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This doesn't answer the question I fundamentally want to know: do they think it was worth it? In my CS master's programs profs often warned against the PhD, sa

This doesn't answer the question I fundamentally want to know: do they think it was worth it? In my CS master's programs profs often warned against the PhD, said companies wouldn't hire you, that they'd view you as "too smart" and potentially be bored by everyday work. Not true for certain disciplines (AI, e.g.) but I don't think every CS PhD is walking out the door with 300K/year offers hitting them in the face.

throwaway080383 8y ago
I don't think Google has ever turned away an applicant for being "too smart". That being said, five years in a PhD is probably not as good for your career as five years' experience at $BigNameTech. PhD is probably more fun, though.
- metaphor 8y ago
  >> PhD is probably more fun, though. These notes[1]--written by Prof. Comer of Purdue--and over a year of introspection ultimately led me to decide against the PhD path (EE, not CS). To be sure, the words fun, happy, and rich were used precisely zero times. It's a humbling quick read for anyone else out there considering. [1] https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/essay.phd.html https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/essay.phd.html
  - Invictus0 8y ago
    The word "joy" is used, to be fair.
  - notafraudster 8y ago
    The notes are very apt, but it's worth noting that a PhD is so fun that the people who finish do so in spite of all the misery described in that essay. It's the best and worst decision of your life.
  - majos 8y ago
    As a PhD student, I'll lightly disagree and say that I'm happy in my PhD. I like doing research every day and having freedom to work when and where I want, on what I want. It's much better than the year I worked as a software developer working on things I found boring and repetitive. I would definitely say I've had fun. Of course, it's not always fun, and I know I've been lucky as far as advisor and project randomness. But the harshness of the link you posted seems unnecessarily severe.
- kazinator 8y ago
  I think that for many people, a Ph. D. is years of grueling, stressful work while living on a low income.
- tranchms 8y ago
  I have many friends in PhD programs, including CalTech, Stanford, and Berkeley, pursuing CS, Genetics, Biomededical Engineering, and EE. To characterize their program is “fun” is a gross mischaracterization, and demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of the rigors involved in any technical/science/engineering PhD pursuit. PhD programs are hard. They’re often lonely. They’re frustrating. They’re tedious. And there’s a tremendous amount of pressure. And it’s academia: highly bureaucratic and political and often unfair. Unless you possess a serious passion for the subject, you’re unlikely to survive. On the other hand, my friends getting the PhDs in subjects such as education (Stanford) and conservation biology (Mississippi State) have described it as the highlight of their life. After their first two years, they’re basically getting paid to do whatever they want. They audit classes. Apply to grants. Travel. And they write.
  - BeetleB 8y ago
    >PhD programs are hard. They’re often lonely. They’re frustrating. They’re tedious. And there’s a tremendous amount of pressure. And it’s academia: highly bureaucratic and political and often unfair. >Unless you possess a serious passion for the subject, you’re unlikely to survive. This is mostly a recent phenomenon in engineering. I went to a top school and left almost a decade ago. While advisors like what you described existed, roughly half of them were not like that. It really was fun, and relatively relaxed.
  - gh02t 8y ago
    > Unless you possess a serious passion for the subject, you’re unlikely to survive. I mean, should you really get a PhD without a serious passion for the subject? I won't disagree one bit that it's not for everybody. Speaking as someone wrapping up an engineering PhD from a good school though, I enjoyed it quite a lot and I think most of the people I work with enjoyed doing their PhD. It was not easy, but it was interesting and rewarding. The environment varies a lot depending on the school and the adviser. Some programs are indeed quite toxic, but there are also plenty that are challenging, but fulfilling and nurturing.
    - projektir 8y ago
- gnulinux 8y ago
  > PhD is probably more fun, though. Being a PhD student in something like Stanford, MIT, Berkeley can be fun in some way, but in some other ways it's mind blowingly stressful. Working in $BigTech can be boring, but it's usually almost 0 stress.
tzakrajs 8y ago
Stanford education comes with access to Stanford faculty and students. These are some of the most accomplished and talented people in the whole of Computer Science. It certainly is in a different class of benefit than job offers and you cannot always put a K/year value on it. I haven't pursued a masters degree before, but if I did it wouldn't be for the money. I could never stay involved enough to be successful.
electricslpnsld 8y ago
