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Wow, a lot of harsh criticism for Ph.D's on here! I can't speak much for a graduate degree in computer science (I don't know anything about it), but at least i

Wow, a lot of harsh criticism for Ph.D's on here! I can't speak much for a graduate degree in computer science (I don't know anything about it), but at least in my field - chemical engineering - there are many jobs that absolutely require a Ph.D. When I was an undergrad, I was dismayed by the number of "Ph.D. required" comments I saw on Intel's job listings for anything involving original processor design (only a BS was necessary for being a fab engineer). A BS in chemical engineering basically qualifies you to be a process engineer. Sure, you can get a R&D job, but it's going to be a lot harder than if you have Ph.D. And there's plenty of research jobs out there; it's basically the impetus for a company's success over its competition (again, the science-y industries). There's certain tasks I would not consider hiring anyone for unless they either had a Ph.D. or had somehow independently demonstrated the capability for novel, unique research and problem solving skills. I know the article was about CS, but the title was "Ph.D. - Industry Gap" and there's many fields out there where I feel like a Ph.D. is almost essential for particular jobs in those fields.

wissler 13y ago
I think CS as a field has theoretical problems at its foundations that chemical engineering doesn't have. This makes a PhD in CS worth less to business than it otherwise would be. Obviously I don't expect this to be a wildly popular sentiment...
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  I have a phd in computer science that doesn't involve much theory. Pure theoreticians exist, but they are quite rare. If your company doesn't have hard problems to solve, it doesn't need phds.
  - wissler 13y ago
    It has hard problems and doesn't need PhD's. You don't need a PhD to solve hard problems, even hard theoretical ones.
    - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
      PhDs are adept at solving hard problems, which is why google hires so many of them. You can develop these research skills without getting a PhD, but experience at many companies only really trains up code monkeys.
    - elteto 13y ago
      This, if true at all, is a very unique characteristic of the software industry. In pretty much any other place, you need advanced degrees if you are doing new and genuine research
      - yetanotherphd 13y ago
        It's more the fuzziness of terms like "hard problem" that is causing confusion. The way I would put it, the things that CS PhD's typically end up working on in industry, are usually things that would require a CS PhD. E.g. almost all the cool computer vision stuff you see on HN is developed by people with PhD's or PhD students.
    - graycat 13y ago
      Anyone who can solve hard theoretical problems can pick up a Ph.D. quickly. Why? Because the main requirement for a Ph.D. is just the research. Commonly there is no coursework requirement. For the research, the main requirement is that it be publishable, and there the main criteria are "new, correct, and significant". It's a grim, nearly bloody, literally life threatening fact of life, that doing such research is really tough and the main challenge of a Ph.D. The Ph.D. training is supposed to help people do such research, and it does. Still the research is tough. Without the Ph.D. training, such research is much more difficult. Net, the idea that a Ph.D. is not needed for good research can be true only for really rare exceptions. Again, getting a Ph.D. is tough, yes, life threatening, and the main challenge is just the research. Broadly there's another option: Now the richest area of the US is likely within 100 miles of the Washington Monument in DC. Why? Because the US Federal Government has a license to print money - literally! Simple. My career started there, and that area just loves technical Ph.D. holders. I failed to understand just how much that area loves such Ph.D. holders and should not have left. You can apply to US Civil Service and/or individual parts of the Federal Government or to the huge number of private companies that do work for the Federal Government. The Washington Post used to be a fast way to get job ads, send a few resume copies, go on seven interviews, and get five offers (I did that once). Some routine Google searching should get you a lot of names and addresses, and sending 100 resumes should get you some good offers.
bbgm 13y ago
At my little biotech/bioinformatics startup (this was 13 years ago), pretty much everyone had a PhD. What made us somewhat different was that only a few of us had done any postdoctoral work.
_delirium 13y ago
There are some areas of CS that are more along those lines. They're less common in the industries represented on HN, though. One example that comes to mind is graphics: places like Pixar and ILM heavily hire PhDs for R&D work, developing rendering algorithms and infrastructure and the like. They do also hire non-PhDs, but without some equivalent research track record (e.g. a SIGGRAPH paper or two), usually not for R&D jobs. I hadn't actually counted before, but if you go to http://graphics.pixar.com/research/people.html http://graphics.pixar.com/research/people.html and look at the bios, 9 out of the 11 have a PhD, and there are more outside the formal research division.
elteto 13y ago
There's a lot of (understandable given the user base) bias in HN towards startups and the software industry, where you don't exactly need a PhD to crank out the next social media app or whatever. Therefore people will emit opinions based on their experiences, which might explain the negativity that you perceive. However, as you point out, in pretty much any other field of engineering, PhD hires are a most if you are pushing the frontier and producing genuine research.
rayiner 13y ago
By and large, comparing chemical engineering to software development is misguided. Software development isn't an engineering field, i.e. the application of a refined theoretical framework to a concrete problem. It's more like carpentry. There's a few basic theoretical principles, but by and large it's just building things. You can spend a lifetime becoming an expert carpenter, and that can be very valuable, but nobody gets a PhD in carpentry because by and large there's not much there that's theoretically interesting. There are many areas that are theoretically rigorous, of course. Machine-learning/AI, crypto/security, graphics, audio, video, etc, and unsurprisingly a PhD is quite valuable for programmers in those fields.
- eriksank 13y ago
  Computer Science has a solid axiomatic foundation in the lambda calculus. Specific areas have their own foundational framework. For example, the relational algebra is an algebraic structure solidly vested in the Zermelo-Fraenckel set theory. So, in terms of math and science there are very solid theoretical principles. Computer Science is fundamentally and undisputedly a branch of mathematics. The fact that it can be practically applied, and very well so, does not detract from its roots and origin. This may sound hard for other academic disciplines, but it is not because it is also useful that it is no longer science.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    I didn't say computer science wasn't scientific, I said software engineering isn't an application of scientific principles. Software engineering mostly isn't a practical application of computer science. To use the example posed above: you cannot be designing chemical processes without a solid grasp of the theory. You cannot do your day to day job without applying the theoretical concepts of the field to daily problems. That's what makes a PhD valuable in that field. In contrast, many software engineers have no idea about lambda calculus, set theory, type theory, etc. You can build a lot of software with just the crudest theoretical understanding that you can pick up from hacking on software. That's why I likened it to carpentry. A carpenter will have a crude theoretical understanding about wood, it's grain patterns and how it absorbs stains, etc, but he doesn't need a solid foundation in the science to effectively do his job.

