6 ms·

I used to work with a brilliant and humble guy. He got accepted to MIT at 14, but his parents made him go to community college for a year to give him a little m

I used to work with a brilliant and humble guy. He got accepted to MIT at 14, but his parents made him go to community college for a year to give him a little more time to mature. He then went to MIT and graduated after three years, then went to Berkeley and got a masters in one year, then went to Stanford and it took six years to get his PhD? Why? Because his advisor milked him for his work. She had a pile of papers to peer review ... hand it off to the grad studends. Have a talk to give? Give the grad students the task for writing up first drafts, collecting data, generating graphs etc. My friend said that nothing in the first five years of his PhD work contributed to his dissertation. I'm amazed that behavior like that of the advisor is allowed.

19skitsch 5mo ago
yeah I do feel like the PhD system is not uniform in terms of students’ experiences. some get out quite quickly if their advisor is chill while others are stuck being stack ranked in their labs or doing grunt work. your fate is basically in the hands of your advisor..
- genxy 5mo ago
  Which is why you should shop for the advisor and then tailor yourself to the labs you want to apply to. Interview current and former students. Go to conferences where that lab is presenting papers, etc. Have some solid blue collar academic skills like cleaning data, doing instrumentation, hell even making bad ass slide decks will get you noticed. Getting a PhD is similar to landing the job you want. Also showing up with a problem you want to solve that aligns with the lab AND the skills to pull it off, boom! During undergrad a bunch of us got good enough at electronics and the machine shop that we had grad students asking US for help. We didn't realize it at the time, but just the instrumentation work could have landed us many a phd program, we were just having fun.
jasonhong 5mo ago
Speaking as someone who has graduated over a dozen PhD students in computer science... Yes, it is possible to complete a PhD in 3-4 years, but it's not really good for your career. The bar our department sets for a PhD is that at the end of it, you should be a world expert in your specific topic. A PhD is more like an apprenticeship, where you develop and refine your skills, your background knowledge in your area of specialization, your ability to write and do presentations, and your taste in research problems. These are all things take a lot of time to mature. The problem with graduating fast is that (a) you wouldn't be able to do internships, (b) you would severely limit your ability to grow your social network (via workshops, conferences, internships, department service, etc), (c) you would limit your ability to deepen and broaden your portfolio of research, and (d) you limit the time your ideas have to percolate out into the rest of the research community and industry. While I can't speak directly about your friend's experiences, learning how to do peer review and learning how to write first drafts are really important skills that can indirectly help with coming up and executing on a dissertation idea.
- genxy 5mo ago
  I agree with all those things, but we should be starting that training in middle school. Deconstructing arguments, making reports, giving presentations, solving open ended questions. Many of these things involve a modest amount of critical thinking, prediction and self-reflection.
- drapado 5mo ago
  Are those PhDs being paid with a decent salary? If not, I can’t agree with your statement. PS. I did my PhD in an EU country where it’s treated as another researcher job with salary and benefits
  - dekhn 5mo ago
    PhD candidates in the US usually get somewhere between $25K and $50K stipend, also some level of benefits (typically health care). Sometimes there is a tuition waiver (student does not need to pay grad program tuition). In my case I was making $32K/year with a tuition waiver and health benefits around ~2000, in SF, which was barely enough to rent a shared apartment and eat food. The only way I could rationalize it is that I was maximizing my future freedom (job choice).
    - lovich 5mo ago
      Wait, some PhD candidates are being paid near minimum wage and are still paying their university to do work for their university? That just sounds like indentured servitude with extra steps.
      - dekhn 5mo ago
        Yes, I suppose you could try to justify it as "this is the price you pay for having the freedom to build your own research plan in the future" ("maximizing your future freedom") but in reality, this just sets you up for more of the same- getting a faculty position (pre-tenure) with a low salary, and immense pressure to bring in funds via research grants/publish papers. I eventually tired of the process and moved to industry because the struggle wasn't worth it.
etempleton 5mo ago
This seems to be how many PhD programs go. Almost all want to quit in the last couple years despite the time invested already. Few want to stay in academia, because they have been abused and used and realize that the same would happened if they try to earn tenure.
- dhosek 5mo ago
  R. F. Kuang’s Katabasis was a fun look at the hell that is graduate school told through a fantasy lens. That paired with the McSweeney’s snake fight article should be essential reading for all would-be grad students.
  - throwaway2037 5mo ago
    This one? https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-portion-of-your-thesis-defense https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-port...
- throwaway-away 5mo ago
