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Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

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Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bailed out three years into a chemistry PhD and my only regret is that I started it at all. I'm not saying that going to graduate school is necessarily a mistake but I think a lot of people go because they've done well in school up to that point and aren't sure what else to do with themselves.

Where did you land after leaving the phd program?

I worked as a lab tech for a while and then switched to programming, which I’ve been doing happily ever since. I miss working in the lab a bit but overall I prefer the freedom and more meritocratic culture of working as a developer.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bailed out three years into a chemistry PhD and my only regret is that I started it at all. I'm not saying that going to graduate school is necessarily a mistake but I think a lot of people go because they've done well in school up to that point and aren't sure what else to do with themselves.

How much do you practically learn about chemistry in those first three years? Was that knowledge at all valuable in your post-academia life?

I leaned quite a bit but unfortunately I can’t say any of it has been specifically useful. I guess I could say I learned to work very very hard and to teach myself whatever I needed to know. Perhaps the price I paid was that was years before I could sit still and enjoy myself for five minutes without feeling like I was shirking.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#93
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bailed out three years into a chemistry PhD and my only regret is that I started it at all. I'm not saying that going to graduate school is necessarily a mistake but I think a lot of people go because they've done well in school up to that point and aren't sure what else to do with themselves.

When I was an undergrad, there was a PhD candidate who advised me to go to grad school for exactly this reason. He told me it was years I could spend avoiding having to find a job.

I worked much, much harder as a graduate student than I ever have as a developer, even at startups. At the lab I worked in putting in anything less than 70 hours a week was considered malingering.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bailed out three years into a chemistry PhD and my only regret is that I started it at all. I'm not saying that going to graduate school is necessarily a mistake but I think a lot of people go because they've done well in school up to that point and aren't sure what else to do with themselves.

How much do you practically learn about chemistry in those first three years? Was that knowledge at all valuable in your post-academia life?

Not OP but it absolutely depends on the sub-field, the most glaring difference being between exclusively computational/theoretical research vs "wet" lab, and even withing sub-subfields it can vary a _lot_.

Depending on the PhD program you can be required to take as low as 1 PhD level course per year. The "real" learning takes place by reading papers + lab work.

The transferable knowledge might not be the specific capacities developed (e.g. how to properly plan and manage a multi-step organic synthesis, how to write an SCF routine, etc) but rather to be able to sit down long enough and reason about the world to make hypotheses and test them. That in general is very useful and a skill most workers in the workforce simply lack. I do not say this to be condescending, it is simply my experience that there is a clear divide in the mental processes of people who went through at the very least a Bachelors' vs people who did not. It's not better or worse, it's different.

PS: Anecdotally, I have not completed my graduate degree for reasons of lack of funding. I really enjoyed what I did but TAing 2-3 courses per semester while working a part-time job (or two) to make sure I could get some vacation time once a year, pay the bills and go to the restaurant with my SO just wasn't worth it. As others have commented, money in academia is most definitely a winner takes all game. Experience showed me that in a cohort, it's mostly the top 5 or so students with excellent grades that will get the scholarships. Then you get maybe a dozen or two who live on ~1k a month and the rest well, fend for yourself (even if you have an advisor). I happened to be in a sub-field where professors were broke, so that was it. I eventually quit due to being absorbed in other (boring but paying) work, with now realising it was a mistake but a mistake that brought food on the table. Today I regret and want to go back, but you can't feed a family with $10k a year can you?

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#95
post #8

Not the same thing- I dropped out of because lack of money, because the work environment providing the funding let me go, because I called them out for doing things that broke the law and were morally very wrong. I didn't even bother to claim the alternative diploma I had the credits for. Now I work with finance and blockchain people, and it's a saner and more honest world. Crazy, I know!

> Now I work with finance and blockchain people, and it's a saner and more honest world. Crazy, I know! You're not alone: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12807488

Being in the free market is very freeing!

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bailed out three years into a chemistry PhD and my only regret is that I started it at all. I'm not saying that going to graduate school is necessarily a mistake but I think a lot of people go because they've done well in school up to that point and aren't sure what else to do with themselves.

I commend you on your courage. Reminds me of one of my good friends from college, who bailed out in the second year of his PhD program in geochemistry and started anew in a MSc program in Computer Science. He now works happily in a startup company as a SDE and never looks back.

I have another friend that just switched from being an associate professor in chemistry to working as a developer for a bioinformatics lab. He loves it and doesn’t regret making the switch at all.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#97
I think CS PhD programs in particular can be a little strange. I decided to go back to school to pursue a CS PhD after chatting with a retired mathematician about his PhD. He was talking about how he took classes for two years to explore different areas of mathematics and to pass the general exams, then he decided on a branch of mathematics (topology) and approached a professor in that area to be his advisor. After working through a few textbooks together, this person posed a question to his advisor, spent a few more years working to answer the question, eventually answered it and published the result in his dissertation.

This seemed to be what a PhD was all about, but it's not what I've experienced. I've just completed the first year of grad school, and while the classes have been interesting, the expectation is that you already have an advisor when you arrive (or at the latest at the end of your first year) and you hit the ground running pumping out papers. There seems to be little opportunity to explore computer science as a whole or to work towards one singular result. I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Peter Sarnak about CS graduate education. He said that CS is in a weird spot between traditional engineering disciplines and the liberal arts, and that the need for grant funding causes departments to encourage students to work on whatever projects the professors are leading. But even he seemed a little surprised when I told him that our department's general exam is basically a presentation on the research you've accomplished so far.

I think this is unfortunate. First, because it goes against what I wanted out of a PhD. But also because it makes the PhD not much different than working in industry. If in either case I have to write code for some boss and satisfy my curiosities on the nights and weekends, why would I choose to do it for much less money and worse career prospects? I imagine this is causing the best and brightest to avoid academia in computer science, which seems bad for research and technological progress in general.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#99
post #86

Just to offer a bit of a counter to much of the negative views here, I enjoyed my Ph.D very much. I went into it with my eyes open, and realizing that an academic career wasn't the only option that would work for me. Through scholarships I was paid enough to be comfortable while spending my time on interesting things. The scholarship game is a bit winner-take-all though, and I know the minimum funding level in my dep…

I feel the same way about my degree. The money was clearly a fraction of what I could be making in industry, but it was enough to live fairly comfortably. And the freedom I had to pursue my interests was unmatched in any other position I could have gotten instead.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#100
The main subject in this story was pursuing a PhD in "Women's Studies". Not to disparage that field of study, but it's quite obvious that it is a pretty useless degree that limits you to a career as a Women's Studies professor. I don't think this is a good illustration of people who leave PhD programs
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