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> We produce more PhDs than needed by either academia or industry. I don't think so - industry can't hire enough PhDs. In my field (programming languages) shor

> We produce more PhDs than needed by either academia or industry. I don't think so - industry can't hire enough PhDs. In my field (programming languages) shortage of qualified people is a bit of a problem at the moment! We wish there were more being produced.

jonsen 4y ago
Shortage of qualified people does not imply shortage of PhDs.
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  A PhD is the most common way to gain the experience and context needed to work professionally on compilers. If there aren't many PhDs, then the supply of people with the experience needed in practice is going to be low, even if there are also people without PhDs who can do it.
  - jonsen 4y ago
    I think we were better off trying to raise the percentage of PhDs who are qualified, rather than just increasing the number of PhDs.
  - quantumwannabe 4y ago
    No university class teaches modern compilers and the state of the art is in open source projects. If someone is interested in compilers, they don’t need to get a PhD in order to learn. Many major companies that maintain programming languages do not require PhDs in order to work on their compiler teams; they are willing to train you on the job. The supply of people interested is just low in general, and if you are biased towards people with PhDs and preexisting experience for junior hires, of course you will find a shortage of workers.
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      > No university class teaches modern compilers Yeah... hence why you need a PhD. 90% of domain knowledge in this field isn't even written down - you have to sit down with a wide range of people to learn from them - which you get to do on a PhD. > Many major companies that maintain programming languages do not require PhDs in order to work on their compiler teams They don't require it... but look at who's actually there and how many of them in practice have a PhD. > if you are biased towards people with PhDs and preexisting experience for junior hires As I've said elsewhere I've taken on people with no high-school diploma and zero experience in the past - I'm not personally gatekeeping.
YetAnotherNick 4y ago
Most Ph.D.s are unemployable in the field that they did Ph.D. in. There is only say very small pool Ph.D. topics which are needed in industry like ML, distributed system, pharmacy etc. Most of the Ph.D. is in fields like humanities, psycology, physics etc. doesn't have many openings in industry.
- april_22 4y ago
  100% agree with you. In some areas you literally need to move to another country because there are no options in academia in your country
- the_only_law 4y ago
  Someone else mentioned something similar, but some of the Postdoc position are oddly specific. Like I get the schooling you do prior is supposed to allow you to hyperfocus something, but at the same time, I've seen jobs asking for postdocs with experience in highly niche areas, often cross disciplinary. One I saw was looking for someone with encyclopedic knowledge of some crazy domain specific algorithm at the intersection of two sciences. Wild guess, but I if I were to bet, I'd bet most people with a PhD or even professional experience in the filed would not have heard of this algorithm. I guess I've seen similar software jobs, but at least with software I can usually afford the equipment to learn things myself.
- johnmyleswhite 4y ago
  This seems pretty off-base to me. A lot of folks with PhD's in physics are working in industry. And a lot of the folks working on distributed systems don't have PhD's in that field.
dagw 4y ago
industry can't hire enough PhDs I think both are true. Academia is producing too many PhDs in fields that industry isn't interested in and too few with a background that industry wants/needs.
thinkharderdev 4y ago
I'm genuinely curious, does the work you are hiring for really require a PhD? To put it a different way, if you and the current employees in your job all started immediately after finishing your undergrad degree would you be any worse at your job?
- chrisseaton 4y ago
  It doesn't literally require a PhD (I'm not sure how that would even work - unless it was regulated by the government!) but it does require context on the state of the art in the field, and a network of peers to talk to. You get that from doing a PhD. If you can get it otherwise, then great, but that's pretty hard to do in practice. I've worked with people without even a high-school diploma in my compilers team, so I'm not snobby, just realistic that to succeed you need things and that a PhD is a great way to get them.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    > I'm not sure how that would even work - unless it was regulated by the government! Easy, you just have your ATS automatically reject any resumes that don't appear to have a PhD
    - chrisseaton 4y ago
      Well that’s choosing to not hire people without a PhD, not that the work actually requires it. Also most people hiring compiler people aren’t doing it with an open application system. It’s a lot of word-of-mouth.
ImprobableTruth 4y ago
Do you think this shortage might be very recent/rather localized? It seems to me as if there are comparatively few places that hire PL folks. I'm a (relatively early on) grad student at a chair that does PL and ML, and it's been pretty depressing to look up alumni or authors of papers more on the PL/FM side and seeing those that left academia at 'normal' jobs that seem unrelated to PL, whereas the vast majority of people more on the ML side work directly with it. I like PLT a lot, but especially if you're not at a top school it seems like quite a gamble.