This ultimately depends on your definition of 'worth it'. The primary reason to do a PhD is to do research. If you know you want to do research (here defined as high-impact work publishable in top journals) as a career, then a PhD is probably a good move. I've worked across a few industry research labs, and 95% of the folks have PhDs. There are some exceptions (one of the best researchers I know, with some of the highest cited papers in the field, has a BA in music from a no-name Canadian university), but by and large getting a PhD is the most direct path to a research career. If your definition of 'worth it' is purely financial, then you are probably better off hitting the job market with a BS or a Masters.
notafraudster 8y ago
Granted that no one does a PhD because they want to starve, but I think looking at it strictly from an instrumentalist point of view (i.e. will this bump my salary enough to offset being paid peanuts for 5-6 years?) is not very useful. Almost anyone good enough to get into a PhD at a top tier school is also good enough to make buckets of money without one. If you want to make money, go make money. A PhD might lead to money, but it's hardly the easiest or most rewarding way to do so. You generally finish classes after 1-2 years -- after which point you have a broad overview of problems in your field and a few more years of practice and professionalization -- and the rest of the time is just researching and pushing the frontier on a narrow, deep problem of interest. Some of the frontier pushing is useful in industry, some of it is purely academic. If you finish the PhD and aim for a tenure track position or a few postdocs, you can continue that type of work. If you exit to applied industry, the type of problems you'll get to work on are very different. I think you should consider a PhD if you enjoy tinkering with problems and pushing your intellectual boundaries, don't particularly care about money, and can see yourself spend several years grinding at something to produce what amounts to a book on the subject (note: a real book, not a "57 Tips To Make Sites in React" ebook to plug on medium blog posts) In terms of whether companies are bothered by people who have too much education? Sure, some might. Certainly a PhD is not prepping you for the kind of work conditions that exist in tech startups. There's no reason to believe a PhD will be notably better at a problem than someone with an MS in the same field, and if they have 5 years less real-world experience, then there's that consideration too.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  You do a PhD if you are truly passionate about the work. You do not do a PhD for money, for admiration, for anything else. You do it because you have to know something about something, and you have to know so much about it you discover something no one else knows about it, no matter how small. There is absolutely no other reason to get a PhD because while there are lots of perks to a PhD - traveling, meeting people who share similar interests, interesting career opportunities, autonomy, collaboration - etc, you can find all of those perks at a different job that isn't so intellectually demanding. The one thing no other job can offer you is proof that you discovered knowledge that is actually new (or whatever way you want to phrase it, there exists no other institution outside of academia that is rigorously structured to ensure you don't get a PhD without doing this at least once). You can say this is an argument of authority controlling a body of knowledge, I am sure that will be the typical start-up perspective. Unfortunately, a start-up's bottom line is to produce a product. That means that if it comes down to the mark of determining the integrity of some knowledge, or keeping the business running, the start-up is not going to destroy itself for the sanctity of knowledge. Plenty of PhD students, however, do! You literally will have no life besides your work if you pursue a PhD. There is zero reason to do one unless you have this drive.
pougetj 8y ago
For foreign students, the PhD program is a great way to enter the U.S. job market. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that, while American undergrads can get lucrative job offers right out of college, foreign students are left with doing a Masters/PhD first, hence partly explaining a skew towards foreign students in many Computer Science departments around the country. For those students, I'd say the PhD program is "worth it". Disclosure: foreign PhD candidate at an American university here.
beamatronic 8y ago
$300k for a Stanford CS PhD sounds about right in all seriousness... supply and demand.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  Yeah, that's about right. crazy thing: still not worth it if your only goal is to make money. do not get a phd to max out lifetime earnings...
  - Godel_unicode 8y ago
    If viewed through risk-averse lenses, it is an excellent way to raise the earnings floor considerably.
lightsighter 8y ago
I have a CS PhD from Stanford (graduated 2014) and it is definitely worth it. The thing it actually buys you is freedom to choose your own research, which you can't do with a bachelors or a masters. I now work at an industrial research lab where I get to set my own research agenda within some reasonable bounds of interest of my employer. I pick the projects I work on and am compensated based onto how valuable they are to the company. Importantly failed projects can be just as valuable to the company as successful ones as they can show the product groups what NOT to do. The PhD is effectively a license showing that you've been trained to conduct research. Most companies won't give you the freedom to pick your own research topics without it. For someone that cares a lot about what I'm working on, that freedom is more valuable than money.

