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"Ability to work with poorly defined goals." Poorly defined goals should not be unfamiliar or scary to anyone who has done at least one IT project for money. A

by kbart 10y ago

"Ability to work with poorly defined goals." Poorly defined goals should not be unfamiliar or scary to anyone who has done at least one IT project for money. Actually, I haven't encountered many well defined goals in my professional life after graduating high school many years ago.

jfaucett 10y ago
Exactly this. I've never encountered any well-defined problem outside of a textbook. In practice, I've always had to discover the goals / problems and then the underlying processes that define them, and only then can you begin to manipulate the processes to optimize your goals. This whole process is iterative, self-influencing, and dynamic. I honestly can't think of one situation where anything was well defined and thats in over 7 years of software engineering exp, albiet startups, agencies, and freelancing, perhaps at Big Corp #1 its different, experience tells me to doubt it though...
pjmorris 10y ago
Having lived on both sides of the fence, I'd say work and PhD are different levels of poorly defined. Poorly defined goals a manager imposes on you are one thing. At least you don't have to make them up. Poorly defined goals you impose on yourself (based on funding and advisor constraints) are another thing. You can make the self-direction work for you, or you can drown in your own creativity.
kelvin0 10y ago
I think the difficulty the parent poster mentions is really meant to be read as: "Ability to work with poorly defined goals AND almost no one knows about this subject you are discovering". So of course you could start a new Web App for a customer and have poorly defined goals (good luck with that!), but the problems you might encounter have solutions already fleshed out by millions of other Web App devs (Stack Overflow). Something tells me undergoing a PhD is not quite the same, as the 'resources' in this context are a few orders of magnitude scarcer, and the subject matter a few orders of magnitude more complex ... (I am not a PhD, please forgive me if this is wrong)
- StreakyCobra 10y ago
  Yes it is a little bit of that. In industry goals are maybe poorly defined, but at least you have directions, and people that can answer the questions you may ask. If the contract is about creating a website, at least you know what you are going to achieve, even if you may have to fight with the customer to understand what he wants/needs on this website and what problem he is trying to solve. Using the image of pushing the boundary: Doing a PhD is like wandering within some heavy fog. You want to push the boundary, but first you have to find the boundary. You don't know in which direction is the closest boundary as you can not see further than 10 meters from you. Maybe also the closest boundary is on top of a 8000 meters high mountain that you don't have the capacities to climb. So at the end you spend you time trying to figure out in which direction to go. Some PhD students may have supervisors that are guiding them through the fog, as they already explored the area and know it, but some other are on their own, trying to figure out a boundary to push that is accessible for them. Situations of all PhD students are probably different, but this is my feeling about it.
odabaxok 10y ago
I can relate to the parent comment and there are differences between doing an IT project for money and PhD. I think, you rather meant poorly defined requirements for an IT project. The goals of the project do not matter for you, you get the requirements from a paid project and the one responsible of the project has to think about the goals. While during PhD you have to define your own goals. Also, as on the picture in the post, you have to push from the circle, you have to find it where you want to push and you have to define how much should you push. While doing an IT project, you are usually moving inside the circle, i.e. you are usually combining working concepts.
roel_v 10y ago
Sure, but for the average 22 year old who has (up until then) gone through life moving from one exactly delineated set of expectations to the next, complete with quantification of the quality of the result (grading) and 'will this be on the test' expectation management, the PhD unboundedness is as alien as it is frightening.

by kbart 10y ago

jfaucett 10y ago

Exactly this. I've never encountered any well-defined problem outside of a textbook. In practice, I've always had to discover the goals / problems and then the underlying processes that define them, and only then can you begin to manipulate the processes to optimize your goals. This whole process is iterative, self-influencing, and dynamic. I honestly can't think of one situation where anything was well defined and thats in over 7 years of software engineering exp, albiet startups, agencies, and freelancing, perhaps at Big Corp #1 its different, experience tells me to doubt it though...

pjmorris 10y ago

Having lived on both sides of the fence, I'd say work and PhD are different levels of poorly defined. Poorly defined goals a manager imposes on you are one thing. At least you don't have to make them up. Poorly defined goals you impose on yourself (based on funding and advisor constraints) are another thing. You can make the self-direction work for you, or you can drown in your own creativity.

kelvin0 10y ago

I think the difficulty the parent poster mentions is really meant to be read as: "Ability to work with poorly defined goals AND almost no one knows about this subject you are discovering". So of course you could start a new Web App for a customer and have poorly defined goals (good luck with that!), but the problems you might encounter have solutions already fleshed out by millions of other Web App devs (Stack Overflow). Something tells me undergoing a PhD is not quite the same, as the 'resources' in this context are a few orders of magnitude scarcer, and the subject matter a few orders of magnitude more complex ... (I am not a PhD, please forgive me if this is wrong)

StreakyCobra 10y ago
Yes it is a little bit of that. In industry goals are maybe poorly defined, but at least you have directions, and people that can answer the questions you may ask. If the contract is about creating a website, at least you know what you are going to achieve, even if you may have to fight with the customer to understand what he wants/needs on this website and what problem he is trying to solve. Using the image of pushing the boundary: Doing a PhD is like wandering within some heavy fog. You want to push the boundary, but first you have to find the boundary. You don't know in which direction is the closest boundary as you can not see further than 10 meters from you. Maybe also the closest boundary is on top of a 8000 meters high mountain that you don't have the capacities to climb. So at the end you spend you time trying to figure out in which direction to go. Some PhD students may have supervisors that are guiding them through the fog, as they already explored the area and know it, but some other are on their own, trying to figure out a boundary to push that is accessible for them. Situations of all PhD students are probably different, but this is my feeling about it.

odabaxok 10y ago

I can relate to the parent comment and there are differences between doing an IT project for money and PhD. I think, you rather meant poorly defined requirements for an IT project. The goals of the project do not matter for you, you get the requirements from a paid project and the one responsible of the project has to think about the goals. While during PhD you have to define your own goals. Also, as on the picture in the post, you have to push from the circle, you have to find it where you want to push and you have to define how much should you push. While doing an IT project, you are usually moving inside the circle, i.e. you are usually combining working concepts.

roel_v 10y ago

Sure, but for the average 22 year old who has (up until then) gone through life moving from one exactly delineated set of expectations to the next, complete with quantification of the quality of the result (grading) and 'will this be on the test' expectation management, the PhD unboundedness is as alien as it is frightening.