Advice for Prospective PhD Students

Deep research areas in computer science would be foundations of databases, cryptography, formal verification, statistical heuristics, core algorithms behind deep learning, ...

Since so many areas in computer science are relatively new, there is generally more flexibility in who might be considered great at research. The field includes many unusually creative individual practitioners who have produced great work without a Ph.D.

But Ph.D.s are still very much in demand and common for research positions in these highly technical, high value areas.

It is problematic to view it purely from the perspective of money. Consider the huge non-financial opportunity cost to not doing a PhD. If you get a PhD, you still have a chance of founding a business and becoming a multimillionaire. If you don't do a PhD, you'll almost certainly not get the benefits of the PhD ever.

I look at my friends who went straight to industry after their undergrad, and compare with myself and those who did a PhD, and there's a notable difference. If your advisor is not a slave driver[1], you'll have more time to introspect and be exposed to many perspectives/disciplines, at high concentration, than you have time for with a full time job. You can do it after work, but only if you opt not to have a life. It will takes perhaps 10 years of consuming all your non work time to perhaps match up 5 years of grad school. Pretty much no one goes this route.

Put another way: If your son discovered he had more earning potential if he never completed high school, would you say "Go for it!"?

[1] And contrary to what you read on HN, many are not.

Indeed, that is my sole reference point. If I ever leave the US, maybe that will be a better opportunity!

> one option is to become a scientific programmer

I'll look into this. Thanks!

Had a nice Baader-Meinhof moment from the article. I have been obsessed with music from a young age, not just the output but also the creative and technical processes that come together to make it, yet despite reading and watching a lot about my favorite bands, the creative process, the music industry over the years I've never internalized his name (although I've doubtless encountered references to him many times).

I stumbled onto a documentary about Rubin and his studio Shangri-La last night and found it immediately captivating, musing to myself, "Wow, what a cool and weird dude. How have I never picked up on his influence before?" After the doc finished I enjoyed a nice session of creative thinking inspired by some things he and David Lynch were talking about. Cool, I've got a new person on my radar to seek out their words and wisdom when the mood or need arises. Then in the opening paragraphs of the first link I click this morning, on HN in a piece written for PhD candidates of all places, here is his name. Kind of wild.

The song "Hurt" by Johnnie Cash [0] is a long-time favorite. It's one the greatest rock and roll covers ever, in no small part for how transformative and emotionally powerful the reinterpretation is, second only to "Take It to the Limit" by Etta James [1] imo. I just learned from that interview it was Rubin who brought Reznor's song to Johnny, saying "this is you, this is the man in black." It's funny, I have sometimes wondered about Johnny listening to Nine Inch Nails, finding it weird. But this is somehow even crazier, that Rubin could hear that first song and somehow connect it to Cash, knowing he might be able to turn it into something so powerful and personal.

I feel like anyone who has a fair degree of creativity in their pursuits, whether professional or for personal fulfillment, can benefit from absorbing some of this dude's process, thoughts, and vibes. Even if you find him and what he says completely ridiculous. Anyway, the entire 60 minutes interview that the clip linked in the article is from is worth a watch [2]. It's pretty short. I particularly like an exchange from the end of that interview,

Rubin: "The audience comes last."

Cooper: "How can that be?"

Rubin: "Well, the audience doesn't know what they want. The audience only knows what has come before."

In the brief time I've been exposed to the guy, one of my favorite concepts Rubin expressed is this idea that his best creative ideas come entirely from outside himself, so most of his life is about putting himself in a place where he can be receptive to that outside force or influence, whatever it is. That rather than being a generator of great ideas, he is merely an antenna that can be carefully tuned to receive the signal from somewhere else.

We all have heard the wisdom that you really can't force creativity or flashes of insight, but this takes it a step further in a way that resonates with me. I don't think what he is saying is necessarily true in any objective or empirical sense of course. The power of this concept is that it deeply acknowledges that almost everything inside us that we think of as ourselves, especially our ego, our sensory interpretations, and our conscious thought processes pouring through our knowledge base, are nowhere near enough on their own to produce the kind of brilliance which human beings are sometimes capable. And becoming overly focused on those more superficial (or at least obvious) parts of our consciousness can sometimes drown out or distort the signal that comes from deeper awarenesses which sometimes have unique and powerful things to say about reality.

Thanks for reading, and good luck to you in your creative and technical pursuits!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AHCfZTRGiI

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqhYXLVYQJ8

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUbUn9FnrME