Hi everyone. I am a engineering PhD student starting my second year. I have so far have only academic experience. I have been continuing from my undergraduate (Home) and then Masters (UK) straight into PhD(UK). I am still not decided where would I like to be working. Although academic doesn't appear bad, I somehow think doing an industry job will be better (may be good money?). But I don't know if industries like to hire fresh PhD (I am aware of 'over qualification') and also I am an international student and so will have some issues of work permit and stuff (although I feel it wouldn't be very bad after PhD).Anyone would like to sore my confidence here?

well, as I found out, a lot of top companies (only) hire PhD in their research team, like IBM, Intel, at least for some positions.

Don't apply to work for IBM... they pay you crap and treat you worse... I speak from experience on that one... trust me..

Thanx.But equally what;s wrong with staying in academia? does it become too monotonous after a while? Does it not pay well?

The general consensus seems to think that industry pays better, offers more excitement (you actually get to see many products built and sold if you're successful) and has better facilities for what you're doing, due to potential product sales.

Maybe you could be more specific about your area, engineering is very vague. Somebody could then quote some figures and actually give more of an insight.

Thanks. I am rather into experimantal electronic engineering where here is a bit of Physics (Magnetic resonance signals) and mainly analogue capacitive sensors and analogue signal processing.Not much of programming which is a bit worrying. I am trying to incorporate some programming in the due course but not very sure. I am rather in desiging RF cirsuit to work around few hundred MHz.

hehe, I was just talking about qualification for a job in industry. No selling for any companies. I want to stay in academia, I like teaching..

Hi. That was just because the previous post wanted me to. I don;t mind teaching either.In fact I like it very much. But not sure how easy or difficult it is to stay in academia.