wissler 13y ago

I think CS as a field has theoretical problems at its foundations that chemical engineering doesn't have. This makes a PhD in CS worth less to business than it otherwise would be. Obviously I don't expect this to be a wildly popular sentiment...

seanmcdirmid 13y ago
I have a phd in computer science that doesn't involve much theory. Pure theoreticians exist, but they are quite rare. If your company doesn't have hard problems to solve, it doesn't need phds.
- wissler 13y ago
  It has hard problems and doesn't need PhD's. You don't need a PhD to solve hard problems, even hard theoretical ones.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    PhDs are adept at solving hard problems, which is why google hires so many of them. You can develop these research skills without getting a PhD, but experience at many companies only really trains up code monkeys.
  - elteto 13y ago
    This, if true at all, is a very unique characteristic of the software industry. In pretty much any other place, you need advanced degrees if you are doing new and genuine research
    - yetanotherphd 13y ago
      It's more the fuzziness of terms like "hard problem" that is causing confusion. The way I would put it, the things that CS PhD's typically end up working on in industry, are usually things that would require a CS PhD. E.g. almost all the cool computer vision stuff you see on HN is developed by people with PhD's or PhD students.
  - graycat 13y ago
    Anyone who can solve hard theoretical problems can pick up a Ph.D. quickly. Why? Because the main requirement for a Ph.D. is just the research. Commonly there is no coursework requirement. For the research, the main requirement is that it be publishable, and there the main criteria are "new, correct, and significant". It's a grim, nearly bloody, literally life threatening fact of life, that doing such research is really tough and the main challenge of a Ph.D. The Ph.D. training is supposed to help people do such research, and it does. Still the research is tough. Without the Ph.D. training, such research is much more difficult. Net, the idea that a Ph.D. is not needed for good research can be true only for really rare exceptions. Again, getting a Ph.D. is tough, yes, life threatening, and the main challenge is just the research. Broadly there's another option: Now the richest area of the US is likely within 100 miles of the Washington Monument in DC. Why? Because the US Federal Government has a license to print money - literally! Simple. My career started there, and that area just loves technical Ph.D. holders. I failed to understand just how much that area loves such Ph.D. holders and should not have left. You can apply to US Civil Service and/or individual parts of the Federal Government or to the huge number of private companies that do work for the Federal Government. The Washington Post used to be a fast way to get job ads, send a few resume copies, go on seven interviews, and get five offers (I did that once). Some routine Google searching should get you a lot of names and addresses, and sending 100 resumes should get you some good offers.

