What You Need to Know Before Considering a PhD

A solution would be to have a letter of recommendation and appreciation from a school.

As long as you are pursuing any education, you should either get the degree automatically, or just get some certificate that you went in some school.

It should be up to schools to select their students, merit in education doesn't seem to work, as it doesn't anywhere anyway.

Also, the metric of success seems to be here how much you earn and how many startups you have founded. If these are your success metrics then don't ever even consider doing a PhD or moving out of Silicon Valley.

There is of course value in the critique that PhD programs can be oppressive with a toxic culture and depression. One has to consider how big this risk is within your program and if one is willing to take it. Thinking you can tackle these issues within your department is beyond naive.

With regards to learning new stuff and finding and scoping interesting problems of your own: People don't seem to realize that it is your PhD program. You are in the lead of the direction your research is taking* . Advisors are there to advise you and not the other way around. If you are just following orders when doing a PhD you are doing it wrong.

To conclude my tangent rambling, if you are going to do a PhD do it for the right reasons. Money, fame, titles and number of startups founded are IMHO not valid reasons to consider doing a PhD. If you are doing a PhD you can shape your research the way you want and be advised by your advisors, not the other way around.

* Terms and conditions may apply. You are still (usually) working of course within a grant to solve one huge problem, but the way you solve it is mostly up to you.

Now, students must submit their thesis within five years (one of my students very nearly failed his PhD because of this), and there are funding restrictions for continuing beyond three.

A safe option?

A (funded!) PhD is an opportunity to focus on a subject you are really interested in, that you probably can't work on outside of academia and spend a lot of time, three to four years, free of all other responsibilities but producing a short book at the end describing your work.

It is the only three years in your life you can spend directing your own research, choosing your own goals and creating new knowledge with nothing but the power in your little hands and your little brain. "Safe"? There is nothing scarier than staring at the darkness of a new path to knowledge, stumbling around in the unknown trying to find your way where neither google, nor Stack Overflow have gone before and there's noone to hold your hand while you make it up as you go along.

A PhD is an opportunity to become a world-class expert in your field. Not because you get an empty title at the end, but because if you do it right there should be literally no-one else on this sweet earth who knows more than you do about your chosen subject (well, except perhaps than your annoying thesis advisor who's always been there and done that and can nip your best ideas in the bud with but a couple of words. But I digress).

A PhD should be a time for your mind to open wide, like a blooming flower, like the hippies of old thought LSD would do to them. It should be a time to become a strong man or woman of knowledge, to drag yourself over and above the mean and look at the stars and say "oh, sweet lord, I get it! I G E T I T !!".

Well of course if you try to take the safe path you'll be bored out of your head and disappointed. What do you expect? "Safe"? "Prestigious"? It's not public office, man! It's a PhD! Focus on the knowledge! That's what it's all about.

Yes, of course you'll learn a ton if you stay in industry, too. But, in industry, it's always someone else who chooses what you need to know. In a PhD, it's your game. A PhD is knowledge, coupled with freedom.