  I am one of those guys. I left for a big tech job even though doing research to push the boundaries of human knowledge was my dream. I know, a cliche, but I was a 20 something year old at the time. The straw that broke the camel back was being treated like shit by my avisor for the nth time. I still remember it. He was like let's meet tomorrow at 8.30. I woke up at 6.30 to be there in time. He shows up at 10.37. Mind you, this happened like a 10s times over the 2 years I was doing my doctorate. And that was just one of the things he would do to undermine you and have the feeling he hold you by the balls. And he sort of did. Not being able to do anything because of potential repercussions was dreadful. Anyway, after that day I decided it was enough. I slashed his car tires in the evening, still showed up for a couple of weeks to avoid suspicions, and only then formally quit.
pcurve 5mo ago
your friend should make a blog post about that. People like that should be exposed.
- buellerbueller 5mo ago
  People like what? Bosses whose methods you disagree with?
- BeetleB 5mo ago
  Not much to expose. Go to any top department in the US, and there will be a handful of them. It's not exactly a secret.
dekhn 5mo ago
Those are typically skills a starting scientist needs to learn. At the same time, sometimes it does feel abusive especially if the student doesn't get some sort of credit for doing the peer review and talk prep. In my program the main reasons people took a long time to graduate was: by year 6 you are usually very well-trained and highly productive (making you very useful to your advisor), and advisors often require you to publish an important paper in a major journal (Science, Nature, Cell) before they sign your dissertation.
tty456 5mo ago
Sad to think of the kind of impact someone like that could have in private sector had they not pursued the phd.
- convolvatron 5mo ago
  that's a very weird comment to make. the scope for doing novel work and contributing to the canon is almost always zero. its extremely difficult to maneuver yourself into a position where you're permitted to scribble outside the box at all. and those situations where you are often require having a phd and a track record in doing research.
YesBox 5mo ago
Just sharing another story: A molecular biochemist PhD I know was forced to redo her advisor's experiment over and over again because it wasn't getting the results he wanted. She knew she was beating a dead horse over the several years she was directed to work on the experiment, and had no other choice but to continue marching forward.
crypto420 5mo ago
My PhD advisor found out that my English writing skills are quite good and the rest of their lab were Chinese internationals, so they started making me write all of their research grants. 30 pages every 2 months, pre-ChatGPT days.
mohamedkoubaa 5mo ago
I decided not to get a PhD against the wishes of my professors and family members because I felt the opportunity cost was too high. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.
matthewdgreen 5mo ago
Reviewing papers, writing papers, these are all part of what grad students do and what they should be doing to learn. They should be getting academic credit for it, however. Your friend sounds like he had an extremely unusual and bad experience, or there's a bit more to the story.
lowbloodsugar 5mo ago
there are two types of people in post-grad academia. those who are interested in advancing knowledge, and those who are interested in advancing their career. i've worked with many phds who were completely useless - they understood how to work for a career minded advisor because they were career minded themselves. those were their skills: doing what they were told, kowtowing, reading other people's work and talking about it as if they understand it. generating and iterating ideas at the pace required for business? non-existent to the point of appearing mentally incompetent. i'd go so far as to say that the office politics involved in academia is antithetical to knowledge creation. i've also worked with phds who were absolute creating geniuses, but I've worked with even more who didn't do a phd or who quit their phd to focus on commericalizing an idea.
QuantumFunnel 5mo ago
Being amazed at how that's allowed displays a naiveté only one could have if they've never been in the process. What you describe is exactly what being in academia is all about for the last couple generations. Being a grad student sounds prestigious to an outsider, but the system is literally built to exploit their labor.
light_hue_1 5mo ago
I've graduated many PhD students at a top tier university. That advisor was correct. What they were doing is teaching their PhD student. You must learn to write good reviews. That doesn't happen without writing quite a few. Of course grad students should generate the first draft of talks, collect data, and generate graphics. That's exactly the point of grad school. You need to learn how to organize and present knowledge. How to tell a story. >My friend said that nothing in the first five years of his PhD work contributed to his dissertation. The point of the PhD is to learn to think about hard problems that are vague, to find your way around them, and learn how to do something new. It's not to stuff as much as possible into a dissertation or anything else. And 6 years for a PhD? That's about right. You need to go from 0 to being the go-to expert everywhere on a totally new problem.
- MrDarcy 5mo ago
  This is insanity. Then let them learn by advancing their own goals, not the goals of their exploiter. I won’t even call it advising because it clearly is not as you yourself admit.

