24 ms·

Graduate students question career options

181 points by clockworksoul 4y ago

Overtonwindow 4y ago
I’ve always felt that for the social sciences, a masters and PhD should not be needed for the job market. However, I can’t help but feel that the demand for these credentials largely comes from a dilution of the marketplace due to the abundance of people with bachelors degrees
chillage 4y ago
Somehow I am mostly just surprised that Nature's graphic designers feel that pie charts are an effective visual communication tool. One of many articles on the topic https://xviz.com/blogs/pie-charts-good-bad-or-ugly/ https://xviz.com/blogs/pie-charts-good-bad-or-ugly/
- civilized 4y ago
  Most of the charts are stacked bar charts, so I think they went with donuts at the top for a little visual variety.
chihuahua 4y ago
I got a Ph.D. in computer science a long time ago, and I think it was the worst mistake of my life. 6 years wasted, for no obvious benefit. I don't know why I did it, other than wanting to learn more computer science stuff. And I think I could have learned a lot more by just working in the industry.
- mjfl 4y ago
  why do you consider it wasted? spending 6 years learning some cool stuff seems like a good life to me.
  - saboot 4y ago
    It's not en entire benefit, that six years could have been spent making a salary, saving up retirement, starting a family, etc. It's pretty disheartening watching your peers while in graduate school
  - rdtwo 4y ago
    He’s probably out a good mil in opportunity cost maybe more over a life time
    - mjfl 4y ago
      and with that mil he could retire early and spend time studying cool stuff, exactly as he was doing in graduate school. To some, phd is skipping the line to doing stuff they want to do.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I think every high schooler should be taught how to project cash flow and figure out quality of life based on various scenarios. There is so much pay and expense data available now, there is little reason these kinds of opportunity costs should be a surprise.
      - toomuchtodo 4y ago
        This is half the battle. The other half is getting in front of folks at that age, versus them not learning these lessons, painfully, until midlife. Lots of apathy and intentional malevolence creating friction in this regard. Knowledge is power.
        lotsofpulp 4y ago
        I meant teaching it to high schoolers in high school as part of class work, hence getting in front of folks. With CA/NYC/CO/WA all requiring job listings to show pay range data, it should be a reasonable project to assign.
      - throwamon 4y ago
        Any recommendations on materials that teach these subjects?
        lotsofpulp 4y ago
        Bogleheads forums. https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Household_budgeting https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Household_budgeting But I just mean making a spreadsheet calculating income/expense/savings by year until you are age 100. Of course, assumptions have to be made about inflation, investment earnings, payrates, and benefits. https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/quickcalc/ https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/quickcalc/
  - yieldcrv 4y ago
    its a waste of time if you are not the elite landlords whose children academia was made for out of several hundred or really thousands of years, its only been several short decades where everyone else was unobjectively convinced that academia was relevant for them, and now we are reverting to the mean
    - lazyasciiart 4y ago
      It’s only been a few more decades that everyone was unobjectively convinced that literacy was for them, are you expecting that to revert as well?
      - loeg 4y ago
        Literacy is a lot more relevant to most people than academia.
      - yieldcrv 4y ago
        no, was there intended to be a moment of introspection introduced by that strawman? it is coincidence that jobs failed to find a way to sort job seekers except by gatekeeping with higher education. higher education did not adapt to this purpose, and doesn't need to and never will need to. the utility of the working class needing higher education will have more diminishing returns, whereas literacy will have less diminishing returns.
  - acchow 4y ago
    This ignores opportunity cost. If you flourish during the PhD, that's great Or you could struggle, go through tons of stress, have no time to give to friends (and lose touch with friends), no time for a relationship, etc. etc. Not to mention the financial opportunity cost
    - cvwright 4y ago
      Or it could be both. Personally I struggled, had tons of stress, no time for relationships, and all that. But it was also an intense time of personal development. I learned a lot about myself and a lot about how to work hard and get stuff done. I used to tell people that if you don’t regret starting your PhD when you’re halfway through, then you’re not doing it right. I’ve since moderated that stance - a lot - but there’s still something to be said for so-called “character building experiences” even though they suck at the time.
      - nostrebored 4y ago
        But you can get that in industry, often with serious financial benefit. It’s not like that is a unique situation
        DiggyJohnson 4y ago
        I think the experiences of a PHD program versus working in industry are sufficiently different enough to say that they are not as easily comparable as you are making it out to be.
        nonethewiser 4y ago
        Hes not broadly comparing them. Hes correctly pointing out that "learning about oneself" and about "how to work hard and get stuff done" isnt unique to getting a PhD. If anything, its shocking that someone does not realize that's just a part of growing up.
        cvwright 4y ago
        You definitely can get that in industry. Or the military. Or lots of places. However I think where you go in industry matters a lot. Doing a PhD at a serious program is more like starting a startup than like writing CRUD apps at a megacorp. More like going to the SEAL teams than being a supply clerk.
  - chihuahua 4y ago
    Massive opportunity cost. And you don't learn all that much.
  - sys_64738 4y ago
    Your twenties are some of the best earnings years of your life.
    - zmalqp 4y ago
      WTF, no. In what universe was this ever true? 40 - 60 are the prime earning years, and always have been, except for maybe mercenaries and pirates.
- nnoitra 4y ago
- jseliger 4y ago
  I have been reading essays about the pitfalls of academia for decades (sample: https://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science https://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science; I wrote my own "humanities PhDs are bad" one: https://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-before-you-start-grad-school-in-english-literature-the-economic-financial-and-opportunity-costs https://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-befo..., which I still get emails about). The main thing of note about the one above is the venue.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    Angry emails? The observation seems exceedingly obvious. Either you limit yourself to a very narrow career path or you dont use it. Sure, it might make sense for a few. A very select few.
- robomartin 4y ago
  > I got a Ph.D. in computer science a long time ago, and I think it was the worst mistake of my life I can't tell you how many PhD's I know the resemble your remarks. Quite a few of them (most?) are not doing anything related to their field of study. For example, one with a PhD in Physics owns a small vocational school teaching nursing and some IT courses. The following is going to sound horrible. Over the years, having worked with thousands of people over a career spanning about five decades and across a range of disciplines, I developed this strong belief that if you need to get things done you should not hire PhD's. In fact, speaking of technology, some of the most creative and talented people I have worked with were university dropouts who, for the most part, got tired of the slow pace and wasted efforts (i.e., having a year of general education coursework for an EE or CS degree) and went off on their own. I am talking about people who had a direct hand in delivering millions of dollars of revenue for the companies who employed them and doing so at breakneck speed. The going joke at one place where I used to work was something like: If you need it done right and in 6 to 12 months, get a college dropout with enough schooling to be able to do the job. If you have four years and don't are about making a prouct, hire a PhD. I know, harsh. I did warn it would be. That said, I have met many brilliant PhD's. I just don't know how the skills, capabilities, creativity and productivity metrics distribute in that population. No clue at all.
  - Test0129 4y ago
    You missed the point of hiring PhDs. You don't usually need them unless you are on the literal bleeding edge of a very minute subfield-of-a-subfield. You hire PhDs as a value signal. "We have 6 PhDs from ivies working on solving X, Y, and Z". It doesn't even matter what X, Y, and Z are. People will THROW, THROW money at you. The only PhDs who, by my estimation, enjoy themselves are in their late 60s to mid 70s, have had tenure for 25+ years, and just do whatever they want in the fields they enjoy. It's equivalent to earning something like an Engineer in Research position. The utility you bring to industry as a PhD is almost nothing - except those 3 letters. Who would've thought 3 letters could net you so much damn money from stupid investors.
    - robomartin 4y ago
_gmax0 4y ago
I do sympathize for many graduate students who are chasing dreams of making a contribution in their fields and to push the edge ever so slightly, not pursuing graduate school purely for vanity sake. But it's apparent to me that academia is straining under the system in which it exists. Incentives are misaligned, from the bottom of the hierarchy to the top. Economic strain puts pressure to produce rushed research, at the expense of PIs and the students and limits the allocations of grants to proven institutions and individuals. The issue is so complicated that I don't even know where to begin to address it without sounding like a Kacyznski-nut. From a naturalist's perspective, maybe this was bound to happen as 'real' innovation dries up. It seems that the only rational conditions to pursue a graduate degree in this economic climate is 1) purely for intellectual reasons, the challenge and the growth, 2) to put a small pimple on the butt of your field and given that it takes off, pick the fruits until the tree is bare. To expect glory and honor is setting yourself up for bitterness and from a purely vocational perspective, many have remarked at the negative opportunity cost.
- jltsiren 4y ago
  > The issue is so complicated that I don't even know where to begin to address it without sounding like a Kacyznski-nut. I don't find it complicated at all. The root issue is that there is too much supply and too little demand. There are too many people willing to work in the academia, while the rest of the world is only willing to feed far fewer academics. Everything else is just symptoms. This was already clear when I did my PhD 10-15 years ago. In the past couple of years, the job market finally reached some kind of breaking point and started to rebalance itself.
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    Only an idiot would pursue a life in academia. I'm overstating it but there is some ironic truth in that observation.
disqard 4y ago
IMO, trying to do something that's usually (a) inherently intrinsically motivated + (b) operates on long timelines, is exactly the sort of thing that: 1. Cannot be easily captured via "metrics", and 2. Is resistant to being "scaled". Yet, for better or worse, we have ended up with these "mass Ph.D" systems and their surrounding ecosystems, so outcomes like in TFA are going to be increasingly common.
metaphor 4y ago
This was and still is the best guidance[1] I ever indirectly received in uni. I hope it continues to help others. [1] https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/essay.phd.html https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/essay.phd.html
- ripe 4y ago
  Thank you for posting that essay. Relevant para: NOT… A way to make more money While we haven't heard any statistics for the past couple of years, graduate students used to estimate the ``payoff'' using the starting salaries of Ph.D. and M.S. positions, the average time required to obtain a Ph.D., the value of stock options, and current return on investments. For a period of at least five years that we know, the payoff was clearly negative. Suffice it to say that one must choose research because one loves it; a Ph.D. is not the optimum road to wealth.
  - jseliger 4y ago
    Academia has never been a way to make a lot of money, but, until ~1975 (https://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-louis-menands-the-marketplace-of-ideas-reform-and-resistance-in-the-american-university-2/ https://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-l...), one could reasonably expect to eventually attain a reasonable material quality of life while pursuing ideas, the life of the mind, and so on. It could be reasonable to sacrifice 5+ years with the expectation that one would get that reasonable material quality of life after, while advancing human knowledge, etc. The problem is that today the more likely outcome (there are exceptions, some of them posting in this thread) is that one has wasted 5+ years in, at best, advancing someone else's career. "I love research" is too often a way for institutions and professors to exploit the young.
godelski 4y ago
