This is actually a revised copy of something i wrote on March 7th 2021, before i started my PhD. It had two purposes at the time: 1) it clarified my ideas about pursuing a PhD and 2) acted as a manifesto of what i hope to achieve. Now i’m coming to the end of it, I feel comfortable with it and think it’s a good read. Enjoy.
My current situation…
As of right now my career looks something like:
“Smart person having completed degrees from UCL/Cambridge in Mathematics, Physics and Computer Science. Has applied research to commercial problems, has management skills and learnt a lot from being an early employee in a start-up.”
My time at Spherical has made me a competent engineer and manager; and cynical of early stage companies. Although I’m not sure how others reflect on the fact that the company hasn’t worked out - I’ve found recruiters tend to have interpreted as having ‘product/commercial focus’.
My current position is as a Senior Applied Researcher at Tractable, a fast growing AI company focused on Automotive Insurance. I predict that Tractable will be a billion dollar company in 1-2 years. If I stick around, by proxy, I’ll demonstrate I can apply ML research successfully to commercial problems.
The job is well paid, there is a clear progression to leadership roles and access to some smart people to work/learn with. It is a really good job and in general it makes me happy.
So why the move? Whats the Motive?
Whilst I’ve demonstrated (to some extent) the ability to apply research to products with commercial value, I want to research problems I care about, e.g Solving Artificial Intelligence (I have an incredible amount of FOMO seeing my peers at DM or OA). Note there are two differences here:
- Subject Area: Commercial Areas (cyber-security or automotive-insurance) vs Scientific Problems (protein folding, beating humans at Go or general intelligence).
- Type of Work: I apply research to problems as opposed to researching solutions to completely unsolved problems.
Subject area has begun to matter a lot to me, even as I work, I spend all my spare time focusing on scientific problems and advances. Recently I’ve found this annoying. When at university, my work was spent on interesting science and free time was for leisure (enjoy music, socialising, etc); now as my work is just work, interesting science has to compete with my leisure time. Put another way, I dedicate 8 hours of my day to something which isn’t the coolest thing I’d like to spend my time on (not sure this will ever be the case or if just some western fantasy).
Also learning how to do research is a genuine skill which over time I’m realising is difficult to learn unless in the PhD. Good research involves patience, a taste for smart ideas and an appreciation on the tractability of problems. These skills are things I desire or certainly think I’ll need later in whatever career I pursue.
There is also a strong vanity element where I believe I can make a better difference in these kind of problems than people currently. My vanity extends further - I believe I could have a really successful career (top 95 percentile) if I did research and then used this to pivot into a research management, Chief-Science Officer role, whilst my current trajectory leads me to an okay (top 85th percentile) in some product/research focused role.
Finally theres a prestige element that following from my role models (e.g Feynman) I really value people who progress science and tackle the most difficult problems which can have the greatest outcome.
Sounds good, but what are the disadvantages?
So there’s a couple of reasons this could be a bad reason. Here are my worries:
- Historically meh at research - My last engagement into research whilst fun (because I was at Cambridge) was difficult. I left most of my work to the last minute, felt handicapped by my technical skills and was not motivated by the subject area (affective computing). Furthermore, the research produced during that time is significantly below the standard i need to achieve for this decision to make sense.
- This could make me unhappy - research involves working on problems that sometimes just don’t work out, thus the experience has sparse rewards. Add to this the crippling feeling of seeing my contemporaries enjoy a different (better) quality of life to me. Note I have strong preference against being poor because having been really poor its a bit too close to reality. This could also result in my friendships drifting (e.g. no more holidays with Kleeman + Nat).
- Long term career - post PhD it’s unclear if this makes my life any better. I’ve been unsuccessful at becoming a research engineer at DM, FAIR and OA. It is not clear if my chances improve when I apply to become a Research Scientist instead (there are much fewer roles). If I consider my friends doing PhDs now, only 2 are going to one of those dream labs.
- Delaying important life events - I’m currently 26, I’ll finish my PhD either when I’m 29 or 30. Considering my partner’s life goals, by this time, she would have us married and considering children. By taking this PhD I fundamentally delay these events - as both marriage and children require financial backings that I will not collected at that time.
