A Survival Guide to a PhD • Hacker News Board

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#101

Post by thr0waway1239 » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 6:31 AM UTC

karpathy wrote: post #98

stared wrote: post #32

Well, I went from academia (after finishing my PhD) to industry, to get more Freedom, Ownership, Personal growth, Status and Expertise. Here is a blog post on my transition from theoretical physics to data science (and how it made my life much better): http://p.migdal.pl/2015/12/14/sci-to-data-sci.html I understand that Andriej Karpathy (my favourite author/lecturer in Deep Learning, by a large margin) had a wonderfu…

It seems that a larger-than-I-expected fraction of the response to my post concentrates on a very small part of it, especially the part where I enumerate some considerations for thinking about whether a PhD might be a good fit for you. By far the largest fraction of the post is concerned with tips/tricks for effectively navigating the PhD experience once you commit to going through it. I jokingly refer to it as a "su…

Also do you mind modifying the title to say a Survival Guide to a C.S. PhD?

Absolutely everything the GP says is spot on, the C.S. PhD is really atypical amongst all the Ph.D. disciplines. E.g. the resource constraints that exist in many disciplines don't even exist in C.S. - it is almost completely the product of thought/ideas and ever cheapening computing power. I would suggest sending out your article to Ph.D. students in different disciplines, look at all the feedback, and then incorporate them if you are so inclined. The article might look quite different.

Edit: after reading the comment from pgbovine, I felt I made an unnecessary personal comment, which I omitted. I rewrote the sentence to keep the main point.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#102

Post by pgbovine » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:08 AM UTC

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #101

karpathy wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that a larger-than-I-expected fraction of the response to my post concentrates on a very small part of it, especially the part where I enumerate some considerations for thinking about whether a PhD might be a good fit for you. By far the largest fraction of the post is concerned with tips/tricks for effectively navigating the PhD experience once you commit to going through it. I jokingly refer to it as a "su…

Also do you mind modifying the title to say a Survival Guide to a C.S. PhD? Absolutely everything the GP says is spot on, the C.S. PhD is really atypical amongst all the Ph.D. disciplines. E.g. the resource constraints that exist in many disciplines don't even exist in C.S. - it is almost completely the product of thought/ideas and ever cheapening computing power. I would suggest sending out your article to Ph.D. stu…

My unsolicited advice: Don't change a word.

At most, link to this HN thread so that readers can see different perspectives, but you wrote the article you wanted to write, not the one that anonymous online critics wanted you to write. If others want to write a response saying why you're misguided, by all means go ahead.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#103

Post by pgbovine » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:09 AM UTC

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #88

shas3 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more of a continuum than you suppose in your comment. It's not a binary of "great" vs "average" PhD. There's plenty in between and many types of averages. Karpathy had it good, as did Might, Guo, and other purveyors of wisdom on PhD. But that doesn't invalidate their arguments and observations.

I wouldn't say Guo had it good, I mean his book is called the PhD grind; that's not a particularly happy sounding title.

best comment today :) thanks. i managed to recover, though, thankfully. should write a new epilogue sometime, but haven't gotten around to it.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#104

Post by codepie » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:19 AM UTC

stared wrote: post #32

Well, I went from academia (after finishing my PhD) to industry, to get more Freedom, Ownership, Personal growth, Status and Expertise. Here is a blog post on my transition from theoretical physics to data science (and how it made my life much better): http://p.migdal.pl/2015/12/14/sci-to-data-sci.html I understand that Andriej Karpathy (my favourite author/lecturer in Deep Learning, by a large margin) had a wonderfu…

I recently met a professor, he said that most of his students are working in Deep Learning and he is finding it difficult to get people to work on other interesting problems. So there is really a demand of students to work on other areas as well. But most of the students get carried away by the trending fields.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#105

Post by gajomi » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:23 AM UTC

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #88

shas3 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more of a continuum than you suppose in your comment. It's not a binary of "great" vs "average" PhD. There's plenty in between and many types of averages. Karpathy had it good, as did Might, Guo, and other purveyors of wisdom on PhD. But that doesn't invalidate their arguments and observations.

I wouldn't say Guo had it good, I mean his book is called the PhD grind; that's not a particularly happy sounding title.