As a grad student (ML) close to finishing I can say exactly what I want. I want to read math books, program, and publish slowly (papers + blogs) with meaningful and substantial work. I do not want to be chasing benchmarks or worrying about how to play the politics of paper publishing to get through the provably random[0][1][2] noise that is the review process. But no one is going to pay me for this, including academia. I know a lot of my peers are chasing big paychecks but I don't understand why anyone would go through all this just for money. There's much easier ways to make money. If you know of anyone that would actually hire me for this, please do let me know. That said, I don't regret doing my PhD. There is a lot of personal value in being able to (mostly) freely study a topic in extreme detail. Obviously you need some obsessive behavior to do this. The thing is that I just want to keep doing it. But with a focus on the learning and extending human knowledge part and cutting out the bullshit. [0] https://blog.mrtz.org/2014/12/15/the-nips-experiment.html https://blog.mrtz.org/2014/12/15/the-nips-experiment.html [1] https://inverseprobability.com/talks/notes/the-neurips-experiment-snsf.html https://inverseprobability.com/talks/notes/the-neurips-exper... [2] Personal experience: I've had reviewers state that a paper with >100 citations is not useful to anyone while many of those citations are from hard sciences using it for explicitly the reason we made it. In another review round a reviewer asked us to include experiments comparing to our main comparitor, which was included in every single graph and table we had in the entire paper (no ability to respond). I've seen rampant abuse of the review system (ACs accepting and rejecting papers in weird ways), collusion rings, and overall benchmark chasing (which hinders a lot of research all together). We are encouraging lazy reviews, everyone agrees, but few are actively trying to make a difference. The worst part of this is that the people hurt the most by these actions are in fact the grad students. Their graduations depend on top tier publications and their ability to get their first jobs highly depend on their top tier publications. Ironically being hired by people who actively discuss issues with the publication system and how much noise there is. It is frustrating.
- thwayunion 4y ago
  Government labs, scientific agencies (NASA et al), or any FFRDC might be a good fit. Also old-hat industrial labs. Defense and defense contractors can also be good, if you don't mind that type of work. They don't care much about vanity metrics like publications at top X conferences, and they don't move at the fast pace of product-oriented groups in tech companies. You can also start an LLC and fund it through SBIR/STTR and/or transition-to-practice style grants, but you'll have to hire a professional admin staff and pay them more than you're making if you want the type of life you're describing (and it'll take some years).
warbler73 4y ago
Weird to see the PhD is now a trade degree with people expecting to receive technical skill training to increase their chances to get an ok job with benefits working for some corporation. Possibly the PhD is the new High School Diploma, signifying basic literacy and ability to follow directions.
- SantalBlush 4y ago
  Now this is what I call a hot take, that a PhD is possibly the new high school diploma.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Everything is a trade degree, unless you're independently wealthy.
  - jltsiren 4y ago
    Everything is a trade degree, if you lack the confidence that you will figure out things somehow. Middle-class life is quite comfortable in most first-world countries. If you have the social capital from growing up in a middle-class family, it's often easy to remain in the middle class, even if you fail a couple of times. Upper middle class is another story, because it's characterized by playing the game and winning rather than social capital. If you are trying to remain in the upper middle class, you can't afford some of the luxuries a middle-class kid could.
version_five 4y ago
I did a PhD. It was the most interesting and productive time of my life|* Aside from actually enjoying the work, I had a salary / scholarship that where I went to school was the same or more than most of my peers who went right to work made (because of tax implications), and when I got a job, I got a better one than I would have otherwise. Plus, many people I started school with had barely finished their undergrad by the time I was done a PhD because of the usual breaks and major changes and failing courses and stuff. I'm not saying this to brag (I've made all sorts of terrible choices since then), only to say that it's possible to do a PhD, have fun (specifically in the sense of learn cool stuff, although I enjoyed the social life), and not make a "sacrifice" in terms of money or starting a career. It's like any other job. You can make all kinds of early career decisions that help or hinder you later, generalizing a "phd" as some specific thing doesn't work * (I like to think I'm coming back to another such period 15+ years later, but anyway)
- notRobot 4y ago
  Your story gives me hope. What country are you in?
- gonzo41 4y ago
  Out of curiosity. What was your family like, stable nuclear family? Middle income, did you fully support yourself, on your own during your studies? Did you have any other work or responsibilities? Did you get cash or material gifts and support from family? etc etc. You described almost a very insta perfect version of the experience which doesn't play out most of the time.
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    They didn’t claim that their experience represented the average experience, instead describing the personal experience in their program. I think this sort of response is extremely rude, and I know how dismissive and silly it sounds. It’s also extremely off-putting without adding much value. It feels like you’re looking for a reason to explain away their positive experience. I think the reason your comment has me flustered is that OP seemed to implicitly address many of your questions. Finally, is having a nuclear family really so remarkable and rare as to be a privilege worth sussing out?
atty 4y ago
I find it interesting how many articles and people on HN say something similar. I had basically the opposite thoughts (and outcomes) from my PhD. I loved the 5 years I spent in my program, I learned a ton about super interesting topics, I learned a ton of very applicable skills, I met and befriended many extremely intelligent and kind individuals, and I immediately got a job after graduating. I’m still at that job, and it’s amazing, 2 and a half years later. (And I didn’t do my work at an Ivy League or anything, I was at Wayne State in Detroit). Frankly, the only thing I wish I would have realized beforehand is that you’re basically forming your young adult friend group with a bunch of people who are going to be spread out over the globe in ~5 years. That part is hard. Everything else was great.
- marcosfelt 4y ago
  What field were you in? I feel like PhDs in fields with a strong job market for R&D (e.g., machine learning, biomedical or chemical engineering) can be worth it. I think, otherwise, it can be really difficult.
- dont__panic 4y ago
  Frankly, the only thing I wish I would have realized beforehand is that you’re basically forming your young adult friend group with a bunch of people who are going to be spread out over the globe in ~5 years. For a lot of us, this is a problem with standard 4-year college as well. It's frustrating that it's so hard to colocate with college friends once your careers have taken you all in different directions (often with very little choice in the matter). I suspect that's responsible for a big chunk of social dysfunction in the USA today: so many people spend 4 years building a circle of friends, and it fractures irreparably 5 minutes after graduation.
jojobas 4y ago
Subsidizing loans for whatever 18-year-olds want is a bad idea, news at five.
- llanowarelves 4y ago
  A good idea for those giving the loans. Can't default, compound interest, etc. Yummy, socially acceptable/shielded (even placed on pedestal) usury.
- lazyasciiart 4y ago
  Is this still about PhD students?
  - jojobas 4y ago
    People get onto these expensive dead-end education paths at 18, the ones where MSc/MA/PhD is the only prospect of earning some cash (often by teaching in the same area). Oh of course I want to be an Egyptologist!
    - lazyasciiart 4y ago
      Nature is a science journal. It is surveying grad students in science. You may notice the questions about things like experiments and labs?
thrown_22 4y ago
>; and students’ experience of racism and discrimination This is the main reason why I am extremely ambivalent about hiring anyone who hasn't quit university in disgust. The other day I had someone try and call me out for saying "meager options" as the n-word options. It was a bizarre half hour of being talked at which started with her proclaiming herself a person of colour who has had to deal with discrimination her whole life to get a PhD and went down hill from there.
pfdietz 4y ago
I had discussions with my daughter about what she wanted to do in STEMM. I told her a PhD is good if you really want to go that direction, but you need to consider the downsides. In the end, she went for an MD, not a PhD, and we're all happy with how it has turned out.
gtmitchell 4y ago
Also, remember the survivorship bias inherent in surveys like this. They rarely capture the very large portion of graduate students who leave their program without a degree. I was one of those, and it’s really difficult for me to look back and see anything positive in the experience. I’m sure if the opinions of dropouts were included, you’d get an even bleaker view of the value of going to graduate school.
- pfdietz 4y ago
  Matt Groening on that: http://magazine.art21.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/life_in_hell-graduate_school.gif http://magazine.art21.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/life_in...
zinxq 4y ago
A Ph.D. really is about the journey. I'd be surprised if anyone ever thought it represented more money. It's unlikely to matter for that. The time I spent getting a Ph.D. was one of the best times of my life. Not just the work, but the environment, the other people in the same situation, and the personal growth. I pursued it because 1) I really did love learning about Computers, and 2) I just loved the University environment. Every time I "graduated" I just signed up again for the next degree. I never thought much about "using it" after I got it. I think it got me a higher starting title at a company or two and impressed a few (probably easily impressed) people along the way. I think the most measurable* impact however was listing it on my dating profile. Again - it was a journey worth taking without much thought of the destination. *Note, I said "measurable", not "good" or "bad"
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  What did it cost? Seems like it's not worth it unless it uniquely qualifies you for something.
j7ake 4y ago
I did a PhD and it completely changed my trajectory in life. I would maybe compare the academic path to more like a start up life : most fail, but you will learn a lot and you will be in charge of your own destiny. Of course the pay and living can be brutal depending on where you choose to do your PhD. But there are phd programs that pay a generous wage (with benefits like health care and retirement) at affordable cities. I am happy I was able to roll the dice with academia. If it didn’t work out I would still be doing fine in industry.
- 78124781 4y ago
  I don't think that you are truly "in charge of your own destiny" at many programs. I get the comparison, but it's more like you're a startup in an oversaturated market with funders who have very little invested in you (and may not even know/care about you) and constantly demand that you perform circus acts to keep them funding you (sometimes in very paltry amounts) for just a bit longer. They will also be very disappointed if you turn out to be anything other than a unicorn. And on top of all this, you could just be out of luck due to factors outside your control. I've seen multiple cases of well-published researchers with excellent teaching records, good social skills, and prestigious postdocs spend 2-3 years on the market and get nothing. It's a random roll of the dice, and I would discourage most people from trying it.
dools 4y ago
The people who I went to university with who now have the most innovative and prosperous companies did their early research as part of PhD programs. In some fields, I think a PhD is a great opportunity to start businesses of real substance
naet 4y ago
Never a graduate student, but I made the choice to not study computer science in undergrad because I didn't want a lifestyle of sitting behind a computer. Fast forward 8 years and... I'm a full time remote software developer sitting alone in front of a computer. I tried education for a few years but it didn't pay enough and the work was difficult due to lack of school resources and lack of support. Switched into tech because I knew I had the technical ability to pull it off, and the salary seemed comfortable. It does feel a bit sad that I spend my time working on random corporate marketing websites instead of helping people learn, but at least I can support my family enjoy a rich life outside of work (including some development side projects). Even though my eventual major isn't relevant to my current work I still think college was very worth while. I took mostly classes that interested me rather than follow a specific career path and I learned so many things that still feel relevant in other ways.
zzda 4y ago
I'd been working as a research assistant in a university lab during and after my undergraduate degree, for about a year, and my supervisor was trying to convince me to do a PhD with him. However, I'd already had several months of getting to know PhD students there and in neighbouring labs, and it made me realise two things. Firstly, how much stress and long working hours they were all enduring. Secondly, for many of them, how fascinated they seemed with their research topics despite this. I quickly realised I didn't really give much of a shit about doing any more of this research, at least not compared to the obsessive PhD students I was working alongside, and ended up pivoting to a vulnerability research career instead. Which has been much, much more rewarding and interesting than anything I was doing previously. I'm incredibly glad I didn't get stuck wasting my life away in academia, which for a time seemed like the default path to take. For a while afterwards I felt like I'd let myself down somehow by not continuing along this path, but I look back in relief knowing now what a nonsense attitude that was.
fluxem 4y ago
