I always find an interesting contrast with articles like this on getting a CS Ph.D., and my experience in engineering. I got a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at

I always find an interesting contrast with articles like this on getting a CS Ph.D., and my experience in engineering. I got a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon. It was a really interesting four years (and three months) - I loved it. I actually brought my thesis topic with me to grad school from a summer job as an undergrad. I wrote three good papers, spent six weeks turning those papers into a thesis (mostly a matter of doing a nice literature review in the introduction), and I was done. I had a excellent advisor, and we had a great relationship. I was part of a solid research group, and we helped each other. The process seemed very straightforward and linear. Everyone in my department seemed to be roughly the same. We all worked hard, did research and got our degree in 4-5 years. Very few of use would have felt on our own. I get the feeling that this happy experience is less common in CS. The relationship between grad student and advisor seems more distant, and less helpful. The happy hours we had with the SCS at CMU reinforced that. They had "black fridays" where projects were terminated and grad students left. That "how will I get my committee to sign off" thing was there, unlike in our department. Is it something about the nature of "research" in CS that leads to this, or is it a cultural thing?