81–90 of 165 posts
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Bill Gates did it, so I guess it's possible?
Bill Gates didn't do it - he doesn't have a PhD at all. He has honorary doctorates, but that's not really what we're talking about here.
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My PhD and the research I do now based on it give me a huge amount of personal satisfaction and are a big part of my quality of life. I'm comparing the work I did before my PhD (because I worked after my degree before a PhD) and seeing what my friends think about work compared to me. Yeah if you're looking for more money, maybe don't do a PhD. If you're looking for the time and space to find satisfaction by working o…
So that’s the pitch they make in the PhD programs. But what they leave out are the negative associations with a PhD. You will immediately be over qualified for large swaths of work. And unless you can immediately land that dream job by, amongst other things, beating out all competition for that work - you will enter the work force with 0 applicable work experience. Hiring managers can be downright blind about anythin…
1. What kind of information you will find in each section of a research paper in your field.
2. What are the major research programs in your field and where they disagree.
3. How to identify where a paper's author stands with respect to the major disagreements in your field.
4. How to decide that a paper isn't worth your time without reading all of it.
5. How do you write a research paper?
6. How do you decide what research to do? (This decision will often be made for you for the first couple of years.)
7. Where you stand with respect to the major disagreements in your field.
8. How to synthesize half a decade's work into a realtively brief document.
Notably, these skills don't help you do any of the following:
1. Manage a research group in an academic setting.
2. Teach undergraduates.
3. Manage people in industry.
You might pick up applicable skills along the way, but these are incidental. Any specific skill, any particular knowledge, can be obtained without getting a Ph.D. The Ph.D. teaches what you need to know to advance the field.
I'd like to return for a second to talk about teaching undergraduates. It's a very important thing to do. Ph.D. training ought to include pedagogy. Standards for university instruction are shockingly low, and professors are rarely held to account for failing to teach the material well, especially at R1 institutions. However this comment is not about what you should learn, but about what you'll actually learn in a Ph.D. program if you decide to enroll tomorrow.
I'd like to. Do graduate programs accept devs who have been working the last decade? There are areas I feel I could be helpful with, e.g. creating reproducible experiments or ensuring a codebase could be open sourced in relation to a paper. It's a lot of grunt work that nobody really has time to do. If that were possible, I'm not quite sure where to start with executing that plan. (Chicago area, FWIW.)
Source: i'm an escaped academic.
> PhDs are intellectually demanding, and not everyone will be able to finish. In the US between 41 and 78% of people who start PhDs have finished them after ten years, depending on their sub field. Computer and Information Science has the lowest graduation rates (41%) Right... I've met a good number of PhD dropouts - I am one myself. None of them dropped out because it was too "intellectually demanding." They all dro…
I went to grad school for chemistry. A PhD in my experience is more an exercise in perseverance than anything. You don’t need to be a genius, just work hard and have some luck as well.
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The question raised by the article is, can real-world experience make up for a lack of PhD? A balance of both is perhaps best, which is what industry PhD holders have.
Corollary being: can a PhD make up for lack of real world experience?
I know this isn't popular. But I will say it - since I know it goes unspoken in the industry. When I see a CS MS degree I assume the person is terrible. I am always proved correct. I can count on one hand resumes of people that gets a CS BS degree THEN a MS degree in CS [15 years of looking at resumes]. In the US, if you get a BS in CS you usually take off doing cool stuff. CS Master degrees are full of people not ma…
I'd like to. Do graduate programs accept devs who have been working the last decade? There are areas I feel I could be helpful with, e.g. creating reproducible experiments or ensuring a codebase could be open sourced in relation to a paper. It's a lot of grunt work that nobody really has time to do. If that were possible, I'm not quite sure where to start with executing that plan. (Chicago area, FWIW.)
I think your best option is to apply to a masters degree. These are easier to get into, especially for someone out of school for a few years. This is also an opportunity to find professors doing research in topics of your interest.
I assume this refers to a PHD. The masters degree I got is also post-grad. I'm not sure if anyone else covered it but you have to have a certain amount of money to get a PHD. I was approved to enter a doctorate program at Stanford. I couldn't afford it so I went to HP to earn some money. After the five-year approval expired I was disappointed that I could never afford it. (We're talking astronomical numbers here).
Don't know how things are now, or how they are in other fields.
Now, of course free wasn't exactly free, because studying in grad school was potentially at the expense of working a regular job. That's another topic.
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You make it sound like this is some elephant in the room across the industry. I'm curious if others here have found the same conclusions you have.
I've seen it among many managers from several companies. After I got involved in the hiring process I saw why. Like unable to fizzbuzz more than half the time.
If someone insists on making a hiring decision based on my ability to whip out fizzbuzz on a whiteboard under a ticking clock, find another person and waste their time. I’ll pass.