I got PhD and I am still not sure how I feel. It took me 6 years, a lot of doubts and putting my life on hold. You never know if you will finish your PhD. In fact, 50% drop out. Imagine spending 4 years of your life and then quitting with little to show for it. First of all, PhD is too long (in the US). You spend 1 - 1.5 years taking grad classes that have little relevance to your subfield. If you haven't done research in undergrad, you spend the first year figuring out what is research. IF you did, there's still a lot less hand-holding as a PhD researcher compared to an undergrad researcher. Now let's talk about research. First, you need to come up with a good idea that no one thought of it before. This requires understanding of all the previous research. Then you try to implement the idea. Even if you implemented everything correctly, if your method is not better than the state of the art, you just wasted your time. (Of course, you need to implement the state of the art also) Do you want to become a professor? Forget about. There are so many bright PhDs competing for a few academic openings. Even if you become a professor, it will take 10 years and a lot of work to get tenure. And if you finally become a professor, the pay is terrible compared to the industry. I'm not even talking about PhD in other subfields like Physics, where people become Google's SWE after finishing their PhD. Such a waste.
- samspenc 4y ago
  The thing that bugs me most about the PhD is how much of the final years are controlled by your advisor and the committee. You have a bit of leeway in your first few years to do some "blue sky" research, scoped by the grants your advisor has of course, but the last 1-3 years can be a nightmare since you're expected to produce work that is funded by and within the scope of your grant BUT also be innovative and something that your advisor and committee approve and let you graduate with.
  - huijzer 4y ago
    > but the last 1-3 years can be a nightmare since you're expected to produce work that is funded by and within the scope of your grant BUT also be innovative and something that your advisor and committee approve and let you graduate with. Great summary! This is exactly how it feels at 3 years in. Every sentence in a paper is a careful balance between adhering to science, the funding agency, the supervisors, and myself.
nemo44x 4y ago
College is about networking and getting sorted into the right groups more than it is about learning anything.
toddm 4y ago
I did a Ph.D. (chemistry) and a M.A. (geology), both at UT-Austin. I have absolutely no regrets, and knew fully what I was signing up for, unlike many people who are featured in articles like the one referenced here: that is a little puzzling, since you are an adult when you embark on the graduate school journey, and there is no shortage of readily-available information about employability, salary, and so on. But enough about the bewildered adults who awaken in the middle of their graduate program and wonder what happened and who to blame other than themselves. Neither graduate degree cost me a dime, as tuition was waived (really, paid by advisor at an in-state rate) and I had combinations of research assistant (RA)/teaching assistant (TA)/fellowship the whole time. There was no assistance at any point from my family. I lived well in Austin in the 1990s, and had a great social life. It was great. I knocked-out my Master's in just over 2 years, then breezed through my Ph.D. in 4 years. I published 6 first-authored papers by graduation time. My advisers were both nice guys, not overly hands-on with career guidance but I was headed towards a tenure-track position anyway. Research projects were reasonable and that was why I was able to go through smoothly. That and I wasn't walking around asking myself what the hell I was doing in grad school...anyway. My postdoctoral fellowships - first at UCSF, then at Princeton - were great with the notable exception that the ~$30K/year salaries did not go far in either location. My tenure-track journey ended with an appointment as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at a small school, and the salary was $52K/9 months. I didn't last long - those deferred student loans from undergrad were due, and the price was steep - but at the rate I was at, if I got a grant with summer salary, I was looking at $70K/year. Totally great experiences. Low salaries even now, and yes I don't bring in big bucks but I'm not a SWE at a FAANG, but that's not for me. Highly recommended.
- jrochkind1 4y ago
  It is much harder now to follow that path you described than it was 30 years ago. That is, fewer portion of people who would like that path successfully get it. (Yeah, the early 90s is 30 years ago. Shocking to me too). Whether students now "know what they were signing up for" or not (or should somehow be expected to or blamed if they didn't, which is not quite the same question), I couldn't say. None of the survey questions mentioned in the article seem to cover what their expectations were before enrolling, or if they have now changed. I wouldn't assume that they did, or didn't.
supernova87a 4y ago
I think part of the problem for current graduate students (well, for the last generation or so) is that while the past idea / lore of graduate school modeled by mentors (professors, parents) was built on a growing post-war pyramid of faculty jobs and research opportunities, now it has become a saturated pyramid in many fields. So then students find themselves not competing easily for a growing number of jobs, but waiting to see which senior professor retires or dies and opens up a spot. Or else leave for industry. And woe to those who go into fields where there is not a lot of industry to exit to. You've probably heard in your field of the old professors who got a faculty job after one postdoc, or even out of grad school? Well, those days of yore are long gone. And don't think that it was just because they were incredibly smart (well, some of course were) but that the field had ripe jobs for them to fill. Do you see some colleagues going to "odd" countries for positions lately? It's where the money is -- we just didn't realize in the past it actually was tied to where the money was (hidden in the form of jobs). Anyway, also now it has almost become a baseline credential for certain jobs or advancement (like college), further filling up the pipeline with competitors for those jobs. Don't get me wrong, for some people graduate school can be great, a great time to explore and satisfy an intellect that wants to gather and contribute to knowledge. But for others, the idea of graduate school is no longer what it was. You're in for a multiple-postdoc, where-is-this-going-on-the-faculty-track questioned existence, seemingly at the whim of advisors who hardly have time to spend on helping your career. Of course, it varies by field. Chemical engineering, probably ok no matter how relatively bad it seems. Astronomy? Not so much. Biology? Better exits, but you're also competing against everyone who can afford a hot plate and PCR rig. Computer science / ML? Your competition is every student in China who has access to a couple hundred hours of GPU time. (exaggerating a bit of course) Just go into it knowing the situation.
- gautamdivgi 4y ago
  There is a lot of myth baked into the PhD along with a lot of romanticization of deep innovative work. From school that is pretty much fed to you of scholars and that you need to get a PhD to be known as one. E.g. Newton, Gauss, Kelvin, Tesla, Marie Curie, Pierre Curie, etc. There is a massive misreading of the general situation though like the parent comment mentions. I think until before WWII academia was a rich mans profession. I would bet that people who got into academia were those whose parents had the means to support their education and that they could either independently or through patronage carry out research. This is what most people miss about a PhD or a scholar. It was exclusively a rich mans (and in very exceptional cases a woman married to a rich man or a man married to a rich woman) business. A more extreme example Carl Jung’s wife supported her husband’s research even when he was having an affair with another woman. Remember that cabin he built so eloquently described in “Deep Work” with a walk in the woods. It might have been with the wife’s money. Post WWII government funding for research exploded but there were not enough researchers. Universities brought in more and more professors for their government funded programs and government funded student loans. All professors want tenure track. To handle tenure track you need publications. But now we have a problem - the professors aren’t wealthy. They need to apply for patronage (ahem - government grants) and need to write proposals. The problem is “professorship” is an up or out profession. You get 7 years to move up or get out. In time, the government grants have reduced, the number of professors has ticked upwards. You have a complete rat race for scraps. There are some well-funded departments that continue to attract great students. But by and large its the stress of grant writing that will eat at you. So, in the end the profession itself hasn’t changed much. You’re still petitioning the “rich man” for “patronage”. It’s just that now there are many more petitioners. It’s just not worth it. That being said, there needs to be some mechanism to acquire deep advanced skills as you continue along your professional journey. A masters with a thesis mostly works and can get you a considerable way through. It could be specialized so that you get more time for focused research as opposed to filling up your time with pointless credits. I did a PhD when I was working. It was stressful - but only from a time perspective. I never had stresses of money or career for which I’m thankful. I also had a very considerate advisor. I cannot think of a position in industry today except in research labs that really need a PhD. Everyone going for it needs to look out and understand that.
Gatsky 4y ago
Nature writing an article like this is like a newspaper writing that journalism is a waste of time. It's quite odd, perhaps they do it for the clicks. Nature, and what it represents, is of course part of the problem.
Apocryphon 4y ago
Any software engineers or other tech workers on HN who went on to get graduate degrees in degrees unrelated to CS/SWE/CE/EE?
btrettel 4y ago
I love research, but I hated most of my PhD. "Publish or perish" attitudes caused a lot of friction for me. I try to be more careful in my research than most, and I don't care too much about the sheer number of papers I publish. One great paper beats 100 average papers. I also think that the (practical) requirement to bring in external funding severely limits what research can be done. There are a lot of great ideas that don't sound good to people in control of money. My day job doesn't involve any research now. I do research on the side. I am glad that I can do research at my own pace and don't have to ask permission from others before doing research. The main problem is that I don't have a lot of time for my research, but I'm hoping to switch to part-time eventually.
vouaobrasil 4y ago
I got a PhD in math because it was a life goal for me and it was the best because I had lots of time just to do whatever I wanted and learn some cool math. I ended up going into a math-related career I hate. But it pays well, and so I became ultra frugal, saved up enough money, got a second remote job doing something I like, and now I'm going to roam as a nomad around the world. Screw 9-5, I'm retiring now. Quitting in a few months and couldn't be happier.
plaguepilled 4y ago
Sick of reading about how bleak it is - when are we going to actually do something about academia being so shit? Legislate? Boycott? Offer a competing research structure? Universities REALLY oversell what they do for researchers. There has to be a better way than this.
bcx 4y ago
I spent 3 years in a PhD program, like many of the posters it was one of the most fun experience of my life. I ended up dropping out to do Ycombinator, but it was an incredibly hard decision. Like many things in life not all PhDs are created equal. In my program I was able to take classes across the University that helped broaden my narrow business / computer science undergraduate experience. I was paid somewhere between 20-30K/year, but was able to take graduate business, econ, architecture, anthropology, and computer science classes. I was able to publish papers and travel internationally. My peers were way smarter than me, and went on to find industry and academic jobs, a few dropped out like me and ended up building very successful careers. In general my advice would be, find a program that suits your interest. The benefits of 3 years of largely self-directed learning is not for everyone, but can be an incredible way to grow. Also, your advisor will make or break your experience, I worked for an amazing guy, and still stay in touch, even after dropping out.
chairhairair 4y ago
The second set of graphs must be in error, correct? 67% have attended conferences but only 0.7% have networked...? Only 0.7% have discussed their career with peers/colleagues? That's impossible. Did they forget to convert these decimals to percentages, or did no one sanity-check this data at all?
- lemursage 4y ago
  Maybe many PhDs attend conferences just because they have to have some paper/poster presentation rather than they are genuinely interested in making new connections? That's what I'm guilty of at least.
6stringmerc 4y ago
A lot of these articles seem to be written by people who had such bad grades they weren’t even eligible for grad school. As in, we’ll it’s probably not good anyway lol
xyzelement 4y ago
It's tricky - I feel like those who get PhD out of true deep love and talent for a field find their way through to happiness. But sadly, a lot of people go into it for the wrong reasons (family pressure, ego, not knowing what else to do) and alas it doesn't often work out. I remember on-campus interviewing an Indian guy who got a BS, MS and now PhD in chemistry, only to realize that he doesn't have a passion for it. That's tragic because all this money/lost time down, he's competing with undergrads for entry level roles. Meanwhile kids that finished undergrad around the same time are already starting to become managers. The world needs PhD level people -- but I just think that your heart has to be into it 10000% and then you'll make it work.
- caddemon 4y ago
  It's pretty easy to be jaded by the end of a PhD even if you went into it for the field. You often don't get true academic freedom until you get a tenure track professorship, which is increasingly hard to come by. Even then you need to spend a lot of time on showmanship. Doing a PhD for the sake of it is still arguable IMO, I don't regret doing mine. But I wish I didn't go in with the delusion I was pursuing a long term career in academia. Post-PhD academia is a hell of a slog.
