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0 pointssonzohan3h ago0 comments

I graduated in 2011, went straight to work at Blizzard entertainment. At the same time I had gotten accepted into graduate school so I opted for an internship at Blizzard to try both. I went back to Blizzard in 2012, but quickly realized I wanted to do my PhD. So I left Blizzard and went full-time as a student. I didn't have funding so I TAd classes. Eventually my advisor and I scored a big NSF grant, so she used the funds to buy out a course and have me teach it as the instructor.

From there, I wound up at a community college running a bachelor's level degree. They hired me because I was the only candidate with NSF experience. They proceeded to fire their grant manager and have me manage the whole grant without extra pay.

Actually used to hire people for exactly what you want to do: be an adjunct for night classes in tech.

If you want to go that route you need to make friends with the Dean and the head of program. It's rare that we hire someone from the general application process, because most people who work in tech do not make good instructors.

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RobRivera2h ago

I'll prospect that way, thank you for the insight. I have a unique background AND teaching experience (military leadership for my first career, and then taught as a full time visiting professor for 2 years) but having spent a decade in industry as a software engineer, yes I concur, teaching is not a common skill among the labor force (anecdotal ofc). I hope after I launch my first indie game I could knock on the doors of say Digipen or similar. Will see tho, thats more a 2027 thing.

What kind of PhD research did you do? I considered going back for a PhD program focusing on simulation as it relates to discoverability within AI research, but kept ruling out it was a bad career decision and should be left as a retirement thing

sonzohanOP1h ago

> I could knock on the doors of say Digipen or similar.

Seattle based? If so toss me your email or contact and I'll see if I can help you break into teaching if you're interested.

> What kind of PhD research did you do?

Assistive technology. I primarily worked with kids who had cleft lip and palate to improve their at-home speech therapy exercises. Trained some offline ASR models, built a therapy game, and automated metrics. I passed the research onto another student once I got my PhD, but the project lives on as https://spokeitthegame.com/

dylan6043h ago

> They proceeded to fire their grant manager and have me manage the whole grant without extra pay.

This is such a bullshit thing to experience. I had a version of this where I took on extra work that I was interested in which became a new revenue stream but was told "let's see how you do and then we'll see about salary bumps". Never saw an extra dime from it. I used the experience learned to land a new job six months later with a salary bump while dumping the other job responsibilities. It's truly the only way to get that bump you deserve.

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