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

PhD life is, in general, a pathway to academia; it means research and teaching. Add to the fact, you'll be overqualified for the vast majority of relevant work.

> I much prefer creating things.

Just do that. Enter the workforce and start a pet project, or think bigger.

The average case of a PhD (even in machine learning) is that a handful of people will read your work, and you'll get cited a few times. That's it.

The analogy I've always used is that researchers are like miners in a gold rush. Most workers take their pickaxe, labour at the rock face, and come away with little more than sore muscles. A lucky few will strike gold (sometimes by looking in the right place, sometimes by working hard, and sometimes by being lucky). You need all those hundreds of people labouring away to find the gold, but the efforts of a single worker matter less than you might think.

That's because in the US, PhD is actually the combination of masters degree (typically 2 years) and PhD (typically 3-4 years) in other countries.

At least in sciences, US universities don't typically even offer a MSc program; people can get MSc by enrolling into PhD, which is typically the only available graduate program, and quitting it after completing the coursework.

When I toyed with the idea of getting a PhD, I spoke to a professor at a CS conference about what it's like to be on a conference committee. One of the first things he said was "Well if my paper doesn't get in another professor's conference, there's no way that professor's papers are getting in _my_ conference." (Double-blind notwithstanding, the research topics in this particular conference had known investigators.)

As much as I enjoyed the toil and reward of seeking novel results, I decided at that point that I could enjoy computer science and work on interesting (possibly novel) things without having to be a part of academia and the petty politics that drive a lot of it.

It really depends on what you define as "interesting" and what you want to get out of your investment in time and energy towards your studies. In a lot of ways, there's no better time to be alive as a software engineer than now. You can apply those skills in such a wide variety of industries (multitudes of AI applications, VR, health care, transportation, etc), many of which are getting new or increased investment from VCs. You may not work on something specifically interesting, but your contribution to a larger goal or mission can be greatly satisfying. I'd say pick an industry where you can have even a small impact as an engineer, or a company where you may have exposure to many areas and drill down into things that interest you.

I took a job after doing my MSc, with the thought of going back to do a PhD in a few years time. I did go back after 5 years, but didn't finish the PhD - I only stayed for a year.

I mostly thought that I had to do a PhD to keep learning. But I was wrong - I learn every day as a developer. I also realized that I liked broad problems rather than narrow. E.g. make a system good enough in all dimensions vs working on "perfect" overload protection.

I wrote more about it here: https://henrikwarne.com/2016/03/07/ph-d-or-professional-prog...