Ask HN: Moving into Academic CS from Industry?
Not impossible, but very difficult. Reading between the lines it seems
that you are underestimating the effort involved. You say that you are
interested in type theory. Do you know everything about Hindley-Milner
systems, lambda calculus, System F, etc? Great! That&#x27;s the very basics
and what you will learn in a CS master program at any reputable
university. But to actually do research in this area, you need to know
about all major results published in the field since the
1970s. Learning all that takes a lot of time. Then you need to learn
the practicalities of research, how to write papers, how to write
papers that gets accepted, etc. Phd programs aren&#x27;t multi-year affairs
because academia wants to prevent students from progressing, it&#x27;s just
that these things take time.<p>Then there is the financial side too. You&#x27;re unlikely to <i>ever</i> earn
as much in academia as you do now as a developer with 16 years
experience. Phd and postdoc salary may be 1&#x2F;2 or 1&#x2F;3 of what you&#x27;re
making now. Then there is the age thing (16 years of experience
implies you&#x27;re 35+)... Your professors and supervisors might be
younger than you.<p>But if you fed up of writing crud apps or bug fixing the shittiest
t-sql code in the world then maybe it is worth it. If you&#x27;ve done
something you didn&#x27;t like for 16 years then it is time to stop and
reconsider.