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Chandu Thekkath Microsoft Research Silicon Valley

Your Research Career. Chandu Thekkath Microsoft Research Silicon Valley. Assumptions and background . You: Graduating or recently graduated Ph.D. Experimental system scientist Research career in industry or academia Me:

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Chandu Thekkath Microsoft Research Silicon Valley

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  1. Your Research Career Chandu Thekkath Microsoft Research Silicon Valley

  2. Assumptions and background • You: • Graduating or recently graduated Ph.D. • Experimental system scientist • Research career in industry or academia • Me: • SW Engineer (‘83-’89). Ph.D.(‘89-’94) Systems researcher (‘94-present) • Worked in industrial labs (DEC, Compaq, Microsoft) • One year on sabbatical at Stanford • Research manager for 3 years

  3. The talk • Personal, prescriptive, and sometimes contradictory • Based on my experience and many researchers I interviewed: • Fresh Ph.D.s to Turing award winners • 1 year out of school to over 2 decades in the field • Mix of software and hardware systems • Some theoreticians • Both men and women • No guarantee any of this is repeatable

  4. Things that matter • Choice of areas, topics, and projects • Who you collaborate with and how • How you position your research and yourself to the external world • Your management and how you are evaluated • Projects/Ideas • You • Collaborators • Management • External Visibility

  5. Topics, areas, and projects • Picking the problem is usually the hard part • Spades and toothpicks (Roger Needham) • Lofty goals vs. concrete results • Solvable vs. high risk problems • Topics that are fun and meaningful to you • Would you use the system? Would anybody? • Plan to evaluate your system (if not use it) • Problems that annoy you • Find a way to make it less annoying

  6. Topics, areas, and projects • Technology leads systems research • The bleeding edge yields nuggets • Immerse yourself; fortune favours the prepared mind • Inter-disciplinary projects • Conferences outside your area • Be open and broad and experiment with many areas • Research career spans 20-25 years • Change topics. Keeps you alert/inventive • Choose projects that you will learn from

  7. Topics, areas, and projects • Develop good taste • Like wine tasting, the more you do it, the better you get at differentiating good from mediocre • Accept ideas and input from others • Be willing to work on other people’s ideas; they will sometimes work on yours • Avoid the tyranny of the LPU and the paper chase • Focus on learning more than CV building

  8. Your colleagues and collaborators • Good systems research requires collaboration • Multiple researchers with different strengths • People who are smart, inventive, different from you (and nice to hang out with) • Move on if you make a mistake • Don’t obsess over credit; evens out • Don’t antagonize people (we are opinionated and full of ourselves) • Hang around people whose work you admire. Try to become technical friends with them

  9. Your colleagues and collaborators • Neither a minion nor a manager be • Collaborate as a peer (hard if collaborator is senior and in a hierarchy) • Use your colleagues • Advisors, users, critics (c.f. conference PC) • Look for external collaborations • Not always easy: geographical, organizational, political hurdles

  10. Promoting yourself externally • Your research and user community • Publications, talks, participation in conferences/workshops • Making your system available externally • The product division in your company • “Technology transfer”: transferring your knowledge or research artifacts • Funding agencies

  11. Publishing • Number of papers vs. number of citations • Publish only things of which you are proud. Weak papers can mar a strong CV. • Huge difference between writing a paper vs. writing the best/definitive/seminal paper on a topic • 5 papers a year vs. 1 SOSP paper, 5 times in a row. • Avoid boondoggles, however attractive • Ultimately, where you publish will reflect on your CV • Your peers may judge you by your submissions (not just your publications)

  12. Publishing • Write papers that • Teach your readers something • Contain results that can be reproduced • Be generous with credit. E.g., • Don’t get hung up on author order • If you are not presenting at the conference, Use other prestigious venues (e.g., colloquia at top-tier universities)

  13. Publishing • Papers get rejected for many reasons. Don’t lose confidence and self-esteem • Find venues to talk about rejected work if you think the work is good. • Ask for advice from your more experienced colleagues • Fix the shortcomings of the research. • Take your time, re-evaluate your decision to republish • Be a conscientious reviewer/PC member • Word gets around if you are a sloppy/indifferent PC member

  14. Technology transfer • Don’t confuse research, advanced development, and product development • You may do all three at times, but be aware of what you are doing • Product folks have a different mindset • Respect them; they are smart but they march to a different beat. • Don’t expect your research system to be immediately useful • Gestation period can be a few years • Develop a research pipeline

  15. Technology transfer • Use product development to learn about real problems • Real usage reveals real problems • Move between research and product development (gasp!) • Work as an advisor or architect • Attend design reviews

  16. Management & environment • Management style matters in research • Top down vs. bottom up can make a huge difference • Research is best done from the trenches rather than from the hilltops • Make sure you know how research is actually done in the organization • “Research” or “Researcher” may not mean what you think • Do you have freedom to pursue your research agenda? • If not, how much of it is directed by group lead/manager • Can you live with this?

  17. Management & environment • Is research your primary responsibility? • Or is it done in your spare time • Is it done only for a fraction of your time • Will you be rewarded for doing only research? • No product impact for an extended time? • Do projects have to be “approved” or “funded” • By somebody (e.g., your manager) • By some group (e.g., a product division) • Do you have enough resources for • Travel and equipment • Visitors/collaborators/interns

  18. Odds and ends • Living your life and being a researcher at the same time • What fraction of your social/family life are you willing to give up. • Pick a balance that works for you. • Being happy is more important than being a star researcher • Know when to give up • If you are not having fun being a researcher, do something else. • Many fulfilling non-research careers available for a Ph.D. in CS

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