Fast-forward 6 years

The life of a NZ CSRSC 2007 attendee

Alyona Medelyan, Pingar

6 years ago @ NZ CSRSC 2007

Fast-forward 6 years

The life of a NZ CSRSC 2007 attendee

several

The lives of NZ CS PostGraduates

Alyona Medelyan, Pingar

How much will I earn and what will affect my salary?

Shall I stay in Academia or go into the Industry?

Will I be happy with my choices?

Where, how and how quickly will I find my first full-time job?

The Kiwi CS PostGraduates Survey

Alumni, Postgrad & Careers departments of

NZ CSRSC & University groups on

3 weeks on

Advertised via

18% Females

Who responded?

155 Kiwi CS Graduates

70 Bachelors

35 Masters

50 PhDs

Between 5 and 40 graduates from each of the 7 NZ univeristies

A variety of CS fields were representedAI, Comp Graphics, Database theory, Formal methods, IR, NLP, Software Engineering, Algorithms,Programming languages, Health Inf, Theoretical CS, Concurrent systems, Security & Cryptography

27% Females among PostGrads

Among 85 PostGrads…

65% have attended NZ CSRSC in previous years

Auckland

AUT

Waikato

Victoria

Massey

Canterbury

Lincoln

Otago

2012-2013

2010-2011

2007-2009

2003-2005

< 2003

Citizen

PR

Student Visa

How much will I earn and what will affect my salary?

Shall I stay in Academia or go into the Industry?

Will I be happy with my choices?

Where, how and how quickly will I find my first full-time job?

Will I find a job?

90% of 85 PostGrads found a full-time position since graduating

Out of 10% who haven’t, majority graduated very recently& interesting fact: none of them has completed an internship

No other correlations were found, except maybe…

Attended NZ CSRSC

Never attended NZ CSRSC

Found a job91% 83%

Haven't found a job9% 17%

Where will my first full-time job be?

Other(equal split between

Europe, Asia, US/Canada)

Australia

NZ(same city)

NZ(moved city)

Student Visa holders are more likely to leave NZNZ citizens & Males are more likely to stay in the same cityOnly NZ citizens with a Masters go to Australia

How will I find this job?

Internship

Job listing

Search for companies

Recruiter

Contacts

Other*

* Most: Company / Recruiter found me (email or conference)

42% of Males but only 25% of Females found job through contacts

Whilestill enrolled

< 3 months

< 6 months

< 1 year

> 1 year

How quickly will I find this job?

83%Incl. 8 grads with“No job experience”

Weak correlation withFemale & 2007-2009 grads

My job hunting story

How much will I earn and what will affect my salary?

Shall I stay in Academia or go into the Industry?

Will I be happy with my choices?

Where, how and how quickly will I find my first full-time job?

What are my job options?Academia Industry

University Research institute Start up Small companyLarge company Self-employed

32 responses 42 responses

Student Visa holders & Females are more likely to stay in AcademiaMales are more likely to join Start UpsAuckland University PostGrads are more likely to join Large companiesNone of the respondents have moved for an Academic job to Australia

Teac

hing

Resea

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Writ

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pape

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Tech

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Softw

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ent

Prod

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anag

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t

Peop

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emen

tHR

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

Academia Industry

What tasks will I be doing at work?

Self-employed and Start Up employees are least likely to do research

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday9:00 emails emails emails emails emails9:30 customer analysis customer analysis team meeting team meeting documentation

10:00 customer meeting programming10:30 11:00 emails 11:30 customer meeting documentation 12:00 lunch documentation lunch 12:30 documentation lunch lunch13:00 lunch emails emails HR13:30 conference preparations documentation self-education14:00 team meeting conference preparations customer analysis programming programming14:30 computer set up 15:00 emails team meeting team meeting 15:30 conference preparations self-education 16:00 documentation documentation programming 16:30 conference preparations documentation 17:00 documentation programming documentation

My tasks @ Pingar

Over the past 3.5 years @ Pingar

4 Peer-reviewed publications (+ 2 submitted)

>12 Talks at Conferences, Trade Shows & MeetUps

2 International trips per year (US, OZ, HK, Singapore, China & India)

Human–computer interaction

Artificial Intelligence

Database theory

Information retrieval

Software engineering

Machine learning / Data mining

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Industry Academia Area of study

Will what I studied matter?

Only 2 PostGrads’ work area has nothing to do with CSMany other areas are equally spread: Comp graphics, Inf. Science, NLPIndustry only: Cryptography 10% Academia only: Prog. Lang. theory 20%

My areas of research

Keyword extraction

Taxonomies

Machine Learning

Wikipedia mining

3 years of PhD

Text summarization

Back-of-the-book indexing

Terminology extraction

Semantic Web

Text categorization

Text clustering

Entity extraction

Query analysis

3.5 years @ Pingar

What will I like/dislike most about my job?

Academia Industry

TeachingAutonomyFlexibilityColleagues “I love working with smart people”

AdminBureaucracyFixed term contracts

Commute & ParkingManagement / PoliticsDeadlines

Challenging & diverse tasksAutonomyFlexibilityColleagues“I love my team”

Most respondents stated that they “enjoy their job on most days”

How much will I earn and what will affect my salary?

Shall I stay in Academia or go into the Industry?

Will I be happy with my choices?

Where, how and how quickly will I find my first full-time job?

How much will I earn?

< 50K

50K – 70K

70K – 100K

NZD/year

> 100K

No answer

2012-2013

2010-2012

2006-2009

2003-2006

PhDs salary depending on graduation year

Average NZ salary: 48Kcareers.govt.nz

The Battle of Salaries

Except in Academia

Masters PhD

$

$

$

Except for PhDs in Industry

Equal for jobs in NZ Universities

!Kiwi Kiwi

Will I get more money overseas?

New Zealand

Australia

Other

130 responses from Bachelors, Masters & PhDs

New Zealand

Overseas

47 responses from PhDs only

How much will I earn and what will affect my salary?

Shall I stay in Academia or go into the Industry?

Will I be happy with my choices?

Where, how and how quickly will I find my first full-time job?

Will money bring happiness?

Academia Industry16 Male PostGrads 27 Male PostGrads

Twice as many PostGrads earn over 100K in Industry

But: The level of happiness is the same!

>100K >100K

I like my job a lot

I like my job a lot

How can I be happy with my job?

Masters Citizen Males Females PhDs Foreigners0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Like current job a lotChanged 2 or more jobs

%

For Masters & PhDs: the average job satisfaction increases with every year after graduating

(it doesn’t for Bachelors!)

How much will you earn and what will affect your salary?

Will you stay in Academia or go into the Industry?

Will you be happy with my choices?

Where, how and how quickly will you find your job?

Advice to CS Kiwi PostGrads

Academia

Industry

• Make sure you have a good supervisor... ditch if not• Apply for things (internships, scholarships)• Do what's fun• Publish• Complete PhD on time• Network

• Get work experience while studying / take a break between degrees• Learn Software Dev skills and processes• Broaden your knowledge• Leave NZ (asap)• Consider companies in other industries that need CS• Network

What do the richest & happiest PostGrads say?

:) Enjoy life!It is amazing how things work out…But you do need to work hard, and

take opportunities when they arise

(notice them in order to take them). Be curious.

Survey results available on medelyan.com/survey

Don't isolate yourself during your research. As difficult as it can

sometimes be, make continuous efforts to engage with others….Bounce ideas

off people. Write early, write often. Actively seek out feedback... And find

time to relax.