| Yes, the financial trade-offs for getting a PhD versus simply earning median software engineer salary is extreme. So much so that most people should only consider the PhD if that trade-off simply isn't a consideration. Somewhat more problematically, "a pretty respectable level of knowledge and ability for CS research" is table stakes for just about every grad student in a CS program. This is especially true at better programs. You might be sadly surprised just how little your industry programming experience is valued in academic CS research - in my grad program, being highly skilled in multiple programming languages was assumed. By better program, I mean programs like an R1 university CS research program - I am specifically excluding terminal, MS-only CS programs in that statement. Many of those terminal, MS-only programs are actually credential programs for career changers (people who want to upgrade to a SW engineer job and had unrelated undergrad majors). You might want to look at how the papers and theses you have been enjoying were produced. I strongly suspect that the writers were mostly grad students working under a current professor who had grants to support grad students to do that work. There probably isn't much (any?) demand to hire programmers to do research programming work - that is what research assistantships pay students for. Maybe a good analogy here would be think about someone who has a physics undergrad, has worked in applied engineering in the energy industry for 16 years, and is now interested in being hired into a university role that allows that person to do more of their day-to-day work directly in particle physics research. What physics department is going to hire that person? Why? Keep in mind there is a verifiable surplus of physics PhD postdocs looking for that gig . . . All this isn't meant to be overly discouraging, just my thoughts. Honestly, just keep a list of universities you wouldn't mind working at and once a week or so, browse all their job listings to see if something fits your interests and apply if it does! |