What You Need to Know Before Considering a PhD • Hacker News Board

Re: What You Need to Know Before Considering a PhD

#131

Post by sparso » Tue, Aug 28, 2018, 9:30 AM UTC

I was a PhD student in the UK, it was always something I wanted to do and even had a publication during my undergraduate degree. I ultimately didn't complete my PhD for two reasons. Firstly my supervisors were scarcely available and neither focussed on my PhD subject, it was a bit of a side interest for them both. As I look back at it now I should have possibly seen the warning signs earlier. Secondly various delays on the project (including 6 months for a piece of hardware to be repaired under warranty by the manufacturer) meant that I had to find a job before I was able to complete the PhD. I did gather enough data to complete my PhD in my spare time, but once in full time work it was very hard to stay motivated to complete it in the evenings.

So having an incomplete PhD, would I do it again? Probably. I would be a bit more cautious about the topic and ensure my supervisor(s) were focussed on the area before beginning. With hindsight I would be more aware of the risks associated with external sources (hardware) that could delay the project for whatever reason. What I did learn though was the ability to manage my own time and collate information from various data sources in order to back up my side of a discussion. The ability to manage my own time I think is something that separates me now from my peers who did not do a PhD, but I do find when applying for jobs that I lack the necessary years of commercial experiences for roles where the hiring manager does not understand the nature of working on a PhD. So whilst it was definitely a great learning experience, I think it has set back my career slightly.

Do I regret doing a PhD? Absolutely not. Sure it was stressful and frustrating dealing with problems out of your control. But I learnt alot about myself and how to manage my own time, as well as how to stay motivated when presented with problems that are outside of your control.

Re: What You Need to Know Before Considering a PhD

#132

Post by fnrslvr » Tue, Aug 28, 2018, 9:38 AM UTC

If your FAANG research team employs just as many PhDs as non-PhDs, and we accept that there are a couple of orders of magnitude more non-PhDs in software engineering than CS PhDs looking for work in industry, then I don't rate my chances of getting recognized within the company for my robust knowledge of theory of computation and abstract algebra later down the road if I take that grad job I was offered by a tech giant. Also, it's not all that likely that a job as an engineer is going to keep me my theory knowledge or research skills fresh.

The article makes a few resonant points, but overall I think the "you can get into research if you jump straight into industry" pitch it tries to make is very weak. As someone who very much wants to do research (mostly hard-to-monetize research about comparing exotic models of computation to one another, but I'll listen to a pitch for applied research too), I'd very much like to see someone lay out a highly plausible roadmap for getting into a research position without a PhD. I don't think this article is that.

Re: What You Need to Know Before Considering a PhD

#133

Post by alibarber » Tue, Aug 28, 2018, 9:58 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #101

sytelus wrote: post #71

This is quite an unfortunate article. Author goes on to list several folks who don’t have PhD but have “made it” and asserts that many people can do fascinating and cutting-edge work without PhDs. There are always outliers in stuff like this but ask yourself: How many people you know who don’t have PhD and have freedom to explore at work full time what truely interests them? Author has rather twisted view of the sele…

You won’t be coming to office everyday doing assigned task on your backlog and reporting your status in scrum meeting Including former colleagues I probably know a couple of hundred PhDs who do this exactly the same as mere Bachelors. Outside of a few niches a PhD is barely recognised in industry. Sorry, but that’s the truth.

I think they're referring to life doing a PhD, not day-to-day industry (although they do earlier say 'rest of your life' - which I assume means continuing into an academic career)

Re: What You Need to Know Before Considering a PhD

#134

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 28, 2018, 9:59 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #105

sytelus wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PhD has no bearing whatsoever on your capacity to do solid research In my experience this is not true except unless you are super genius. Most folks without PhD often keeps making same naive mistakes, for example, not studying previous state of the art, not recording experiments properly, heuristics instead of rigorous analysis and so on. PhD trains to avoid all these. It allows you to build network, identity great…

not studying previous state of the art, not recording experiments properly, heuristics instead of rigorous analysis and so on ??? They taught all of us that in undergrad. a person without PhD would often neglect to mention scale in the graphs ... and they taught us about the scale of a graph in secondary school ...

