3 ms·

To give a counterpoint, as a current CS PhD student... If you measure how much money someone will make in the next 10 years from the point they decide whether

by javert 14y ago

To give a counterpoint, as a current CS PhD student... If you measure how much money someone will make in the next 10 years from the point they decide whether to pursue a PhD or not, yes, you are correct, the ones who do not pursue one will have lots more money. However, you can live a middle class lifestyle while gettings a PhD (OK, maybe "lower middle class" here, but still very comfortably, if you don't have dependents to support) and also after getting a PhD, which is the same result as if you didn't pursue the PhD. To me, that is more relevant than a raw amount of money. I care what class I'm in, i.e., (a) starving; (b) poor; (c) middle class; (d) rich. I don't really care _within_ those categories. As a sidenote, I think getting a PhD increases your likelihood of getting an otherwise unlikely outcome in the sense of career success/advancement, getting rich, etc. (unless you choose academia). I mean, over the course of your career, you could really leverage your PhD, or you could not. In theory (and probably in practice most of the time), it won't hurt to have one, career-wise.

eshvk 14y ago
> As a sidenote, I think getting a PhD increases your likelihood of getting an otherwise unlikely outcome in the sense of career success/advancement, getting rich, etc. (unless you choose academia). I mean, over the course of your career, you could really leverage your PhD, or you could not. In theory (and probably in practice most of the time), it won't hurt to have one, career-wise. To give you another counterpoint, as a person who dropped out of a C.S. PhD and went to industry. Sure, it won't hurt to get a PhD. Getting rich unfortunately is only weakly correlated with technical ability beyond a certain point. 1) You are not going to get rich purely as a salary (wo)man unless you are lucky enough to be an early stage employee (which I don't see how the PhD or otherwise helps you that much. ). 2) To found your own company and leverage your PhD skills seems tempting but rarely if ever do PhD's have research that can be converted into successful industry products. Boston Dynamics is one of those rare examples. However, these opportunities are not closed to off to people who while they may not have done research in the field and know every other implication of certain strategies but have great contacts and know how to get things done.
- _dark_matter_ 14y ago
  I'm currently an undergrad senior getting degrees in CS and Physics. I just finished applying to CS PhD grad programs, but I've really been leaning towards dropping out after completing my masters and going to work in industry. I'm just interested in your experience of doing just that. I've found very little reference material on it, except some comments by professors and people currently working in industry that people are courted by companies once they finish their qualifying exams. This may be off topic, but what's your experience with this? Were you courted before you decided to leave? How far did you get? What affected your decision? What was the salary difference? What do you do now? Was it worth it to even go for a little?
  - javert 14y ago
    I'm not the person you're asking this question of, but rather, the person who faced the same decision and decided to stay in grad school. I couldn't let my advisor down. After sticking with me for two years, I would have felt horrible if I had left him after my masters. I did not _expect_ this going in, and I planned to have "leaving after my masters" as a real option. To be clear, I still would have left if I had had a good reason. Ultimately, I wanted to stay. But if it had been borderline, I would have still stayed. And "borderline" for grad school may very well be "I'm tired of killing myself with overwork, I don't really feel like doing this shit for a few more years. But I could just suck it up and keep going, since I'm already like half way there." Grad school can be pretty crappy. I definitely could have turned summer internships during grad school into full-time work, though, and gotten a well-paying engineering job.
  - eshvk 14y ago
    > I'm just interested in your experience of doing just that. I've found very little reference material on it, except some comments by professors and people currently working in industry that people are courted by companies once they finish their qualifying exams. There are tons and tons of companies that come to a school every year. If you have a linkedin profile or some sort of web presence, you will be courted. It doesn't necessarily happen once you finish quals or whatever, but it will keep happening. > This may be off topic, but what's your experience with this? Were you courted before you decided to leave? How far did you get? What affected your decision? What was the salary difference? What do you do now? Was it worth it to even go for a little? I do data science (machine learning, scalability engineering) stuff. Lots of people have PhDs, I presume they make a good 20% or so more than I do. However, keep in mind that they have spent 3+ years finishing a PhD so I can probably make up. Honestly, if you are going into industry, I don't think you'd need a PhD. Companies these days think it is fancy to hire someone with a big name degree but a master's degree hasn't hampered me. I miss school terribly mainly because I felt stupid there (I know how silly this sounds) and the problems were terribly hard.
rwallace 14y ago
> I think getting a PhD increases your likelihood of getting an otherwise unlikely outcome in the sense of career success/advancement, getting rich, etc. I can't see how it could fail to decrease it, once you take opportunity cost into account. The most likely way to get rich in a technical career is doing a startup. During the five or six years you were spending on your PhD, you could have founded two startups, had them both fail, learned from the experience, taken a third shot, and be seeing your latest startup taking off, all by the time you would have been putting your PhD in your pocket and wondering what to do next.
- javert 14y ago
  What about going into quant finance? :P I've heard it said that that's a better way to become a multimillionaire than trying to do startups. But regarding startups... doing a technical startup that leverages PhD research (or just background knowledge), or even just a "highly specialized" software consultancy, is probably a better strategy than trying to build the next stupid app that anybody who can program can build. One key step to me going into grad school was realizing that I could always do startups, but I could only go to grad school while I was young. (Technically you can always go, but for me, there was a very strong preference to do it "now" or do it never.) So... you can have both, but probably only if you do grad school first, not startups first.
- rwallace 14y ago
  (It's not giving me a link to reply to javert's latest comment, any idea why not? Replying here.) Quant finance is an option, though I suspect once you actually got into it, you'd find making serious money that way wasn't really easier than doing a startup. Besides it's mostly a zero-sum game these days, and wouldn't you like to make the world a better place as well as getting rich? I know of people who've gone back and done a PhD in their forties or fifties. Strikes me as probably more practical than doing it in your twenties and putting the rest of your life on hold. The probability of being able to use your PhD thesis in a startup is negligible. Technical knowledge that you pick up on the way, sure, but that's a very inefficient way of obtaining that kind of knowledge.
  - 14y ago

