Re: masters, work, then back to school... is this possible?

Fishilicious wrote:
On 3 Sep, 18:08, dbell <bellda2...@xxxxxxx> wrote:

I never said it was necessary, but I have seen it open countless
opportunities for people that furthered their career that they would
not have gotten without a PhD. Even if they knew the exact same
material and had the same capabilities, but no PhD, the
opportunities would not have presented themselves in the same way.

I would never encourage anyone to go for a PhD degree, and in the
past I have often wondered what one can do with a degree that one
can't do without it.

However, I have been in the position where a project proposal of
mine was met with 'who do *you* think you are to think you can
do what lots of smart people have attmpted and failed?' where my
PhD degree + former affiliations with certain R&D institutions
came in handy.

Not a card to be played too often, but potentially very effective.

Rune

Wow thanks for all the replies! Well just a couple of things I would
like to add. The reason I don't think this is the right place is
primarily one that is social, same goes for why I wanted to do a PhD
to start with. I wanted to get the degree as a kind of self
accomplishment, not because I'm passionate about the research or want
a higher pay. I know this is not a good reason to do graduate
school, but it pretty much carried me through undergraduate, and now
master's.

On a more logical note, I do have the concern that MS will cause me to
eventually hit a glass ceiling. Together with the fact that I still
wish to attend that one school I wanted to since high school, I'm
looking to reapply in a few years. However, PhD isn't the only thing
I'm considering. Now, I don't think I'm fit for management, so the
other option from what I heard would be patent law. But then again,
these are all up in the air right now, need to get a job first.

With all that said, I am clueless as to what kind of job would a MSEE
in DSP would do in the work force. I think my ideal job right now is
one that is research / design oriented, but with the current state of
economy, I probably should just take whatever I can get. I have been
searching for the past few days, and seems like most job postings
that require knowledge in DSP are heavily software related--not
something I was hoping for. Just tossing some of my concerns these
days out there, thanks again for all the great replies!!

The "D" in DSP pretty much guarantees it's gonna be software. Even if you
are designing FPGAs, that's a lot like "software".

If you want to do research then it's either a University or possibly a
government lab.

Your motive for doing the PhD program is fine. But, as others have
suggested, not much of a glass ceiling involved unless you want to be a
professor.

Consider that there are very few "DSP" workers at all. Instead there are
engineers who develop products which have some DSP in them. As things get
smaller / chips get more comprehensive / it's entirely possible for one EE
to design a product from start to finish with just a bit of mechanical
engineering help for the box, structure, cooling and maybe the power
supply.... That's fairly common practice in product companies and entails
much more in the job than DSP. The new grad EE type engineers I hired
usually had done a real project with an FPGA, usually had skills in software
and understood a variety of things - including DSP or image processing or
......

Fred


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