19skitsch 5mo ago

yeah I do feel like the PhD system is not uniform in terms of students’ experiences. some get out quite quickly if their advisor is chill while others are stuck being stack ranked in their labs or doing grunt work. your fate is basically in the hands of your advisor..

genxy 5mo ago
Which is why you should shop for the advisor and then tailor yourself to the labs you want to apply to. Interview current and former students. Go to conferences where that lab is presenting papers, etc. Have some solid blue collar academic skills like cleaning data, doing instrumentation, hell even making bad ass slide decks will get you noticed. Getting a PhD is similar to landing the job you want. Also showing up with a problem you want to solve that aligns with the lab AND the skills to pull it off, boom! During undergrad a bunch of us got good enough at electronics and the machine shop that we had grad students asking US for help. We didn't realize it at the time, but just the instrumentation work could have landed us many a phd program, we were just having fun.

jasonhong 5mo ago

Speaking as someone who has graduated over a dozen PhD students in computer science... Yes, it is possible to complete a PhD in 3-4 years, but it's not really good for your career. The bar our department sets for a PhD is that at the end of it, you should be a world expert in your specific topic. A PhD is more like an apprenticeship, where you develop and refine your skills, your background knowledge in your area of specialization, your ability to write and do presentations, and your taste in research problems. These are all things take a lot of time to mature. The problem with graduating fast is that (a) you wouldn't be able to do internships, (b) you would severely limit your ability to grow your social network (via workshops, conferences, internships, department service, etc), (c) you would limit your ability to deepen and broaden your portfolio of research, and (d) you limit the time your ideas have to percolate out into the rest of the research community and industry. While I can't speak directly about your friend's experiences, learning how to do peer review and learning how to write first drafts are really important skills that can indirectly help with coming up and executing on a dissertation idea.

genxy 5mo ago
I agree with all those things, but we should be starting that training in middle school. Deconstructing arguments, making reports, giving presentations, solving open ended questions. Many of these things involve a modest amount of critical thinking, prediction and self-reflection.
drapado 5mo ago
Are those PhDs being paid with a decent salary? If not, I can’t agree with your statement. PS. I did my PhD in an EU country where it’s treated as another researcher job with salary and benefits
- dekhn 5mo ago
  PhD candidates in the US usually get somewhere between $25K and $50K stipend, also some level of benefits (typically health care). Sometimes there is a tuition waiver (student does not need to pay grad program tuition). In my case I was making $32K/year with a tuition waiver and health benefits around ~2000, in SF, which was barely enough to rent a shared apartment and eat food. The only way I could rationalize it is that I was maximizing my future freedom (job choice).
  - lovich 5mo ago
    Wait, some PhD candidates are being paid near minimum wage and are still paying their university to do work for their university? That just sounds like indentured servitude with extra steps.
    - dekhn 5mo ago
      Yes, I suppose you could try to justify it as "this is the price you pay for having the freedom to build your own research plan in the future" ("maximizing your future freedom") but in reality, this just sets you up for more of the same- getting a faculty position (pre-tenure) with a low salary, and immense pressure to bring in funds via research grants/publish papers. I eventually tired of the process and moved to industry because the struggle wasn't worth it.

etempleton 5mo ago

This seems to be how many PhD programs go. Almost all want to quit in the last couple years despite the time invested already. Few want to stay in academia, because they have been abused and used and realize that the same would happened if they try to earn tenure.

