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I had a very different personal experience, but Karpathy did a wonderful PhD and I did a very marginal one (at a good school, which in many ways makes it worse)

I had a very different personal experience, but Karpathy did a wonderful PhD and I did a very marginal one (at a good school, which in many ways makes it worse). From the perspective of the "anchor" rather than the valedictorian, I'd say that he's right on almost all points as to what you should look to do if you decide to be a PhD. However, I do take exception at the rather false dichotomy between industry and academia that he creates. A good PhD leads to many of the nice things he describes: freedom and ownership and personal growth and all that stuff. An average PhD (or worse) leads to pretty much the opposite. Most of the superstars I know went on to do pretty much whatever they are interested in at top schools. The non-superstars (and the real lumps, like me) can easily wind up in a death spiral - where your mediocre publishing record and mediocre PhD afford entry only into 3rd-tier institutions, where you will work with worse and worse people, more or less guaranteeing steadily declining quality of work. A mediocre result more or less guarantees that you will be a low-status drone in academia, trying to wedge world-class work in with a bunch of other activities (teaching, being a glorified research assistant, and other 'service'). No-one sets out to do a bad PhD, but people need to understand that the average outcome isn't nearly as glowing as Karpathy outlines. Similarly, the outcome of going to industry also has a huge range. I found myself immediately - I mean on Day 1 - doing more pure Computer Science going to work for a startup than I had any reasonable hope of doing as a semi-failed academic, and have had a steadily improving experience subsequently (some of this stems from a rather delayed growing-up on my part, so it's not entirely a judgement on industry vs academia).

nextos 10y ago
Isn't what you are saying a bit extreme? I mean, PhDs in Europe are very short and thus students don't have the opportunity to do that much. So in a way they are quite mediocre. Yet some recover afterwards. But I agree it's hard to revert the trend if you're in a down-spiral.
- adityab 10y ago
  It's not as straightforward a distinction as you imply, and certainly not grounds for attributing a lower value. In Europe (Germany in particular), you have to do a 2-year Masters degree which tends to be ~1.3 years of coursework and ~0.7 years of research culminating in a thesis. Judged by the quality of your thesis, you then try to get accepted into a group for a PhD which takes 3 years on average. In the US you go straight to a 5-year PhD program and within that, the coursework-research duration split is similar to what you find in Europe.
  - glangdale 10y ago
    "5 year program" (laughter). At CMU people were occasionally referred to as 'being on the 4-year plan', which meant you were like a superior alien intelligence (and, more importantly, focused on some good problem rather than, say, beer and girls or whatever you're into). But I think 7 years was typical, especially in "systems" or anything where you'd have to build something. Places that provision for 3 years total for a PhD are doing something fundamentally different, as people doing good quality PhDs at CMU were already casting around for topics quite early in those 6-7 years. I'm sure that in the long run it evens out for good people coming from good places in either system, as of course, the euro-PhD person can do 3 more years of post-doc under similar conditions.
  - roel_v 10y ago
    Most phds I was involved with (Europe) were 4 years with the understanding there'd be a 2 year post doc if there was money (which usuallybcan be found if they want to keep you; even if it means 75% teaching), if you're not a complete cock up and if you want it. Imho people make a bigger deal of EU/US phd differences than there actually is. The structure is different, but the end result not so much.
shas3 10y ago
I think it's more of a continuum than you suppose in your comment. It's not a binary of "great" vs "average" PhD. There's plenty in between and many types of averages. Karpathy had it good, as did Might, Guo, and other purveyors of wisdom on PhD. But that doesn't invalidate their arguments and observations.
- Ar-Curunir 10y ago
  I wouldn't say Guo had it good, I mean his book is called the PhD grind; that's not a particularly happy sounding title.
  - pgbovine 10y ago
    best comment today :) thanks. i managed to recover, though, thankfully. should write a new epilogue sometime, but haven't gotten around to it.
    - gajomi 10y ago
      Well now I feel a bit embarrassed about the sibling comment I made... since the man himself has appeared I just wanted to reiterate that I enjoyed reading your memoir, as did several students in the lab I worked in. We even went and tried out IncPy for a bit, which was fun :)
  - gajomi 10y ago
    I very much enjoyed reading through Guo's PhD grind, which came out as I was nearing the end of my PhD. However, the picture he paints of the grind, where he stumbles along a few different projects that end up in top tier journals/conference with intermittent internships at high profile companies is a thing to envy for the vast majority of PhD students. I'm not saying he didn't work hard, that his experience wasn't genuine, etc., but the memoir is hard to read as anything other than a string of incredible successes when compared to a typical PhD student's experience. In the narrative of the book they only sound like failures because he is comparing himself to Stanford professors who are at the top of the food chain.
- 10y ago

