Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 169 posts

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#121

Post by dxbydt »

rxhernandez wrote: post #110
hnuser355 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean PhD might be a piece of paper but most people I know who do them in marketable fields don’t pay tuition and get paid assistantships

When I say expense, I mean your time, your youth and the fact that you could have been getting paid a lot more in that time period; all of which are very expensive things to ask of anyone.

> you could have been getting paid a lot more in that time

I'm sure you are familiar with the concept of fuckyou money. Its a different number for different people.

Say that number is 5. I will give you many examples below. Every example is a real living person. I personally know every one of these people.

(enterprise programmer in stodgy bank in usa) 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5

(enterprise programmer in stodgy bank in poor country) 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5 + ... + 0.5 = 5

( steady progress in startup until faang acquired it) 0.5 + 0.8 + 1.2 + 1.2 + 1.3 + 6 > 5

( many failed startups in valley until 1 success) 0.5 + 0.8 + -2 + 0.5 + 0.7 + -2 + 0.5 + 20 >> 5

( phd student whose invention was purchased by salesforce ) 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 15 >> 5

( phd student who ended up in fang ) 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 2 + 3 > 5

etc.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#122

Post by umvi »

walshemj wrote: post #92
randcraw wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Production code has to deal with anomalies and failure in a graceful way that allows recovery and identification of the fault. That's not something that's taught in academia at any level, perversely. And it takes time to learn how to use software tools effectively in a standard way in a production environment that others can understand and extend and maintain. This isn't taught in academia either, and usu…

As opposed to some one fresh from a BSc who got through the interview by rote memorisation who will be just as clueless.

Well at least with them you can pay them an entry level salary without looking bad.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#123

Post by seanwilson »

freyir wrote: post #6

Throughout most of my career, my PhD has felt like a liability. Especially when I've sought out a non-research-oriented position. Employers seem skeptical that I might rather spend my day coding a product I believe in, rather than solving esoteric research problems. In the case of many PhD degrees, you devote yourself to studying a niche topic in great depth for several years. In the end, employers might see that you…

> Throughout most of my career, my PhD has felt like a liability. Especially when I've sought out a non-research-oriented position. Employers seem skeptical that I might rather spend my day coding a product I believe in, rather than solving esoteric research problems.

I've had this as well along with comments like "academics are bad at X", "academics tend to write code in way Y", "academics can only write prototypes and not production code", "I'm self-taught and never saw the point of University because..." etc.

Generalisations like this are really dumb.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#124

Post by pmiller2 »

kochikame wrote: post #111
NullPrefix wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't read the book, but ... >By the year AD 802,701, humanity has evolved into two separate species: the Eloi and the Morlocks. The Eloi live a banal life of ease on the surface of the earth while the Morlocks live underground, tending machinery and providing food, clothing, and inventory for the Eloi. Please explain how is this arrogant?

Because of the clear assumed superiority of coders over all other humans

I think I’d prefer an easy, but banal lifestyle to one of strenuous toil.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#125

Post by pmiller2 »

x0x0 wrote: post #67
JamesBarney wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about this before because I've found the same thing. I think it's caused by an over reliance on education as a signal. If you have a stack of resumes you're likely to interview everyone with a PhD, but only the ones with the most stellar github profile if they have no formal education. During the interview if the PhD says something silly you'll probably disregard it. But the person without a formal educa…

I'm a hiring manager who interviews a lot. In my experience, high performance in difficult degrees at good schools are a very strong indicator of future success. We find gems outside the above profile, but it holds true even across the people we've hired from code schools.

