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I'm someone who finished a PhD, here's my perspective. You don't believe your supervisor or your research group and so you quit, great. It's great that you have the critical thinking abilities and confidence in yourself to make such a decision. However, I think it's extremely unprofessional to write a blog post saying that your supervisor is superficial or your research group is performative art. I don't say this bec…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are way more PhD's then there are research positions, so we are very far from the deficit you fear.
> There are way more PhD's then there are research positions Nonsense. Look at how many job openings there are for PhDs - people can't hire them fast enough. I was in a call the other day saying how hard it is to even find PhDs to interview, let alone get them to accept your offer.
I'm someone who finished a PhD, here's my perspective. You don't believe your supervisor or your research group and so you quit, great. It's great that you have the critical thinking abilities and confidence in yourself to make such a decision. However, I think it's extremely unprofessional to write a blog post saying that your supervisor is superficial or your research group is performative art. I don't say this bec…
I interact very heavily with academics (though am thankfully no longer one myself) and one thing I can't stand is that all of them will complain endlessly about the horribly abusive and broken system that academia has become, then without hesitation turn around and flog the next person in line when it's their turn to continue the process from the abusing side. As someone who once held the title of assistant professor…
You pay your weight in gold, but if you become a pain to someone high enough on the totem pole, it's easy to get kicked out of a program, leaving you with not much.
You gotta play the game to have any chance of changing things. A lot like politics, actually.
> I started my PhD in Quantum Computing. Even though I basically didn’t have any previous knowledge about it How does this happen?
It sounds a bit like his supervisor(s) didn't know to much about Quantum Computing as well. Really seems like a strange situation...
So everyone is falling over each other to train up some new nerds. They are opening huge pots of money any professor who can make a plausible case for quantum computing with X. Here X is generally some form of pure research that the professor made a contribution to in the past. You'll inevitably have some growing pains when you try to repurpose hundreds of physicists like this.
It seems sort of silly, but when a government decides it wants get a jump on a new industry, before it's commercially viable, I don't see a better option.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are way more PhD's then there are research positions Nonsense. Look at how many job openings there are for PhDs - people can't hire them fast enough. I was in a call the other day saying how hard it is to even find PhDs to interview, let alone get them to accept your offer.
Job != research. Many people see a PhD as an indicator of "really smart person" (good for jobs!...maybe...until you have too many of them and they get bored or act like divas), but it's more an indicator of an ability to do independent research (good for a very specific type of job). We are producing vastly more PhDs than we need for jobs that require the latter.
I'm someone who finished a PhD, here's my perspective. You don't believe your supervisor or your research group and so you quit, great. It's great that you have the critical thinking abilities and confidence in yourself to make such a decision. However, I think it's extremely unprofessional to write a blog post saying that your supervisor is superficial or your research group is performative art. I don't say this bec…
I interact very heavily with academics (though am thankfully no longer one myself) and one thing I can't stand is that all of them will complain endlessly about the horribly abusive and broken system that academia has become, then without hesitation turn around and flog the next person in line when it's their turn to continue the process from the abusing side. As someone who once held the title of assistant professor…
Completely agree.
> The amount of bullshit being produced and regurgitated in academia needs to be called out. Your definition of "unprofessional" is just "this makes us look bad"
No, it isn't. First off, I'm not in the academia. I'm not part of the "us". It doesn't affect me if person A is attacking people B. For me I don't care at all. Also, I specifically said that the problem wasn't criticism. The problem is criticism so vague it's impossible to defend, because there's nothing to address. Person A says that person B is superficial. Person B responds "no I'm not". Very substantive!
It looks like the author has taken down the post, but it's archived: https://web.archive.org/web/20220523144108/https://blog.derh...
You should consider respecting their desire to take it down, at least in the context of the heavily trafficked HN comments section
You did well. Quantum computing will never exist and you seem like a reasonable person who does not want to waste their life on horseshit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spent a lot of time in academia, and I quite disagree. He's pointing out something that is very common in academia - common enough to be widely accepted . Saying he is unprofessional in criticizing his supervisors is like saying someone is unprofessional in criticizing his boss for demanding Leetcode style interviews. If his supervisor were an outlier, I could see your point. But a big purpose behind his blog post is…
> Spent a lot of time in academia, and I quite disagree. He's pointing out something that is very common in academia - common enough to be widely accepted. Saying he is unprofessional in criticizing his supervisors is like saying someone is unprofessional in criticizing his boss for demanding Leetcode style interviews. I specifically said the issue isn't criticizing. The issue is criticizing in a way which is so vagu…