bbgm 13y ago

At my little biotech/bioinformatics startup (this was 13 years ago), pretty much everyone had a PhD. What made us somewhat different was that only a few of us had done any postdoctoral work.

_delirium 13y ago

There are some areas of CS that are more along those lines. They're less common in the industries represented on HN, though. One example that comes to mind is graphics: places like Pixar and ILM heavily hire PhDs for R&D work, developing rendering algorithms and infrastructure and the like. They do also hire non-PhDs, but without some equivalent research track record (e.g. a SIGGRAPH paper or two), usually not for R&D jobs. I hadn't actually counted before, but if you go to http://graphics.pixar.com/research/people.html http://graphics.pixar.com/research/people.html and look at the bios, 9 out of the 11 have a PhD, and there are more outside the formal research division.

elteto 13y ago

There's a lot of (understandable given the user base) bias in HN towards startups and the software industry, where you don't exactly need a PhD to crank out the next social media app or whatever. Therefore people will emit opinions based on their experiences, which might explain the negativity that you perceive. However, as you point out, in pretty much any other field of engineering, PhD hires are a most if you are pushing the frontier and producing genuine research.

rayiner 13y ago

By and large, comparing chemical engineering to software development is misguided. Software development isn't an engineering field, i.e. the application of a refined theoretical framework to a concrete problem. It's more like carpentry. There's a few basic theoretical principles, but by and large it's just building things. You can spend a lifetime becoming an expert carpenter, and that can be very valuable, but nobody gets a PhD in carpentry because by and large there's not much there that's theoretically interesting. There are many areas that are theoretically rigorous, of course. Machine-learning/AI, crypto/security, graphics, audio, video, etc, and unsurprisingly a PhD is quite valuable for programmers in those fields.

eriksank 13y ago
Computer Science has a solid axiomatic foundation in the lambda calculus. Specific areas have their own foundational framework. For example, the relational algebra is an algebraic structure solidly vested in the Zermelo-Fraenckel set theory. So, in terms of math and science there are very solid theoretical principles. Computer Science is fundamentally and undisputedly a branch of mathematics. The fact that it can be practically applied, and very well so, does not detract from its roots and origin. This may sound hard for other academic disciplines, but it is not because it is also useful that it is no longer science.
- rayiner 13y ago
  I didn't say computer science wasn't scientific, I said software engineering isn't an application of scientific principles. Software engineering mostly isn't a practical application of computer science. To use the example posed above: you cannot be designing chemical processes without a solid grasp of the theory. You cannot do your day to day job without applying the theoretical concepts of the field to daily problems. That's what makes a PhD valuable in that field. In contrast, many software engineers have no idea about lambda calculus, set theory, type theory, etc. You can build a lot of software with just the crudest theoretical understanding that you can pick up from hacking on software. That's why I likened it to carpentry. A carpenter will have a crude theoretical understanding about wood, it's grain patterns and how it absorbs stains, etc, but he doesn't need a solid foundation in the science to effectively do his job.