Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lessons from my PhD

web.eecs.utk.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 133 posts

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#121

Post by evancoop »

lambdatronics wrote: post #114
evancoop wrote: post #26

The "lead or be led" trope is apt, and certainly became the paradigm of my doctoral years. I might, however, amend this slightly. There's another idea of going rogue too soon or too late ( https://matt.might.net/articles/ways-to-fail-a-phd/ ). Students, new employees, and other inexperienced folks need to be led initially, and then rapidly, transition into a self-directed paradigm. Success emerges if and only if the…

Great point. I clashed a bit with my advisor early on - they were trying to shepherd me away from a rabbithole, but I was a bit pigheaded and determined to fix something that I felt was sloppy. I ended up with a publication on it, but it probably wasn't a great use of my time (aside from providing me with a chance to flex my wings).

It seems like, in your case, the publication is evidence that the rabbit hole was at least original and interesting. Students in that category tend to graduate, have a few compelling results to their name, and simply expend a couple extra semesters relative to the average.

The real question is whether they learn to focus efforts on the relevant goal (in which case, these original thinkers with innate curiosity can be fantastic hires) or continue their rabbit-hole-exploring ways (in which case they generate publications as post-docs, but generally struggle in the private sector where folks want THEIR questions answers ASAP). Which are you?

(Fascinating discussion!)

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#122

Post by low_tech_love »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #6

Two things I would add to this that I learned early on in my PhD: 1. Presentations aren’t really about conveying information. I sat though so many dull presentations, they were very informative but I can read a paper quicker than they can badly present the same information. The best presentations were the ones that covered the whys of the work, the applications, the next steps, the specific problem areas - often thes…

“Showing up” is the best advice of all, better than any of the (great) ones presented by the article. Actually, none of the other advices will work unless you show up. I’ve seen people digging around for advice in the hopes that it will save them from disaster or help them do more with less time, but the truth is that the advice only works if you are actually willing to suffer through the working hours.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#123

Post by jl2718 »

I do not have a PhD, but this is how I believe professional work should (and probably used to) operate. I’m extremely bored and annoyed by management practices that do nothing but track and assign work. When I started my career, it seemed a like a lot like a PhD described here. It was in space systems, and everybody was responsible for finding a problem to solve independently within the mission requirements. In that scenario, a PhD felt like a waste of time compared to professional work. Today it feels like I sorely need it (or an MBA) to climb the micromanagement hierarchy.

Is there such a place today as a professional?

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#124

Post by xab31 »

lambdatronics wrote: post #99
xab31 wrote: post #38

My big eye-openers (some from postdoc) were more about the sociology of science than the day-to-day productivity: - Even the most blatantly wrong and illogical published work can only be displaced by another publication that explains/does the same phenomenon better; i.e., people are going to keep believing in phlogiston until someone shows them oxygen. If you simply point out inconsistencies in phlogiston theory, in…

The sociology of science is so interesting. (Not the field, but the subject.) Here are some of my favorites quotes/thoughts: This one is a direct contrast to your advice (which speaks volumes about what's wrong with academia): "A good scientist, in other words, does not merely ignore conventional wisdom, but makes a special effort to break it. Scientists go looking for trouble."[0] This was written about physics at C…

> "...Scientists go looking for trouble."

It is several repeated and very costly attempts that I made to do just that which leads me to give the advice I did.

The pyramid quote is an interesting one. Obviously there is a tension between being passionate about an idea/goal/cause but not being overly siloed. It seems the best-case scenario is: pick your passion, find some people who're thinking in the same general direction, and compromise the vision among yourselves.

Let's just say that the thought of solving some of the problems I'm interested in from outside academia has occurred to me. But I'm sure it's not all sunshine and rainbows on the outside, either, and moving from academia whose primary motivator is risk aversion to something like a startup is an extreme culture shock, the more so because my objective would be building something real, rather than bilking gullible VCs into an acquihire.

Really good thoughts there.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#125

Post by kafkaIncarnate »

xab31 wrote: post #38

My big eye-openers (some from postdoc) were more about the sociology of science than the day-to-day productivity: - Even the most blatantly wrong and illogical published work can only be displaced by another publication that explains/does the same phenomenon better; i.e., people are going to keep believing in phlogiston until someone shows them oxygen. If you simply point out inconsistencies in phlogiston theory, in…

This is true here, as well. I once asked about something related to SSL/TLS (fairly politely) and was kind of mockingly escorted by some groupies to the corner since I apparently responded to an Apache developer.

