5 ms·

This happened when I was in grad school back in the late 90s. Clinton increased the budget of the NIH significantly (thanks Bill) which led to a huge increase

by dekhn 1y ago

This happened when I was in grad school back in the late 90s. Clinton increased the budget of the NIH significantly (thanks Bill) which led to a huge increase in training grants allowing PhD programs to expand. However, faculty positions did not expand, so many PhDs had to find alternate careers (most people go into PhD program to get a faculty/researcher position). This actually worked out really well for bigtech, which hoovered these folks up. I worked with tons of ex-physicists who were great programmers especially at machine learning. It turns out that many of the things you need to thrive in a PhD program translate to bigtech engineering needfs.

jojobas 1y ago
That sure applies to maths/physics PhDs, not so much for arts ones, these are still competing for a handful of academic jobs and the rest go to menial jobs with huge debts.
redczar 1y ago
You think it was a bad decision to increase NIH budget?
- dekhn 1y ago
  That's a great question. To the extent that increasing the budget caused more smart people to get PhDs and more of them were able to contribute to the scientific effort (as well as help bigtech develop ML and contribute back to science), I think it was a good idea. It might have been better executed- somehow matching the increased supply of grad students with increase supply of faculty positions, or perhaps just growing it more slowly to let the inequalities equilibrate a bit more. But ultimately, I think it was a good thing, in that it increased the total science being done.
  - wileydragonfly 1y ago
    Yeah, NIH had two guys (Lauer and Collins) that tried to do all kinds of things to spread out funding to junior researchers and increase the number of jobs. The entrenched investigators fought them every step of the way and Trump has since run both off.
  - redczar 1y ago
    Thanks for the clarification.
tptacek 1y ago
My understanding is that there are lots of industry jobs in NIH's ambit that tacitly require PhD's (very much unlike the technology industry).
aleph_minus_one 1y ago
> It turns out that many of the things you need to thrive in a PhD program translate to bigtech engineering needfs. This is contrary to my life experience (even for math or physics PhDs). What makes a great PhD thesis is to question an insane lot of assumptions of deep results in the field of your PhD thesis, and show that if you base these on a very different foundation, these results generalize to whole different areas; e.g. you found a bridge between seemingly unrelated areas of studies. On the other hand, managers deeply hate it if you question a lot of assumptions behind the work that you do, whether it is some special case of something deeper, and aren't obedient to the manager's leadership. In other words: a great PhD program teaches you to think and work all the time on things managers will hate you for.
- dekhn 1y ago
  Certainly a subset of PhDs who work at bigtech fail to have any impact. I've seen a few brilliant but inflexible people hit up against the immovable parts of a corporation. I've also seen brilliant PhDs who refuse to study for a software engineering interview... and then fail miserably. But by and large, based on hundreds of individuals, I've found that quantitative PhDs can drop into many SWE roles and contribute- both mundane improvements to code quality, and massive improvements to the foundations of projects.
  - znpy 1y ago
    > I've seen a few brilliant but inflexible people hit up against the immovable parts of a corporation. With such an attitude it would have only been a matter of time before they hit up the immovable part of academia as well.
sien 1y ago
It's global. Here is something on Australia : https://theconversation.com/australia-has-way-more-phd-graduates-than-academic-jobs-heres-how-to-rethink-doctoral-degrees-203057 https://theconversation.com/australia-has-way-more-phd-gradu... Key quotes : The number of PhD completions has been steadily growing over the past two decades, from about 4,000 to about 10,000 per year. According to our calculations* based on the information available, the cumulative number of people in Australia with a PhD has increased from about 135,000 in 2016 to about 185,000 in 2021. The incentives are for Universities to get smart young people to do their work cheaply. What happens to the graduates afterwards ceases to be the University's problem. The only strange thing about it is that the smart young people are taking so long to figure it out.
- lapcat 1y ago
  > The only strange thing about it is that the smart young people are taking so long to figure it out. I don't think it's so strange. They're smart in their chosen fields, but intelligence is not wisdom or hard experience. Moreover, intelligence breeds confidence, often overconfidence, the idea that you'll be the one to beat the odds. I suppose the same thing happens to young, talented athletes, for example.
  - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
    > Moreover, intelligence breeds confidence, often overconfidence Quite the opposite: intelligence is linked to depression: https://engl105sp2020.web.unc.edu/2020/02/is-there-a-link-between-intelligence-and-depression/ https://engl105sp2020.web.unc.edu/2020/02/is-there-a-link-be...
    - lapcat 1y ago
      1) Mental illness is not the opposite of academic confidence. And graduate school applicants must demonstrate undergraduate academic achievement in order to be accepted, so there is a clear basis for confidence. 2) IQ is pseudoscience. 3) "Karpinski and her team emailed several members of a group named “American Mensa” OMG just stop right there. 4) "The authors of this study could not find a similar group of average intelligence people to utilize as a control group, so they used national data regarding disorders of people with any range of intelligence and assumed overall intelligence would be average." Garbage.
georgeburdell 1y ago
I have a PhD and I felt that I had to deprogram myself to fit in with BigTech. With a PhD, I would uncompromisingly pursue a single goal. Ideas were worth something. In Big Tech, ideas are in abundance but time is short, and I must compromise to follow through on my commitments. The only thing I really have an advantage over non-PhDs is that I get suspicious of good results Edit: totally unrelated, but PhDs in the West basically seem to be immigration schemes, and universities are happy to play along.
- gopher_space 1y ago
  Money brought in by foreign students is greater than money brought in by out of state students, which is greater than money brought in by local students. The way tuition is set up as a general concept will lead to this situation if your institution lasts long enough.
  - lapcat 1y ago
    Many graduate students get tuition waivers, so this is largely irrelevant. The difference is that in graduate school, there's little or no bias in favor of in-state candidates, whereas for state universities, it's basically their mission statement to make dedicated space for in-state undergraduates. Keep in mind that graduate school admission is controlled by the individual academic departments, but individual academic departments don't directly get tuition money from its students. The professors on the admissions committee don't care how much tuition the students pay.
    - judahmeek 1y ago
      > The professors on the admissions committee don't care how much tuition the students pay. I'm confident that all professors are aware of the revenue streams of their universities and are incentivized to maximize those revenue streams, even if only implicitly.
      - lapcat 1y ago
        > I'm confident that all professors are aware of the revenue streams of their universities and are incentivized to maximize those revenue streams, even if only implicitly. I'm confident that they aren't. Furthermore, professors have to work personally with their grad students. Teach them, advise them, employ them, publish with them, recommend them for jobs. It's ridiculous to suggest that they're choosing their students based on in-state vs. out-state tuition. That's the very last thing they give a damn about. Do you have any first-hand knowledge of graduate school?
627467 1y ago
I'm not questioning that PhD programmes infuse skills/knowledge useful in big tech but I wonder if here we're are also looking at useless grade/degree inflation. Surely if there's surplus of "overqualified individuals" it becomes cheaper to hire them. Is it net cost effective for all that this is the case? Do you really gain so much by wasting(?) 3 to 5 years in a PhD programme?

