HN's local PhD-holders are interesting examples of how having a PhD doesn't really mean you have to do any specific thing (or pursue an academic career). When I

HN's local PhD-holders are interesting examples of how having a PhD doesn't really mean you have to do any specific thing (or pursue an academic career). When I was doing a little research on the most prolific HN posters [1], I found 3 of the top 20 have a PhD, and none are in academia: Paul Graham runs YCombinator, John Graham-Cumming is a programmer and author, and Colin Wright works in maritime technology (while also giving mathematics talks to students on the side). Another only-slightly-less-prolific poster is Colin Percival, who runs a one-man technology business (Tarsnap). [1] http://www.kmjn.org/notes/hacker_news_posters.html http://www.kmjn.org/notes/hacker_news_posters.html