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Why I'm Getting a PhD

johnbender.us

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Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#91

Post by mjn »

apl wrote: post #87
vrnm wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany you get around 2000-2500 netto per month for doing a PhD. Its like an entry level engineering salary, but instead of working for someone else, you are working for your self (on your own PhD, which is a lot of fun). Furthermore, you are still a student, so you get all the student benefits available (really cheap transportation, cheaper food, cheaper sports, travels...).

That applies to some of the hard sciences (more precisely: engineering, as well as some branches of physics and chemistry), but not in general. PhD students in biology earn around 1400 after taxes; a philosopher or what have you is lucky to make any money at all.

This depends heavily on the country. In Denmark a PhD student in any discipline will earn a salary of about €2000/month after taxes. However the positions are somewhat more competitive as a result: professors have fewer PhD students at a time than American professors do, usually only one or two, sometimes three. The downside of that is that it's harder to get into grad school. But the upside is that the situation of lower ratios of PhD students to existing professors makes getting academic jobs after graduation easier, because the number of new PhDs graduating is not hugely out of proportion to the number of academic positions opening up.

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#92

Post by andrewcooke »

Lewisham wrote: post #61
burntsushi wrote: post #18

Is anyone else doing their PhD (or did their PhD) just because they thought it was a lot of fun and a great way to learn a lot in a short time period? Not that it's the only way to do any of those things, but I've found the lifestyle of a graduate student in CS to be extremely appealing. My mentor once suggested that a PhD is only worthwhile if you plan on doing research after you graduate. But as he got to know me b…

Isn't that enough? Well, yes, it can be . During my PhD studies I met a couple people who could be considered "lifers" who were clearly very happy doing graduate-level research work. Maybe you are one of them. Their optimal career path would be a cushy postdoc job so they continue to keep doing what they are doing but without paying tuition fees. I'm sure you know, but for others reading, there are reasons why most p…

(1) is (only) your personal viewpoint - i certainly never felt that.

(3) can apply to any interesting job, if you let it.

only (2) is an impartial criticism of research.

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#93

Post by tensor »

omnisci wrote: post #81
tensor wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds a lot like you are telling us what you value in life. There are no rules in life and it's not a requirement to have your whole life planned out at every moment in time. Most people don't, including highly successful people. That's ok. What's important is taking advantage of opportunity when it is presented. If a goal of yours is to learn, then a PhD is a great opportunity for this. The value of the PhD is…

[bill lumbergh] I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you on that. [/office space] (My PhD is in behavioral neuroscience, so YMMV) I've found that if people want to learn, then they will learn. You don't need a PhD for that, and the process of going through a PhD doesn't really teach you anything more than you couldn’t have gotten yourself. Passion drives someone to learn, not getting accepted into a PhD progr…

It's about access to resources that you won't have not being part of a university. This is especially true for physical sciences that require expensive laboratory equipment. However, even for something like CS, having access to good lecturers and courses is very helpful.

Of course, the open courses being put out for CS and Math is certainly is changing the picture for these fields. I think they are great.

The point is, learning in a bubble is not nearly as useful as learning from peers and those more experienced as yourself. It's also the case that few people have the discipline to go through the important but sometimes dreary exercises required to learn these topics. Having structured learning programs helps with this too.

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#94

Post by burntsushi »

Lewisham wrote: post #61
burntsushi wrote: post #18

Is anyone else doing their PhD (or did their PhD) just because they thought it was a lot of fun and a great way to learn a lot in a short time period? Not that it's the only way to do any of those things, but I've found the lifestyle of a graduate student in CS to be extremely appealing. My mentor once suggested that a PhD is only worthwhile if you plan on doing research after you graduate. But as he got to know me b…

Isn't that enough? Well, yes, it can be . During my PhD studies I met a couple people who could be considered "lifers" who were clearly very happy doing graduate-level research work. Maybe you are one of them. Their optimal career path would be a cushy postdoc job so they continue to keep doing what they are doing but without paying tuition fees. I'm sure you know, but for others reading, there are reasons why most p…

I think this is a really insightful reply, and I tend to agree with you. But it still doesn't help me be any less taken aback when people assert that PhD's should only be obtained when you want to do original research for your career. If you want to warn people, that's fine, but just do it instead of phrasing it as if you know the One True Reason for doing a PhD. I grant that some people might just be trying to be pithy, but I've seen too many people take it too seriously to just give the benefit of the doubt to everyone.