Didn’t Google find no useful correlation between either GPA or school attended and job performance? I’m not sure if they categorized people by “easy” or “hard” degrees.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#126

Post by scottlegrand2 »

nostrademons wrote: post #28

I worked with a bunch of a Ph.Ds at Google, and my dad had one. I myself have nothing more than a bachelor's, and no desire to get anything more. I've heard and observed that the Ph.D teaches you one crucial skill - how to take a vaguely defined research problem that nobody has done before, where you're not even sure that a solution exists, and make tangible, rigorous progress on it. Your actual doctoral topic as a P…

My all-time best PhD moment, as the holder of one of those much-vaunted doctorate thingies, was last year when GlaxoSmithKline told me that too much time had passed since I obtained my PhD therefore it was no longer considered valuable. So watch out everyone, these advanced degrees apparently come with expiration dates now! Always check for freshness.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#127

Post by yowlingcat »

x0x0 wrote: post #67
JamesBarney wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about this before because I've found the same thing. I think it's caused by an over reliance on education as a signal. If you have a stack of resumes you're likely to interview everyone with a PhD, but only the ones with the most stellar github profile if they have no formal education. During the interview if the PhD says something silly you'll probably disregard it. But the person without a formal educa…

I'm a hiring manager who interviews a lot. In my experience, high performance in difficult degrees at good schools are a very strong indicator of future success. We find gems outside the above profile, but it holds true even across the people we've hired from code schools.

Mind if I ask which one, or if it's at least one of FAANG?

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#128

Post by analog31 »

I got my PhD in physics 25 years ago. One thing I quickly noticed about the article, is that it doesn't differentiate PhDs by field. When I was in school, science students got PhDs in higher proportion than engineers. This might have had to do with the stronger job prospects for engineers in industry. But if you were hiring PhDs, it meant you were hiring scientists. This is definitely still the case in my workplace. PhD engineers are quite rare.

In my view it's inevitable that as one moves up the educational ladder, the amount of variation between candidates is going to increase, as will the presence of alternative paths. There is no "hiring PhDs" as if we're a fungible commodity. Much as it would gratify me for people to believe that all PhDs are magical wizards, I can't defend my entire cohort, nor should I want to. My job is to sell myself on my own merits, that's all. Don't hire anybody without looking under the hood, and without considering alternatives to what you think are your selection criteria. That's just good business sense.

At best we're going to reach the same conclusion that was discussed in recent threads about college degrees: The wisdom of economists and other experts disagrees with the collective wisdom of the market on the value of higher education. At worst, we will assign a derogatory label ("signaling") to that difference without understanding it.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#129

Post by sinuhe69 »

I believe for these employers a PhD servers as a signal only: somebody who is (super?) smart, has grit and can innovate. Are we not saying “he is smart (because) he has a PhD” all the time? However, I argue there are another ways to achieve similar signs, albeit with lower cost. Winning prestige competitions, interesting and valuable personal projects/work history, high IQ would serve the same purpose without wasting years of your life for something you don’t value (not to mention tons of money, too ;) )

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#130

Post by entee »

rxhernandez wrote: post #104
entee wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd add that a PhD in the sciences is like getting punched in the face by mother nature every day with a, "hah! try again!". The rigorous thought process that cultivates by the end is hard to replicate without those very hard constraints. It's possible to do, I've met tons of people who have that same rigor without having wasted the time in a PhD, but it's quite an effective method. When I've worked with non-PhDs in…

I haven't seen that at all. To preface the rest, most of everyone I've worked with over the past 6 years had a PhD in electrical engineering, physics or chemistry from top 10 universities (about 20+ people). Maybe 30% had the ability to pick apart an experiment rigorously, most of them would hand wave themselves through the steps in experiments leaving obvious gaping holes that required unnecessary iterations on the…

It’s true, some people don’t. I went to a top program though even there I’d say we graduated some that weren’t great critical thinkers. That said I’d say that the closer you are to a “wet” bench in a basic science the more likely you build those skills. The more time spent dealing with in silico data or with theory the less feedback from cold hard reality you get. Nature doesn’t care if you graduate.

I’d also say that 30% is still not a bad ratio and better than most training sources on average.

Still it’s not a perfect screen by any means.

Post reply on HN