deleted 4y ago
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bubblethink 4y ago
A few random thoughts based on personal experience: - A PhD is like a sabbatical in many ways. You are trading off time and money for what amounts to a long break to explore things or work on something that may be difficult otherwise. - Identifying well defined problems is half the game. - Finding a good advisor is quite important. Above all, it should be someone you can get along with. - At least for CS, the tradeoffs are quite reasonable. In a good case, it will open more doors for you. In the worst case, you will be at the same level as a Master's student after having spent a few more years in school.
Exendroinient00 4y ago
Another useless thread of sellouts mocking non sellouts for not selling out. Toxic internet mob didn't spare this website.
wanderingmind 4y ago
PhD is a scam that sucks hardwork from smartest individuals while giving them poverty, mental health problems, significant opportunity cost and graduating them with absolutely no skills that are required to make a living in market economy. I have said it multiple times unless you are doing a CS PhD or you are an Olympiad medalist, PhD is a significant net negative for your life and career.
- erfgh 4y ago
  Everything you said about CS PhDs also applies to a lesser (but not insignificant) extent to postgraduate and undergraduate degrees. You don't need degrees to make it into the tech world. Yes some companies might ignore you in the very beginning of your career if you don't have a degree but there is so much demand out there for tech workers that you will find a job for sure and after one or two years nobody will care that you don't have a degree. By the time your peers graduate you will have multiple years of experience in the field and that's what everyone cares about. Oh, and doing a CS degree you hardly learn anything about programming and most professors teaching you have never coded anything longer than 50 lines.
- Fomite 4y ago
  I'm not in CS, and it was neither a net negative on my life or career.
lacker 4y ago
I dropped out of my CS PhD program after two and a half years to "go into industry". It was the perfect amount of time to spend in grad school - just enough time to meet my future wife.
Fomite 4y ago
One of the reasons I enjoy my field is that the assumption you're going into academia isn't baked into things. But I do wonder what these numbers will look like if the SV tech scene starts slowing down significantly. That was always the comparator group people looked toward.
zwaps 4y ago
I finished my PhD at the top program in my country (which is not the US of course) fairly recently. The system is American "inspired" (fully funded, no mandatory work, international professors). For me, the research work was enjoyable, and I was happy to do it "while it lasted". However I think the main problem is that for the largest majority of students, there is no academic future. All of us were top-of-the-class in every scholastic phase up to then. Smart people, all. But after the PhD, and then after the junior job market - there simply aren't many positions anymore. All your academic efforts then culminate into a pack of files describing your merit, a hasty presentation in a hotel or two, and a largely random market deciding whether you will indeed be able to do the job you trained for your entire life, or not! It's a breaking point, and it is stressful not only because of that but especially because everything is uncertain. Expectations are very high. After all, a lot of money has been spent on the PhD students and placing them in academic positions is crucial for the school. However, the job market is exceedingly difficult (for many different situational and even arcane reasons that differ country-by-country - I was going to write more about it, but everyone who knows knows already). In consequence, you are never really prepared enough for the job market. At the same time, your success hinges only marginally on your research and more on prep, predigree, fit and randomness. And so, PhDs have to spend more and more time (6-7 years now) to feel somewhat "ready". Others are pushed by their advisors to stay. During this time, you put your life on hold. You earn as little as the university can get away with in your country. You have to prepared to move anywhere in the world. Family is difficult to realize. Work-life-balance usually non-existent. And the longer you stay, the more you question whether you will ever make it. For us, there were few tenure-tracked positions to be had in that year. People who stayed in academia started with post-doc contracts - often only for a year - all around the world. A continuation of the above. I am sure some will eventually succeed. I myself decided to take a non-academic position, which was a breeze by comparison. From my cohort, almost all have ended up with some sort of mental health issue. Even though I never really felt it, I did notice (after leaving) that I had been depressed during the final year. Two PhD students were admitted to the hospital for issues I am 100% sure are stress induced. At the same time, I don't know how to fix all this. Being a tenured professor will always be the dream for many people. At least as it appears on the surface. For it to be that, there will never be as many positions as applicants.
philshem 4y ago
The Simpsons' take on grad students: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqrCoyVK80I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqrCoyVK80I (edit: I have a PhD)
ansc 4y ago
Don't worry -- you probably wouldn't "want this kind of life" when you're a corporate drone either.
graycat 4y ago
During parts of the Cold War, near DC, some knowledge of some STEM topics, e.g., assembler, Fortran, PL/I, C, the algorithms in the relevant book by Knuth, the fast Fourier transform, Kalman filtering, Maxwell's equations, algebraic coding theory, antenna theory, optimization, especially with a Ph.D., could generate a relatively good career in US national security. Maybe now, not just near DC or in US national security, if can get a job in some organization that is doing important work, then there is a chance that can see an important problem and use good STEM field knowledge and computing to get a very valuable solution -- none of the effort part of the job description. And IMHO computing and the Internet are continuing to explode, that is, have not yet nearly been fully exploited. Then maybe pick a promising problem, use some STEM field knowledge, computing, and the Internet to get a valuable solution, and start a business. Ph.D.? (1) Aim for a Ph.D. in engineering. (2) Take some courses you believe might be helpful for your Ph.D. research and/or your career later. (3) For your research, find, pick your own problem, maybe from practice outside of academics. (4) Complete your research on your own and hand the results to your department or advisor(s). At some universities, the official requirement for a dissertation is "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication" So, at such a university and more generally, to remove nearly all doubt about your dissertation, publish your work. Maybe for your first job, accept an assistant professor position in some engineering school and from there make contacts for a good career outside of academics.
randomsearch 4y ago
Having had a lot of experience of academia, I’m probably one its harshest critics. But - I don’t regret the PhD. I learnt a lot of skills, learnt from other PhD students and postdocs. I will say, make sure your supervisor is a nice person who does not place their career above all else. I was lucky with that, and I think finding such a person in academic is increasingly difficult. Never do a PhD with a supervisor you are unsure about. Finish the PhD in 3 years (U.K.) and get the hell out. There is nothing left in academia for people who genuinely want to improve the world. If your goal is getting paid a reasonable amount for a bit of a silly job, and you can tolerate or enjoy politics and game playing, that’s fine, stay. Hours are flexible, you can get away with not doing anything much at all for your career, and the pensions in the U.K. are still very generous. Over the summers most people don’t actually do any work.
- a_bonobo 4y ago
  >I will say, make sure your supervisor is a nice person who does not place their career above all else. I was lucky with that, and I think finding such a person in academic is increasingly difficult. Never do a PhD with a supervisor you are unsure about. This is a great point. A bad supervisor will make your time miserable, and universities generally have no interest in weeding out the bad ones. There's an academic whisper-net where this knowledge is spread, but undergrad or MSc students generally have no access to the net. Which is a shame as it would protect them from terrible supervisors who look good to the world. If you're in that position, see if you can find a Prof who you can trust and explicitly ask them about colleagues in a 1-on-1 meeting; at least you'll get some access then.
  - marcosfelt 4y ago
    I agree with the whisper net comment. You learn about who's good and bad pretty quickly once you get into a department, but everyone is hush-hush otherwise. We need a glassdoor for academia.
red_admiral 4y ago
For PhDs in the humanities in the US, this Brett Deveraux piece is worth reading: https://acoup.blog/2021/10/01/collections-so-you-want-to-go-to-grad-school-in-the-academic-humanities/ https://acoup.blog/2021/10/01/collections-so-you-want-to-go-... The TL/DR is basically: don't.
- marcosfelt 4y ago
  Wow, this is a lot.
balsam 4y ago
I put it down to a lack of focus. Research universities had one job, to ensure the undelayed success of someone (or collective) like Yitang Zhang/Katalin Kariko, and it failed, while managing to award tenure to many a downright incompetent or even fraudulent persons and research groups. Surely doing this job is, if not easier, more important than achieving general AI? When I say easier, I refer to the ontopic suggestion of giving every person who gets a PhD a basic income..
flownoon 4y ago
I got a PhD in 2.5 years (already had a masters), a very fast amount of time, and the advice I always give people is “pick a program with clear deliverables.” My advisor said that after publishing 3 articles in good journals, I was done. So I was very motivated, had a clear target, and had a more satisfying and quick experience than probably 98% of PhD students. I looked at programs in more attractive locations and at better rated schools, where they said essentially “you are done when we feel like you are done”. I turned them down and it was a fantastic decision.
- iorrus 4y ago
  IMO this is exactly not how to do a PhD which should be about exploring a topic and becoming an expert over time. A meandering path concentrated around self directed learning. If you want clear deliverables and a set path to follow, just get a job in industry.
  - falcor84 4y ago
    >If you want clear deliverables and a set path to follow, just get a job in industry. I find this to be an extremely over-generous view of what industry work is like. But my actual point is that whether you are in academia or industry, you should prefer a position where you have some real control over the deliverables, rather than being a puppet on the strings of a boss or advisor.
    - iorrus 4y ago
      Yes, it's true that industry is not like this all the time. I've done the PhD/Postdoc route now working as a data scientist in mega corp. The value of a PhD IMO is the pain of forcing yourself to learn things independently, work on hard problems for long periods of time and develop expertise. I think following a set path laid out by a supervisor defeats alot of this as the hard work is being done for you, you're just following your supervisor's set agenda. Industry simply doesn't allow for this long deep, mostly unproductive work. Things change constantly and projects move, adapt etc. However the goals are for the most part better defined with a clear outcome. A post below put this well, academia is closer to a start up lifestyle.
bigbacaloa 4y ago
A doctoral program makes sense for someone who wants to spend the rest of his/her life studying something that can't be studied except in an academic context. It makes sense for no one else. In particular, it is usually silly to do a doctorate if one's ambitions are to make money or succeed professionally in business/commerce/engineering. On the other hand, if those are one's ambitions, one generally doesn't have the sort of passion needed for research.
idanman 4y ago
I was working full time and did my PhD at the same time. My employer let me do the work at work (there was a lot of overlap) and only had to travel to university to take a few classes (made up the time by working longer hours and sometimes on weekends) and meet with my academic advisor. I also had an advisor (mentor) at work that I would interact with on a daily basis. The downside was that I had to pay tuition, but the company paid for some and the rest I paid from my salary. I still made more than a graduate student at the institution. Overall, it was a great experience. I would recommend doing it this way if you are interested in going into industry and you already have a built-in job. I was upfront when I got hired and told them I was looking to do a PhD and they agreed.
Balgair 4y ago
A good piece on going to grad school or not. It's tailored to the Humanities, but the advice is still relevant for the Sciences: https://acoup.blog/2021/10/01/collections-so-you-want-to-go-to-grad-school-in-the-academic-humanities/ https://acoup.blog/2021/10/01/collections-so-you-want-to-go-... TLDR: Only go if you meet 1 of 2 conditions: 1) You are rich. 2) You get along with your advisor so well you know within 9 months of meeting/working with them that you'll be at their funeral no matter what. The chance of this is a dice roll with very heavy disadvantage (4xd20, choose lowest). Otherwise, try it out for a year, then bounce. It's not worth your time.
mathteddybear 4y ago
The survey did not include any question about start-up career prospects, I suppose what Paul Graham touted regarding software startups is not widely applicable across most fields.
joshcsimmons 4y ago
I don't regret doing mine but at the same time I'd never recommend it to anyone.

