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American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

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Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#21

Post by JonathonW »

stirfrykitty wrote: post #3

Very few jobs require PhDs. Tech most certainly doesn't. I've been in this industry across three decades now, and by far the most talented people I've worked for or with have had nothing but HS diplomas and AS degrees. That's right. The bottom rung education levels. My dearest mentor, a man who has forgotten more about *nix, coding, and about anything else than I will ever know has a HS diploma and can and does run r…

As someone who went through grad school in CS, I don't regret my Master's-- in large part because it led me directly into the job I'm in today, which I enjoy (a startup devoted to commercializing tech developed in the research group where I was working in grad school).

I also don't regret dropping out of the program before finishing my PhD. After I finished my Master's and started pushing towards the PhD, I came to the realization that what I really wanted to do was just to build cool things, not spend my life in the publish-or-perish cycle of academia. So I stopped with my Master's, took a full-time staff position doing more-or-less exactly the same thing I was doing in my Research Assistantship except for a lot more money, and moved on with my life. And eventually got recruited to where I am now.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#22

Post by valzam »

freyir wrote: post #16

The current "PhD hang up" in tech, if it exists at all, seems to be driven by the competition for ML talent (edit: ML research talent ). To some extent, this is understandable: a typical undergrad CS curriculum is terrible preparation for ML research. I'd even say almost any analytical field: statistics, signal processing, physics, math, etc. is better preparation for working in ML than a conventional undergrad CS cu…

Have you ever worked on ML systems in industry? 90% of all your problems are engineering problems. The myth that you should hire some STEM PhD because they are good at math is ridiculous.

I have worked at several AI/ML firms. Only in extremely rare circumstances do your problems require PhD level ML knowledge. But the amount of tech debt produced by 'scientists' is horrendous.

Can someone who studied CS 15 years ago and has since worked as a webdev produce robust ML systems? Probably not without significant training. But someone who has done a CS Masters in the last 5-7 years and has shown interest in the subject will run circles around a PhD who never had to write non-academic code.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#23

Post by ylmm »

DeonPenny wrote: post #13
jimmaswell wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine most of the time but Google etc. are going to want a few PhD's in graph theory, AI, number theory, etc

Even in the case of google I know most of the people working in their AI program I know personally don't have an MS or PHD. As long as you can understand the work it's fine.

Sure, but what do they do? Looking at Google Brain for example, "research scientists" are exclusively people with doctorates, while "engineers" only require an MS or BS/BA.

The work is totally different; they're not substitutes.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#24

Post by coverman »

As a data scientist with a BS and MBA, I can attest to having experienced disqualification for jobs specifically because of my lack of a PhD. What's troubling is employers think they need PhDs. It often doesn't matter if I have 10 years experience applying data science in industry, without that PhD companies think I'm unqualified.

From my perspective, the best data scientists strike a balance between technical and business knowledge. And it's the business knowledge that PhDs coming straight from academia often lack.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#25

Post by copperx »

umvi wrote: post #15

PhD programming candidates at my work seem completely clueless to industry standards when it comes to coding because they've been mired in academia land for decades...

That's an example of something that can be quickly learned on the job, 1-2 days tops.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#26

Post by HeavenFox »

ylmm wrote: post #23
DeonPenny wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in the case of google I know most of the people working in their AI program I know personally don't have an MS or PHD. As long as you can understand the work it's fine.

Sure, but what do they do? Looking at Google Brain for example, "research scientists" are exclusively people with doctorates, while "engineers" only require an MS or BS/BA. The work is totally different; they're not substitutes.

