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I'm quitting my PhD

blog.derhagen.eu

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Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#171

Post by BeetleB »

sdfhdhjdw3 wrote: post #99
BeetleB wrote: post #79

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…

> I specifically said the issue isn't criticizing.

And my issue wasn't about whether it's OK or not to criticize, nor about the level of detail, but whether his manner of criticism was unprofessional. It was not. You can argue that it's not effective, but there's nothing unprofessional about it.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#172

Post by acqbu »

noptd wrote: post #158
sdfhdhjdw3 wrote: post #20

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.

thanks for sharing

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#173

Post by peteradio »

itzworm wrote: post #145
peteradio wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your face when in 5 years you find yourself in project management: >:0

"We've found you to be so good at your job we want you to stop doing that job and do something with an almost mutually exclusive skill set."

"It's difficult to take direction from someone who doesn't know (or can't explore) the problem space as well as I do. I find I'm managing up so much that there seems less and less benefit to the current reporting structure I find myself in."

How often do people complain themselves into a new post?

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#174

Post by iab »

ghaff wrote: post #82
sdfhdhjdw3 wrote: post #20

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…

In general, I tend to be of the school that, while I won't say you should never blow up bridges with great force, the default should almost always be that whatever satisfaction is gained by publishing a cathartic blog post or twitter thread is probably better written in a diary somewhere without pushing a publish button.

Blogs need a "emotion-meter" metric that auto-delays publication for a set time. Probably true for every communication method in existence.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#175

Post by sdfhdhjdw3 »

Benjammer wrote: post #122
sdfhdhjdw3 wrote: post #99

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. I specifically said the issue isn't criticizing. The issue is criticizing in a way which is so vagu…

>It's exhausting commenting on HN. You have to append every minor observation of a laundry list of responses to likely misinterpretations. Interesting seeing this response after you just posted: >If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself Was this a tongue-in-cheek demonstration of your point? Or is vague criticism only unacceptable in academia?

The post I was responding to was the example.

I wanted to claim that you shouldn't make vague criticism. I immediately expected that people would respond as if my claim was that you shouldn't criticize. And sure enough, that's what the post I responded to did.

Me: "You shouldn't make vague criticism"

Response: "OMG you're saying university professors are above criticism."

Do you think I'm being vague here? :-)

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#177

Post by bumby »

dahart wrote: post #74
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #16

I would love PhDs to be thought of as something you dive into when you have something to pursue, perhaps many years later in life rather than a follow on immediately after study. As a comparison imagine if VC funding only went to the highest scoring new grads and the business proposal was asked for after the invitation to take on VC funding. That's pretty much what's been happening with PhDs. You get the marks, you g…

It’d be pretty cool if we had a real path for later-in-life research time. I’m not sure that’s very realistic, but I’d love it too. Big problems are that kids and jobs lock you into needing to make enough money. I actually tried to join a PhD program after 5 years of industry experience, and they offered the top fellowship they had, which was not enough to cover only the health insurance for my family, not to mention…

>It’d be pretty cool if we had a real path for later-in-life research time.

I think some of these are out there. I've known a few people working in government, academia staff positions, and quasi-government organizations that pursued their PhDs (for free) while working full time. Occasionally, some got some push-back as to why they wouldn't be available to teach, for example, but often their advisors welcomed them because they came with real-world problems they were trying to solve and an organization willing to pay and support them in that effort as part of their "real" job.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#178

Post by ModernMech »

OJFord wrote: post #7
ModernMech wrote: post #3

Probably for the best. Usually “I quit my PhD” stories are people who spent 6 years and got fed up, but if if the author can’t last 6 months it sounds like they had the wrong expectations going in.

Having a supervisor roughly in the field seems like a reasonable expectation though? The complaint is not having anyone to discuss the topic with...

That’s part of the problem here. 99% of a PhD is your choice of advisor. It fully determines your experience. Going to do quantum computing research in a lab that doesn’t understand quantum computing is really on the author; any questions about the core competency of the lab can be answered by their publication history.

Step 1 of doing a PhD is reaching out to people actually doing the research to see if it’s a match. Also having no one with whom to talk about QC tells me it’s a very small school or a specialized school. Or just the wrong school! Not all schools are created equally; they each have their own core competencies defined by the skills of the department faculty. If no one in the faculty had a history of QC research, why is the author attending that school to do QC research? Did they not think to ask before they applied?

And why don’t they just find a better school to fit their interests? Transferring is not unheard of at such an early stage of the degree. But the author is done completely, which tells me they weren’t that serious in the first place.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#179

Post by ModernMech »

dahart wrote: post #21
ModernMech wrote: post #3

Probably for the best. Usually “I quit my PhD” stories are people who spent 6 years and got fed up, but if if the author can’t last 6 months it sounds like they had the wrong expectations going in.

> if the author can’t last 6 months This doesn’t seem like an entirely fair take. Nobody has perfect expectations fresh out of undergrad. PIs chasing funding is real, and using those funds on grad students who are excited but don’t know what they’re getting into is extremely common. The one thing that is less common is providing zero resources & guidance to get the job done. This definitely sounds like at least as mu…

Not going to disagree that it’s not an advising failure as well, but if you’re so interested in Quantum computing that you’d like to devote 6-8+ years studying the subject under a professor, you might want to check first that the professor knows something about quantum computing.

Step 1 of doing a PhD is to find a person who you want to work under for probably 10% of your entire life. If you’re serious about it, it’s something you should not quit at literally the first roadblock.

If I may read between the lines here, because I see this often enough: it seems like this student had a passing interest in QC; joined a department without talking to anyone there to find out if the research they do is compatible with their interests; proposed a deep theoretical research topic that neither anyone in the department nor the author knows much about; and then promptly quit when they told him it’s probably not the best idea.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#180

Post by Barrera »

The article has been replaced with this disclaimer:

> Because this article received somewhat more attention than I expected/feel comfortable with, I’ll take it down for a moment. Sorry. I’ll leave the disclaimer:

> Disclaimer: This article has been primarily written to clear up my mind, and to potentially receive constructive, uplifting or critical comments from others. I feel like it helps me cope with a frustrating and difficult situation. I do not intend to attack anyone.

It looks like the article was submitted to HN by the author. Then, taken aback by promotion to the front page and certain passages that could be construed negatively, the author took the article down.

A lot of people dream about being well-known, or at least getting on the front page of HN. What they may not realize is the microscope that places you under and what it can do to you.

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