181 points by clockworksoul 4y ago

I’ve always felt that for the social sciences, a masters and PhD should not be needed for the job market. However, I can’t help but feel that the demand for these credentials largely comes from a dilution of the marketplace due to the abundance of people with bachelors degrees

chillage 4y ago

Somehow I am mostly just surprised that Nature's graphic designers feel that pie charts are an effective visual communication tool. One of many articles on the topic https://xviz.com/blogs/pie-charts-good-bad-or-ugly/ https://xviz.com/blogs/pie-charts-good-bad-or-ugly/

civilized 4y ago
Most of the charts are stacked bar charts, so I think they went with donuts at the top for a little visual variety.

chihuahua 4y ago

I got a Ph.D. in computer science a long time ago, and I think it was the worst mistake of my life. 6 years wasted, for no obvious benefit. I don't know why I did it, other than wanting to learn more computer science stuff. And I think I could have learned a lot more by just working in the industry.

mjfl 4y ago
why do you consider it wasted? spending 6 years learning some cool stuff seems like a good life to me.
- saboot 4y ago
  It's not en entire benefit, that six years could have been spent making a salary, saving up retirement, starting a family, etc. It's pretty disheartening watching your peers while in graduate school
- rdtwo 4y ago
  He’s probably out a good mil in opportunity cost maybe more over a life time
  - mjfl 4y ago
    and with that mil he could retire early and spend time studying cool stuff, exactly as he was doing in graduate school. To some, phd is skipping the line to doing stuff they want to do.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I think every high schooler should be taught how to project cash flow and figure out quality of life based on various scenarios. There is so much pay and expense data available now, there is little reason these kinds of opportunity costs should be a surprise.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      This is half the battle. The other half is getting in front of folks at that age, versus them not learning these lessons, painfully, until midlife. Lots of apathy and intentional malevolence creating friction in this regard. Knowledge is power.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        I meant teaching it to high schoolers in high school as part of class work, hence getting in front of folks. With CA/NYC/CO/WA all requiring job listings to show pay range data, it should be a reasonable project to assign.
    - throwamon 4y ago
      Any recommendations on materials that teach these subjects?
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        Bogleheads forums. https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Household_budgeting https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Household_budgeting But I just mean making a spreadsheet calculating income/expense/savings by year until you are age 100. Of course, assumptions have to be made about inflation, investment earnings, payrates, and benefits. https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/quickcalc/ https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/quickcalc/
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  its a waste of time if you are not the elite landlords whose children academia was made for out of several hundred or really thousands of years, its only been several short decades where everyone else was unobjectively convinced that academia was relevant for them, and now we are reverting to the mean
  - lazyasciiart 4y ago
    It’s only been a few more decades that everyone was unobjectively convinced that literacy was for them, are you expecting that to revert as well?
    - loeg 4y ago
      Literacy is a lot more relevant to most people than academia.
    - yieldcrv 4y ago
      no, was there intended to be a moment of introspection introduced by that strawman? it is coincidence that jobs failed to find a way to sort job seekers except by gatekeeping with higher education. higher education did not adapt to this purpose, and doesn't need to and never will need to. the utility of the working class needing higher education will have more diminishing returns, whereas literacy will have less diminishing returns.
- acchow 4y ago
  This ignores opportunity cost. If you flourish during the PhD, that's great Or you could struggle, go through tons of stress, have no time to give to friends (and lose touch with friends), no time for a relationship, etc. etc. Not to mention the financial opportunity cost
  - cvwright 4y ago
    Or it could be both. Personally I struggled, had tons of stress, no time for relationships, and all that. But it was also an intense time of personal development. I learned a lot about myself and a lot about how to work hard and get stuff done. I used to tell people that if you don’t regret starting your PhD when you’re halfway through, then you’re not doing it right. I’ve since moderated that stance - a lot - but there’s still something to be said for so-called “character building experiences” even though they suck at the time.
    - nostrebored 4y ago
      But you can get that in industry, often with serious financial benefit. It’s not like that is a unique situation
      - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
        I think the experiences of a PHD program versus working in industry are sufficiently different enough to say that they are not as easily comparable as you are making it out to be.
        nonethewiser 4y ago
        Hes not broadly comparing them. Hes correctly pointing out that "learning about oneself" and about "how to work hard and get stuff done" isnt unique to getting a PhD. If anything, its shocking that someone does not realize that's just a part of growing up.
      - cvwright 4y ago
        You definitely can get that in industry. Or the military. Or lots of places. However I think where you go in industry matters a lot. Doing a PhD at a serious program is more like starting a startup than like writing CRUD apps at a megacorp. More like going to the SEAL teams than being a supply clerk.
- chihuahua 4y ago
  Massive opportunity cost. And you don't learn all that much.
- sys_64738 4y ago
  Your twenties are some of the best earnings years of your life.
  - zmalqp 4y ago
    WTF, no. In what universe was this ever true? 40 - 60 are the prime earning years, and always have been, except for maybe mercenaries and pirates.
nnoitra 4y ago
jseliger 4y ago
I have been reading essays about the pitfalls of academia for decades (sample: https://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science https://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science; I wrote my own "humanities PhDs are bad" one: https://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-before-you-start-grad-school-in-english-literature-the-economic-financial-and-opportunity-costs https://jakeseliger.com/2012/05/22/what-you-should-know-befo..., which I still get emails about). The main thing of note about the one above is the venue.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Angry emails? The observation seems exceedingly obvious. Either you limit yourself to a very narrow career path or you dont use it. Sure, it might make sense for a few. A very select few.
robomartin 4y ago
> I got a Ph.D. in computer science a long time ago, and I think it was the worst mistake of my life I can't tell you how many PhD's I know the resemble your remarks. Quite a few of them (most?) are not doing anything related to their field of study. For example, one with a PhD in Physics owns a small vocational school teaching nursing and some IT courses. The following is going to sound horrible. Over the years, having worked with thousands of people over a career spanning about five decades and across a range of disciplines, I developed this strong belief that if you need to get things done you should not hire PhD's. In fact, speaking of technology, some of the most creative and talented people I have worked with were university dropouts who, for the most part, got tired of the slow pace and wasted efforts (i.e., having a year of general education coursework for an EE or CS degree) and went off on their own. I am talking about people who had a direct hand in delivering millions of dollars of revenue for the companies who employed them and doing so at breakneck speed. The going joke at one place where I used to work was something like: If you need it done right and in 6 to 12 months, get a college dropout with enough schooling to be able to do the job. If you have four years and don't are about making a prouct, hire a PhD. I know, harsh. I did warn it would be. That said, I have met many brilliant PhD's. I just don't know how the skills, capabilities, creativity and productivity metrics distribute in that population. No clue at all.
- Test0129 4y ago
  You missed the point of hiring PhDs. You don't usually need them unless you are on the literal bleeding edge of a very minute subfield-of-a-subfield. You hire PhDs as a value signal. "We have 6 PhDs from ivies working on solving X, Y, and Z". It doesn't even matter what X, Y, and Z are. People will THROW, THROW money at you. The only PhDs who, by my estimation, enjoy themselves are in their late 60s to mid 70s, have had tenure for 25+ years, and just do whatever they want in the fields they enjoy. It's equivalent to earning something like an Engineer in Research position. The utility you bring to industry as a PhD is almost nothing - except those 3 letters. Who would've thought 3 letters could net you so much damn money from stupid investors.
  - robomartin 4y ago

_gmax0 4y ago

I do sympathize for many graduate students who are chasing dreams of making a contribution in their fields and to push the edge ever so slightly, not pursuing graduate school purely for vanity sake. But it's apparent to me that academia is straining under the system in which it exists. Incentives are misaligned, from the bottom of the hierarchy to the top. Economic strain puts pressure to produce rushed research, at the expense of PIs and the students and limits the allocations of grants to proven institutions and individuals. The issue is so complicated that I don't even know where to begin to address it without sounding like a Kacyznski-nut. From a naturalist's perspective, maybe this was bound to happen as 'real' innovation dries up. It seems that the only rational conditions to pursue a graduate degree in this economic climate is 1) purely for intellectual reasons, the challenge and the growth, 2) to put a small pimple on the butt of your field and given that it takes off, pick the fruits until the tree is bare. To expect glory and honor is setting yourself up for bitterness and from a purely vocational perspective, many have remarked at the negative opportunity cost.

jltsiren 4y ago
> The issue is so complicated that I don't even know where to begin to address it without sounding like a Kacyznski-nut. I don't find it complicated at all. The root issue is that there is too much supply and too little demand. There are too many people willing to work in the academia, while the rest of the world is only willing to feed far fewer academics. Everything else is just symptoms. This was already clear when I did my PhD 10-15 years ago. In the past couple of years, the job market finally reached some kind of breaking point and started to rebalance itself.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Only an idiot would pursue a life in academia. I'm overstating it but there is some ironic truth in that observation.

disqard 4y ago

IMO, trying to do something that's usually (a) inherently intrinsically motivated + (b) operates on long timelines, is exactly the sort of thing that: 1. Cannot be easily captured via "metrics", and 2. Is resistant to being "scaled". Yet, for better or worse, we have ended up with these "mass Ph.D" systems and their surrounding ecosystems, so outcomes like in TFA are going to be increasingly common.

metaphor 4y ago

This was and still is the best guidance[1] I ever indirectly received in uni. I hope it continues to help others. [1] https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/essay.phd.html https://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/dec/essay.phd.html

ripe 4y ago
Thank you for posting that essay. Relevant para: NOT… A way to make more money While we haven't heard any statistics for the past couple of years, graduate students used to estimate the ``payoff'' using the starting salaries of Ph.D. and M.S. positions, the average time required to obtain a Ph.D., the value of stock options, and current return on investments. For a period of at least five years that we know, the payoff was clearly negative. Suffice it to say that one must choose research because one loves it; a Ph.D. is not the optimum road to wealth.
- jseliger 4y ago
  Academia has never been a way to make a lot of money, but, until ~1975 (https://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-louis-menands-the-marketplace-of-ideas-reform-and-resistance-in-the-american-university-2/ https://jakeseliger.com/2010/01/21/problems-in-the-academy-l...), one could reasonably expect to eventually attain a reasonable material quality of life while pursuing ideas, the life of the mind, and so on. It could be reasonable to sacrifice 5+ years with the expectation that one would get that reasonable material quality of life after, while advancing human knowledge, etc. The problem is that today the more likely outcome (there are exceptions, some of them posting in this thread) is that one has wasted 5+ years in, at best, advancing someone else's career. "I love research" is too often a way for institutions and professors to exploit the young.