by javert 14y ago

eshvk 14y ago

> As a sidenote, I think getting a PhD increases your likelihood of getting an otherwise unlikely outcome in the sense of career success/advancement, getting rich, etc. (unless you choose academia). I mean, over the course of your career, you could really leverage your PhD, or you could not. In theory (and probably in practice most of the time), it won't hurt to have one, career-wise. To give you another counterpoint, as a person who dropped out of a C.S. PhD and went to industry. Sure, it won't hurt to get a PhD. Getting rich unfortunately is only weakly correlated with technical ability beyond a certain point. 1) You are not going to get rich purely as a salary (wo)man unless you are lucky enough to be an early stage employee (which I don't see how the PhD or otherwise helps you that much. ). 2) To found your own company and leverage your PhD skills seems tempting but rarely if ever do PhD's have research that can be converted into successful industry products. Boston Dynamics is one of those rare examples. However, these opportunities are not closed to off to people who while they may not have done research in the field and know every other implication of certain strategies but have great contacts and know how to get things done.

_dark_matter_ 14y ago
I'm currently an undergrad senior getting degrees in CS and Physics. I just finished applying to CS PhD grad programs, but I've really been leaning towards dropping out after completing my masters and going to work in industry. I'm just interested in your experience of doing just that. I've found very little reference material on it, except some comments by professors and people currently working in industry that people are courted by companies once they finish their qualifying exams. This may be off topic, but what's your experience with this? Were you courted before you decided to leave? How far did you get? What affected your decision? What was the salary difference? What do you do now? Was it worth it to even go for a little?
- javert 14y ago
  I'm not the person you're asking this question of, but rather, the person who faced the same decision and decided to stay in grad school. I couldn't let my advisor down. After sticking with me for two years, I would have felt horrible if I had left him after my masters. I did not _expect_ this going in, and I planned to have "leaving after my masters" as a real option. To be clear, I still would have left if I had had a good reason. Ultimately, I wanted to stay. But if it had been borderline, I would have still stayed. And "borderline" for grad school may very well be "I'm tired of killing myself with overwork, I don't really feel like doing this shit for a few more years. But I could just suck it up and keep going, since I'm already like half way there." Grad school can be pretty crappy. I definitely could have turned summer internships during grad school into full-time work, though, and gotten a well-paying engineering job.
- eshvk 14y ago
  > I'm just interested in your experience of doing just that. I've found very little reference material on it, except some comments by professors and people currently working in industry that people are courted by companies once they finish their qualifying exams. There are tons and tons of companies that come to a school every year. If you have a linkedin profile or some sort of web presence, you will be courted. It doesn't necessarily happen once you finish quals or whatever, but it will keep happening. > This may be off topic, but what's your experience with this? Were you courted before you decided to leave? How far did you get? What affected your decision? What was the salary difference? What do you do now? Was it worth it to even go for a little? I do data science (machine learning, scalability engineering) stuff. Lots of people have PhDs, I presume they make a good 20% or so more than I do. However, keep in mind that they have spent 3+ years finishing a PhD so I can probably make up. Honestly, if you are going into industry, I don't think you'd need a PhD. Companies these days think it is fancy to hire someone with a big name degree but a master's degree hasn't hampered me. I miss school terribly mainly because I felt stupid there (I know how silly this sounds) and the problems were terribly hard.

rwallace 14y ago

> I think getting a PhD increases your likelihood of getting an otherwise unlikely outcome in the sense of career success/advancement, getting rich, etc. I can't see how it could fail to decrease it, once you take opportunity cost into account. The most likely way to get rich in a technical career is doing a startup. During the five or six years you were spending on your PhD, you could have founded two startups, had them both fail, learned from the experience, taken a third shot, and be seeing your latest startup taking off, all by the time you would have been putting your PhD in your pocket and wondering what to do next.

javert 14y ago
What about going into quant finance? :P I've heard it said that that's a better way to become a multimillionaire than trying to do startups. But regarding startups... doing a technical startup that leverages PhD research (or just background knowledge), or even just a "highly specialized" software consultancy, is probably a better strategy than trying to build the next stupid app that anybody who can program can build. One key step to me going into grad school was realizing that I could always do startups, but I could only go to grad school while I was young. (Technically you can always go, but for me, there was a very strong preference to do it "now" or do it never.) So... you can have both, but probably only if you do grad school first, not startups first.
rwallace 14y ago
(It's not giving me a link to reply to javert's latest comment, any idea why not? Replying here.) Quant finance is an option, though I suspect once you actually got into it, you'd find making serious money that way wasn't really easier than doing a startup. Besides it's mostly a zero-sum game these days, and wouldn't you like to make the world a better place as well as getting rich? I know of people who've gone back and done a PhD in their forties or fifties. Strikes me as probably more practical than doing it in your twenties and putting the rest of your life on hold. The probability of being able to use your PhD thesis in a startup is negligible. Technical knowledge that you pick up on the way, sure, but that's a very inefficient way of obtaining that kind of knowledge.
- 14y ago