Ask HN: Ways to break into CS research without a formal education/degree?

[cliffordfajardo]

As a basis for discussion:

  - Does anyone know stories of people without degrees or PHD’s doing research work in their respective fields (submitting co-authoring papers etc)?
  - If so, what their journey was like?
  - What other organizations have research teams besides Amazon, MSFT, Google?  

Some experiences of breaking into “researchy” roles & teams:

  - **Friend at Microsoft Research** works alongside researchers, they build tools that bring the researchers tools to life; they have to have a solid grasp of the tech side to a certain degree
  - **Friend alongside a team full of CS/Physics PHDs**; they spoke at a quantum conference recently  & they do some research;  bootcamp grad, dropout
  - **Friend works on database internals / distributed systems, has worked alongside creators of core tech**, has presented at conferences, written very strong technical content for his company’s engineering blog (FAANG+ company)  ; bootcamp grad, no tech degree

 From the outside, breaking into research doesn’t seem impossible, BUT it seems there are some factors that can increase your opportunity:
  
  - Does the current organization have research opportunities/teams?
  - Joining the right team/timing; maybe who you know?
  - Breaking in from the inside -- years at the company, /social capital, reputation internally?