godelski 4y ago

As a grad student (ML) close to finishing I can say exactly what I want. I want to read math books, program, and publish slowly (papers + blogs) with meaningful and substantial work. I do not want to be chasing benchmarks or worrying about how to play the politics of paper publishing to get through the provably random[0][1][2] noise that is the review process. But no one is going to pay me for this, including academia. I know a lot of my peers are chasing big paychecks but I don't understand why anyone would go through all this just for money. There's much easier ways to make money. If you know of anyone that would actually hire me for this, please do let me know. That said, I don't regret doing my PhD. There is a lot of personal value in being able to (mostly) freely study a topic in extreme detail. Obviously you need some obsessive behavior to do this. The thing is that I just want to keep doing it. But with a focus on the learning and extending human knowledge part and cutting out the bullshit. [0] https://blog.mrtz.org/2014/12/15/the-nips-experiment.html https://blog.mrtz.org/2014/12/15/the-nips-experiment.html [1] https://inverseprobability.com/talks/notes/the-neurips-experiment-snsf.html https://inverseprobability.com/talks/notes/the-neurips-exper... [2] Personal experience: I've had reviewers state that a paper with >100 citations is not useful to anyone while many of those citations are from hard sciences using it for explicitly the reason we made it. In another review round a reviewer asked us to include experiments comparing to our main comparitor, which was included in every single graph and table we had in the entire paper (no ability to respond). I've seen rampant abuse of the review system (ACs accepting and rejecting papers in weird ways), collusion rings, and overall benchmark chasing (which hinders a lot of research all together). We are encouraging lazy reviews, everyone agrees, but few are actively trying to make a difference. The worst part of this is that the people hurt the most by these actions are in fact the grad students. Their graduations depend on top tier publications and their ability to get their first jobs highly depend on their top tier publications. Ironically being hired by people who actively discuss issues with the publication system and how much noise there is. It is frustrating.

thwayunion 4y ago
Government labs, scientific agencies (NASA et al), or any FFRDC might be a good fit. Also old-hat industrial labs. Defense and defense contractors can also be good, if you don't mind that type of work. They don't care much about vanity metrics like publications at top X conferences, and they don't move at the fast pace of product-oriented groups in tech companies. You can also start an LLC and fund it through SBIR/STTR and/or transition-to-practice style grants, but you'll have to hire a professional admin staff and pay them more than you're making if you want the type of life you're describing (and it'll take some years).

warbler73 4y ago

Weird to see the PhD is now a trade degree with people expecting to receive technical skill training to increase their chances to get an ok job with benefits working for some corporation. Possibly the PhD is the new High School Diploma, signifying basic literacy and ability to follow directions.

SantalBlush 4y ago
Now this is what I call a hot take, that a PhD is possibly the new high school diploma.
pfdietz 4y ago
Everything is a trade degree, unless you're independently wealthy.
- jltsiren 4y ago
  Everything is a trade degree, if you lack the confidence that you will figure out things somehow. Middle-class life is quite comfortable in most first-world countries. If you have the social capital from growing up in a middle-class family, it's often easy to remain in the middle class, even if you fail a couple of times. Upper middle class is another story, because it's characterized by playing the game and winning rather than social capital. If you are trying to remain in the upper middle class, you can't afford some of the luxuries a middle-class kid could.

version_five 4y ago

I did a PhD. It was the most interesting and productive time of my life|* Aside from actually enjoying the work, I had a salary / scholarship that where I went to school was the same or more than most of my peers who went right to work made (because of tax implications), and when I got a job, I got a better one than I would have otherwise. Plus, many people I started school with had barely finished their undergrad by the time I was done a PhD because of the usual breaks and major changes and failing courses and stuff. I'm not saying this to brag (I've made all sorts of terrible choices since then), only to say that it's possible to do a PhD, have fun (specifically in the sense of learn cool stuff, although I enjoyed the social life), and not make a "sacrifice" in terms of money or starting a career. It's like any other job. You can make all kinds of early career decisions that help or hinder you later, generalizing a "phd" as some specific thing doesn't work * (I like to think I'm coming back to another such period 15+ years later, but anyway)

notRobot 4y ago
Your story gives me hope. What country are you in?
gonzo41 4y ago
Out of curiosity. What was your family like, stable nuclear family? Middle income, did you fully support yourself, on your own during your studies? Did you have any other work or responsibilities? Did you get cash or material gifts and support from family? etc etc. You described almost a very insta perfect version of the experience which doesn't play out most of the time.
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  They didn’t claim that their experience represented the average experience, instead describing the personal experience in their program. I think this sort of response is extremely rude, and I know how dismissive and silly it sounds. It’s also extremely off-putting without adding much value. It feels like you’re looking for a reason to explain away their positive experience. I think the reason your comment has me flustered is that OP seemed to implicitly address many of your questions. Finally, is having a nuclear family really so remarkable and rare as to be a privilege worth sussing out?

atty 4y ago

I find it interesting how many articles and people on HN say something similar. I had basically the opposite thoughts (and outcomes) from my PhD. I loved the 5 years I spent in my program, I learned a ton about super interesting topics, I learned a ton of very applicable skills, I met and befriended many extremely intelligent and kind individuals, and I immediately got a job after graduating. I’m still at that job, and it’s amazing, 2 and a half years later. (And I didn’t do my work at an Ivy League or anything, I was at Wayne State in Detroit). Frankly, the only thing I wish I would have realized beforehand is that you’re basically forming your young adult friend group with a bunch of people who are going to be spread out over the globe in ~5 years. That part is hard. Everything else was great.

marcosfelt 4y ago
What field were you in? I feel like PhDs in fields with a strong job market for R&D (e.g., machine learning, biomedical or chemical engineering) can be worth it. I think, otherwise, it can be really difficult.
dont__panic 4y ago
Frankly, the only thing I wish I would have realized beforehand is that you’re basically forming your young adult friend group with a bunch of people who are going to be spread out over the globe in ~5 years. For a lot of us, this is a problem with standard 4-year college as well. It's frustrating that it's so hard to colocate with college friends once your careers have taken you all in different directions (often with very little choice in the matter). I suspect that's responsible for a big chunk of social dysfunction in the USA today: so many people spend 4 years building a circle of friends, and it fractures irreparably 5 minutes after graduation.

jojobas 4y ago

Subsidizing loans for whatever 18-year-olds want is a bad idea, news at five.

llanowarelves 4y ago
A good idea for those giving the loans. Can't default, compound interest, etc. Yummy, socially acceptable/shielded (even placed on pedestal) usury.
lazyasciiart 4y ago
Is this still about PhD students?
- jojobas 4y ago
  People get onto these expensive dead-end education paths at 18, the ones where MSc/MA/PhD is the only prospect of earning some cash (often by teaching in the same area). Oh of course I want to be an Egyptologist!
  - lazyasciiart 4y ago
    Nature is a science journal. It is surveying grad students in science. You may notice the questions about things like experiments and labs?

thrown_22 4y ago

>; and students’ experience of racism and discrimination This is the main reason why I am extremely ambivalent about hiring anyone who hasn't quit university in disgust. The other day I had someone try and call me out for saying "meager options" as the n-word options. It was a bizarre half hour of being talked at which started with her proclaiming herself a person of colour who has had to deal with discrimination her whole life to get a PhD and went down hill from there.

pfdietz 4y ago

I had discussions with my daughter about what she wanted to do in STEMM. I told her a PhD is good if you really want to go that direction, but you need to consider the downsides. In the end, she went for an MD, not a PhD, and we're all happy with how it has turned out.

gtmitchell 4y ago

Also, remember the survivorship bias inherent in surveys like this. They rarely capture the very large portion of graduate students who leave their program without a degree. I was one of those, and it’s really difficult for me to look back and see anything positive in the experience. I’m sure if the opinions of dropouts were included, you’d get an even bleaker view of the value of going to graduate school.

pfdietz 4y ago
Matt Groening on that: http://magazine.art21.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/life_in_hell-graduate_school.gif http://magazine.art21.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/life_in...

zinxq 4y ago

A Ph.D. really is about the journey. I'd be surprised if anyone ever thought it represented more money. It's unlikely to matter for that. The time I spent getting a Ph.D. was one of the best times of my life. Not just the work, but the environment, the other people in the same situation, and the personal growth. I pursued it because 1) I really did love learning about Computers, and 2) I just loved the University environment. Every time I "graduated" I just signed up again for the next degree. I never thought much about "using it" after I got it. I think it got me a higher starting title at a company or two and impressed a few (probably easily impressed) people along the way. I think the most measurable* impact however was listing it on my dating profile. Again - it was a journey worth taking without much thought of the destination. *Note, I said "measurable", not "good" or "bad"

nonethewiser 4y ago
What did it cost? Seems like it's not worth it unless it uniquely qualifies you for something.

j7ake 4y ago

I did a PhD and it completely changed my trajectory in life. I would maybe compare the academic path to more like a start up life : most fail, but you will learn a lot and you will be in charge of your own destiny. Of course the pay and living can be brutal depending on where you choose to do your PhD. But there are phd programs that pay a generous wage (with benefits like health care and retirement) at affordable cities. I am happy I was able to roll the dice with academia. If it didn’t work out I would still be doing fine in industry.

78124781 4y ago
I don't think that you are truly "in charge of your own destiny" at many programs. I get the comparison, but it's more like you're a startup in an oversaturated market with funders who have very little invested in you (and may not even know/care about you) and constantly demand that you perform circus acts to keep them funding you (sometimes in very paltry amounts) for just a bit longer. They will also be very disappointed if you turn out to be anything other than a unicorn. And on top of all this, you could just be out of luck due to factors outside your control. I've seen multiple cases of well-published researchers with excellent teaching records, good social skills, and prestigious postdocs spend 2-3 years on the market and get nothing. It's a random roll of the dice, and I would discourage most people from trying it.

dools 4y ago

The people who I went to university with who now have the most innovative and prosperous companies did their early research as part of PhD programs. In some fields, I think a PhD is a great opportunity to start businesses of real substance

naet 4y ago

Never a graduate student, but I made the choice to not study computer science in undergrad because I didn't want a lifestyle of sitting behind a computer. Fast forward 8 years and... I'm a full time remote software developer sitting alone in front of a computer. I tried education for a few years but it didn't pay enough and the work was difficult due to lack of school resources and lack of support. Switched into tech because I knew I had the technical ability to pull it off, and the salary seemed comfortable. It does feel a bit sad that I spend my time working on random corporate marketing websites instead of helping people learn, but at least I can support my family enjoy a rich life outside of work (including some development side projects). Even though my eventual major isn't relevant to my current work I still think college was very worth while. I took mostly classes that interested me rather than follow a specific career path and I learned so many things that still feel relevant in other ways.

zzda 4y ago

I'd been working as a research assistant in a university lab during and after my undergraduate degree, for about a year, and my supervisor was trying to convince me to do a PhD with him. However, I'd already had several months of getting to know PhD students there and in neighbouring labs, and it made me realise two things. Firstly, how much stress and long working hours they were all enduring. Secondly, for many of them, how fascinated they seemed with their research topics despite this. I quickly realised I didn't really give much of a shit about doing any more of this research, at least not compared to the obsessive PhD students I was working alongside, and ended up pivoting to a vulnerability research career instead. Which has been much, much more rewarding and interesting than anything I was doing previously. I'm incredibly glad I didn't get stuck wasting my life away in academia, which for a time seemed like the default path to take. For a while afterwards I felt like I'd let myself down somehow by not continuing along this path, but I look back in relief knowing now what a nonsense attitude that was.

