» Thursday, 17 August A.D. 2006
leaving rice
Yesterday was my last day at Rice. I forgot to turn in my keys yesterday, though, so I had to go back in today. The department admin told me that I need not have bothered. She was probably right, because the Rice Police saw fit to tag my car with a ticket for a parking violation. Oh well.
I have been (seriously) thinking about withdrawing from graduate school for several months now. (“Withdrawing” sounds so much better than “dropping out,” doesn't it?) I couldn't settle on a thesis topic and the prospects that were out there didn't line up with my interests--or I was unwilling to figure how they might be coerced into lining up. Getting out now seemed like a better idea than continuing on for a year, possibly finding a topic, only to go through this same crisis stage next year and have “wasted” a year's worth of work.
There is also the matter of careers after the doctorate. I came to Rice expecting to teach after I finished my Ph.D. My undergraduate degree was from a school which was not a “publish or perish” sort of school and that was the sort of school at which I wanted to teach. After seeing other people graduate from the compilers group, search high and low and in vain for an academic position (teaching or research), I realized that such a position was extremely difficult to find.
Thinking about it for a while, I came to believe that the sort of university I want to teach at will probably not be around much longer. My reasoning on this was as follows: Universities make their money in one of two ways: a) incoming tuition money and b) research grants. (Ignoring endowment funds for the moment; I don't think they play a role here, for reasons that I hope will become clear.) The cost of college eduction in this country is rising rather rapidly. Colleges have a problem if their primary source of income is a), i.e. the sort of college at which I would prefer to teach. Such colleges cannot raise tuition indefinitely, which leaves them with several options: a) stop hiring new professors, b) cut professor salaries, and c) start to accept research money. Endowment money does not help you in the long-term, since you will probably deplete the endowment faster than it can be built up and building endowments to the levels that would be necessary to avoid these choices takes quite a bit of time. All of these are unpalatable options for a aspiring professor such as myself, to say nothing of the administrators of such colleges.
While I acknowledge that it is possible for a university to be an excellent teaching university and an excellent research university (from what I have seen in the computer science department, Rice is evidence of this fact), such universities are few and far between and competition for positions at such places is fierce (see above). Furthermore, while I really enjoy teaching, I have also confirmed to myself that I really enjoy programming as well. “If I'm coding, I'm happy,” is a pretty good motto for me. Coding seemed somewhat lacking in the job description of a professor. So, I decided to start hunting for a programming job.
I think the most amazing thing for me to have realized during this process is that yes, there are people who do not complete their Ph.D. I had this mental block that everybody who enters a graduate program eventually staggers out with a doctorate. If you didn't, I thought, you must be a “loser.” Well, I am now a “loser,” I have friends who are “losers,” many people I have talked to about this have children or friends who are “losers,” and I am in fact going to work at a company founded by a “loser.” Realizing that I am, in fact, not a loser for doing this has been quite liberating.
I mentioned that I do have a job. After Labor Day, I will be starting work at CodeSourcery, where I will be doing various compiler-related work, mostly on the GNU toolchain (GCC, binutils, glibc). I went to school for compiler work, I ought to make use of that knowledge, right? Talking about the company to my wife after I was invited to send in my resumé, she remarked that my excitement level about this work was far above anything she had seen concerning my graduate work. I am extremely excited about the work I will be doing for them.
The work in itself is cool, but one of the other cool opportunities this job affords is that I get to work from home. All of the employees work from home, communicating via IRC, email, telephone, and the occasional all-hands face-to-face meeting. When evaluating the offers from CodeSourcery and the other companies I considered, the prospect of working from home was one of the key factors in the decision--it meant we didn't have to buy a second car, didn't have to pay for car insurance, repairs, gas, etc. on that car, it meant eating three meals a day with my family, going to take walks with my family during the day, etc. etc.
The prospect of working from home is a little daunting--productivity, motivation, interacting with “virtual” colleagues, etc.--but I'm confident working for CodeSourcery will be quite satisfying.
My sister recently informed me that I needed more “personal” posts and less “computer” posts. Perhaps this one is a step in the right direction.
posted by Nate @ 7:46PM