> Now I've done my PhD, people often ask me "Do you think I should do one?" and the unsatisfyingly true answer is "I don't know, I'm not you"

I wholeheartedly agree.

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#95

Post by jrobbins »

John, it's great that you want to learn more about those topics. But, don't misunderstand. Earning a PhD is like 10% learning about the topic, and 90% learning the process of research and the business of research. Based on your blog post, it's going to take a while until that other 90% really hits you. Reading papers is easy compared to writing them.

Also, PhD studies and the academic life at a research institution are emotionally stressful and extremely time consuming. You have to consider the negative impact of that on your family, regardless of how supportive they are.

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#96

Post by burntsushi »

Lewisham wrote: post #62
burntsushi wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As I've gotten further into the degree, I've realized that academic research is as plagued by corporate-style politics as any other venture. The fun started to die. I've actually gone through precisely the same realization, but it hasn't ruined the fun for me. Namely, I seem to be an observer while the messy politics are played by the faculty members. I entered graduate school with the intention to become a profess…

I decided not to continue with academia after my PhD not because of the internal politics[1], but the external. I failed completely to find external funding, and with NSF only funding 11% of applications, that's typical. And when you going for external funding, you're having to do what they want you to do, not the blue sky research I naively thought I'd get to do when I started my PhD. If I'm going to have to justify…

> The internal politics is actually easy to understand. It moves very slowly, and it's based entirely on getting a critical mass of influential people in the department to be on your side. It requires a lot of closed door chats to get things done.

Definitely. I'm entering my fourth year now, and in retrospect, it's completely unsurprising. But when I entered graduate school, I almost immediately realized that I had idealized the notion of academia. Probably because I was a newborn pup as far as academia was concerned and really wanted to believe bullshit didn't get in the way of quality publications. (And I don't even have any sour anonymous review experiences myself.)

But academia is just like everything else: most people seem motivated to publish to advance their career. Only a few good ones are out to publish something to help others. I really thought it'd be the other way around when I entered. Naive, I know.

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#97

Post by burntsushi »

betterunix wrote: post #66
burntsushi wrote: post #18

Is anyone else doing their PhD (or did their PhD) just because they thought it was a lot of fun and a great way to learn a lot in a short time period? Not that it's the only way to do any of those things, but I've found the lifestyle of a graduate student in CS to be extremely appealing. My mentor once suggested that a PhD is only worthwhile if you plan on doing research after you graduate. But as he got to know me b…

The problem is that you might find yourself at a point where it is just not all that enjoyable anymore. Your adviser stops caring about your research, or you are told that you need to get N papers published by the end of the year to stay in the program, etc. Maybe you find that you are unable to work with your adviser, and there is nobody else who will take you on as a student. I have seen a number of people leave gr…

Well, I mean, yeah. If you don't enjoy it or end up in a position where you no longer enjoy it, then doing it for fun is no longer a good reason. :-)

I certainly didn't mean to imply that everyone's experience should be rosy...

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#98

Post by _delirium »

omnisci wrote: post #81
tensor wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds a lot like you are telling us what you value in life. There are no rules in life and it's not a requirement to have your whole life planned out at every moment in time. Most people don't, including highly successful people. That's ok. What's important is taking advantage of opportunity when it is presented. If a goal of yours is to learn, then a PhD is a great opportunity for this. The value of the PhD is…

[bill lumbergh] I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you on that. [/office space] (My PhD is in behavioral neuroscience, so YMMV) I've found that if people want to learn, then they will learn. You don't need a PhD for that, and the process of going through a PhD doesn't really teach you anything more than you couldn’t have gotten yourself. Passion drives someone to learn, not getting accepted into a PhD progr…

In theory I agree, but I very rarely run into people who actually do so on their own. Even fewer who do something recognizable as contributions to a research field, in the sense of writing up something of peer-reviewed paper quality, which indicates the author is familiar with existing research, appropriately explains how the new contribution relates to concepts and techniques that already exist, and presents the results in a convincing format (whether that's statistical analysis or a good case study or whatever). It doesn't even have to actually be published; I'm fine browsing papers on arXiv too, or things circulated as whitepapers or tech reports.

