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The standards for junior employees are much higher. I have encountered several PhDs in computational fields who barely knew how to code when they were first adm

The standards for junior employees are much higher. I have encountered several PhDs in computational fields who barely knew how to code when they were first admitted to their grad programs. They would not have been hired as junior software engineers at any decent company.

jltsiren 4y ago
Computational fields are not software engineering. In order to be productive, you need expertise in the field you are studying, as well as in at least two of CS, software engineering, statistics, and mathematics. Undergraduate degrees are too short to teach all that, which is why people must continue learning basic skills during PhD (and postdoc).
- MontyCarloHall 4y ago
  >you need expertise in the field you are studying, as well as in at least two of CS, software engineering, statistics, and mathematics There are some very talented undergraduates with expertise in several of the above. They generally end up being the most successful PhD students, since they are immediately productive from the get-go. (Or, they work as a junior quant at Jane Street.) >people must continue learning basic skills during PhD Hence why they’re considered trainees, and not junior employees. Junior employees may have rudimentary skills in certain areas, but not so rudimentary that their productivity is zero (or negative!) >and postdoc No postdocs should still be learning basic skills. The (ostensible) purpose of a postdoc is a final step to prepare very talented PhDs for a faculty position. People who are faculty material should have mastered all relevant skills during their PhD. Sadly, the postdoc has been perverted to become a holding tank to absorb excess PhDs with no other career options, since, as the article points out, postdocs are a source of cheap experienced labor. I’m all for treating grad students and postdocs as real employees, but we need to acknowledge that doing so would dramatically raise standards for admission, which I’m also all for.
  - jltsiren 4y ago
    > No postdocs should still be learning basic skills. The (ostensible) purpose of a postdoc is a final step to prepare very talented PhDs for a faculty position. People who are faculty material should have mastered all relevant skills during their PhD. That attitude is very bureaucratic. Computational research is always interdisciplinary. Administrators organize universities into departments according to the needs of undergraduate curricula, but those administrative boundaries have little to do with the skills needed in research. The skills you learn during PhD are probably enough for your PhD research, but then you may need new skills when you start a new project as a postdoc. And again when you start a new project as a junior faculty member. Postdoc is also the career stage where many people switch fields. For example, a background in X or even computational X is often insufficient for some research topics in computational X. You need to hire people who got their PhDs in CS, mathematics, or statistics, and then those people must learn X before they can contribute. And once they start contributing, they may have to learn software engineering to turn the methods they have developed into useful tools.

jltsiren 4y ago

Computational fields are not software engineering. In order to be productive, you need expertise in the field you are studying, as well as in at least two of CS, software engineering, statistics, and mathematics. Undergraduate degrees are too short to teach all that, which is why people must continue learning basic skills during PhD (and postdoc).

MontyCarloHall 4y ago
>you need expertise in the field you are studying, as well as in at least two of CS, software engineering, statistics, and mathematics There are some very talented undergraduates with expertise in several of the above. They generally end up being the most successful PhD students, since they are immediately productive from the get-go. (Or, they work as a junior quant at Jane Street.) >people must continue learning basic skills during PhD Hence why they’re considered trainees, and not junior employees. Junior employees may have rudimentary skills in certain areas, but not so rudimentary that their productivity is zero (or negative!) >and postdoc No postdocs should still be learning basic skills. The (ostensible) purpose of a postdoc is a final step to prepare very talented PhDs for a faculty position. People who are faculty material should have mastered all relevant skills during their PhD. Sadly, the postdoc has been perverted to become a holding tank to absorb excess PhDs with no other career options, since, as the article points out, postdocs are a source of cheap experienced labor. I’m all for treating grad students and postdocs as real employees, but we need to acknowledge that doing so would dramatically raise standards for admission, which I’m also all for.
- jltsiren 4y ago
  > No postdocs should still be learning basic skills. The (ostensible) purpose of a postdoc is a final step to prepare very talented PhDs for a faculty position. People who are faculty material should have mastered all relevant skills during their PhD. That attitude is very bureaucratic. Computational research is always interdisciplinary. Administrators organize universities into departments according to the needs of undergraduate curricula, but those administrative boundaries have little to do with the skills needed in research. The skills you learn during PhD are probably enough for your PhD research, but then you may need new skills when you start a new project as a postdoc. And again when you start a new project as a junior faculty member. Postdoc is also the career stage where many people switch fields. For example, a background in X or even computational X is often insufficient for some research topics in computational X. You need to hire people who got their PhDs in CS, mathematics, or statistics, and then those people must learn X before they can contribute. And once they start contributing, they may have to learn software engineering to turn the methods they have developed into useful tools.