager do you know do you happen to know more about the team what that person will do aside from answering your questions there's a good chance that they're going to reach out to the higher manager and say hey you know what I actually talked to that person they're pretty good um yeah if that happens two things happen number one the person you network with kind of made the hiring managers job easier they need to call through 100 to 100 applications anything that someone can help them to to to cool it it's helpful so basically this interaction means that now the hire manager probably was going to grab your your resume put it above the stack that's that's invaluable it's amazing on the other hand it's to the person you talk to it's to their advantage to do this because if they feel that you're good you wouldn't taint the reputation then it's to their advantage to get them to hire you because usually companies have bonus incentive programs for referrals for jobs so you get hired a couple months later they get a bonus so doing this type of interaction with people it's basically you're kind of making your own job interview that you already passed it's a perfect strategy can't agree more with you absolutely and that's why I actually uh when I give advice to people I say they should do that right away at the beginning right away start doing it now the mistake that a lot of people make is they'll watch a video like this they'll be like oh that's a great idea but they've already graduated right and so they're reaching out to these people now don't get me wrong you should still do it but they're reaching out to these people and when the even if the people you know do respond to you they get that feeling that you want something from them right and that is not a good feeling but if you're like a freshman in college and you start reaching out to people you're like hey I you know you are super accomplished um you know I have a goal of eventually getting into a career just like you have and I was wondering if you could answer a few of my questions I would really appreciate it um a lot of you know a lot of people are not gonna respond because let's be honest who actually checks LinkedIn for one it's kind of cringy sometimes but but a lot of people are gonna respond right so those people who do respond they're gonna answer your questions you're gonna go back and forth many people are very very helpful and they love to help people out because they see themselves in you they're like oh I was in your exact same position you know 10 years back and so after a while maybe let's say you're in your sophomore year now you start asking them hey do you have any ideas on different projects that I can do to showcase my skills they might give you a great project idea that you can do in order to showcase your skills they're like you know what if I saw this I would be very impressed by someone who is able to do this project idea and then maybe in your junior year you might ask them hey do you have any projects that you're working on that I could personally contribute to is there anything that I could personally contribute to to help you out like maybe you're doing some sort of survey or something like that and I could help you out just because I'm like younger or something along those lines even if it's just a little bit of help a lot of the time they might actually you know have something that you can help them with again that's another thing you can put on your resume so you see how this works it's like and then maybe senior year you reach out to them and you're like hey I'm looking for jobs right now is there any way that you could maybe give me some sort of recommendation letter or even better than that I maybe I could work at your company and could you maybe put in the good word for me right so that that is how the real magic of networking happens is when when you reach out to somebody and and you're not you know desperate for a job right at right at the moment you reach out to them and you're honestly just trying to communicate with them talk with them ask them for advice and then maybe like way later on you just you know mention to them hey I'm looking you know I'm on a job hunt right now I'm looking for a job could you put in the good word for me and they're very very likely going to say yes at that point so yeah go ahead I would actually further make make a go out and make a statement spending three months doing networking as a student probably nine out of ten times will work better and going and getting a master's degree for jobs that don't require a master's degree network is just better it's easier it's cheaper it's quicker and you and and and immediately likely get your jobs that you like better it's it's a much if I could think of one single alternative that basically anybody any student can do that will be more conducive towards the job they want than classical only grassroots required for that job it will be networking like the weather we just discussed it really will make a huge impact networking is one of those things where it's almost like a cheat code it's essentially like a cheat code you don't have to network but if you do network you're going to make your life ten times easier right like you don't have to network to get a job you can go through the traditional means of just a product companies the shotgun approach right and that can work don't get me wrong that definitely works but networking just it's like a cheat code it makes your life so much easier and the earlier you do it the better like it works so much better if you do it earlier than later on further the shotgun approach is basically you're you're shooting many directions to see what bites with networking you actually can you're sort of picking the companies that you want to try to court at the particular jobs that you like I mean there's so many upsides to this it's just not even funny like like for example if you're going to college a great way of doing networking is through your professors professors know many alumni I got my job because of a professor referral and I've hard I've managed to help two people get hired to six-figure jobs because of networking one went through a professor that helped me out quite a bit when he didn't need to later on he approached you hey I have two graduates two masters to graduate in the interest in your company and I got one hired I mean the odds are so much better compared to the shotgun approach it's not even funny it really is it really is but the problem the problem is is like people who come to me they typically want a job right now right and so like I teach the shotgun approach to there are ways of doing the shotgun approach that work as well yes but if you're a senior year you have less time to network I mean a lot of these relationships you need to nurture them over a little bit of time I imagine a lot of people that come to you are coming with an acute problem not with a chronic problem exactly and the strategies are different so now it definitely definitely awesome so you dropped some amazing knowledge and you know what I'm we're gonna have to make some more videos because there's topics that popped up into my head that we could talk about everybody comment down below if there's anything you'd like me to make a video about or ask Chris about as well but Chris thank you so much for coming on the channel I really appreciate it now thank you for having me Shane I really enjoyed it talking to you