I very much enjoyed reading through Guo's PhD grind, which came out as I was nearing the end of my PhD. However, the picture he paints of the grind, where he stumbles along a few different projects that end up in top tier journals/conference with intermittent internships at high profile companies is a thing to envy for the vast majority of PhD students. I'm not saying he didn't work hard, that his experience wasn't genuine, etc., but the memoir is hard to read as anything other than a string of incredible successes when compared to a typical PhD student's experience. In the narrative of the book they only sound like failures because he is comparing himself to Stanford professors who are at the top of the food chain.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#106

Post by gajomi » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:26 AM UTC

pgbovine wrote: post #103

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say Guo had it good, I mean his book is called the PhD grind; that's not a particularly happy sounding title.

best comment today :) thanks. i managed to recover, though, thankfully. should write a new epilogue sometime, but haven't gotten around to it.

Well now I feel a bit embarrassed about the sibling comment I made... since the man himself has appeared I just wanted to reiterate that I enjoyed reading your memoir, as did several students in the lab I worked in. We even went and tried out IncPy for a bit, which was fun :)

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#107

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:29 AM UTC

pgbovine wrote: post #102

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also do you mind modifying the title to say a Survival Guide to a C.S. PhD? Absolutely everything the GP says is spot on, the C.S. PhD is really atypical amongst all the Ph.D. disciplines. E.g. the resource constraints that exist in many disciplines don't even exist in C.S. - it is almost completely the product of thought/ideas and ever cheapening computing power. I would suggest sending out your article to Ph.D. stu…

My unsolicited advice: Don't change a word. At most, link to this HN thread so that readers can see different perspectives, but you wrote the article you wanted to write, not the one that anonymous online critics wanted you to write. If others want to write a response saying why you're misguided, by all means go ahead.

[deleted]

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#108

Post by wodenokoto » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 7:35 AM UTC

aab0 wrote: post #79

wodenokoto wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good teaching, blogging, and sharing software probably hurts you. Karpathy is pretty famous for his blogging and open software. His code and blog post about recurrent neural networks practically got him a language model named after him. He also recommend you to release code in this article, so I'm not really sure what you are getting at.

> Karpathy is pretty famous for his blogging and open software. Yes, he's famous for that, but that didn't earn him his PhD nor would it have gotten him tenure. As he remarks about his teaching of his course, him doing a good job actively worked against him because... it's not writing a sexy new paper or networking. > He also recommend you to release code in this article, so I'm not really sure what you are getting a…

Most of the "Release your code" section is about how you should put your code in public because in makes you do the extra effort to write a better implementation.

> but that didn't earn him his PhD nor would it have gotten him tenure.

He doesn't have tenure. He works at a private organisation. We don't know how he landed it, but I think his internet famous helped.

In the "Don't play the game" section, which is where I think you got the "don't teach"-thing, he writes:

> but I did them anyway, I would do it the same way again, and here I am encouraging others to as well.

How you read this as anything but an encouragement to teach, write software and blogging is a mystery to me.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#109

Post by makeset » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 8:10 AM UTC

> Status. Regardless of whether it should be or not, working towards and eventually getting a PhD degree is culturally revered and recognized as an impressive achievement. You also get to be a Doctor; that’s awesome.

Ha, sarcasm, very funny. Seriously though, outside of academia, if you're at an actual cocktail party or something with normal people, don't ever say that you have a PhD. It's like admitting that you're into some really weird shit. If anyone else mentions it about you, quickly change the subject to something less cringeworthy, like herpes.

And for the love of God, never ever call yourself a "doctor." WTF is wrong with you? No.

If you're still a graduate student ("working towards"), this is all moot, because they shouldn't have let you into the party.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#110

Post by roel_v » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 8:13 AM UTC

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #101

karpathy wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that a larger-than-I-expected fraction of the response to my post concentrates on a very small part of it, especially the part where I enumerate some considerations for thinking about whether a PhD might be a good fit for you. By far the largest fraction of the post is concerned with tips/tricks for effectively navigating the PhD experience once you commit to going through it. I jokingly refer to it as a "su…

Also do you mind modifying the title to say a Survival Guide to a C.S. PhD? Absolutely everything the GP says is spot on, the C.S. PhD is really atypical amongst all the Ph.D. disciplines. E.g. the resource constraints that exist in many disciplines don't even exist in C.S. - it is almost completely the product of thought/ideas and ever cheapening computing power. I would suggest sending out your article to Ph.D. stu…

I disagree. It's true that it's easier to get funding for CS but the career strategies described are exactly the same for most other fields. Many phd students just can't understand this post though; they think they're 'students' like they were in undergrad but it's whole different ballgame. The concept of the symbiotic relationship between adviser and student for example - most phd students just cannot see that, even after it's spelled out for them. Ito requires a certain mental maturity that most 23 year olds just do not have, it seems.