Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD.

What a refreshing article when I'm about to defend my PhD this Friday :)

My experience of the PhD was that it didn't break me but I come out of my studies having completely lost all respect for academia.

I finished my dissertation in about two and a half years (the main contribution and content of it) and then I waited for about three years to be able to defend it. No matter how often I pressed things and asked whether something was missing or lacking nothing happened (I actually blame my advisor). It wasn't until after I talked to the department head and said that I would not university registration fees (we have to pay them every year) unless something happened. Some other professor was put in charge and that made my advisor angry and everything got delayed again and now I'm finally finishing.

What bothers me is that I'm defending based on knowledge I had three years ago and I'm not allowed to add to it since that's not a part of my dissertation (and I've been really afraid of some other individual having published similar or same finding in those three years - I haven't really been following all research since I lost all interest in academia).

:)

I could not disagree more with the author - in fact at the moment I feel sorry for her.

TLDR: PhD is not for whimps

Yes it has the potential to break you, yes you will have very or little feedback loop and almost no money, and yes more people look forward being in academia for the freedom to pursue whatever research they fancy.

But this whole interpretation is very very wrong.

A PhD is a life changing experience - you learn how to learn and discover new knowledge - a process that can be extended to other disciplines and topics (it's not unusual to find someone with a PhD in something doing research in something very different).

It's the single best investment in yourself you can make - if you do value your capacity to work and create value, not just being paid to do stuff other people tell you to do, or what everybody has done in a given way for ages, and so you keep it doing that way for tradition/lack of creativity/no reason whatsoever.

Also, the biggest difference between the work you do during your PhD and the other work is that you work effectively without any precise objective. You learn to find inward motivation - which is the best replacement there is to outward reward. The work you do is its own reward. With that, and the kind of commitment you showed in the research-work you did alone for years, you can take any challenge you want.

Certainly, you work will be dissected by the best experts in the domain, and they will criticize it in any way they can - basically, you can't cheat. You have to actually do something outstanding, for which you will be judged.

It seems to me that's what most people on HN love and value : being judged on the merit of your work. At least that's why I love and value.

The only problem with all this is IMHO that many (most?) who do a PhD want to work in academia afterwards, to have the freedom to work on the topics they enjoy. I had the same failings - guilty as charged. I wanted to do something great and then to keep improving it in ways I saw fit. But I changed my ways (and got out of a tenure track in late 2012 - it's not for me)

I believe this is wrong, because anyone who wants to do that believes that its own interests are for some reason better than what the market values. It's good and all, do whatever you fancy, but not on my dime - not on public money. Get a real job.

I learnt a lot during my PhD - but more importantly I bootstrapped unknown capabilities to create knowledge - something that's bringing value in many things I do.

EDIT: for anyone interested, my last post on the topic and how my PhD in CS is currently coming into the real world 5 years later : http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4871888

Sums it up beautifully! Though one should not underestimate the downfalls most encounter on the way, or the very real possibility of failure. I have never encountered higher highs and lower lows than during my phd. Though it has made me a better person.

You learn how to think (something no undergrad could ever do so rigorously). You learn how to motivate yourself.

Invaluable lessons..

I think hardhead might have just been referring to keeping a "full time job" which is impossible in many of the STEM PhD programs in the US. A lab-mate of mine has a child, and I know a few others in my program that have children as well. Almost all STEM PhD programs offer stipends for TAs and/or RAs, so you might get on the order of 20K/year to be a student. That being said, there are no shortage of people claiming the grad student -> postdoc -> nontenured prof. -> tenured prof. route is hostile to those wanting a family.

It's also important to note that the supervising culture varies a lot between subjects. Computer scientists are usually spoiled by good supervision, but in the humanities you might see your supervisor only twice a year.. (and I do know people in Oxford in that situation).