I was just trying to learn. Learning bad is what I learned.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#126

Post by euroderf »

ModernMech wrote: post #72
euroderf wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there an issue that if you take two years off, in the meantime someone somewhere else is doing the same topic and bangs it out and steals your thunder? Does this kind of thing ever happen, or is it more of a theoretical possibility?

It's more theoretical. While it's possible to write a dissertation in a short amount of time (I wrote mine in 2 months), it really should represent multiple years worth of dedicated research. For example, I had a figure in my dissertation which took 4 months to create, in terms of data collection and processing. Just one single figure out of several dozen! That's one aspect is that most dissertations are not very imp…

Thanks for replying. I'm not implying that someone else would "redo" your entire body of work in that two years, but rather, that someone else had also already been working on it at the point when you took your two years off, and they wrapped it up in that two years, taking you somewhat by surprise. But yes, I imagine that for a sufficiently compact addition to Knowledge, it's straightforward to keep tabs on everyone working in that small area.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#127

Post by lambdatronics »

evancoop wrote: post #121
lambdatronics wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point. I clashed a bit with my advisor early on - they were trying to shepherd me away from a rabbithole, but I was a bit pigheaded and determined to fix something that I felt was sloppy. I ended up with a publication on it, but it probably wasn't a great use of my time (aside from providing me with a chance to flex my wings).

It seems like, in your case, the publication is evidence that the rabbit hole was at least original and interesting. Students in that category tend to graduate, have a few compelling results to their name, and simply expend a couple extra semesters relative to the average. The real question is whether they learn to focus efforts on the relevant goal (in which case, these original thinkers with innate curiosity can be…

I'd like to think I've gotten better about focusing on a relevant goal. I'm working in industry now, although still doing physics R&D.

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#128

Post by lambdatronics »

xab31 wrote: post #124
lambdatronics wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sociology of science is so interesting. (Not the field, but the subject.) Here are some of my favorites quotes/thoughts: This one is a direct contrast to your advice (which speaks volumes about what's wrong with academia): "A good scientist, in other words, does not merely ignore conventional wisdom, but makes a special effort to break it. Scientists go looking for trouble."[0] This was written about physics at C…

> "...Scientists go looking for trouble." It is several repeated and very costly attempts that I made to do just that which leads me to give the advice I did. The pyramid quote is an interesting one. Obviously there is a tension between being passionate about an idea/goal/cause but not being overly siloed. It seems the best-case scenario is: pick your passion, find some people who're thinking in the same general dire…

Thanks! What kind of problems outside academia are you interested in?

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#129

Post by rabbits77 »

anonymousDan wrote: post #81
rabbits77 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall the same things. I remember being bitterly envious of students that seemingly were given topics to examine while I had to spin my wheels for a good year or two coming up with my own ideas to explore. Looking back my perspective is very different. First of all, my ideas generated a minor spike in publications for the lab all centered around my work. After I graduated I continued to advise new students to cont…

Wow, not being allowed to present your own first author paper is pretty bad - unless someone else contributed a lot of the work and was made second author + presented?

Not at all. The papers where I was first author were essentially 100% all my work. Second or third authors were advisor and a committee member that helped edit, closely read proofs and pseudocode. Certainly helpful and deserving of authorship but a steep drop off in contributions from first author (me) to them.

Advisor had family in Europe (I am in US), and would use these conferences to create extended family vacation plans.

Of course when I think back on this I am still pissed! But years have passed and I am doing well in my career. I am able to not get too fixated on it.

And yes, I agree with the people saying it was terrible and very wrong. In terms of all the possible terrible and very wrong things that can happen to a graduate student this is maybe, in the grand scheme of things, about mid-range maybe?

Re: Lessons from my PhD

#130

Post by XorNot »

natechols wrote: post #48
chrisseaton wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A first year is a pretty harsh deadline to set yourself to know what you’re doing. Most people I know’s PhDs only came together in the last 18 months of their degree.

For most people in my program and others like it (molecular biology, US) the decision point tended to be at the end of the second year, after the qualifying exam(s). This is because the first year tends to be full of lab rotations and some classes, and you don't really start doing research until nine months in.

My program was pure research, so I'd say that decision point lines up pretty well with the "1 year of research in, are you looking good?"

Though it seems weird to me to be in classes and labs without it being associated with it's own academic achievement (did that qualify as a certificate of any sort?)

Post reply on HN