I wrote this on Nov 1st, 2022. Two years ago, I started as a postdoc at UC Santa Cruz during this fall season. That postdoc was the phoenix that rose from the ashes of a 2020 pandemic Ph.D. graduation and a series of failed applications for tenure-track faculty positions. The amount of labor that had gone into preparing those research statements and teaching statements paled in comparison to the number of hours I had spent imagining a research lab with my students to mentor and living academic life. That labor of academic applications may have been the fuel but the fire really stemmed from that vision that is fed to every Ph.D. grad that – academic life is the best life. I too was enchanted by that hope and tried with all my might to continue to keep that fire alive by telling myself that I was nearly there. All of this changed when I moved to California for a postdoc.
You see, as a lower-middle-class Indian immigrant, who was really there in the United States of America because of merit, those 6 years of grad school made me forget that I couldn’t continue to be a nomadic man-child when there were responsibilities - financial, social, and personal - that I had been putting off until graduation. Suddenly, trying for one more year or publishing two more journal articles was no longer the hope I wanted to cling to while the rest of the world was moving on. This included the sticker shock of moving from Indiana to California. From the mid-west to the wild-west, this $24k per annum earning grad student had “leveled up” to $60k as a postdoc with a fancy Dr title. This 2.5x increase in salary, not gonna lie, did feel awesome when the first paycheck arrived but quickly fizzled away when 65% of that went away in rent! “Will I have to live with roommates, again?” I thought to myself. Each day in the Bay Area in California made me just feel like crap. The job already makes you feel like an imposter with immense pressure to continue to publish and little hope of relevant positions opening up. Add to that the misery of trying to make ends meet with a lack of financial support when the expectation in a typical Indian family really is that you should be the one providing the financial support. All of these thoughts were just crippling and suddenly the emotion of achievement of a Ph.D. didn’t really alleviate the emotion of dissatisfaction and frustration towards a system that almost felt like a pyramid scheme. For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was failing on epic proportions. To make matters worse, I really thought it was me. I wasn’t putting enough effort, I wasn't publishing enough, I wasn’t committing all the time I could, and … maybe…I didn’t deserve this Ph.D.!
Just when these thoughts were becoming more and more self-deprecating, my location change on LinkedIn resulted in a flurry of recruiters reaching out to me for industry positions. Initially, I was so entrapped with the idea of academic applications, that even reading those messages seemed like a betrayal to myself and to my dreams. However, when a recruiter from Google’s Behavioral Science team reached out to me, it was too hard to not entertain the idea of applying there. “How difficult could it be!?” my arrogant self thought. This arrogance was years in the making when all that you hear is constant industry bashing from ivory tower academics. When I actually did go through the interview process, it was eye-opening! This wasn’t easy! A 5 to 6 hour interview process with in-depth interviews and technical questions, sometimes on topics that you have long forgotten! I landed up not getting an offer from Google but I did go through the entire technical process that made me realize that my perception of the industry was far away from reality even for something as simple as the hiring process.
That lack of an offer from a place like Google made me feel like I was being presented with a new and exciting challenge - applying to the industry and getting an offer! I chased this feeling and focused on keywords such as human-AI interaction, human-centered AI, cognitive modeling, etc. since that is my area of expertise. Through this, I stumbled upon Fiddler AI - a start-up focusing on Responsible AI. Mind you, this search process resulted in a lot of failures as well, but somehow here the feeling of rejection was less painful than in academia. Perhaps because the amount of time you spend personalizing and tailoring your academic applications is absurdly high as compared to the one in the industry. After going through the super thoughtful interview process at Fiddler, I landed up getting an offer! In my heart, I had already made the decision to move. I had a chat with my postdoc advisor and she was just super happy for me either way. That kind of support is so helpful and considerate and I am grateful that both my Ph.D. and Postdoc advisors ultimately advised me to choose a path that works for me.
