I have just quit a PhD after three and a half years of work. In the UK PhD courses generally last between 3 and 4 years so it was a large proportion of that tim

I have just quit a PhD after three and a half years of work. In the UK PhD courses generally last between 3 and 4 years so it was a large proportion of that time completed. But I decided that it was more important to be doing work that I enjoyed rather than slaving away on a PhD that was not interesting to me and irrelevant to my future career anyway. I've now got a good job in an exciting startup (http://www.songkick.com/ http://www.songkick.com/) doing the work I wanted to be doing. What more could I want? Whether this is relevant to you I don't know. But I have strongly come to feel that unless you are going to be an academic, or work in a field for which it is specifically useful, like finance or pharmaceuticals, a Phd is not useful. But I have a vested interest in that being true so perhaps you shouldn't listen to me :-)