5 ms·

As a hiring manager of non-specialized software developers, I take people with 4-6 years of real world coding over a phd any day. We generally hire phd's at the

As a hiring manager of non-specialized software developers, I take people with 4-6 years of real world coding over a phd any day. We generally hire phd's at the same level/pay as a bachelors in cs with maybe only a nominal amount more in salary. the skills you learn as a phd are not really what the industry needs, unless you manage to find one of the small number of jobs that requires whatever specific thing you studied as a phd. like the article says, those are very few and far between compared to the # of students exiting with degrees.

ideonexus 14y ago
I concur. My experience with CS PhDs is that they lack the production-oriented mindset needed for the real world. We hired a CS PhD to write reports for us. In six months he did not write one single line of code, but produced a very impressive whitepaper about the code he intended to write. He went on to write more whitepapers for a company specializing in vaporware somewhere else. I've had similar experiences with PhDs in many other fields as well. I have a great deal of respect for the degree, the person who worked so hard for it, and I love to read their often brilliant research, but either the effort of getting the degree or the mindset it takes to want to obtain one makes these people nearly useless in the business world. Give me an entry-level BS degree or 5-6 years equivalent experience any day.
- tensor 14y ago
  Meanwhile, the top tech firms aggressively recruit CS PhDs.
  - modarts 14y ago
    Well, more power to them. They have the resources to train them up to a level where they'll be productive.
    - tensor 14y ago
      Or perhaps this thread is full of obscene generalizations that are untrue. Hell, it even started off on the wrong foot by invoking "real world". All that term means is that you think your work is somehow relevant while the work of others, in this case PhDs, is not relevant. Parts of this community have a real problem with ego and unsubstantiated generalizations.
      - crucifiction 14y ago
        No, real world = in production for potentially a long time, iterated with customer feedback. phd/ms work = functional hacks that maybe a professor or the student ever looks at/codes against and that are eventually thrown away. except in very rare circumstances
  - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
    Ya, google is sucking up many of them. But don't tell parent, he doesn't get it and doesn't need to get it.
  - foobarian 14y ago
    In my experience, there are two kinds of CS PhDs, one which is more theory oriented and not very good at coding, and the other which is more systems oriented and tends to attract crack coders too bored to stay in industry.
- rprospero 14y ago
  I find your experience with PhDs fascinating because it's been the exact opposite of my experience with graduate school. My graduate program has been far more production oriented than any of the private sector work I've ever done. In the private sector, I've been given a list of specifications and told to report back in a week on what progress I'd made. In research, on the other hand, a professor would hand me the requirements and then stand there until I delivered the code. If the professor was on a looser deadline, he might take a chair while he waited me. Most deadlines are measured in hours, instead of days, so the thought of a PhD not having his code finished in a month is baffling to me. Of course, I'll also be the first to admit that this still produces some poor production habits. When you have a twenty minute deadline to write code in a language you've never seen before on during your first ever experience on a VAX, you tend to skip the unit tests. And the source control. And the comments. And the white space. But, I'd like to think that, if I had an extra hour, I'd go back for all of that.
seunosewa 14y ago
Perhaps PhDs just need to be paired with real world coders to be productive?
- ChuckMcM 14y ago
  Having worked with a number of PhD and non-PhD people over the years I've not observed any correlation between "skill" and "years of education." That said, its always to pair up new hires with real world coders to help them become productive quickly.
jonemo 14y ago
I am in the process of finishing up a PhD (Robotics, Cornell) and spent some time looking for jobs outside academia. What you write sounds very familiar because I heard it almost everywhere I looked. There seems to be a widespread misconception that graduate school consists of people focusing on one (usually obscure) topic without ever doing anything that "normal people" would do in a "normal job". Here's how grad school really works. At least in the US, completing a PhD requires you to take classes. I took classes in my field (Mechanical Engineering) and in my elected minor field (CS). None of them had anything to do with my research are (modular robotics): Vibrations, Linear Systems, Feedback Control, Intermediate Dynamics, Intro to AI, 3D Perception, Evolutionary Methods, Autonomous Mobile Robots (you get the idea, there are more). I also took a management class and a course on technology commercialization, but that's just me. Basically, they are the same classes Master level students take (and companies pay them a premium for doing so), just more of them. Very few grad students work on only one project during their PhD program. Many students "bounce around" for a while before selecting an adviser. Sometimes projects don't work out and you switch to something else (happened to me). Sometimes the availability of grants dictates what you are working on and when. And often you just start a new project because the old one is completed. What causes every PhD to have that brief, often obscure sounding, description for their work, is that the thesis describing all those different projects needs one title (not five). When you open the cover of the thesis you might find sections on a wide range of topics covering many areas of expertise that the author had to master before being able to produce original work in their obscure topic area. There might be disciplines where you can work exclusively on one subject area without using any external tools. I don't know any. As a PhD student you rarely have someone to delegate work to. And because what you do in a PhD is new, you often have to build your own equipment for doing it. As a result of having to do everything yourself, you often end up accumulating experience of varying depth in all kinds of languages and technologies during grad school. Dealing with external suppliers and contract manufacturers is also quite common, at least in engineering. My actual everyday work in grad school is definitely more varied than any job in any of the companies I have seen. Soft skills are something frequently cited as an area that PhDs are lacking in. I don't agree with this assessment. Some skills are less important in academia (negotiation skills, leadership), but others are more important (endurance, teaching/presentation skills, ability to learn quickly). Only very few scientists are the socially awkward eggheads that popular media portrait them as. Finally, it's worth pointing out that PhDs have spent several years working in the future. The technology that in development at universities today includes things you might consider cutting edge a few years from now. Your freshly graduate PhD job applicant just spent five years interacting with this stuff and the people building it on a daily basis. If your company can't make use of having somebody from the future work for you, I'd consider that a problem. Please do yourself (and people like me) a favor and kindly stop pigeon-holing anyone with a PhD as "overspecialized". Have a look at what kind of work they were doing during their five year time in the ivory tower, and see what useful skills they needed to get their maybe-not-so-useful research done. You might be surprised at the breadth. And don't worry if your PhD job applicant's qualifications are a little strange and don't quite fit between any of the department walls in your company. The PhD is used to working interdisciplinary and learning new skills quickly.