I am not sure about Google, but when I was at Facebook, any Software Engineer with PhD can opt to use title Research Scientist instead. The purpose is mostly to make Green Card application easier.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#27

Post by freyir »

valzam wrote: post #22
freyir wrote: post #16

The current "PhD hang up" in tech, if it exists at all, seems to be driven by the competition for ML talent (edit: ML research talent ). To some extent, this is understandable: a typical undergrad CS curriculum is terrible preparation for ML research. I'd even say almost any analytical field: statistics, signal processing, physics, math, etc. is better preparation for working in ML than a conventional undergrad CS cu…

Have you ever worked on ML systems in industry? 90% of all your problems are engineering problems. The myth that you should hire some STEM PhD because they are good at math is ridiculous. I have worked at several AI/ML firms. Only in extremely rare circumstances do your problems require PhD level ML knowledge. But the amount of tech debt produced by 'scientists' is horrendous. Can someone who studied CS 15 years ago…

I totally agree that 90% of ML problems are engineering problems and having a PhD is not relevant to those cases. My comment was more about the 10%, the more research-oriented parts, which some companies have become very competitive about in the last few years.

> But the amount of tech debt produced by 'scientists' is horrendous.

Absolutely. I've been trying to exit a research-oriented position for the last few months because I want to work with competent engineers again.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#28

Post by nostrademons »

I worked with a bunch of a Ph.Ds at Google, and my dad had one. I myself have nothing more than a bachelor's, and no desire to get anything more.

I've heard and observed that the Ph.D teaches you one crucial skill - how to take a vaguely defined research problem that nobody has done before, where you're not even sure that a solution exists, and make tangible, rigorous progress on it. Your actual doctoral topic as a Ph.D student will probably be useless. Most of your coursework is the same as what any master's degree gives you. But the experience that sets you apart from B.S. and M.S. graduates is that of slogging through a dissertation, trying to make an original contribution to knowledge.

There are other ways to develop this skillset. Founding a company does it as well, as does developing a new product from scratch. High-level creative work (eg. writing a novel, getting traction for your band, producing a theatrical performance or radio show) does as well. Companies love to hire candidates from these backgrounds as well, but most don't want to work for someone else. (Interestingly, depression and anxiety might actually be a feature of developing this skillset, not a bug - these two mental disorders are endemic among these fields as well.)

The reason employers get hung up on this is because the economic returns to innovation are at an all-time high these days, and so developing that blockbuster new product or highly-efficient new process makes a lot of money. And part of the reason returns to innovation are so high is because so few people are actually innovating. While there certainly exist people with just a bachelors or even no degree at all who are capable of innovating, a large number of bachelor's holders do not have the toolset or mental fortitude to break out beyond what everybody else knows and create new knowledge.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#29

Post by tathougies »

stirfrykitty wrote: post #3

Very few jobs require PhDs. Tech most certainly doesn't. I've been in this industry across three decades now, and by far the most talented people I've worked for or with have had nothing but HS diplomas and AS degrees. That's right. The bottom rung education levels. My dearest mentor, a man who has forgotten more about *nix, coding, and about anything else than I will ever know has a HS diploma and can and does run r…

I mean it really depends on what kind of tech you're doing. Tech is not just *nix, javascript, python and phone apps. If you're working on chip verification and formal methods, as some people I know are, then a PhD is a huge boon. These are rapidly developing and in some sense still emerging fields with lots of money to be made (especially in the arena of defense, medtech, etc). They are not your 'typical' valley fodder of mindless web apps, 'machine learning', I'll give you that. But they are tech nonetheless (and actually really cool, underappreciated tech in my opinion).

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#30

Post by ylmm »

HeavenFox wrote: post #26
ylmm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but what do they do? Looking at Google Brain for example, "research scientists" are exclusively people with doctorates, while "engineers" only require an MS or BS/BA. The work is totally different; they're not substitutes.

I am not sure about Google, but when I was at Facebook, any Software Engineer with PhD can opt to use title Research Scientist instead. The purpose is mostly to make Green Card application easier.

Oh that's so clever aha.

When some people FB Core Data Science came to campus, they made it pretty clear that they were looking for people with doctoral training for their research work (and not, for example, a Master's graduate who completed PhD-level coursework), so I guess it depends on the task/team.

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