Well, I joined Fiddler on Nov 1st, 2021, as this clueless Data Scientist who continued feeling like an imposter in his initial days wondering if Fiddler made a mistake and whether I tricked them. Today is my 1 year anniversary at Fiddler AI (we call it Fiddlerversary) and I couldn’t be happier! In this one year, I have published a paper at The 10th AAAI Conference on Human Computation and Crowdsourcing, a workshop paper in ICML22, and a workshop paper in NeurIPS22 focusing on human-centric challenges with ML model monitoring. I have published a blog series on intersectional fairness, launched a new product feature, understood how startups work, improved my coding skills, and improved product quality through testing and documentation. I can’t believe I have been able to do so much! Needless to say, I am continuing to gain knowledge on human-centered, responsible, and ethical AI - an area I am so passionate about thanks to my journey with engineering design, decision-making research, and human-centered design roots. I feel blessed to have traversed this unique path and to be where I am now.
This transition from academia to the industry has been an awesome one for me. Here is my experience over this one year at Fiddler -
Getting to see an immediate impact, and being able to delight customers is very exciting to me. In my first year at Fiddler, I was able to launch a new drift metric called Population Stability Index (in general this is termed a new “product feature” in the industry when your work results in being able to do something new on the software). This work gave me the opportunity to go above and beyond and work with a machine learning engineer and a front-end engineer and convince them to just get this feature launched. I did this two quarters earlier than what higher-ups were anticipating! That feeling of overachievement was so sweet and when a fintech customer started using it within weeks of launching the feature it was just a cherry on top to see my work contributing to the bigger organizational goals.
I was no longer working in isolation. There are dedicated teams for jobs that I used to have to do in academia all by myself while constantly being aware that the job I’ve done, in an area I am not an expert in, is subpar and feeling like an imposter. That feeling hasn’t gone away completely but it’s not as loud as it used to be.
I felt like I was getting paid more than just to make ends meet. You obviously make a lot more money in industry than in academia and as an immigrant coming from a lower middle-class family, it absolutely matters! Don’t let anyone tell you not to worry about money. It’s generally said by those who are in a different phase of their life, who have accumulated wealth only to realize they don’t know what to do with it and it doesn’t motivate them. Context does matter. Being in a phase of life where you are trying to just survive - you can think of a lot of things you can do to bring comfort in your life through that extra income. Of course, money is not everything. I don’t think a majority of the folks think that way. However, it is a disservice to the impressionable people who look up to you to say that you shouldn’t worry about money and finances.
Having said all of this above – here are some of the things that are a part of my professional experience by being in the tech industry
There are luck-based factors even in industry and not just in academia. For example, getting the job itself has a lot to do with luck and timing. Other luck-based factors include -
the organizational culture,
your manager’s emotional intelligence,
your starting projects (are you being set up for failure)
economic conditions
The things in your control -
being a lifelong learner - which means being curious, asking questions, getting to know the sociotechnical aspects like the right people for the right questions, creating a mental map of various subsystems of this large organization that you are part of, acquiring intelligence through “transfer learning” == not having to reinvent the wheel, when you have the feeling that you have free time at work figuring out how to make it productive instead of secretly feeling happy about having free time during work hours and whiling away your time. - a lot of this I learned through my grad school life and mostly because I had an insightful Ph.D. advisor who forced me to think and justify every decision I took about the next steps for work. For that, I am super grateful to academia and my advisor.
Finding mentors. This is super important. Knowing which person in the organization can help you is crucial. PS - It may not be your manager but rather your coworkers.
You can be the source of fun and happiness for others.
Make sure to have meetings with others across the organization and not just your team
Take control of your calendar! Block chunks of time as focus time for yourself. Do not let anyone schedule meetings in those blocks.
Politics is everywhere. Knowing which fights to fight and which to let go of is crucial across all phases of life.
Your manager cannot be your friend but needs to be friendly.
Taking an initiative does not mean you forget about the weekly priorities set for you. So don’t get lost/aim for heroics if you aren’t keeping up with your weekly targets.
There is obviously a lot more but I wanted to pen this down before I forget. I hope this helps someone who is currently a grad student and thinking about the academia vs industry debate. There is no right or wrong answer and the path totally depends on your context and your personal journey. If you wanna chat more, shoot me a message on LinkedIn!