fluxem 4y ago

I got PhD and I am still not sure how I feel. It took me 6 years, a lot of doubts and putting my life on hold. You never know if you will finish your PhD. In fact, 50% drop out. Imagine spending 4 years of your life and then quitting with little to show for it. First of all, PhD is too long (in the US). You spend 1 - 1.5 years taking grad classes that have little relevance to your subfield. If you haven't done research in undergrad, you spend the first year figuring out what is research. IF you did, there's still a lot less hand-holding as a PhD researcher compared to an undergrad researcher. Now let's talk about research. First, you need to come up with a good idea that no one thought of it before. This requires understanding of all the previous research. Then you try to implement the idea. Even if you implemented everything correctly, if your method is not better than the state of the art, you just wasted your time. (Of course, you need to implement the state of the art also) Do you want to become a professor? Forget about. There are so many bright PhDs competing for a few academic openings. Even if you become a professor, it will take 10 years and a lot of work to get tenure. And if you finally become a professor, the pay is terrible compared to the industry. I'm not even talking about PhD in other subfields like Physics, where people become Google's SWE after finishing their PhD. Such a waste.

samspenc 4y ago
The thing that bugs me most about the PhD is how much of the final years are controlled by your advisor and the committee. You have a bit of leeway in your first few years to do some "blue sky" research, scoped by the grants your advisor has of course, but the last 1-3 years can be a nightmare since you're expected to produce work that is funded by and within the scope of your grant BUT also be innovative and something that your advisor and committee approve and let you graduate with.
- huijzer 4y ago
  > but the last 1-3 years can be a nightmare since you're expected to produce work that is funded by and within the scope of your grant BUT also be innovative and something that your advisor and committee approve and let you graduate with. Great summary! This is exactly how it feels at 3 years in. Every sentence in a paper is a careful balance between adhering to science, the funding agency, the supervisors, and myself.

nemo44x 4y ago

College is about networking and getting sorted into the right groups more than it is about learning anything.

toddm 4y ago

I did a Ph.D. (chemistry) and a M.A. (geology), both at UT-Austin. I have absolutely no regrets, and knew fully what I was signing up for, unlike many people who are featured in articles like the one referenced here: that is a little puzzling, since you are an adult when you embark on the graduate school journey, and there is no shortage of readily-available information about employability, salary, and so on. But enough about the bewildered adults who awaken in the middle of their graduate program and wonder what happened and who to blame other than themselves. Neither graduate degree cost me a dime, as tuition was waived (really, paid by advisor at an in-state rate) and I had combinations of research assistant (RA)/teaching assistant (TA)/fellowship the whole time. There was no assistance at any point from my family. I lived well in Austin in the 1990s, and had a great social life. It was great. I knocked-out my Master's in just over 2 years, then breezed through my Ph.D. in 4 years. I published 6 first-authored papers by graduation time. My advisers were both nice guys, not overly hands-on with career guidance but I was headed towards a tenure-track position anyway. Research projects were reasonable and that was why I was able to go through smoothly. That and I wasn't walking around asking myself what the hell I was doing in grad school...anyway. My postdoctoral fellowships - first at UCSF, then at Princeton - were great with the notable exception that the ~$30K/year salaries did not go far in either location. My tenure-track journey ended with an appointment as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at a small school, and the salary was $52K/9 months. I didn't last long - those deferred student loans from undergrad were due, and the price was steep - but at the rate I was at, if I got a grant with summer salary, I was looking at $70K/year. Totally great experiences. Low salaries even now, and yes I don't bring in big bucks but I'm not a SWE at a FAANG, but that's not for me. Highly recommended.

jrochkind1 4y ago
It is much harder now to follow that path you described than it was 30 years ago. That is, fewer portion of people who would like that path successfully get it. (Yeah, the early 90s is 30 years ago. Shocking to me too). Whether students now "know what they were signing up for" or not (or should somehow be expected to or blamed if they didn't, which is not quite the same question), I couldn't say. None of the survey questions mentioned in the article seem to cover what their expectations were before enrolling, or if they have now changed. I wouldn't assume that they did, or didn't.

supernova87a 4y ago

I think part of the problem for current graduate students (well, for the last generation or so) is that while the past idea / lore of graduate school modeled by mentors (professors, parents) was built on a growing post-war pyramid of faculty jobs and research opportunities, now it has become a saturated pyramid in many fields. So then students find themselves not competing easily for a growing number of jobs, but waiting to see which senior professor retires or dies and opens up a spot. Or else leave for industry. And woe to those who go into fields where there is not a lot of industry to exit to. You've probably heard in your field of the old professors who got a faculty job after one postdoc, or even out of grad school? Well, those days of yore are long gone. And don't think that it was just because they were incredibly smart (well, some of course were) but that the field had ripe jobs for them to fill. Do you see some colleagues going to "odd" countries for positions lately? It's where the money is -- we just didn't realize in the past it actually was tied to where the money was (hidden in the form of jobs). Anyway, also now it has almost become a baseline credential for certain jobs or advancement (like college), further filling up the pipeline with competitors for those jobs. Don't get me wrong, for some people graduate school can be great, a great time to explore and satisfy an intellect that wants to gather and contribute to knowledge. But for others, the idea of graduate school is no longer what it was. You're in for a multiple-postdoc, where-is-this-going-on-the-faculty-track questioned existence, seemingly at the whim of advisors who hardly have time to spend on helping your career. Of course, it varies by field. Chemical engineering, probably ok no matter how relatively bad it seems. Astronomy? Not so much. Biology? Better exits, but you're also competing against everyone who can afford a hot plate and PCR rig. Computer science / ML? Your competition is every student in China who has access to a couple hundred hours of GPU time. (exaggerating a bit of course) Just go into it knowing the situation.

gautamdivgi 4y ago
There is a lot of myth baked into the PhD along with a lot of romanticization of deep innovative work. From school that is pretty much fed to you of scholars and that you need to get a PhD to be known as one. E.g. Newton, Gauss, Kelvin, Tesla, Marie Curie, Pierre Curie, etc. There is a massive misreading of the general situation though like the parent comment mentions. I think until before WWII academia was a rich mans profession. I would bet that people who got into academia were those whose parents had the means to support their education and that they could either independently or through patronage carry out research. This is what most people miss about a PhD or a scholar. It was exclusively a rich mans (and in very exceptional cases a woman married to a rich man or a man married to a rich woman) business. A more extreme example Carl Jung’s wife supported her husband’s research even when he was having an affair with another woman. Remember that cabin he built so eloquently described in “Deep Work” with a walk in the woods. It might have been with the wife’s money. Post WWII government funding for research exploded but there were not enough researchers. Universities brought in more and more professors for their government funded programs and government funded student loans. All professors want tenure track. To handle tenure track you need publications. But now we have a problem - the professors aren’t wealthy. They need to apply for patronage (ahem - government grants) and need to write proposals. The problem is “professorship” is an up or out profession. You get 7 years to move up or get out. In time, the government grants have reduced, the number of professors has ticked upwards. You have a complete rat race for scraps. There are some well-funded departments that continue to attract great students. But by and large its the stress of grant writing that will eat at you. So, in the end the profession itself hasn’t changed much. You’re still petitioning the “rich man” for “patronage”. It’s just that now there are many more petitioners. It’s just not worth it. That being said, there needs to be some mechanism to acquire deep advanced skills as you continue along your professional journey. A masters with a thesis mostly works and can get you a considerable way through. It could be specialized so that you get more time for focused research as opposed to filling up your time with pointless credits. I did a PhD when I was working. It was stressful - but only from a time perspective. I never had stresses of money or career for which I’m thankful. I also had a very considerate advisor. I cannot think of a position in industry today except in research labs that really need a PhD. Everyone going for it needs to look out and understand that.

Gatsky 4y ago

Nature writing an article like this is like a newspaper writing that journalism is a waste of time. It's quite odd, perhaps they do it for the clicks. Nature, and what it represents, is of course part of the problem.

Apocryphon 4y ago

Any software engineers or other tech workers on HN who went on to get graduate degrees in degrees unrelated to CS/SWE/CE/EE?

btrettel 4y ago

I love research, but I hated most of my PhD. "Publish or perish" attitudes caused a lot of friction for me. I try to be more careful in my research than most, and I don't care too much about the sheer number of papers I publish. One great paper beats 100 average papers. I also think that the (practical) requirement to bring in external funding severely limits what research can be done. There are a lot of great ideas that don't sound good to people in control of money. My day job doesn't involve any research now. I do research on the side. I am glad that I can do research at my own pace and don't have to ask permission from others before doing research. The main problem is that I don't have a lot of time for my research, but I'm hoping to switch to part-time eventually.

vouaobrasil 4y ago

I got a PhD in math because it was a life goal for me and it was the best because I had lots of time just to do whatever I wanted and learn some cool math. I ended up going into a math-related career I hate. But it pays well, and so I became ultra frugal, saved up enough money, got a second remote job doing something I like, and now I'm going to roam as a nomad around the world. Screw 9-5, I'm retiring now. Quitting in a few months and couldn't be happier.

plaguepilled 4y ago

Sick of reading about how bleak it is - when are we going to actually do something about academia being so shit? Legislate? Boycott? Offer a competing research structure? Universities REALLY oversell what they do for researchers. There has to be a better way than this.

bcx 4y ago

I spent 3 years in a PhD program, like many of the posters it was one of the most fun experience of my life. I ended up dropping out to do Ycombinator, but it was an incredibly hard decision. Like many things in life not all PhDs are created equal. In my program I was able to take classes across the University that helped broaden my narrow business / computer science undergraduate experience. I was paid somewhere between 20-30K/year, but was able to take graduate business, econ, architecture, anthropology, and computer science classes. I was able to publish papers and travel internationally. My peers were way smarter than me, and went on to find industry and academic jobs, a few dropped out like me and ended up building very successful careers. In general my advice would be, find a program that suits your interest. The benefits of 3 years of largely self-directed learning is not for everyone, but can be an incredible way to grow. Also, your advisor will make or break your experience, I worked for an amazing guy, and still stay in touch, even after dropping out.

chairhairair 4y ago

The second set of graphs must be in error, correct? 67% have attended conferences but only 0.7% have networked...? Only 0.7% have discussed their career with peers/colleagues? That's impossible. Did they forget to convert these decimals to percentages, or did no one sanity-check this data at all?

lemursage 4y ago
Maybe many PhDs attend conferences just because they have to have some paper/poster presentation rather than they are genuinely interested in making new connections? That's what I'm guilty of at least.

6stringmerc 4y ago

A lot of these articles seem to be written by people who had such bad grades they weren’t even eligible for grad school. As in, we’ll it’s probably not good anyway lol

xyzelement 4y ago

It's tricky - I feel like those who get PhD out of true deep love and talent for a field find their way through to happiness. But sadly, a lot of people go into it for the wrong reasons (family pressure, ego, not knowing what else to do) and alas it doesn't often work out. I remember on-campus interviewing an Indian guy who got a BS, MS and now PhD in chemistry, only to realize that he doesn't have a passion for it. That's tragic because all this money/lost time down, he's competing with undergrads for entry level roles. Meanwhile kids that finished undergrad around the same time are already starting to become managers. The world needs PhD level people -- but I just think that your heart has to be into it 10000% and then you'll make it work.

caddemon 4y ago
It's pretty easy to be jaded by the end of a PhD even if you went into it for the field. You often don't get true academic freedom until you get a tenure track professorship, which is increasingly hard to come by. Even then you need to spend a lot of time on showmanship. Doing a PhD for the sake of it is still arguable IMO, I don't regret doing mine. But I wish I didn't go in with the delusion I was pursuing a long term career in academia. Post-PhD academia is a hell of a slog.