throwaway080383 8y ago

I don't think Google has ever turned away an applicant for being "too smart". That being said, five years in a PhD is probably not as good for your career as five years' experience at $BigNameTech. PhD is probably more fun, though.

metaphor 8y ago
>> PhD is probably more fun, though. These notes[1]--written by Prof. Comer of Purdue--and over a year of introspection ultimately led me to decide against the PhD path (EE, not CS). To be sure, the words fun, happy, and rich were used precisely zero times. It's a humbling quick read for anyone else out there considering. [1] https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/essay.phd.html https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/essay.phd.html
- Invictus0 8y ago
  The word "joy" is used, to be fair.
- notafraudster 8y ago
  The notes are very apt, but it's worth noting that a PhD is so fun that the people who finish do so in spite of all the misery described in that essay. It's the best and worst decision of your life.
- majos 8y ago
  As a PhD student, I'll lightly disagree and say that I'm happy in my PhD. I like doing research every day and having freedom to work when and where I want, on what I want. It's much better than the year I worked as a software developer working on things I found boring and repetitive. I would definitely say I've had fun. Of course, it's not always fun, and I know I've been lucky as far as advisor and project randomness. But the harshness of the link you posted seems unnecessarily severe.
kazinator 8y ago
I think that for many people, a Ph. D. is years of grueling, stressful work while living on a low income.
tranchms 8y ago
I have many friends in PhD programs, including CalTech, Stanford, and Berkeley, pursuing CS, Genetics, Biomededical Engineering, and EE. To characterize their program is “fun” is a gross mischaracterization, and demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of the rigors involved in any technical/science/engineering PhD pursuit. PhD programs are hard. They’re often lonely. They’re frustrating. They’re tedious. And there’s a tremendous amount of pressure. And it’s academia: highly bureaucratic and political and often unfair. Unless you possess a serious passion for the subject, you’re unlikely to survive. On the other hand, my friends getting the PhDs in subjects such as education (Stanford) and conservation biology (Mississippi State) have described it as the highlight of their life. After their first two years, they’re basically getting paid to do whatever they want. They audit classes. Apply to grants. Travel. And they write.
- BeetleB 8y ago
  >PhD programs are hard. They’re often lonely. They’re frustrating. They’re tedious. And there’s a tremendous amount of pressure. And it’s academia: highly bureaucratic and political and often unfair. >Unless you possess a serious passion for the subject, you’re unlikely to survive. This is mostly a recent phenomenon in engineering. I went to a top school and left almost a decade ago. While advisors like what you described existed, roughly half of them were not like that. It really was fun, and relatively relaxed.
- gh02t 8y ago
  > Unless you possess a serious passion for the subject, you’re unlikely to survive. I mean, should you really get a PhD without a serious passion for the subject? I won't disagree one bit that it's not for everybody. Speaking as someone wrapping up an engineering PhD from a good school though, I enjoyed it quite a lot and I think most of the people I work with enjoyed doing their PhD. It was not easy, but it was interesting and rewarding. The environment varies a lot depending on the school and the adviser. Some programs are indeed quite toxic, but there are also plenty that are challenging, but fulfilling and nurturing.
  - projektir 8y ago
gnulinux 8y ago
> PhD is probably more fun, though. Being a PhD student in something like Stanford, MIT, Berkeley can be fun in some way, but in some other ways it's mind blowingly stressful. Working in $BigTech can be boring, but it's usually almost 0 stress.

tzakrajs 8y ago

Stanford education comes with access to Stanford faculty and students. These are some of the most accomplished and talented people in the whole of Computer Science. It certainly is in a different class of benefit than job offers and you cannot always put a K/year value on it. I haven't pursued a masters degree before, but if I did it wouldn't be for the money. I could never stay involved enough to be successful.