ideonexus 14y ago

I concur. My experience with CS PhDs is that they lack the production-oriented mindset needed for the real world. We hired a CS PhD to write reports for us. In six months he did not write one single line of code, but produced a very impressive whitepaper about the code he intended to write. He went on to write more whitepapers for a company specializing in vaporware somewhere else. I've had similar experiences with PhDs in many other fields as well. I have a great deal of respect for the degree, the person who worked so hard for it, and I love to read their often brilliant research, but either the effort of getting the degree or the mindset it takes to want to obtain one makes these people nearly useless in the business world. Give me an entry-level BS degree or 5-6 years equivalent experience any day.

tensor 14y ago
Meanwhile, the top tech firms aggressively recruit CS PhDs.
- modarts 14y ago
  Well, more power to them. They have the resources to train them up to a level where they'll be productive.
  - tensor 14y ago
    Or perhaps this thread is full of obscene generalizations that are untrue. Hell, it even started off on the wrong foot by invoking "real world". All that term means is that you think your work is somehow relevant while the work of others, in this case PhDs, is not relevant. Parts of this community have a real problem with ego and unsubstantiated generalizations.
    - crucifiction 14y ago
      No, real world = in production for potentially a long time, iterated with customer feedback. phd/ms work = functional hacks that maybe a professor or the student ever looks at/codes against and that are eventually thrown away. except in very rare circumstances
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago
  Ya, google is sucking up many of them. But don't tell parent, he doesn't get it and doesn't need to get it.
- foobarian 14y ago
  In my experience, there are two kinds of CS PhDs, one which is more theory oriented and not very good at coding, and the other which is more systems oriented and tends to attract crack coders too bored to stay in industry.
rprospero 14y ago
I find your experience with PhDs fascinating because it's been the exact opposite of my experience with graduate school. My graduate program has been far more production oriented than any of the private sector work I've ever done. In the private sector, I've been given a list of specifications and told to report back in a week on what progress I'd made. In research, on the other hand, a professor would hand me the requirements and then stand there until I delivered the code. If the professor was on a looser deadline, he might take a chair while he waited me. Most deadlines are measured in hours, instead of days, so the thought of a PhD not having his code finished in a month is baffling to me. Of course, I'll also be the first to admit that this still produces some poor production habits. When you have a twenty minute deadline to write code in a language you've never seen before on during your first ever experience on a VAX, you tend to skip the unit tests. And the source control. And the comments. And the white space. But, I'd like to think that, if I had an extra hour, I'd go back for all of that.

