I'm a first year CS PhD student who is dropping out of the program after completing my MSc in another week or so. I went directly to a PhD program following my

I'm a first year CS PhD student who is dropping out of the program after completing my MSc in another week or so. I went directly to a PhD program following my undergraduate career because 1) I had the opportunity to do so 'risk free' (a one year PhD salary at an Ivy is ~26k) and 2) because I would one day like to teach computer science at the university level. This first year was fairly painful because my interests were not in line with my advisor's and my advisor has reached the level of fame & respect within academia that his graduate students are more like cogs in a complex system than research colleagues. A Computer Science PhD (especially in more concrete areas like systems / security / perhaps even PL a la Graham), I believe, is different from many other academic PhD's in that what you learn through the course of your research and dissertation can have real world implications in industry. Whether or not it does, though, depends on the idea you are working on which is entirely your responsibility to define. There have been some comments below about being forced to work on "somebody else's problem" with which I disagree. It is your responsibility to find the best advisor for you and the best advisor for you is going to be the advisor who either A) shares a serious interest in the exact problem you would like to solve -or- B) has a general interest in the problem you would like to solve and has an advising style that is concerned as much or more with your growth and success than his/her gain from your work. For another perspective on choosing the right research I suggest Hamming's remarks: http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html So what's next for an entrepreneurial minded PhD drop-out? Another PhD program! This time with an advisor whose research interests are very in line with my own and in an area whose commercial market is only growing (collaborative systems). One must not either be an entrepreneur or an academic. One can be either, both, or neither. The entrepreneur considering the pursuit of academia must convince herself/himself that it is a risky investment that, at best, will lead to great commercial opportunity, at worst, be a painful 4 or 5 years and have lead to research that dead ends, or, most likely, will be a challenging experience where you will learn a vast ammount of new information and instill a certain level of discipline when approaching new ideas. Economically one is safest in going to Microsoft/Oracle/SAS immediately after obtaining a BS/MSc. However, if you're the type of entrepreneur who dreams of innovating on technology (a la Google, Akamai, SAS, Sybase, INGRES, etc) versus the type of entrepreneur who dreams of innovating on applications of technology (Facebook, MySpace, Web 2.0 in general), then a Computer Science PhD may be a very worthwhile investment in the path to your ambitions. "Any day you can be paid by someone to learn something new... that's a good day." -Prof. Gary Bishop