Ask HN: Will getting a PhD lead to a more interesting life? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Will getting a PhD lead to a more interesting life?

#171

Post by bryanrasmussen » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

peterwoerner wrote: post #78

I have a PhD (in mech engineering) and work in industry. My experience was that I basically had to pick up a new physics set and tool set every year as I jumped from algorithm development, to constitutive model development, machine learning, and quantum computing. In all cases they were tackling problems in different areas: new toolset to learn, new math to learn and new physics to learn. I thoroughly enjoy working o…

If you have reason to suspect that the job market will be somewhat recessed in the coming time then getting a PhD might be a reasonable strategy to ride that time out.

Re: Ask HN: Will getting a PhD lead to a more interesting life?

#172

Post by saas_startup » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:16 PM UTC

TL;DR: For me personally Ph.D. has been the greatest decision I have ever made.

I am not going to cover the typical discussion regarding the diminished lifelong earnings of Ph.D graduates as I don't think everyone is optimizing their life 100% around money. If that's the case I would recommend looking holistically including choice of life partner and their earning potential as well where you live and the job market there.

I have a PhD in Computer Science from one of the top 5 schools in the world and Masters from unknown university in a medium size city.

Through the years I have struggled with being an outlier at my unknown university where people did not understand my passion for CS. I took part in open source projects, went to meetups and read tons of CS books just to satisfy my curiosity. at the same time there was nobody I could talk to regarding my passion.

When I entered Ph.D this turned out to be the greatest social experience ever. Almost all my current friends I have met during Ph.D. They are geeks in their own respective area (CS, Chemistry, Biology, Social Science, Theatre studies) and we can talk for hours about our research which never happened with me before. I met my life partner there and chances of finding of someone who I can talk to about theorem proving in a "normal" world are close to zero. On top of it she also understands the value of hard work and long hours I commit to work which has always been a struggle with my partners from general population.

Now the bad parts. You should expect that Ph.D. is a long and lonely journey that you have to execute by yourself. You are likely to go for months without any tangible results and you need to be happy with that. I did not suffer any mental health problems during the Ph.D. but they were fairly common between my friends due to pressure to publish and loneliness of the pursuit. If during Masters you are already dealing with some anxiety Ph.D. may not be enjoyable. In the end all my friends turned out fine and graduated but expect ups/down during the process.

Re: Ask HN: Will getting a PhD lead to a more interesting life?

#173

Post by scarejunba » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

Don't do it unless you have something deep pulling you in that direction. People fetishize the things. You will grow in industry in other ways. You will see what things look like when the rubber meets the road.

Re: Ask HN: Will getting a PhD lead to a more interesting life?

#174

Post by seph-reed » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

Nicholas_C wrote: post #112

fightme wrote: post #101

CS PhD from Stanford in dynamic program analysis. Lost all my friends. Ghosted by companies for jobs directly related to my research. Everyone I knew who went directly into industry is doing way better than me. My salary has only tracked inflation. I sorely regret the decision and consider it to have fundamentally ruined my life beyond repair.

This will sound rude and I’m sorry but there is no way your entire life is ruined because you decided to get a PhD from one of the top 5 most prestigious institutions in the entire world.

I totally believe it. Debt sucks. Being smart (passed a certain point) sucks. Plus, think of the lock-in, losing friends, etc.

Basically, he sold his soul, and I don't blame him for thinking he's not going to get it back.

Re: Ask HN: Will getting a PhD lead to a more interesting life?

#175

Post by snrji » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:31 PM UTC

Not necessarily, it depends on the advisor, university, program and field.

The problem is that once you start you are committed for 4 years. Abandoning a PhD program and starting another one is quite more complicated than changing of job.

Re: Ask HN: Will getting a PhD lead to a more interesting life?

