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I'm quitting my PhD

blog.derhagen.eu

111–120 of 382 posts

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#111

Why higher edu institutions are so disappointing and mediocre? I dont think ive ever heard good things about phd except the chance to work in cool places like e.g microsoft research

They’re not. Not universally. I really enjoyed my PhD and so did most of my friends.

The issue with absolutist statements like “Why higher edu institutions are so disappointing and mediocre?” is that it is a generalization from a non-random sampling of narratives, one that appeals to our sense of outrage and negativity. If one were to collect a fuller set of narratives one will likely find a more nuanced picture — yes, there’s hardship in a Ph.D. but in many cases there’s also joy in learning and discovery. It’s all a function of your advisor, your topic, your funding, your peer group and yourself (not everyone is cut out for it).

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#112
post #74

I would love PhDs to be thought of as something you dive into when you have something to pursue, perhaps many years later in life rather than a follow on immediately after study. As a comparison imagine if VC funding only went to the highest scoring new grads and the business proposal was asked for after the invitation to take on VC funding. That's pretty much what's been happening with PhDs. You get the marks, you g…

It’d be pretty cool if we had a real path for later-in-life research time. I’m not sure that’s very realistic, but I’d love it too. Big problems are that kids and jobs lock you into needing to make enough money. I actually tried to join a PhD program after 5 years of industry experience, and they offered the top fellowship they had, which was not enough to cover only the health insurance for my family, not to mention…

It'd be interesting to see someone with industry experience bring industry problems to academia and explore them there. As a bonus, they might be accomplished enough professionally that they aren't interested in the publication rat race, so they're more likely to produce meaningful results (or nothing, but that's ok!) than a pointless paper.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#113
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should consider respecting their desire to take it down, at least in the context of the heavily trafficked HN comments section

If you don't want people to read your post, perhaps write a private diary instead.

Having it on the Archive is fine; choosing to disregard how scary landing on the top of HN can be seems callous.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#114

> "Aiming to produce PDF files that would be accepted at conferences (which seems to be easy-going if you sprinkle some fancy quantum vocabulary over something and hand it in to a non-quantum conference). I felt less and less comfortable in a setting that apparently expected me to pick some low-hanging – let’s call it fruits – and call it a day. After all, science is all about the pursuit of knowledge, even though th…

From what I can tell, the cause of this is that "number of papers published per unit of time" is the only metric institutions seem to care about when it comes to evaluating researchers' work.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#115
post #7

Probably for the best. Usually “I quit my PhD” stories are people who spent 6 years and got fed up, but if if the author can’t last 6 months it sounds like they had the wrong expectations going in.

Having a supervisor roughly in the field seems like a reasonable expectation though? The complaint is not having anyone to discuss the topic with...

They chose their supervisior.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#116
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are way more PhD's then there are research positions, so we are very far from the deficit you fear.

> There are way more PhD's then there are research positions Nonsense. Look at how many job openings there are for PhDs - people can't hire them fast enough. I was in a call the other day saying how hard it is to even find PhDs to interview, let alone get them to accept your offer.

Link to a graph of open tenure-track phd positions over time? I can't find one but from what I've been reading it would indicate there are not enough positions open to fill demand.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#117
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Giving the OP the benefit of the doubt -- that he is completely correct in his assessment of the group -- he is certainly doing himself no favors publicly throwing them under the bus. I imagine other prospective advisors, in any field, might be reluctant to take him on if this is a pontential outcome.

This can go both ways. While he may be hurt by this, light needs to be shed on systemic failure. I know a few people who have PhD's that had fantastic support, counselors and teachers, and they still had questions on the validity of their degrees and processes. Here, this person's experience seems to be a money grab by a school unqualified to provide him a PhD in his area. Going public though, maybe a hard decision,…

This seems like the most important point. Is it normal for research groups to take on PhD candidates who they are unable to support in the field of interest?

{Takes on Quantum Computing grad student} + {has insufficient Quantum Computing expertise in group to even advise} seems... pretty bad.

PS: And being from a tenured family and having grown up exposed to academia, I'm inclined to take author at their judgement here, given that taking on students in hot topics meshes with how the incentives of grant funding, publishing, and prestige work.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#118
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are way more PhD's then there are research positions, so we are very far from the deficit you fear.

> There are way more PhD's then there are research positions Nonsense. Look at how many job openings there are for PhDs - people can't hire them fast enough. I was in a call the other day saying how hard it is to even find PhDs to interview, let alone get them to accept your offer.

There are three types of jobs a PhD could go into: A) industry job (just job to us mortals), B) industrial research lab (a company, but does research. An example would be IBM or Microsoft Research in CS), or C) a professor. For context, I work in a research group in a building full of PhDs, postdocs and professors.

For A, PhDs ought never be short of work. They were likely good students, they also spent 3-5 years looking at the state of the art in their field. Something should've rubbed off along the way. So a PhD is usually a good signal (but many smart people decide not to do PhDs, as well).

For B - the supply of places which will pay you to do actual research rather than company-specific goal stuff is much reduced compared to the supply of PhDs. This is why you'll find plenty of PhDs at Google doing software engineering - sure they're PhDs and they're smart, but they're likely not still publishing much. Whereas MSR/IBM research groups do publish (and in many ways act like a university).

For C - the chances of getting to tenure-track professorship are low, and when people say there aren't enough jobs for PhDs this is generally what they mean: there aren't enough academic jobs. The usual process is to become a postdoc and then to become junior faculty - a professor, but not tenured. Then you must seek promotion into a tenured role. Sometimes people skip steps, but this is the path people I've talked to have taken. Each stage is competitive: you have to convince a professor to take you on as a postdoc, then you must convince hiring committees you should become faculty and that you have the potential to become tenured. All the while, you must deliver enough research output to back that up.

At each of those stages, there's a relatively high attrition rate, and this is amongst people who obtained PhDs.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#119

> I started my PhD in Quantum Computing. Even though I basically didn’t have any previous knowledge about it How does this happen?

There are a few ways.

Maybe a research group wants to investigate a connection to another discipline.

Maybe the research group comes across a talented student and sees the potential for a research grant (how this works depends on the country).

Maybe the student has the means to self-fund and so the university happily collects a pay-cheque.

I fell into the first category - I did my PhD in a quantum information group despite my background being in mathematical logic. I was accepted because I knew a lot about different formal logic systems, and they wanted to study connections between those and the formalism they were using for quantum information.

Re: I'm quitting my PhD

#120

I'm someone who finished a PhD, here's my perspective. You don't believe your supervisor or your research group and so you quit, great. It's great that you have the critical thinking abilities and confidence in yourself to make such a decision. However, I think it's extremely unprofessional to write a blog post saying that your supervisor is superficial or your research group is performative art. I don't say this bec…

> If you can't be specific enough to be scientific about it, just keep it to yourself

Why?

What you're doing right now is telling other people how to live their lives. Is that ok, or should you be scientific about it, or keep it to yourself?

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