I had a ton of fun doing my PhD, but I’m pretty sure I’ll have had similar fun without it as well. The reason I suggested not doing a PhD is the forces at play

I had a ton of fun doing my PhD, but I’m pretty sure I’ll have had similar fun without it as well. The reason I suggested not doing a PhD is the forces at play in various angles (the whole pyramid scheme, academia politics, publish vs. perish, good luck going tenure track, insane hours, abusive practices, the whole luck based system of it all). If you went through your entire PhD without seriously questioning your life choices at all then we definitely did a different PhD for sure! I and my colleagues constantly discussed the pros and cons and why the system is the way it is. In general I can never present the problems as clearly as Hamming did so I’ll let him give my viewpoint since I agree with everything here - http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html