by dekhn 1y ago

jojobas 1y ago

That sure applies to maths/physics PhDs, not so much for arts ones, these are still competing for a handful of academic jobs and the rest go to menial jobs with huge debts.

redczar 1y ago

You think it was a bad decision to increase NIH budget?

dekhn 1y ago
That's a great question. To the extent that increasing the budget caused more smart people to get PhDs and more of them were able to contribute to the scientific effort (as well as help bigtech develop ML and contribute back to science), I think it was a good idea. It might have been better executed- somehow matching the increased supply of grad students with increase supply of faculty positions, or perhaps just growing it more slowly to let the inequalities equilibrate a bit more. But ultimately, I think it was a good thing, in that it increased the total science being done.
- wileydragonfly 1y ago
  Yeah, NIH had two guys (Lauer and Collins) that tried to do all kinds of things to spread out funding to junior researchers and increase the number of jobs. The entrenched investigators fought them every step of the way and Trump has since run both off.
- redczar 1y ago
  Thanks for the clarification.

tptacek 1y ago

My understanding is that there are lots of industry jobs in NIH's ambit that tacitly require PhD's (very much unlike the technology industry).

aleph_minus_one 1y ago

> It turns out that many of the things you need to thrive in a PhD program translate to bigtech engineering needfs. This is contrary to my life experience (even for math or physics PhDs). What makes a great PhD thesis is to question an insane lot of assumptions of deep results in the field of your PhD thesis, and show that if you base these on a very different foundation, these results generalize to whole different areas; e.g. you found a bridge between seemingly unrelated areas of studies. On the other hand, managers deeply hate it if you question a lot of assumptions behind the work that you do, whether it is some special case of something deeper, and aren't obedient to the manager's leadership. In other words: a great PhD program teaches you to think and work all the time on things managers will hate you for.