seunosewa 14y ago

Perhaps PhDs just need to be paired with real world coders to be productive?

ChuckMcM 14y ago
Having worked with a number of PhD and non-PhD people over the years I've not observed any correlation between "skill" and "years of education." That said, its always to pair up new hires with real world coders to help them become productive quickly.

jonemo 14y ago

I am in the process of finishing up a PhD (Robotics, Cornell) and spent some time looking for jobs outside academia. What you write sounds very familiar because I heard it almost everywhere I looked. There seems to be a widespread misconception that graduate school consists of people focusing on one (usually obscure) topic without ever doing anything that "normal people" would do in a "normal job". Here's how grad school really works. At least in the US, completing a PhD requires you to take classes. I took classes in my field (Mechanical Engineering) and in my elected minor field (CS). None of them had anything to do with my research are (modular robotics): Vibrations, Linear Systems, Feedback Control, Intermediate Dynamics, Intro to AI, 3D Perception, Evolutionary Methods, Autonomous Mobile Robots (you get the idea, there are more). I also took a management class and a course on technology commercialization, but that's just me. Basically, they are the same classes Master level students take (and companies pay them a premium for doing so), just more of them. Very few grad students work on only one project during their PhD program. Many students "bounce around" for a while before selecting an adviser. Sometimes projects don't work out and you switch to something else (happened to me). Sometimes the availability of grants dictates what you are working on and when. And often you just start a new project because the old one is completed. What causes every PhD to have that brief, often obscure sounding, description for their work, is that the thesis describing all those different projects needs one title (not five). When you open the cover of the thesis you might find sections on a wide range of topics covering many areas of expertise that the author had to master before being able to produce original work in their obscure topic area. There might be disciplines where you can work exclusively on one subject area without using any external tools. I don't know any. As a PhD student you rarely have someone to delegate work to. And because what you do in a PhD is new, you often have to build your own equipment for doing it. As a result of having to do everything yourself, you often end up accumulating experience of varying depth in all kinds of languages and technologies during grad school. Dealing with external suppliers and contract manufacturers is also quite common, at least in engineering. My actual everyday work in grad school is definitely more varied than any job in any of the companies I have seen. Soft skills are something frequently cited as an area that PhDs are lacking in. I don't agree with this assessment. Some skills are less important in academia (negotiation skills, leadership), but others are more important (endurance, teaching/presentation skills, ability to learn quickly). Only very few scientists are the socially awkward eggheads that popular media portrait them as. Finally, it's worth pointing out that PhDs have spent several years working in the future. The technology that in development at universities today includes things you might consider cutting edge a few years from now. Your freshly graduate PhD job applicant just spent five years interacting with this stuff and the people building it on a daily basis. If your company can't make use of having somebody from the future work for you, I'd consider that a problem. Please do yourself (and people like me) a favor and kindly stop pigeon-holing anyone with a PhD as "overspecialized". Have a look at what kind of work they were doing during their five year time in the ivory tower, and see what useful skills they needed to get their maybe-not-so-useful research done. You might be surprised at the breadth. And don't worry if your PhD job applicant's qualifications are a little strange and don't quite fit between any of the department walls in your company. The PhD is used to working interdisciplinary and learning new skills quickly.