4 ms·

From what I've seen, people with PhDs in CS are less competent as devs than devs without PhDs.

by jshevek 10y ago

asabjorn 10y ago
That doesn't make sense at all. I do not see why a PhD would disproportionally filter out people with talent for coding, so that the graduates even after years of industry experience afterwards would still be unable to be great at coding.
- jshevek 10y ago
  I'm speaking anecdotally, and there are many ways my sample may be biased. (Also, maybe bad PhD devs make sure everyone knows they have PhDs, while competent devs never mention it?). OTOH, there could be something in culture and personality that pushes lesser devs into getting PhDs.
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  No, but not having a PhD filters out people without a talent for coding. Same with not having a college degree at all - it's not that going to college makes you worse at coding, but that getting a coding job without a college degree requires you to be better at coding.
plinkplonk 10y ago
What a PhD in CS teaches you is how to do research in CS. This skill may or may not be valuable for a specific company and may or may not intersect with raw dev chops. Production Dev is a distinct skill from CS research.
- pc86 10y ago
  As a dev who has both interviewed and worked with several dozen PhDs and ABDs, the intersection of skills required to both be a great developer and complete (or nearly complete) a PhD are nearly zero.
dmritard96 10y ago
the assumption here is that people can only learn at adequately fast rates before earning their phd? aka, isnt the expectation that if you can earn a phd in at least a highly related industry you should be able to pick up just about anything. Are they going to know how to wrangle a huge dev ops stack into submission, or pump data through some realtime frame work to maximize throughput or setup paxos properly from day 0, fine. but neither does any other entry level engineer and these guys can either learn it or be placed on a different team within the company that does deeper research that would make use of their phd...
yitchelle 10y ago
Horses for courses. If you to do R&D, go with PhDs, if you want D&D, go with devs.
- ModernMech 10y ago
  > if you want D&D, go with devs. I'll go with a mage, thief, and warrior instead ;)

From what I've seen, people with PhDs in CS are less competent as devs than devs without PhDs.

by jshevek 10y ago

From what I've seen, people with PhDs in CS are less competent as devs than devs without PhDs.

That doesn't make sense at all. I do not see why a PhD would disproportionally filter out people with talent for coding, so that the graduates even after years of industry experience afterwards would still be unable to be great at coding.

jshevek 10y ago
I'm speaking anecdotally, and there are many ways my sample may be biased. (Also, maybe bad PhD devs make sure everyone knows they have PhDs, while competent devs never mention it?). OTOH, there could be something in culture and personality that pushes lesser devs into getting PhDs.
ThrustVectoring 10y ago
No, but not having a PhD filters out people without a talent for coding. Same with not having a college degree at all - it's not that going to college makes you worse at coding, but that getting a coding job without a college degree requires you to be better at coding.

plinkplonk 10y ago

What a PhD in CS teaches you is how to do research in CS. This skill may or may not be valuable for a specific company and may or may not intersect with raw dev chops. Production Dev is a distinct skill from CS research.

pc86 10y ago
As a dev who has both interviewed and worked with several dozen PhDs and ABDs, the intersection of skills required to both be a great developer and complete (or nearly complete) a PhD are nearly zero.

dmritard96 10y ago

the assumption here is that people can only learn at adequately fast rates before earning their phd? aka, isnt the expectation that if you can earn a phd in at least a highly related industry you should be able to pick up just about anything. Are they going to know how to wrangle a huge dev ops stack into submission, or pump data through some realtime frame work to maximize throughput or setup paxos properly from day 0, fine. but neither does any other entry level engineer and these guys can either learn it or be placed on a different team within the company that does deeper research that would make use of their phd...

yitchelle 10y ago

Horses for courses. If you to do R&D, go with PhDs, if you want D&D, go with devs.

ModernMech 10y ago
> if you want D&D, go with devs. I'll go with a mage, thief, and warrior instead ;)