[deleted]

Re: What You Need to Know Before Considering a PhD

#135

Post by MikeTaylor » Tue, Aug 28, 2018, 10:11 AM UTC

There is only one good reason to do a Ph.D, and that is because you really really want to invest 10,000 hours of your life into researching a topic that you love deeply for itself. I have a Ph.D in vertebrate palaeontology, which I got because I loved the work; I know a lot of other palaeo Ph.Ds who did the same. But in my experience, everyone who attempts a Ph.D for any other reason -- for prestige, to improve job prospects, whatever -- either craps out of the course (best case) or endures a miserable five years (or often much longer).

Bottom line: do a Ph.D if and only if you want to do the work. Don't do one in order to get the qualification. Focus on the journey, not the destination.

Re: What You Need to Know Before Considering a PhD

#136

Post by gambiting » Tue, Aug 28, 2018, 10:39 AM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #21

This is total anecdata, but out of my closest college friends, five of them went to get a PhD, while I went to industry. When they graduated, I was already making more than of all of them, with five years of industry experience. And I made more them them for the next thirteen years too. I never hit any magical ceiling where a PhD was necessary. In other words, don't do a PhD if you're in it for the money. It may open…

Total anecdata too - when me and my friends finished undergrad, I went to work in the industry and two of my friends doing PhDs were much better paid than me throughout their entire PhD programme - the combination of grants, paid hours for teaching and marking made their salary about 150% of mine. Only after they finished their PhDs 4 years later my salary has matched what they were making at the start.

I suppose it could be unique in a way that their PhDs were sponsored by large companies and hence well funded, but I worked 4 years a C++ programmer and never caught up with their pay.

That was in the UK btw.

Re: What You Need to Know Before Considering a PhD

#137

Post by lbriner » Tue, Aug 28, 2018, 10:40 AM UTC

This raises the significant issue again that colleges are attempting to do two things, in most cases they only do one of them well: Academia and Industry readiness.

At my university, I learned very little in my degree that was noticeably useful in industry but then academia is not supposed to be about industry, usually, but about increasing knowledge that may or may not have an application.

In the college I attended before university, I learned an enormous amount of information useful for Industry but it didn't give me much of a leg-up for the work I was about to do at university.

Most industry work I have seen is not massively academic and does not require academic qualifications. In certain jobs, however, they make a point of requiring qualifications when they could probably run some tests instead to demonstrate that you understand the basics of comp-sci or whatever else.

Re: What You Need to Know Before Considering a PhD

#138

Post by stared » Tue, Aug 28, 2018, 10:43 AM UTC

sytelus wrote: post #71

This is quite an unfortunate article. Author goes on to list several folks who don’t have PhD but have “made it” and asserts that many people can do fascinating and cutting-edge work without PhDs. There are always outliers in stuff like this but ask yourself: How many people you know who don’t have PhD and have freedom to explore at work full time what truely interests them? Author has rather twisted view of the sele…

> People should do PhD if they are genuinely interested in doing scientific research.

This condition is necessary, but not sufficient.

After finishing my PhD in quantum information, I turned to data science. I couldn’t be happier about this transition! Compared with academia, data science world looks to me like a wonderland.

tl;dr: faster pace, more freedom (sic!), way less bureaucracy and politics, etc

Longer version: https://p.migdal.pl/2015/12/14/sci-to-data-sci.html

Re: What You Need to Know Before Considering a PhD

#139

Post by govg » Tue, Aug 28, 2018, 10:45 AM UTC

account2 wrote: post #23

throwawaymath wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) Do FAANG companies hire non-PhDs for machine learning positions? Most seem to require a MS or PhD That depends on what you mean by "machine learning positions" and what your bar for normalcy is. For research roles - these generally have distinct titles like "Research Scientist" or "Quantitative Researcher" - it is extremely difficult to get an interview without a PhD, let alone an offer. It happens , but rarely,…

Thanks. Can you list what courses one should focus on as a baseline to do research in ML? You mentioned Probability theory & Linear algebra, but what specific topics in those areas should one learn? Any other fields of math?

Probability, statistics and linear algebra are recommended because all of machine learning uses these as foundations. Any graduate level course in these areas will cover what you could possibly need. For people working in the more theoretical side of machine learning, maybe some analysis (functional specifically) might be useful.

Re: What You Need to Know Before Considering a PhD

#140

Post by dagw » Tue, Aug 28, 2018, 10:51 AM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #118

GLjEI4YbnGD27LB wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's europe, there's not that much debt.

In e.g. Sweden (that has this PhD system), the max student debt allowed (unless you go to a private lender which is more or less unheard of) is for 5 years full time studies. Meaning you already "maxed out" your student debt before starting tour PhD.

In Sweden PhD positions tend to pay around the median wage for a first job out of university.