dekhn 1y ago
Certainly a subset of PhDs who work at bigtech fail to have any impact. I've seen a few brilliant but inflexible people hit up against the immovable parts of a corporation. I've also seen brilliant PhDs who refuse to study for a software engineering interview... and then fail miserably. But by and large, based on hundreds of individuals, I've found that quantitative PhDs can drop into many SWE roles and contribute- both mundane improvements to code quality, and massive improvements to the foundations of projects.
- znpy 1y ago
  > I've seen a few brilliant but inflexible people hit up against the immovable parts of a corporation. With such an attitude it would have only been a matter of time before they hit up the immovable part of academia as well.

sien 1y ago

It's global. Here is something on Australia : https://theconversation.com/australia-has-way-more-phd-graduates-than-academic-jobs-heres-how-to-rethink-doctoral-degrees-203057 https://theconversation.com/australia-has-way-more-phd-gradu... Key quotes : The number of PhD completions has been steadily growing over the past two decades, from about 4,000 to about 10,000 per year. According to our calculations* based on the information available, the cumulative number of people in Australia with a PhD has increased from about 135,000 in 2016 to about 185,000 in 2021. The incentives are for Universities to get smart young people to do their work cheaply. What happens to the graduates afterwards ceases to be the University's problem. The only strange thing about it is that the smart young people are taking so long to figure it out.

lapcat 1y ago
> The only strange thing about it is that the smart young people are taking so long to figure it out. I don't think it's so strange. They're smart in their chosen fields, but intelligence is not wisdom or hard experience. Moreover, intelligence breeds confidence, often overconfidence, the idea that you'll be the one to beat the odds. I suppose the same thing happens to young, talented athletes, for example.
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago
  > Moreover, intelligence breeds confidence, often overconfidence Quite the opposite: intelligence is linked to depression: https://engl105sp2020.web.unc.edu/2020/02/is-there-a-link-between-intelligence-and-depression/ https://engl105sp2020.web.unc.edu/2020/02/is-there-a-link-be...
  - lapcat 1y ago
    1) Mental illness is not the opposite of academic confidence. And graduate school applicants must demonstrate undergraduate academic achievement in order to be accepted, so there is a clear basis for confidence. 2) IQ is pseudoscience. 3) "Karpinski and her team emailed several members of a group named “American Mensa” OMG just stop right there. 4) "The authors of this study could not find a similar group of average intelligence people to utilize as a control group, so they used national data regarding disorders of people with any range of intelligence and assumed overall intelligence would be average." Garbage.

georgeburdell 1y ago

I have a PhD and I felt that I had to deprogram myself to fit in with BigTech. With a PhD, I would uncompromisingly pursue a single goal. Ideas were worth something. In Big Tech, ideas are in abundance but time is short, and I must compromise to follow through on my commitments. The only thing I really have an advantage over non-PhDs is that I get suspicious of good results Edit: totally unrelated, but PhDs in the West basically seem to be immigration schemes, and universities are happy to play along.

gopher_space 1y ago
Money brought in by foreign students is greater than money brought in by out of state students, which is greater than money brought in by local students. The way tuition is set up as a general concept will lead to this situation if your institution lasts long enough.
- lapcat 1y ago
  Many graduate students get tuition waivers, so this is largely irrelevant. The difference is that in graduate school, there's little or no bias in favor of in-state candidates, whereas for state universities, it's basically their mission statement to make dedicated space for in-state undergraduates. Keep in mind that graduate school admission is controlled by the individual academic departments, but individual academic departments don't directly get tuition money from its students. The professors on the admissions committee don't care how much tuition the students pay.
  - judahmeek 1y ago
    > The professors on the admissions committee don't care how much tuition the students pay. I'm confident that all professors are aware of the revenue streams of their universities and are incentivized to maximize those revenue streams, even if only implicitly.
    - lapcat 1y ago
      > I'm confident that all professors are aware of the revenue streams of their universities and are incentivized to maximize those revenue streams, even if only implicitly. I'm confident that they aren't. Furthermore, professors have to work personally with their grad students. Teach them, advise them, employ them, publish with them, recommend them for jobs. It's ridiculous to suggest that they're choosing their students based on in-state vs. out-state tuition. That's the very last thing they give a damn about. Do you have any first-hand knowledge of graduate school?

627467 1y ago

I'm not questioning that PhD programmes infuse skills/knowledge useful in big tech but I wonder if here we're are also looking at useless grade/degree inflation. Surely if there's surplus of "overqualified individuals" it becomes cheaper to hire them. Is it net cost effective for all that this is the case? Do you really gain so much by wasting(?) 3 to 5 years in a PhD programme?