3 ms·

Good for you, but the tone you're taking in your comment is not quite appropriate. Many people still want PhDs for reasons having nothing to do with financial

Good for you, but the tone you're taking in your comment is not quite appropriate. Many people still want PhDs for reasons having nothing to do with financial considerations. Also: I'm writing from the POV of someone outside the United States, specifically from someone based in Europe. The system in the U.S. is based on a squeezed/dying middle class. In large parts of Europe, middle class is all there is. With high taxes, wealth transfers from the rich to the poor, and many policies that have the effect of keeping people wealthy but cash-poor (mandatory social security of all kinds imaginable), and with super-high real estate prices in basically all areas that will make it possible to work in tech, the ability to get on the real estate ladder is now no longer a given, even for someone with a six-figure-usd-equivalent salary, which are actually much rarer in Europe, even in tech, than they are the U.S.

scarface74 7y ago
There is nothing wrong with wanting a PhD for other than financial reasons, but they can’t complain about the well known consequences of their decision. That’s like someone getting a degree in Ancient Chinese Art History and wondering why they can’t find a job. But, like you said, this is coming from my American perspective - the only one I know. Also, is the tech bro culture a thing in Europe?
- stakhanov 7y ago
  Re tech bro: Personally, having worked for maybe half a dozen European-based tech companies, I've experienced two companies where I felt a bit out of the loop socially for not joining them when they played table football or went to the indoor climbing arena after work etc. But they were always peer groups of people situated below decision-making level. So there was never anyone who could actually decide things that might be bad for my career, leaving me to wonder whether me not being a bro was what it was about.

scarface74 7y ago

There is nothing wrong with wanting a PhD for other than financial reasons, but they can’t complain about the well known consequences of their decision. That’s like someone getting a degree in Ancient Chinese Art History and wondering why they can’t find a job. But, like you said, this is coming from my American perspective - the only one I know. Also, is the tech bro culture a thing in Europe?

stakhanov 7y ago
Re tech bro: Personally, having worked for maybe half a dozen European-based tech companies, I've experienced two companies where I felt a bit out of the loop socially for not joining them when they played table football or went to the indoor climbing arena after work etc. But they were always peer groups of people situated below decision-making level. So there was never anyone who could actually decide things that might be bad for my career, leaving me to wonder whether me not being a bro was what it was about.