The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time

Paul Halmos, a famous mathematician, was often approached by undergraduates who asked him if he thought they should go to grad school. He gave all of them the same advice: "No."

Now mind you, he was extremely enthusiastic about academia, and he would cheerfully encourage students who didn't immediately walk away, but insisted that they really wanted to do academic research.

I quit a well-paying job [added for HN: at a late-stage startup, no less] to slog through a difficult, low-paying PhD program and it was the best decision of my life. It was not a "practical" decision, certainly not for my earning prospects, but I wanted to do advanced research more badly than I wanted to do anything else.

The Ph.D. is designed to introduce you to the world of academic research and prepare you for a career as a professor. Full stop. I have no problem whatsoever with anyone who enters a Ph.D. program for any other reason, but they should not come with illusions about what they are getting into.

However - I am quite concerned that it may decrease my salary or even make me border line unemployable. Right now I have a good number of years experience in software development under my belt. I can search for jobs on any given day and find hundreds or even thousands of opportunities that I would be able to make a credible application for. I'm quite concerned that once I have a PhD many of these people would look at my PhD and turn me down as overqualified.

I'm curious if anyone with strong software skills has any experience in what the effect of a PhD is on employability?

Most PhD students -- at least the ones I know in the states and overseas -- spend most of their time in school trapped in a lab or office. A few make time to "network" with people outside the department, but most have to be forced to socialize with a broader audience than can be found at the weekly beer hour.

The far more common pattern for a PhD student is to spend years busting his/her ass in near-isolation to accomplish research goals and graduate, only to find that it's hard to get a job without real-world contacts. So you're absolutely correct in the sense that PhD students should be networking, but it just doesn't seem to happen very much in practice.

Oh man, +1,000,000. As someone who made the other choice from the same position you were in, this is exactly the advice I give to any fresh-faced grad student who gets all glassy-eyed and weak-minded in the face of doing "cool research" for some wonk professor for years while letting the real world slide by in the background.

You don't realize it when you're 22, but you've only got so much irrational exuberance and tolerance for crazy work schedules in reserve. Once that phase of your life is gone, it's gone, and you'll never get it back. Also, your friends are all moving on, too: the people with whom you can do things like co-found companies won't be in the same risk-tolerance categories when you're finally done with your research-based vacation from life.

During the time I was getting a PhD, I missed out on the second-biggest technology wealth creation event of my lifetime. My best friends -- the guys with whom I'd want to found companies -- got older, married, and had children. They're not able to take risks like that now. The world is harder and more expensive.

Now I'm working in the technology industry anyway, and I look around the world and see younger guys who are VP or C-level roles, leading large teams, and otherwise further along on the career ladder. But I have a PhD.