I was a sponsored full-time PhD student in the joint PhD program of SUNY-Buffalo and IIITD, and I am a full-time research scientist in Adobe Media and Data Science Research.
At least four times a week, I get asked the following questions:
Whoa, I didn't know this. Is this even legal? Are you moonlighting?
Which program is this?
How do you manage your time?
How can I get into this program?
Is it a part-time PhD program?
What are the benefits of this kind of setting (job+PhD)?
So, I thought I would write a blog post to answer these questions and redirect people to this post next time I get asked these questions.
Yes, it is a real (and a legal) program. No, I am not moonlighting. It is called a sponsored full-time PhD program. Both Adobe and my institutes have a policy in place for this kind of program. Let me cover the policies for both Adobe and the institutes:
IIITD makes it very clear on its official page that it is a full-time program (https://www.iiitd.ac.in/admission/phd/sponsored). The program is not easy by any standards. You have to take courses, make assignments, do quizzes, and obviously do your research, publish papers, give talks, etc., all while working full-time for a company. The institute does not provide any additional provisions for sponsored students in terms of course load or research load. You have to do everything that a regular full-time PhD student does. The only difference that I could find is that sponsored students do not have to do TA duties. In lieu of that, the sponsored students have to pay tuition fees.
Adobe has a policy of education reimbursement for its employees. The policy is very simple. If you are a full-time employee, you can get your tuition fees reimbursed. The only condition is that you have to get your manager's approval and you have to pass your courses with a certain grade.
To my knowledge, quite a few technical companies (especially the big ones), have similar policies. Even if they don't reimburse you, they may support you in other ways. For example, they may allow you to work from home on certain days of the week, or they may allow you to take a sabbatical for a semester or two. Adobe is special because it allows for all of these (reimbursement, sabbatical, ...) :).
I have a very simple answer to this question. I don't. I don't manage my time. I just do whatever I can whenever I can. I don't have a fixed schedule. Since I like doing research much more than attending courses, I usually take only 1-2 courses per semester.
If you want to get into just IIITD, you can look at their website (https://www.iiitd.ac.in/admission/phd/sponsored).
If you want to get into the joint program, you have to get into both IIITD and SUNY-Buffalo separately and inform both the institutes that you want to be a part of the joint program. I have captured more details about this and the benefits of doing this in another blog post (https://sites.google.com/view/yaman-kumar/blog/joint-phd-programs-in-india).
Well, there are many benefits.
Your research has an actual impact in a much more direct way. Your industrial job helps you test your idea in the real world.
You get to have a full-time salary along with getting the PhD degree.
You define your research problem as opposed to your advisor's funding sources.
You get to avoid the pressure of searching for a job after your PhD. You already have a job.
You can define your own timelines for publishing, taking courses; you can own your own time. Since you are not being funded by academia, you don't have to worry about graduating in 4-5 years. You can take your own time and publish good papers. Want to graduate early? You can do that too.
Having one foot in academia and the other in the industry has its own set of non-tangible benefits.
The following applies only when you are in an industrial research lab (not in a product team):
Industry is richer than academia, so you get to work with more and better resources (better GPUs, better CPUs, better servers, better datasets, etc.).
You get to work with amazing researchers, both seniors and peers. While in academia, you have one advisor, in industry, you can get mentorship from many senior researchers. You can learn a lot from them. In academia, you meet your advisor once or twice a week; here, you meet your team daily. Getting regular feedback keeps you on track.
You get ideas from a lot of different places: product team requirements, other researchers, your advisors, your own research interests, etc. You get to choose what you want to work on and how.
Being in a company, you get to work on real-world problems, and you get to see the impact of your research.
I can keep on going, but I think you get the point. I am not saying that this is the best way to do a PhD. I am just saying that this is one way to do a PhD. It has its own pros and cons. You have to decide what is best for you.