A Career in Computer Science

Jon Crowcroft, http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jac22

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jac22/zen-lab.txt

Q Set

1. What opportunities for jobs are you aware of at your organization or from your past experience?

2. What type of skills and experience (e.g. an internship, teaching) have you found most valuable for your career?

3. What is the most important piece of advice that was useful to you in making your career choices?

4. What do you wish you knew before you started building a computing career, but didn't.

Job Opportunities (Q1)

Don’t ask me – I never applied for a job

But note, CS departments are hiring In US and UK (e.g. ucl )

Most people agree there’s a tech bubble So take care if you move to industry

Balance (Q2)

Teaching Essential for learning and inspiring new Masters/ PhDs

Research Have too many ideas – filter later

Admin Grant proposal writing IS a discipline

Service to the community TPCs/Editors – learn the problem space/gap analysis Give seminars – get visible, get feedback

Be picky but also promiscuous (Q3)

Firsts REALLY REALLY matter Your first internship – go somewhere great for hard pb

Your first postdoc posn Be a small fish in a big pond – get exposed to cool stuff

in spades Your first academic position

Go somewhere where teaching and admin are balanced And people aren’t to scared of the REF

Be picky but….

Your first PhD student Is your best advertisement

Your first RA Is lever with which you can move the moon (don’t stand on

them though Any industry work

May get you easier money (internships v. good) Once you’ve got the hang of it,

Get as many as you can sensibly For me, max of 3 phds per year (i.e. 9-12 total)

and 3 RAs is most could ever cope with Compute cost - need research income of 300k pa.

Relevance

In CS, being relevant is easy People claim (in theory) that they can’t see

how their work has an impact coz their work takes 10 years to get used

People claim (in practice) having an impact reduces them to working for industry, coz people out there use our stuff….

Other subject disciplines would love to have our problems

Have fun!!! (Q4)