- Don’t bite the hand that feeds you - Tractable just gave me a job, I’d be leaving with a tenure of only 7 months. This is bad for a couple of reasons (in order of severity): 1) leave without equity, 2) I may burn bridges, 3) this looks bad for future employers.
I just noticed you haven’t even mentioned the programme, is it just a means to an end?
So let’s be clear, I know a PhD will be fun, I’ll be able to engage with cool people, spend lots of time focusing on learning (which I absolutely love) and then working on interesting problems. These things are currently eclipsed by my uncertainty - the lack of structure is intimidating and academia feels like an intense rat-race; and citations feel a little broken.
Talking to mentors/role-models in the jobs I aspire to, one thing is clear - they really enjoyed their PhD and honestly I think that will be the same for me.
In a bubble where I didn’t care about my existing friends and my partner progressing beyond me - I wouldn’t hesitate to take a PhD. I guess a large portion of my worry is wanting to keep my amazing support bubble around me.
Whats the endgame and whats the contingency plan?
The endgame is to be like Demis Hassibis, e.g:
Directing a research focused organisation, focused on solving a moonshot problem.
Demis has a PhD, so I need a PhD. If I want to direct a research organisation I need authority on what is good research. Demis also clearly has strong leadership and communication skills, something which whilst i’m still not perfect at - is not my current limiting factor. The plan looks something like:
$PhD → Research Scientist → Solve Important Problem → Start Own Company$
It is vague and thus flexible. @me if you think there is some steps I should add.
In case this fails i’m not overly worried. Depending on if I fail in first or fourth year the world is slightly different:
- Fail in Year 1 - then I’m still active on the job market, but probably can’t go back to Tractable and may still be fairly unattractive for jobs I care about (e.g DM and OA) - I’m probably returning to a slightly worse position than now.
- Fail in Year 4- then I have a PhD but can’t get a job anywhere I like. Also 4 more years worth of Machine Learning students had graduated that didn’t before and whilst there may be more machine learning jobs in general - I’d guess there is less high quality/fun jobs available. My base salary will be less than if I had stayed in industry for 4 years.
So what are the odds of a success?
I think things are much different this time around for my research studies:
- I really like the research area - MARL is super interesting and in general tackling the high level problem of “intelligence” is ambitious. There is a large scope of work and it’s sufficiently varied that I anticipate there are multiple avenues of research I can sink into during my PhD. It’s also not SOTA chasing.
- I really like my supervisors - Tim and Ed come across as fantastic mentors and are really at the perfect position in their careers to supervise me. Although I’ve only seen on other member of my cohort so far, DARK is looking like a very interesting place to be.
- People liked my proposal - the general response to my proposal was very promising. This could be that people just are very nice, that I got help from lots of my friends or finally that genuinely this is a good way to think about problems. Its a minor signal but makes me feel positive.
- Access to good labs - Both my supervisors are already at FAIR, which is a good step to establish potential career progression and collaborative projects. Equally I’ve had interest from some researchers at DM who are willing to talk to me regularly! These things all make me feel more positive.
- I can now code - I’m technically much more competent than before, even more than some of my peers at Tractable. This makes me a lot more positive about future work.
However as people remind me, you can’t make any guarantees with research. So whilst I can position myself well, maybe this isn’t enough.
Whats the alternative?
If I decide to not to take the offer - maybe I’ll have a lot of regret. However stuff will be great fun. I’ll have a large amount of expendable income and be able to focus on paying of student loan, building up savings and going on fun holidays with friends.
Tractable is a fast moving company and loads of scope for me to do very well and make a large impact. I will solidfy my position as being someone who can commericalise research. This leads to two futures:
- Become really good at Tractable, it will be a unicorn if they can expand their TAM within the next 2 years. I then found my own company that does a similar problem in a different vertical
- Continue to apply for research engineering roles at deepmind, FAIR and openai, however i feel my chances of joining them only decreases with time (the pool of research engineers only increases, and the type of engineering only becomes more specialised into niches that I probably won’t be able to fill).
So whats the call?
I dunno. Theres tonnes of disadvantages and all I gain is the chance to do something I might be good at.
I think I should try minimise regret and just go do it.