They exist, but they're uncommon, and many of the people doing that kind of work are in sort of para-academic jobs, like long-time librarian at a big research library, or senior staff member at a (government or corporate) research lab. Even in an environment like Google, the majority of the papers and paper-like writeups seem to come from either people with PhDs, or people with long track records in a quasi-academic environment, like Google's sizable stable of ex-Bell-Labs researchers.

I don't really say that out of any particular love for institutionally tied research, but more out of the opposite, a frustration that it's so rare to find DIY research that really contributes to a research field. Some of that, I assume, is just incentives: if what you earn money on involves getting something to work, all that really matters is that you come up with a technique that works. Understanding how your technique relates to existing techniques, explaining whether it's completely novel or a variant of an established one, and doing the detailed analysis to figure out why precisely it outperforms existing techniques (e.g. is there one particular tweak that's critical, and if so, why is it critical?), is not always something incentivized in that context, but is important to advancing the state of knowledge in a field.

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#99

Post by freyr »

tensor wrote: post #78
freyr wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong, it's extremely important. You're devoting the next 5+ years of your life to a single task. You're forgoing your programmer salary for the next 5+ years, which could easily add up to $300k - $500k in opportunity cost. Your forcing your wife and kids to come along for the ride. You're going to end up a world expert in a tiny niche that, quite possibly, nobody outside of academia cares about. You should have a pr…

This sounds a lot like you are telling us what you value in life. There are no rules in life and it's not a requirement to have your whole life planned out at every moment in time. Most people don't, including highly successful people. That's ok. What's important is taking advantage of opportunity when it is presented. If a goal of yours is to learn, then a PhD is a great opportunity for this. The value of the PhD is…

> This sounds a lot like you are telling us what you value in life.

That's true, just as you're telling us what you value in life (e.g., the opportunity to learn to learn).

However, I'm suggesting that it's be beneficial to enter into a PhD program with a long-term perspective. You seem to be actually discouraging that, or at the very least, claiming it's irrelevant.

I can't really see a scenario where that's good advice.

In fact, that's exactly how I entered a PhD program fresh out of college: without much direction or a long-term goal in mind, except to learn as much as I could and enjoy the experience. I enjoyed the experience, but I would have benefitted (during the program and after graduation) by aligning the program with my long term goals.

Besides, your counterparts who ran the corporate treadmill will only be incrementally richer than you anyways.

Of course, money isn't everything. But to be honest, that's definitely not the case. I have several friends who hustled after college or enrolled in professional degree programs. They now make multiples of what I can ever hope to earn as a "research engineer." Other friends saved up during those years and now own a house. Realistically, I'm still several years from owning a condo.

If you really want to be rich, you need to take on big risks such as starting a company or the like. Talking about putting your wife and kids in a tough spot!

And we've circled around to yet another example of the opportunity cost of spending 5+ years (perhaps before the wife and kids) in graduate school.

(As an aside, I've heard that grad school is about "learning to learn" before, and I'm not convinced. Yes, I worked on problems to which nobody knew the answer. From my perspective, that's not significantly different from working on a problem whose answer is at the back of the textbook. The internal process is the same. Most successful graduate students I knew were reasonably smart, and worked very hard, and eventually made progress. Did I need to spend an additional five years after college to tell me that "intelligence + effort = progress"?)

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#100

Post by zmmmmm »

I see a lot of people saying getting a PhD limits your options for employment afterwards and you should only do it if you want an academic career.

I'm currently completing a PhD, and that was one of my primary concerns prior to starting. However I've eventually become more at ease with it. For one, I see a new appreciation for PhD level knowledge thanks to Google et. al, who have repopularised the value of having a PhD with their hiring practises. The advent of machine learning has made higher level CS knowledge more valuable again where for a while it was even actively spurned by much of the software industry. At the same time the basic bachelor CS degree is becoming commoditized and its value is decreasing. Partly because of outsourcing, partly because of MOOCs, and partly because it is becoming evident to employers that people without college / university training can be as effective as people with that training.

All up, I'm a lot less worried about this point than I was before I started.

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