Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD. • Hacker News Board

Re: Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD.

#131

Post by barber5 » Thu, Jan 24, 2013, 7:23 PM UTC

geophile wrote: post #47

pnathan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My PhD adviser was a wonderful man, low-key, with some fun things he was investigating, but he wasn't building an empire, built on the backs of enslaved grad students. We were just looking at interesting problems together. That sounds like so much fun. Hey, what was your PhD on? Can you talk about the product you shipped?

My research was on spatial query processing -- z-order-based techniques. The idea is to map spatial objects to one dimension by noting how a space-filling curve (z-order) passes in and out of the object. Overlapping objects can then be found by simple operations on 1-d data structures supporting random and sequential access, (e.g. sorted array, btree). I believe that the same transformation is used in geohashes. The…

It probably won't actually matter but it could for some who do something similar to you, but are you sure you actually own your research and that the IP doesn't belong to the university? That's another reason not to do a PhD that was relevant for me: the ability to have more control over the value I was creating rather than giving it to the university to dispose of.

Re: Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD.

#132

Post by geophile » Fri, Jan 25, 2013, 4:13 AM UTC

barber5 wrote: post #131

geophile wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My research was on spatial query processing -- z-order-based techniques. The idea is to map spatial objects to one dimension by noting how a space-filling curve (z-order) passes in and out of the object. Overlapping objects can then be found by simple operations on 1-d data structures supporting random and sequential access, (e.g. sorted array, btree). I believe that the same transformation is used in geohashes. The…

It probably won't actually matter but it could for some who do something similar to you, but are you sure you actually own your research and that the IP doesn't belong to the university? That's another reason not to do a PhD that was relevant for me: the ability to have more control over the value I was creating rather than giving it to the university to dispose of.

I don't think anyone "owns" it. The research was published, and anyone can read the papers and then perhaps build something with it. That is true of the vast majority of academic research. There is no IP in the form of something that could be patented, because a published idea would count as prior art.

Commercial efforts started by people employed by the university are a completely different matter, and universities have rules about how much time can be spent on such efforts (including consulting), and about ownership of companies established by faculty.

Re: Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD.

#133

Post by dhimes » Mon, Jan 28, 2013, 3:21 PM UTC

tryggvib wrote: post #82

dhimes wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, tryggvib. There are a lot of comments I can make in this thread (I'm 50 years old, Ph.D. in physics, despised classes but loved research), but I'm only going to make this one, to you: Good luck Friday!! Remember, YOU are the world's expert in this specialty. Remain calm, and don't let them rattle you.

Thank you dhimes! On the bright side there is one thing my lack of respect for academia results in (I hope I'm not offending anybody and I'm mostly directing this at my university): I'm not at all stressed for the defense. Thanks for the kind words.

Congratulations?

Re: Dear brilliant students: Please consider not doing a PhD.

#134

Post by enjo » Tue, Jan 29, 2013, 5:47 PM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #126

enjo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another data point: My wife is a relatively recent PhD (6 years out). Her experience has been nothing but amazing. When it comes to academia your field of study matters. Alot. My wife is a behavioral accounting researcher, which is a high-demand field with incredibly low supply. Her experience, compared to other disciplines, just couldn't be any more different. She's highly paid and does exactly what she loves. It he…

Umm, so what is behavioral accounting? I did google it, and it suggests that Steve Jobs (when he was alive) was a major asset of Apple and should be priced into the company's stock value.

It's like behavioral economics (Freakonomics, Predictably Irrational, etc..) but focused purely on how people are influenced by information, specifically accounting information.