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A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

theguardian.com

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Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#131

Post by gozur88 »

alexasmyths wrote: post #97
gozur88 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... there's intellectual understanding and then there's emotional understanding. These are people who were the very top in their high school and the very top as undergrads. They've always made the cut when most everyone else didn't, so why should a tenure track position be any different?

"So why should a tenure track position be any different" Economics and reality come into play as we are adults. There's basically no excuse for 'the smartest among us' to not have a basic grasp of the dynamics of how their education will play out into their careers.

But they've always been the smartest in a group of the smartest people. It's not that they're not being smart or not being adult. It's that they feel this is just another step in a road they've been traveling since they were kids.

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#132

Post by twblalock »

dabockster wrote: post #102
WhitneyLand wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your interview questions sound like bullshit. What are these interviews for, how did you arrive at those questions, and what leads you to believe they have a strong correlation with success?

This. I haven't even heard the word palindrome outside of either college or outsourced coding challenges (further driving home the bullshit point).

It only takes a few seconds to explain what a palindrome is. It's a very simple concept. A candidate who can't figure out how to tell if a string is a palindrome in the normal amount of time allocated for an interview is probably not a very good programmer, even if the candidate has never heard of palindromes before.

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#133

Post by Gatsky »

The real problem is the inverse. We have too many people ready to contribute new knowledge.... and we think this is a bad thing? Because, all diseases are cured, the jails are empty and we aren't actively destroying the planet?

I think this is actually how we want the future to be (we would prefer more bankers and real estate agents?). The real problem is nobody has worked out a humane way to fund it.

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#134

Post by kaeluka »

brians wrote: post #65
School-Cotton wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you get downvoted because theoretical CS research really doesn't need to involve coding, so it's not as odd as you seem to think.

Dijkstra famously compared this to astronomers who have no interest in telescopes or observing. I love theory, would happily retire to it—but I can’t see how anyone could have the right imagination calibration without lots of practice.

No offence, but you sound like you haven't worked in or close to such a field. CS theory very often doesn't require coding at all, and coding would be barely helpful.

edit: this is not a value statement.

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#137

Post by toyg »

santaclaus wrote: post #40
dv_dt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is more of an indictment of how little real investment goes into R&D at private industry - even as the companies merge into megopolies who should have the finances to best justify it, they seem to become even less inclined to invest in fundamental research.

The big (and some even not-so-big) companies hire lots of PhDs -- roughly 8% of Google's employees have doctorates.

Google is infamous for valuing academic achievement over practical skills in interviews, 8% is actually much lower than what previously reported - I guess they lowered their standards of late.

If google is at 8%, everyone else of comparable size will probably be around 3% at best.

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#138

Post by steve_gh »

I work in engineering consultancy. Some of our best consultants come from non-engineering backgrounds. Two in particular - one is an architect by training, the other an ancient historian, with a background in reconstructing ancient power hierarchies from the inscriptions on funeral carvings.

In my field, the transferable skills from academic research are far more important than the domain knowledge.

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#139

Post by Jach »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #86
yeukhon wrote: post #44

I come from a city university, and in my experience many of the master students there (information system or computer science program) are not up to standard when they leave the program (i.e. they can't really program, let alone with theories). I think this is the problem with my school, but when I had this conversation with an old friend he felt that his master classes focused on theory, very little room for program…

Your interview questions sound like bullshit. What are these interviews for, how did you arrive at those questions, and what leads you to believe they have a strong correlation with success?

I also use the odd-even number question in my phone screen. The primary purpose I use it for is to filter out people who can't program at all, my secondary purpose is to see if they can think of using a bitwise operator when prompted for an alternate solution(s). I don't think it's worthwhile to ask for more complicated problem implementations (at least at the phone screen level) since complicated algorithms aren't what we do most of the time. So far everyone I've asked it to has passed the primary purpose, but I keep it around just in case I hit these people who supposedly have Masters or PhDs and can't do it... It's still BS in a way but I don't have a better idea to filter out people who can't program than by asking them to program something, anything.

Re: A glut of PhDs who can’t find academic jobs

#140

Post by puranjay »

Gatsky wrote: post #133

The real problem is the inverse. We have too many people ready to contribute new knowledge.... and we think this is a bad thing? Because, all diseases are cured, the jails are empty and we aren't actively destroying the planet? I think this is actually how we want the future to be (we would prefer more bankers and real estate agents?). The real problem is nobody has worked out a humane way to fund it.

While I appreciate the sentiment, making a living is a real concern.
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