dhosek 5mo ago
R. F. Kuang’s Katabasis was a fun look at the hell that is graduate school told through a fantasy lens. That paired with the McSweeney’s snake fight article should be essential reading for all would-be grad students.
- throwaway2037 5mo ago
  This one? https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-portion-of-your-thesis-defense https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-port...
throwaway-away 5mo ago
I am one of those guys. I left for a big tech job even though doing research to push the boundaries of human knowledge was my dream. I know, a cliche, but I was a 20 something year old at the time. The straw that broke the camel back was being treated like shit by my avisor for the nth time. I still remember it. He was like let's meet tomorrow at 8.30. I woke up at 6.30 to be there in time. He shows up at 10.37. Mind you, this happened like a 10s times over the 2 years I was doing my doctorate. And that was just one of the things he would do to undermine you and have the feeling he hold you by the balls. And he sort of did. Not being able to do anything because of potential repercussions was dreadful. Anyway, after that day I decided it was enough. I slashed his car tires in the evening, still showed up for a couple of weeks to avoid suspicions, and only then formally quit.

pcurve 5mo ago

your friend should make a blog post about that. People like that should be exposed.

buellerbueller 5mo ago
People like what? Bosses whose methods you disagree with?
BeetleB 5mo ago
Not much to expose. Go to any top department in the US, and there will be a handful of them. It's not exactly a secret.

dekhn 5mo ago

Those are typically skills a starting scientist needs to learn. At the same time, sometimes it does feel abusive especially if the student doesn't get some sort of credit for doing the peer review and talk prep. In my program the main reasons people took a long time to graduate was: by year 6 you are usually very well-trained and highly productive (making you very useful to your advisor), and advisors often require you to publish an important paper in a major journal (Science, Nature, Cell) before they sign your dissertation.

tty456 5mo ago

Sad to think of the kind of impact someone like that could have in private sector had they not pursued the phd.

convolvatron 5mo ago
that's a very weird comment to make. the scope for doing novel work and contributing to the canon is almost always zero. its extremely difficult to maneuver yourself into a position where you're permitted to scribble outside the box at all. and those situations where you are often require having a phd and a track record in doing research.

YesBox 5mo ago

Just sharing another story: A molecular biochemist PhD I know was forced to redo her advisor's experiment over and over again because it wasn't getting the results he wanted. She knew she was beating a dead horse over the several years she was directed to work on the experiment, and had no other choice but to continue marching forward.

crypto420 5mo ago

My PhD advisor found out that my English writing skills are quite good and the rest of their lab were Chinese internationals, so they started making me write all of their research grants. 30 pages every 2 months, pre-ChatGPT days.

mohamedkoubaa 5mo ago

I decided not to get a PhD against the wishes of my professors and family members because I felt the opportunity cost was too high. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

matthewdgreen 5mo ago

Reviewing papers, writing papers, these are all part of what grad students do and what they should be doing to learn. They should be getting academic credit for it, however. Your friend sounds like he had an extremely unusual and bad experience, or there's a bit more to the story.

lowbloodsugar 5mo ago

there are two types of people in post-grad academia. those who are interested in advancing knowledge, and those who are interested in advancing their career. i've worked with many phds who were completely useless - they understood how to work for a career minded advisor because they were career minded themselves. those were their skills: doing what they were told, kowtowing, reading other people's work and talking about it as if they understand it. generating and iterating ideas at the pace required for business? non-existent to the point of appearing mentally incompetent. i'd go so far as to say that the office politics involved in academia is antithetical to knowledge creation. i've also worked with phds who were absolute creating geniuses, but I've worked with even more who didn't do a phd or who quit their phd to focus on commericalizing an idea.

QuantumFunnel 5mo ago

Being amazed at how that's allowed displays a naiveté only one could have if they've never been in the process. What you describe is exactly what being in academia is all about for the last couple generations. Being a grad student sounds prestigious to an outsider, but the system is literally built to exploit their labor.

light_hue_1 5mo ago

I've graduated many PhD students at a top tier university. That advisor was correct. What they were doing is teaching their PhD student. You must learn to write good reviews. That doesn't happen without writing quite a few. Of course grad students should generate the first draft of talks, collect data, and generate graphics. That's exactly the point of grad school. You need to learn how to organize and present knowledge. How to tell a story. >My friend said that nothing in the first five years of his PhD work contributed to his dissertation. The point of the PhD is to learn to think about hard problems that are vague, to find your way around them, and learn how to do something new. It's not to stuff as much as possible into a dissertation or anything else. And 6 years for a PhD? That's about right. You need to go from 0 to being the go-to expert everywhere on a totally new problem.

MrDarcy 5mo ago
This is insanity. Then let them learn by advancing their own goals, not the goals of their exploiter. I won’t even call it advising because it clearly is not as you yourself admit.