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bubblethink 4y ago

A few random thoughts based on personal experience: - A PhD is like a sabbatical in many ways. You are trading off time and money for what amounts to a long break to explore things or work on something that may be difficult otherwise. - Identifying well defined problems is half the game. - Finding a good advisor is quite important. Above all, it should be someone you can get along with. - At least for CS, the tradeoffs are quite reasonable. In a good case, it will open more doors for you. In the worst case, you will be at the same level as a Master's student after having spent a few more years in school.

Exendroinient00 4y ago

Another useless thread of sellouts mocking non sellouts for not selling out. Toxic internet mob didn't spare this website.

wanderingmind 4y ago

PhD is a scam that sucks hardwork from smartest individuals while giving them poverty, mental health problems, significant opportunity cost and graduating them with absolutely no skills that are required to make a living in market economy. I have said it multiple times unless you are doing a CS PhD or you are an Olympiad medalist, PhD is a significant net negative for your life and career.

erfgh 4y ago
Everything you said about CS PhDs also applies to a lesser (but not insignificant) extent to postgraduate and undergraduate degrees. You don't need degrees to make it into the tech world. Yes some companies might ignore you in the very beginning of your career if you don't have a degree but there is so much demand out there for tech workers that you will find a job for sure and after one or two years nobody will care that you don't have a degree. By the time your peers graduate you will have multiple years of experience in the field and that's what everyone cares about. Oh, and doing a CS degree you hardly learn anything about programming and most professors teaching you have never coded anything longer than 50 lines.
Fomite 4y ago
I'm not in CS, and it was neither a net negative on my life or career.

lacker 4y ago

I dropped out of my CS PhD program after two and a half years to "go into industry". It was the perfect amount of time to spend in grad school - just enough time to meet my future wife.

Fomite 4y ago

One of the reasons I enjoy my field is that the assumption you're going into academia isn't baked into things. But I do wonder what these numbers will look like if the SV tech scene starts slowing down significantly. That was always the comparator group people looked toward.

zwaps 4y ago

I finished my PhD at the top program in my country (which is not the US of course) fairly recently. The system is American "inspired" (fully funded, no mandatory work, international professors). For me, the research work was enjoyable, and I was happy to do it "while it lasted". However I think the main problem is that for the largest majority of students, there is no academic future. All of us were top-of-the-class in every scholastic phase up to then. Smart people, all. But after the PhD, and then after the junior job market - there simply aren't many positions anymore. All your academic efforts then culminate into a pack of files describing your merit, a hasty presentation in a hotel or two, and a largely random market deciding whether you will indeed be able to do the job you trained for your entire life, or not! It's a breaking point, and it is stressful not only because of that but especially because everything is uncertain. Expectations are very high. After all, a lot of money has been spent on the PhD students and placing them in academic positions is crucial for the school. However, the job market is exceedingly difficult (for many different situational and even arcane reasons that differ country-by-country - I was going to write more about it, but everyone who knows knows already). In consequence, you are never really prepared enough for the job market. At the same time, your success hinges only marginally on your research and more on prep, predigree, fit and randomness. And so, PhDs have to spend more and more time (6-7 years now) to feel somewhat "ready". Others are pushed by their advisors to stay. During this time, you put your life on hold. You earn as little as the university can get away with in your country. You have to prepared to move anywhere in the world. Family is difficult to realize. Work-life-balance usually non-existent. And the longer you stay, the more you question whether you will ever make it. For us, there were few tenure-tracked positions to be had in that year. People who stayed in academia started with post-doc contracts - often only for a year - all around the world. A continuation of the above. I am sure some will eventually succeed. I myself decided to take a non-academic position, which was a breeze by comparison. From my cohort, almost all have ended up with some sort of mental health issue. Even though I never really felt it, I did notice (after leaving) that I had been depressed during the final year. Two PhD students were admitted to the hospital for issues I am 100% sure are stress induced. At the same time, I don't know how to fix all this. Being a tenured professor will always be the dream for many people. At least as it appears on the surface. For it to be that, there will never be as many positions as applicants.

philshem 4y ago

The Simpsons' take on grad students: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqrCoyVK80I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqrCoyVK80I (edit: I have a PhD)

ansc 4y ago

Don't worry -- you probably wouldn't "want this kind of life" when you're a corporate drone either.

graycat 4y ago

During parts of the Cold War, near DC, some knowledge of some STEM topics, e.g., assembler, Fortran, PL/I, C, the algorithms in the relevant book by Knuth, the fast Fourier transform, Kalman filtering, Maxwell's equations, algebraic coding theory, antenna theory, optimization, especially with a Ph.D., could generate a relatively good career in US national security. Maybe now, not just near DC or in US national security, if can get a job in some organization that is doing important work, then there is a chance that can see an important problem and use good STEM field knowledge and computing to get a very valuable solution -- none of the effort part of the job description. And IMHO computing and the Internet are continuing to explode, that is, have not yet nearly been fully exploited. Then maybe pick a promising problem, use some STEM field knowledge, computing, and the Internet to get a valuable solution, and start a business. Ph.D.? (1) Aim for a Ph.D. in engineering. (2) Take some courses you believe might be helpful for your Ph.D. research and/or your career later. (3) For your research, find, pick your own problem, maybe from practice outside of academics. (4) Complete your research on your own and hand the results to your department or advisor(s). At some universities, the official requirement for a dissertation is "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication" So, at such a university and more generally, to remove nearly all doubt about your dissertation, publish your work. Maybe for your first job, accept an assistant professor position in some engineering school and from there make contacts for a good career outside of academics.

randomsearch 4y ago

Having had a lot of experience of academia, I’m probably one its harshest critics. But - I don’t regret the PhD. I learnt a lot of skills, learnt from other PhD students and postdocs. I will say, make sure your supervisor is a nice person who does not place their career above all else. I was lucky with that, and I think finding such a person in academic is increasingly difficult. Never do a PhD with a supervisor you are unsure about. Finish the PhD in 3 years (U.K.) and get the hell out. There is nothing left in academia for people who genuinely want to improve the world. If your goal is getting paid a reasonable amount for a bit of a silly job, and you can tolerate or enjoy politics and game playing, that’s fine, stay. Hours are flexible, you can get away with not doing anything much at all for your career, and the pensions in the U.K. are still very generous. Over the summers most people don’t actually do any work.

a_bonobo 4y ago
>I will say, make sure your supervisor is a nice person who does not place their career above all else. I was lucky with that, and I think finding such a person in academic is increasingly difficult. Never do a PhD with a supervisor you are unsure about. This is a great point. A bad supervisor will make your time miserable, and universities generally have no interest in weeding out the bad ones. There's an academic whisper-net where this knowledge is spread, but undergrad or MSc students generally have no access to the net. Which is a shame as it would protect them from terrible supervisors who look good to the world. If you're in that position, see if you can find a Prof who you can trust and explicitly ask them about colleagues in a 1-on-1 meeting; at least you'll get some access then.
- marcosfelt 4y ago
  I agree with the whisper net comment. You learn about who's good and bad pretty quickly once you get into a department, but everyone is hush-hush otherwise. We need a glassdoor for academia.

red_admiral 4y ago

For PhDs in the humanities in the US, this Brett Deveraux piece is worth reading: https://acoup.blog/2021/10/01/collections-so-you-want-to-go-to-grad-school-in-the-academic-humanities/ https://acoup.blog/2021/10/01/collections-so-you-want-to-go-... The TL/DR is basically: don't.

marcosfelt 4y ago
Wow, this is a lot.

balsam 4y ago

I put it down to a lack of focus. Research universities had one job, to ensure the undelayed success of someone (or collective) like Yitang Zhang/Katalin Kariko, and it failed, while managing to award tenure to many a downright incompetent or even fraudulent persons and research groups. Surely doing this job is, if not easier, more important than achieving general AI? When I say easier, I refer to the ontopic suggestion of giving every person who gets a PhD a basic income..

flownoon 4y ago

I got a PhD in 2.5 years (already had a masters), a very fast amount of time, and the advice I always give people is “pick a program with clear deliverables.” My advisor said that after publishing 3 articles in good journals, I was done. So I was very motivated, had a clear target, and had a more satisfying and quick experience than probably 98% of PhD students. I looked at programs in more attractive locations and at better rated schools, where they said essentially “you are done when we feel like you are done”. I turned them down and it was a fantastic decision.

iorrus 4y ago
IMO this is exactly not how to do a PhD which should be about exploring a topic and becoming an expert over time. A meandering path concentrated around self directed learning. If you want clear deliverables and a set path to follow, just get a job in industry.
- falcor84 4y ago
  >If you want clear deliverables and a set path to follow, just get a job in industry. I find this to be an extremely over-generous view of what industry work is like. But my actual point is that whether you are in academia or industry, you should prefer a position where you have some real control over the deliverables, rather than being a puppet on the strings of a boss or advisor.
  - iorrus 4y ago
    Yes, it's true that industry is not like this all the time. I've done the PhD/Postdoc route now working as a data scientist in mega corp. The value of a PhD IMO is the pain of forcing yourself to learn things independently, work on hard problems for long periods of time and develop expertise. I think following a set path laid out by a supervisor defeats alot of this as the hard work is being done for you, you're just following your supervisor's set agenda. Industry simply doesn't allow for this long deep, mostly unproductive work. Things change constantly and projects move, adapt etc. However the goals are for the most part better defined with a clear outcome. A post below put this well, academia is closer to a start up lifestyle.

bigbacaloa 4y ago

A doctoral program makes sense for someone who wants to spend the rest of his/her life studying something that can't be studied except in an academic context. It makes sense for no one else. In particular, it is usually silly to do a doctorate if one's ambitions are to make money or succeed professionally in business/commerce/engineering. On the other hand, if those are one's ambitions, one generally doesn't have the sort of passion needed for research.

idanman 4y ago

I was working full time and did my PhD at the same time. My employer let me do the work at work (there was a lot of overlap) and only had to travel to university to take a few classes (made up the time by working longer hours and sometimes on weekends) and meet with my academic advisor. I also had an advisor (mentor) at work that I would interact with on a daily basis. The downside was that I had to pay tuition, but the company paid for some and the rest I paid from my salary. I still made more than a graduate student at the institution. Overall, it was a great experience. I would recommend doing it this way if you are interested in going into industry and you already have a built-in job. I was upfront when I got hired and told them I was looking to do a PhD and they agreed.

Balgair 4y ago

A good piece on going to grad school or not. It's tailored to the Humanities, but the advice is still relevant for the Sciences: https://acoup.blog/2021/10/01/collections-so-you-want-to-go-to-grad-school-in-the-academic-humanities/ https://acoup.blog/2021/10/01/collections-so-you-want-to-go-... TLDR: Only go if you meet 1 of 2 conditions: 1) You are rich. 2) You get along with your advisor so well you know within 9 months of meeting/working with them that you'll be at their funeral no matter what. The chance of this is a dice roll with very heavy disadvantage (4xd20, choose lowest). Otherwise, try it out for a year, then bounce. It's not worth your time.

mathteddybear 4y ago

The survey did not include any question about start-up career prospects, I suppose what Paul Graham touted regarding software startups is not widely applicable across most fields.

joshcsimmons 4y ago

I don't regret doing mine but at the same time I'd never recommend it to anyone.