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I'm quitting my PhD

blog.derhagen.eu

161–170 of 382 posts

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#161
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should consider respecting their desire to take it down, at least in the context of the heavily trafficked HN comments section

If you don't want people to read your post, perhaps write a private diary instead.

Or, you know, just don't submit it to HN yourself? If someone else had submitted it, I'd be fine with the author taking it down. Not everyone wants HN's attention.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#162
Sometimes I ask myself if a degree is really a legitimate proof of competence, skill or knowledge. Of course higher education matters, but I wish it would not exclude so many people. Higher education is usually the place where social classes start to branch.

Academia has often been a tool used to maintain social inequality, and that's the words you often hear from people who are insiders. A lot of people want to be in academics for passion of their field, or for prestige, or for the status. But in reality, it's another place meant to maintain elitism.

The weirdest thing is that jobs want you to have a degree, yet you often hear that degrees don't matter. So you quickly realize that education matters, but that degrees should not exist. Students should just want to learn and degrees should not be some sort of carrot on a stick.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#163
post #158

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…

Quoted post unavailable.

I flagged this but thought it is prudent to explain why.

The author deliberately took it down because the attention it garnered made them uncomfortable. While we all know what goes up on the internet is forever, it doesn't preclude us from having the decency to respect their wishes.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#164

https://github.com/derhagen/derhagen.github.io/commit/71c934... I don't understand what's so controversial about this post that the author had to take it down. Seems like a level-headed criticism of modern-day academia to me. Sturgeon's rule applies to everything, including academia.

the top rated comment is accusing him of being unprofessional. TBH, i would be mad too if someone did that to me.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#165
post #114

> "Aiming to produce PDF files that would be accepted at conferences (which seems to be easy-going if you sprinkle some fancy quantum vocabulary over something and hand it in to a non-quantum conference). I felt less and less comfortable in a setting that apparently expected me to pick some low-hanging – let’s call it fruits – and call it a day. After all, science is all about the pursuit of knowledge, even though th…

From what I can tell, the cause of this is that "number of papers published per unit of time" is the only metric institutions seem to care about when it comes to evaluating researchers' work.

Please. They care about $$$ in grants as well.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#166

I will hand in my notice tomorrow, after circa 1 year as a PhD student. In fact, I'm switching fields: from a PhD in Mechanical Engineering (energy systems) to a software developer role in a non-engineering sector. Very little of my 7 years (MSc) and subsequent circa 1 year as a PhD will carry over. Certainly an exciting step, although the program here was pretty excellent. Good supervision, full funding for the enti…

You’re going to become a middle manager if you follow the normal software engineering track.

Maybe it’s getting work “done” is what’s most attractive to you. I can see how it must feel to see your work right in front of you when you are writing code, but you need to be very aware of what you want. I’d not be happy if I switched fields to avoid management just to end up being a middle manager in a couple of years.

Then what?

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#167

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…

I'd be interested in hearing your perspective on what's broken, why, and what avenues are available to fix it. (Genuinely curious, I know the tone of that sentence may come across as dismissive. It wasn't intended to.)

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#168

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…

> If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself.

This is some serious gatekeeping. A PhD student is an apprentice, on a path to get scientific training. They are not yet trained enough, so that you could reasonable expect them to "be scientific" to a level of rigorous standards.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#169
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't want people to read your post, perhaps write a private diary instead.

Having it on the Archive is fine; choosing to disregard how scary landing on the top of HN can be seems callous.

People in this thread should take into consideration that the author submitted the post to Hacker News themselves. This is a call for the general hacker public to read it, and ultimately it cannot be undone easily.

I do understand the basic level of curiosity from fellow HN readers -- I did look up the research team and the supervisors mentioned. They do claim a really large area of research interests:

* Verification and Validation

* Search-Based Software Engineering

* Autonomous Driving

* Cyber-Physical Systems

* Digital Twins

* Quantum Software Engineering

It all adds something to the picture. That being said, I would not form any conclusions from this besides "a PhD student faces a crisis" -- unfortunately, this happens often and diagnosing those is really, truly difficult. (I am an assistant professor for just a year now, and I have seen those crises second-hand.)

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#170
post #63

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.

Ha! every now and then my dad tells me about this new "progress" they have made in quantum computer. The other day I thought I'd document myself a bit more to see the merit of the articles he mentioned. I was completely underwhelmed by the state of so called "quantum computing". I believe Blockchains will find a real-world widespread use way before "quantum computing" because feasible and usable for anything.
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