151–160 of 485 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The counter party to your opportunity costs doesn't send collection agencies, though.
$250k in savings in six years is doable with a salary of $125k after undergrad.
As usual, lot of PhD bashing in the comments. My experience was generally positive. The good things 1. I had mostly fun doing it. Being paid to learn things is great. 2. I got to work in different countries, and travel to many places 3. I was able to have more than one career. PhD + academia, before switching to industry. Gave me more perspectives. 4. I did learn a few things and skills (public speaking, I learned a…
For a long time, I felt stupid for getting my PhD during the buildup before the 08 bubble. I could have socked away a lot more money than my measly stipend. And afterwards, I always had decent jobs but not SV style salaries. That made me feel like it was all a bad decision.
But now that I'm approaching my 50s, I feel a bit differently. I traded variability for steady consistent growth. When SV lays of 80% of the work force and a bunch of people lose their jobs and their fancy SV salaries go to 0, I've luckily (knock on wood) never had that experience.
I bet in the long run a person making SV salary right out of college and invests smartly will still out perform economically than a steady growth after a delay for the PhD. But mentally the lack of variability has been good for me. YMMV.
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But can you still get $125k directly after undergrad? How many employers are willing to pay 2x the median wage to someone with no experience and no demonstrated skills, simply because they went to a school? To someone who is likely to make a net negative contribution until they learn how things work and require less guidance? To someone who is at a high risk of taking another job after a couple of years? It's more co…
FAANG or some company in a high-rent area where you could most definitely not save that kind of money, as far as I know. And, I love how making $125K is some sort of great salary. I live in MN and while it’s above the median HHI for the state, it’s by no means a comfortable enough wage to save that kind of money unless your housing is covered by family or something. Here in the MSP metro, you’re looking at $2500/mo f…
The median household income in Minneapolis is around $77K and they are somehow surviving.
In STEM in particular the opportunity costs of a PhD are extremely high and with little payoff at the end. Even if you want to stay in academia, which is the only real reason to do a PhD now, there are far more PhDs graduating per year than open faculty positions. Many get stuck in Postdoc or adjunct hell for years and can never get a tenure track role.
There are many research jobs at Microsoft, Google, etc., that require a STEM PhD.
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Why pay an American worker 100k + benefits out of college when you can pay an H1B worker 60k for the same level of education and also have a massive amount of leverage over them?
Because this is ostensibly illegal, and it would be nice if someone enforced the fucking law (H1Bs must be paid the market rate, and it's supposed to be enforced by the Department of Labor). But the entirety of US government apparati are geared toward helping big corps make money. It's just a question of which big corps (modern Democratic party is soooo captured by Big Tech). Of course, one of them also supports fasc…
I think we’re at the “so what are you going to do about it” phase where the courts and congress are going to tisk tisk at the most, because they don’t want the deep pockets of Elon and Co to primary-them-out
As a software engineer, a PhD doesn't seem worth it. It's a lot of work and time, and most companies don't particularly need PhDs. Maybe a PhD gets a boost in pay starting out, but 5 years of experience cancels out most of the benefit. I suppose PhDs can get a shortcut into Prinicple or Senior roles, so there's some tangible benefit. On the other hand, if a company is hiring PhDs and doing research, I feel those jobs…
A PhD isn't like a MBA which is meant mostly for the credential and associated pay bump. It's a research degree that you get if you want to work in academia or in a private research lab. If you're evaluating it purely by its economic value, of course it's not going to make sense, but that assessment misses why people pursue these degrees in the first place.
I considered a PhD in machine learning. It’s mostly downsides. Granted, most fields are not like this but: 1) The field moves too fast to focus on a single thing for 4 years. A lot of people were devastated when ChatGPT essentially solved their NLP tasks. 2) Cutting edge NLP/vision research is being done in industrial labs as much as universities. And industry will probably outgun you with equipment (GPUs) and high q…
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You are discarding opportunity cost in your assessment.
Maybe, but if you compare paying 30-50k per year plus living expenses for an average masters program for 2-3 years and then paying student loans for a really long time because you couldn't afford it in the first place vs paying no tuition and getting a $30k-40k stipend for 4-5 years. The advantage of a year or two of additional work isn't as great as you think, when you subtract out tuition and the stipend they give…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why pay an American worker 100k + benefits out of college when you can pay an H1B worker 60k for the same level of education and also have a massive amount of leverage over them?
Because this is ostensibly illegal, and it would be nice if someone enforced the fucking law (H1Bs must be paid the market rate, and it's supposed to be enforced by the Department of Labor). But the entirety of US government apparati are geared toward helping big corps make money. It's just a question of which big corps (modern Democratic party is soooo captured by Big Tech). Of course, one of them also supports fasc…
Credit Suisse here in Switzerland used to only hire PhDs for programming positions. It didn’t matter what the PhD was in - they’d train you how to program. Note: credit Suisse collapsed a few years ago and now no longer exists.