jonsen 4y ago

Shortage of qualified people does not imply shortage of PhDs.

chrisseaton 4y ago
A PhD is the most common way to gain the experience and context needed to work professionally on compilers. If there aren't many PhDs, then the supply of people with the experience needed in practice is going to be low, even if there are also people without PhDs who can do it.
- jonsen 4y ago
  I think we were better off trying to raise the percentage of PhDs who are qualified, rather than just increasing the number of PhDs.
- quantumwannabe 4y ago
  No university class teaches modern compilers and the state of the art is in open source projects. If someone is interested in compilers, they don’t need to get a PhD in order to learn. Many major companies that maintain programming languages do not require PhDs in order to work on their compiler teams; they are willing to train you on the job. The supply of people interested is just low in general, and if you are biased towards people with PhDs and preexisting experience for junior hires, of course you will find a shortage of workers.
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    > No university class teaches modern compilers Yeah... hence why you need a PhD. 90% of domain knowledge in this field isn't even written down - you have to sit down with a wide range of people to learn from them - which you get to do on a PhD. > Many major companies that maintain programming languages do not require PhDs in order to work on their compiler teams They don't require it... but look at who's actually there and how many of them in practice have a PhD. > if you are biased towards people with PhDs and preexisting experience for junior hires As I've said elsewhere I've taken on people with no high-school diploma and zero experience in the past - I'm not personally gatekeeping.

YetAnotherNick 4y ago

Most Ph.D.s are unemployable in the field that they did Ph.D. in. There is only say very small pool Ph.D. topics which are needed in industry like ML, distributed system, pharmacy etc. Most of the Ph.D. is in fields like humanities, psycology, physics etc. doesn't have many openings in industry.

april_22 4y ago
100% agree with you. In some areas you literally need to move to another country because there are no options in academia in your country
the_only_law 4y ago
Someone else mentioned something similar, but some of the Postdoc position are oddly specific. Like I get the schooling you do prior is supposed to allow you to hyperfocus something, but at the same time, I've seen jobs asking for postdocs with experience in highly niche areas, often cross disciplinary. One I saw was looking for someone with encyclopedic knowledge of some crazy domain specific algorithm at the intersection of two sciences. Wild guess, but I if I were to bet, I'd bet most people with a PhD or even professional experience in the filed would not have heard of this algorithm. I guess I've seen similar software jobs, but at least with software I can usually afford the equipment to learn things myself.
johnmyleswhite 4y ago
This seems pretty off-base to me. A lot of folks with PhD's in physics are working in industry. And a lot of the folks working on distributed systems don't have PhD's in that field.

dagw 4y ago

industry can't hire enough PhDs I think both are true. Academia is producing too many PhDs in fields that industry isn't interested in and too few with a background that industry wants/needs.

thinkharderdev 4y ago

I'm genuinely curious, does the work you are hiring for really require a PhD? To put it a different way, if you and the current employees in your job all started immediately after finishing your undergrad degree would you be any worse at your job?

chrisseaton 4y ago
It doesn't literally require a PhD (I'm not sure how that would even work - unless it was regulated by the government!) but it does require context on the state of the art in the field, and a network of peers to talk to. You get that from doing a PhD. If you can get it otherwise, then great, but that's pretty hard to do in practice. I've worked with people without even a high-school diploma in my compilers team, so I'm not snobby, just realistic that to succeed you need things and that a PhD is a great way to get them.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  > I'm not sure how that would even work - unless it was regulated by the government! Easy, you just have your ATS automatically reject any resumes that don't appear to have a PhD
  - chrisseaton 4y ago
    Well that’s choosing to not hire people without a PhD, not that the work actually requires it. Also most people hiring compiler people aren’t doing it with an open application system. It’s a lot of word-of-mouth.

ImprobableTruth 4y ago

Do you think this shortage might be very recent/rather localized? It seems to me as if there are comparatively few places that hire PL folks. I'm a (relatively early on) grad student at a chair that does PL and ML, and it's been pretty depressing to look up alumni or authors of papers more on the PL/FM side and seeing those that left academia at 'normal' jobs that seem unrelated to PL, whereas the vast majority of people more on the ML side work directly with it. I like PLT a lot, but especially if you're not at a top school it seems like quite a gamble.