nextos 10y ago

Isn't what you are saying a bit extreme? I mean, PhDs in Europe are very short and thus students don't have the opportunity to do that much. So in a way they are quite mediocre. Yet some recover afterwards. But I agree it's hard to revert the trend if you're in a down-spiral.

adityab 10y ago
It's not as straightforward a distinction as you imply, and certainly not grounds for attributing a lower value. In Europe (Germany in particular), you have to do a 2-year Masters degree which tends to be ~1.3 years of coursework and ~0.7 years of research culminating in a thesis. Judged by the quality of your thesis, you then try to get accepted into a group for a PhD which takes 3 years on average. In the US you go straight to a 5-year PhD program and within that, the coursework-research duration split is similar to what you find in Europe.
- glangdale 10y ago
  "5 year program" (laughter). At CMU people were occasionally referred to as 'being on the 4-year plan', which meant you were like a superior alien intelligence (and, more importantly, focused on some good problem rather than, say, beer and girls or whatever you're into). But I think 7 years was typical, especially in "systems" or anything where you'd have to build something. Places that provision for 3 years total for a PhD are doing something fundamentally different, as people doing good quality PhDs at CMU were already casting around for topics quite early in those 6-7 years. I'm sure that in the long run it evens out for good people coming from good places in either system, as of course, the euro-PhD person can do 3 more years of post-doc under similar conditions.
- roel_v 10y ago
  Most phds I was involved with (Europe) were 4 years with the understanding there'd be a 2 year post doc if there was money (which usuallybcan be found if they want to keep you; even if it means 75% teaching), if you're not a complete cock up and if you want it. Imho people make a bigger deal of EU/US phd differences than there actually is. The structure is different, but the end result not so much.

shas3 10y ago

I think it's more of a continuum than you suppose in your comment. It's not a binary of "great" vs "average" PhD. There's plenty in between and many types of averages. Karpathy had it good, as did Might, Guo, and other purveyors of wisdom on PhD. But that doesn't invalidate their arguments and observations.

Ar-Curunir 10y ago
I wouldn't say Guo had it good, I mean his book is called the PhD grind; that's not a particularly happy sounding title.
- pgbovine 10y ago
  best comment today :) thanks. i managed to recover, though, thankfully. should write a new epilogue sometime, but haven't gotten around to it.
  - gajomi 10y ago
    Well now I feel a bit embarrassed about the sibling comment I made... since the man himself has appeared I just wanted to reiterate that I enjoyed reading your memoir, as did several students in the lab I worked in. We even went and tried out IncPy for a bit, which was fun :)
- gajomi 10y ago
  I very much enjoyed reading through Guo's PhD grind, which came out as I was nearing the end of my PhD. However, the picture he paints of the grind, where he stumbles along a few different projects that end up in top tier journals/conference with intermittent internships at high profile companies is a thing to envy for the vast majority of PhD students. I'm not saying he didn't work hard, that his experience wasn't genuine, etc., but the memoir is hard to read as anything other than a string of incredible successes when compared to a typical PhD student's experience. In the narrative of the book they only sound like failures because he is comparing himself to Stanford professors who are at the top of the food chain.
10y ago