#176

Post by SkyPuncher » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #171

peterwoerner wrote: post #78

I have a PhD (in mech engineering) and work in industry. My experience was that I basically had to pick up a new physics set and tool set every year as I jumped from algorithm development, to constitutive model development, machine learning, and quantum computing. In all cases they were tackling problems in different areas: new toolset to learn, new math to learn and new physics to learn. I thoroughly enjoy working o…

If you have reason to suspect that the job market will be somewhat recessed in the coming time then getting a PhD might be a reasonable strategy to ride that time out.

I tend to disagree with this.

PhD's tend to work in advanced areas of companies. When recessions hit, R&D is one of the first places to take a hit.

Re: Ask HN: Will getting a PhD lead to a more interesting life?

#177

Post by Itaxpica » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

The thing is, a PhD is in its own way a professional degree, like a JD or MD. The difference is that the profession a PhD is teaching you is research. If you don't enjoy research, there's really no reason to get a PhD. For non-research jobs in industry it doesn't matter if you have a PhD or not, and if you don't want to do research then you probably won't want the jobs in industry that would require a PhD.

Re: Ask HN: Will getting a PhD lead to a more interesting life?

#178

Post by halfarmbandit » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #166

crispyambulance wrote: post #159

There are plenty of PHD's who lead thoroughly uninteresting lives, there are plenty that have exciting and meaningful lives. Your degree isn't what makes your life interesting or not, nor is your job title, nor is your job, nor is how much you get paid. The premise of the question is wrong, IMHO. If you're "not sure" about the PHD, take some time off and work for a couple years in something challenging and then decid…

> Your degree isn't what makes your life interesting or not, nor is your job title, nor is your job, nor is how much you get paid. So a day laborer in India has equal chance at "interesting life" than a researcher at google ?

Comment OP is trying to express that life is what you make of it. A PhD or an industry job at google etc etc won’t make your life interesting by themselves, but you need to make it be.

Re: Ask HN: Will getting a PhD lead to a more interesting life?

#179

Post by SkyPuncher » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

cujo wrote: post #113

fightme wrote: post #101

CS PhD from Stanford in dynamic program analysis. Lost all my friends. Ghosted by companies for jobs directly related to my research. Everyone I knew who went directly into industry is doing way better than me. My salary has only tracked inflation. I sorely regret the decision and consider it to have fundamentally ruined my life beyond repair.

> Ghosted by companies for jobs directly related to my research This is unexpected. What's going on there?

I have heard it anecdotally time and time again, "Overqualified".

Specialization only pays more when there's demand for the exact specialization. Nobody wants to pay a PhD and risk them moving onto the "perfect" position when the same job can be done by somebody more generalized.

Re: Ask HN: Will getting a PhD lead to a more interesting life?

#180

Post by debatem1 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #166

crispyambulance wrote: post #159

There are plenty of PHD's who lead thoroughly uninteresting lives, there are plenty that have exciting and meaningful lives. Your degree isn't what makes your life interesting or not, nor is your job title, nor is your job, nor is how much you get paid. The premise of the question is wrong, IMHO. If you're "not sure" about the PHD, take some time off and work for a couple years in something challenging and then decid…

> Your degree isn't what makes your life interesting or not, nor is your job title, nor is your job, nor is how much you get paid. So a day laborer in India has equal chance at "interesting life" than a researcher at google ?

I have been a day laborer (not in India) and worked at Google (not as a researcher) so I might be close enough to both worlds.

While my time at Google was very exciting for me, it didn't yield any stories that friends or family ask me to retell. Compared to "the time my boss asked me to catch running circular saws he would slide down a roof at me", "that time I found a complicated XSS" just lacks pizzazz. And since I worked hard, I had fewer off hours to generate stories like "the time got so mad he called me an asshole in a room full of donors" or "the time I got second place in a drunken knife-catching contest".

The net is that based on that coarse metric of how often retellings of stories from various times in my life are requested, my life at Google was actually one of the least interesting I led, and I suspect that will be generalizable for most people without a straight-line path through life.