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I completely disagree with the opening premise, which is not supported by any data, that PhDs "are in short supply." I don't know Chand John, but if he really

I completely disagree with the opening premise, which is not supported by any data, that PhDs "are in short supply." I don't know Chand John, but if he really is an expert programmer, and was unable to get a programming job in Silicon Valley in today's economy, something else is going on. Either he is very, very picky, or employers are turning him down for reasons other than his PhD. Professional success has much more to do with focus and assertiveness and ambition and other personal qualities than with grades, test scores, and degrees accumulated. Learned this the hard way myself.

SomeCallMeTim 13y ago
I've certainly encountered more than one PhD who couldn't program worth anything. Understanding the theory and the practice are different things.
- Jagat 13y ago
  Couldn't agree more. One of my professors wrote a 200 line Matlab code to extract a column from a csv file.
  - thret 13y ago
    I'm sure it was perfectly spaced though.
    - Jagat 13y ago
      It was. A single line of awk/cut would have sufficed.
  - joshdulac 13y ago
    I worked in a university research lab and had more than one PhD student/RA inform me that MatLab destroyed their actual programming skills in other languages.