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I Dropped Out of Grad School Today

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11–20 of 53 posts

Re: I Dropped Out of Grad School Today

#11
post #9

This has got to make PG nervous. How many people's life is he affecting? :-) He's definitely had an impact on my priorities in a very big and positive way. I hope everyone who makes changes based on his inspiration and motivation does it with a clear head and can take responsiblity for the decision and outcome.

I saw him and JL tonight and they were pretty freaked out. It's cool though- I got a nice t-shirt out of it.

Re: I Dropped Out of Grad School Today

#12
post #3

It's brave to drop everything you've been working so hard for in sights of opportunity, but is it really in the electronic part search market? Sorry, I don't mean to sound negative, but a PhD in physics would have opened such a large expanse of possibilities. You're going to throw it away for a chance at more women and on the whim of one man (PG's) advice. Best of luck.

A PhD in physics today opens up some opportunities in the one very specific field that you studied. Getting post-doctoral positions is hard; there isn't that much money floating around. I know that I'm dropping out soon.

Re: I Dropped Out of Grad School Today

#13
I often wonder if there are good opportunities for (non-web) startups in physics/science. The state of programming in there is abysmal, in my experience. There must be thousands of Fortran implementations of finite element codes out there, each with dozens of non-trivial bugs. It's absurd that physicists do so much low-level programming and optimization on their own.

Re: I Dropped Out of Grad School Today

#14
post #6

I suspect that startups are for more creative people. So you need to decide whether to pursue an analytical phd or a more creative startup. BTW, you might find this discussion interesting: http://weblog.fortnow.com/2006/07/science-and-art-of-computation.html

Creativity rules everywhere. A good Ph.D. from a good school requires tons of creativity.

Re: I Dropped Out of Grad School Today

#15
post #6

I suspect that startups are for more creative people. So you need to decide whether to pursue an analytical phd or a more creative startup. BTW, you might find this discussion interesting: http://weblog.fortnow.com/2006/07/science-and-art-of-computation.html

As someone who did a PhD in a creative kind of computer science field and felt frustrated by the success of those who choose more trodden PhD paths - I was going to agree with this. But in start-ups as well as PhDs success is defined by the number of people you give value to not how creative you were.

Re: I Dropped Out of Grad School Today

#16
Couldn't you have taken a sabbatical? I mean, did you just totally walk away from it? I took a sabbatical for a year from a PhD in CS to pursue some medical science ideas, then went back when they didn't go far enough to make a living on. Not flaming, just curious.

Re: I Dropped Out of Grad School Today

#17
post #14
post #6

I suspect that startups are for more creative people. So you need to decide whether to pursue an analytical phd or a more creative startup. BTW, you might find this discussion interesting: http://weblog.fortnow.com/2006/07/science-and-art-of-computation.html

Creativity rules everywhere. A good Ph.D. from a good school requires tons of creativity.

Absolutely! Creativity is as important, if not more so, than technical skill.

Re: I Dropped Out of Grad School Today

#18
post #14
post #6

I suspect that startups are for more creative people. So you need to decide whether to pursue an analytical phd or a more creative startup. BTW, you might find this discussion interesting: http://weblog.fortnow.com/2006/07/science-and-art-of-computation.html

Creativity rules everywhere. A good Ph.D. from a good school requires tons of creativity.

There are different forms of creativity, some more open-ended than others. Most research done in scientific fields is not what I would call open-ended creativity. BTW, the most creative idea I have seen recently actually came from the Univ of Washington & Microsoft Research: http://labs.live.com/photosynth/. The most creative one prior to that came from a phd student @ CMU: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143. It would be interesting to see what percentage of successful startups are conceptually clever with mind-blowing ideas such as these. As an example of one, I really like http://www.likebetter.com/.
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