electricslpnsld 8y ago

This ultimately depends on your definition of 'worth it'. The primary reason to do a PhD is to do research. If you know you want to do research (here defined as high-impact work publishable in top journals) as a career, then a PhD is probably a good move. I've worked across a few industry research labs, and 95% of the folks have PhDs. There are some exceptions (one of the best researchers I know, with some of the highest cited papers in the field, has a BA in music from a no-name Canadian university), but by and large getting a PhD is the most direct path to a research career. If your definition of 'worth it' is purely financial, then you are probably better off hitting the job market with a BS or a Masters.

notafraudster 8y ago

Granted that no one does a PhD because they want to starve, but I think looking at it strictly from an instrumentalist point of view (i.e. will this bump my salary enough to offset being paid peanuts for 5-6 years?) is not very useful. Almost anyone good enough to get into a PhD at a top tier school is also good enough to make buckets of money without one. If you want to make money, go make money. A PhD might lead to money, but it's hardly the easiest or most rewarding way to do so. You generally finish classes after 1-2 years -- after which point you have a broad overview of problems in your field and a few more years of practice and professionalization -- and the rest of the time is just researching and pushing the frontier on a narrow, deep problem of interest. Some of the frontier pushing is useful in industry, some of it is purely academic. If you finish the PhD and aim for a tenure track position or a few postdocs, you can continue that type of work. If you exit to applied industry, the type of problems you'll get to work on are very different. I think you should consider a PhD if you enjoy tinkering with problems and pushing your intellectual boundaries, don't particularly care about money, and can see yourself spend several years grinding at something to produce what amounts to a book on the subject (note: a real book, not a "57 Tips To Make Sites in React" ebook to plug on medium blog posts) In terms of whether companies are bothered by people who have too much education? Sure, some might. Certainly a PhD is not prepping you for the kind of work conditions that exist in tech startups. There's no reason to believe a PhD will be notably better at a problem than someone with an MS in the same field, and if they have 5 years less real-world experience, then there's that consideration too.

s-shellfish 8y ago
You do a PhD if you are truly passionate about the work. You do not do a PhD for money, for admiration, for anything else. You do it because you have to know something about something, and you have to know so much about it you discover something no one else knows about it, no matter how small. There is absolutely no other reason to get a PhD because while there are lots of perks to a PhD - traveling, meeting people who share similar interests, interesting career opportunities, autonomy, collaboration - etc, you can find all of those perks at a different job that isn't so intellectually demanding. The one thing no other job can offer you is proof that you discovered knowledge that is actually new (or whatever way you want to phrase it, there exists no other institution outside of academia that is rigorously structured to ensure you don't get a PhD without doing this at least once). You can say this is an argument of authority controlling a body of knowledge, I am sure that will be the typical start-up perspective. Unfortunately, a start-up's bottom line is to produce a product. That means that if it comes down to the mark of determining the integrity of some knowledge, or keeping the business running, the start-up is not going to destroy itself for the sanctity of knowledge. Plenty of PhD students, however, do! You literally will have no life besides your work if you pursue a PhD. There is zero reason to do one unless you have this drive.

pougetj 8y ago

For foreign students, the PhD program is a great way to enter the U.S. job market. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that, while American undergrads can get lucrative job offers right out of college, foreign students are left with doing a Masters/PhD first, hence partly explaining a skew towards foreign students in many Computer Science departments around the country. For those students, I'd say the PhD program is "worth it". Disclosure: foreign PhD candidate at an American university here.

beamatronic 8y ago

$300k for a Stanford CS PhD sounds about right in all seriousness... supply and demand.

throwawayjava 8y ago
Yeah, that's about right. crazy thing: still not worth it if your only goal is to make money. do not get a phd to max out lifetime earnings...
- Godel_unicode 8y ago
  If viewed through risk-averse lenses, it is an excellent way to raise the earnings floor considerably.

lightsighter 8y ago

I have a CS PhD from Stanford (graduated 2014) and it is definitely worth it. The thing it actually buys you is freedom to choose your own research, which you can't do with a bachelors or a masters. I now work at an industrial research lab where I get to set my own research agenda within some reasonable bounds of interest of my employer. I pick the projects I work on and am compensated based onto how valuable they are to the company. Importantly failed projects can be just as valuable to the company as successful ones as they can show the product groups what NOT to do. The PhD is effectively a license showing that you've been trained to conduct research. Most companies won't give you the freedom to pick your own research topics without it. For someone that cares a lot about what I'm working on, that freedom is more valuable than money.