5 ms·
After reading this, the cynical part of me would say that the start-up world is in competition with the academic world to recruit the best talents. So, it keeps
by duchenne 8y ago
After reading this, the cynical part of me would say that the start-up world is in competition with the academic world to recruit the best talents. So, it keeps publishing biased articles about the drawbacks of doing a PhD. For similar reasons, it also publishes articles about bad experiences in the corporate world.
However, I do remember that, during my PhD, about a third of my lab mates had some kind of mental breakdown. Some suddenly cut the bridge and stopped going to the lab. They would not answer to emails or phone calls.
I would say that in the CS fields, successful PhD are most often a very positive experience, and bring a lot of professional opportunities. The program itself is very intellectually satisfying. And now, many of lab mates have very exciting jobs: startup founders, top AI scientists/engineers, professors.
However,some students that were used to study very well and have top grades, once they started their PhD program, felt completely lost and hopeless in this totally different way of working and thinking. They had to work (mainly) alone for years. So, if no output came out, they felt very depressed. On top of that, the failure to publish usually extends the length of the PhD program...
- haihaibye 8y ago>> the start-up world is in competition with the academic world to recruit the best talents. So, it keeps publishing biased articles about the drawbacks of doing a PhD. You think Nature has sided with startups over academia?
- duchenne 8y agoAbviously not. Nature sides with academia. This article has been cherry-picked.
- alexgmcm 8y agoStart-ups want CS PhDs mostly. If your PhD is in Chemistry/Biology/Physics, not so much. Some fields of Physics do alright (primarily HEP due to the advanced mathematical/statistical analyses they learn).
- mattkrause 8y agoOne reason I always doubt these "shortage of tech workers" stories is that I rarely heard[0] from recruiters, either as a grad student or a postdoc in a fairly computational field. It's a pool of smart, driven people with precarious employment and aren't getting paid very much. It should be like shooting fish in a barrel! It sometimes feels like some people imagine that we're all having tea and debating philosophy instead of scrabbling with data. [0] Except, oddly, for an hour ago.
- distant_hat 8y agoThe problem is that the pools which recruiters tend to connect with are almost completely disjoint from the academic pools. The recruiting is almost completely driven by word of mouth. The other problem is outside of CS (and to some extent Wall Street) hiring companies often think they can get fresh PhDs for cheap. I've been offered salaries that were a x% bump on my pathetic postdoc pay. I have a PhD and would have loved to jump into industry but could only make it happen once I started networking within industry folks. Once I had an industry position I was suddenly swamped with recruiters asking if I was looking for a change.
- j_b_s 8y ago"...keeps publishing biased articles about the drawbacks of doing a PhD" I think that startups have a lot more interesting and important things to do than support or promote hit pieces on PhDs and academia life.