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

If you don't _want_ to get a PhD, it will be very hard to finish. It is already hard if you are motivated and eager to do research.

Also, just the title alone is of not much value in industry, you need to have done research in a sought-after area. So if you mainly want to do it for career purposes, interactive theorem proving is probably not a good choice. If you think you need a PhD to get interesting industry jobs, better look for a PhD in an area where FAANG researchers publish.

There's typically no debt doing a STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering and Math) Ph.D. in most places, unless you're talking about undergrad debt.

STEM Ph.D.s are like jobs. You get paid a stipend (the financial package typically requires you to work as a TA/RA).

A few data points. My Ph.D. program paid me $30k/yr tax free over 4 years. Prestige scholarship holders were able to get even more, maybe $45k-50k. (my numbers are old -- I got my Ph.D. nearly a decade ago)

I've had friends at Princeton who received packages in the range of $28k-$35k/yr from their engineering depts.

Not a huge amount of money, but enough for a single grad student to survive on. I have a friend who did a Ph.D. in Math at Stanford, and he didn't have to pay cent.

Debt is generally not a common issue for STEM Ph.Ds.

Humanities/Social Science Ph.Ds. on the other hand are a completely different ball game. I've heard that many live in relative penury and rarely finish on-time (taking anywhere from 5-7 years). Humanities Ph.Ds. please add data points.

> The really interesting jobs are absolutely held by Phds.

That wholly depends on your definition of interesting.

I don't have a PhD.

I've written software that taught literacy to kids, helped people pay their bills online (back in 1999, when this was novel), written full ML systems (15 years ago, before the advent of open source ml packages), co-founded a YC company, and now I'm helping people rediscover the images of their lives (see my profile if you're interested!)

To be sure, I'd love to go back to school. There's so much I know I don't know, and would be wonderful to discover.

Just realize you can work on interesting stuff if you look for it, are willing to stretch your skills continuously, and change jobs every handful of years.

do the phd and find a profession outside of tech.

I almost have a PhD from UW and concur. One failure mode I’ve observed in people getting a PhD is not fully understanding what it entails before starting. Later they undergo a painful period of rectifying reality and their idealized version of what it means to be a PhD student. Often realizing it wasn’t for them, and they would be happier elsewhere. I think for many people it’s important to overcome the sunk cost fallacy and leave.

Like many things in life a PhD is what you make of it, and I know many people who have had a miserable time, and those who’ve had an awesome time and everything in between. My PhD has been exceptionally tough, and not for the reasons Philip talks about, I have an awesome advisor, great lab, focus, lots of papers and it’s still just a challenging process. To me the PhD is much like ultra-marathon training, I’ve had the opportunity to do amazing things that I would have never got to do at a company for 5 or 6 years and wrote cool papers and built high impact systems. Though I’ve had to do all those things while making almost no money, and working with exceptionally limited resources.