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Could it be that you are overqualified? How was your PhD experience, do you think it has helped your career considering the opportunity cost?
by nnoitra 6y ago
Could it be that you are overqualified?
How was your PhD experience, do you think it has helped your career considering the opportunity cost?
- georgeburdell 6y agoNot over-qualified (see other posts). At this point in my career, a PhD has been a net financial loss even though I managed to graduate in four years. The jobs are more interesting though. I wouldn't recommend it, honestly.
- texasbigdata 6y agoDo you have more terminal career optionality though? It feels like a PhD should be at least relatively valuable as a promotion signal, or are you arguing the 4 years of lost work experience outweigh any positives (ignoring debt and foregone income).
- michaelt 6y agoFor most programming jobs, the salary for "no industry experience, PhD" is lower than the salary for "4 years industry experience, college degree" So it's not a big moneymaker. But it's certainly not the biggest financial hit you can take in life; having children will cost you a lot more and loads of people do that. If you look at lifetime salary surveys, you'll find people with doctoral degrees earn more - and some people will say even if a PhD doesn't boost your salary on the day of graduation, your salary will rise faster and higher than your peers. But that could easily be confounded by the fact you've got to have good grades, or ambition towards fancy titles, in order to get a PhD. There are exceptions, of course; if you want to become a professional academic, if you target a job at a company's research division and choose your research accordingly, or if moves you into a new immigration status. There's no doubt the likes of Chris Urmson and Anthony Levandowski made a lot of money on the back of their PhDs.