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Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

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Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#151

Post by foldr »

chrisseaton wrote: post #57
spamizbad wrote: post #21

Genuinely shocked that graduate programs remain stuffed to the gills. You live off a meager stipend for about a decade and then, in your mid-30s, you go on the job market for the first time. Unless you're somehow in the top 0.1% of your field, you're probably going to be fighting for a tenure-track positions at any institution that will take you. Big dreams of teaching in the Pacific Northwest? Too bad, the only plac…

Not this anti-PhD negative nonsense again! It doesn't ring true to me at all. > You live off a meager stipend for about a decade I paid a mortgage, supported a family, and built savings while doing my PhD with no issue. > and then, in your mid-30s, you go on the job market for the first time. You don't appear on the job market like a newbie. By the time you graduate you should already be well-known enough in your fie…

>If you're not in the top 0.1% of your field you shouldn't be doing a PhD in the first place.

The OP means in the top 0.1% among PhD students in your field.

If you want to get a tenure-track position in a good department, then in many fields, you do have to be that good. (0.1% might be a bit of an exaggeration, but not that much.)

More generally, you should be aware that your post is very specific to the field you worked in. Computer science has a very well established PhD -> industry pipeline, and lots of money to throw at grad students. There are many disciplines where doing a PhD is a very different story.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#152

Post by Fomite »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #138
chriskanan wrote: post #74

A PhD is a degree in conducting research. Get one if you want a career in research. If you don't like research, don't do a PhD. Any decent program pays students about a $1.5-3K monthly stipend. Don't have being a professor as the only acceptable end-goal. There are lots of careers that benefit from or require a PhD besides being a professor. People with STEM PhDs are found in great concentration in R&D settings. For…

If you're not in STEM, if you want a PhD in the humanities, it's going to be a VERY tough path. Many of those students do shell out many thousands of dollars per semester, ending their PhD with very high levels of debt. At the same time, the jobs for people with PhDs in humanities are becoming less frequent, even as the number of PhDs in non-STEM is increasing. Many of these individuals are stuck in adjunct slavery.…

Yeah...my default response for people asking about a PhD in the humanities is "Don't."

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#153

Post by csa »

throwawaymath wrote: post #143
overeater wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to be blunt throwawaymath, but that's just wrong. I am very familiar with several American universities (including Ivy League) where the advisor can admit directly.

I don't mind you being blunt at all, but do you mind naming those schools specifically? I'm still skeptical.

Not OP, but Harvard, Yale, and Penn are three that I can speak to with firsthand experience.

I will also say that, depending on the specifics of the applicant, you might be shocked by what admissions standards can be bent/broken based on the desire of a faculty member to have a specific student. It’s not common, but it happens.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#154

Post by Fomite »

anjc wrote: post #78
luizfzs wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not saying 'why publishing?'. Im saying 'why publish if I barely know if what Im doing will have some positive result? Think of this example: we are researching for a few months whether an arbitrary compound X has relieffing effects on people with headache, but since we are still researching, there is no concrete result or any slight evidence yet. maybe the compound will relief the headache in 30min but maybe it w…

I don't know why the downvotes. Publishing something takes a lot of directed effort. It's so tough to stop doing (what feels like) the real work, and quickly squeeze out a submission for a conference that has a 10% acceptance rate. Of course publishing is extremely important, but too large a focus on publishing hampers results.

Results that aren't disseminated are functionally useless.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#155

Post by mcv »

NotPhysicsPhd wrote: post #85
navidfarhadi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You live off a meager stipend for about a decade Keep in mind that this is not necessarily true for schools in countries outside of the US. At my school, KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, as a PhD student you are considered an employee of the school and you are paid a living wage with full benefits. The current salary starts at 28600 SEK/month and can reach up to 33500 SEK/month [1] which is definitel…

To my knowledge, in the Netherlands and Luxembourg there is a similar situation to the one you described in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. In Portugal you get a fellowship that covers tuition and a monthly stipend which was increased for the first time in 15 years (by 1.4%) last year. PhD fellows are not considered employees of the University and since the stipend is not really a salary you are stuck in a weird financia…

Still, what I hear from some PhD students is that even with decent pay, it's not a great career. The chances of getting tenure are tiny, academic freedom isn't what it once was, and if you enter the job market, the PhD mostly cost a lot of time without adding a whole lot of value. Unless it's in Machine Learning, maybe.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#156

Post by Fomite »

wenc wrote: post #90
geoalchimista wrote: post #9

Because most modern PhD factories are sweat shops that offer a rather dismal career prospect. (If you've been through the process --- I suspect there are a lot on HN --- you know what I mean.)

> most modern PhD factories are sweat shops I don't know if that is universally true. This type of anecdata tends to be very program specific. I worked on the computational side of things and got paid a lot to work on (what I thought was) interesting stuff. Folks who did experimental work (especially on the bio side of things) tended to put in more hours even over the weekends because biological substrates are no res…

This. My PhD program wasn't a sweat shop, and I actively make an effort to make sure the lab I run isn't either.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#157

Post by Fomite »

spamizbad wrote: post #21

Genuinely shocked that graduate programs remain stuffed to the gills. You live off a meager stipend for about a decade and then, in your mid-30s, you go on the job market for the first time. Unless you're somehow in the top 0.1% of your field, you're probably going to be fighting for a tenure-track positions at any institution that will take you. Big dreams of teaching in the Pacific Northwest? Too bad, the only plac…

A couple notes:

"You live off a meager stipend for about a decade" is not true for all students, especially under-represented minorities. I had a fascinating discussion with a student once where her 'meager stipend' was the best job anyone in her family had ever had.

"Unless you're somehow in the top 0.1% of your field, you're probably going to be fighting for a tenure-track positions at any institution that will take you." A huge amount of my cohort ended up living where they wanted to live - I'm in a field with good representation in "non-academic" jobs in government and private industry, and plenty of people made the decision not to chase a job they wanted in exchange for quality of life decisions.

"Meanwhile your peers are well established in their careers, have families, making 2-3x as much as you." Knew plenty of people who started their families in graduate school. The opportunity cost is real though.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#158

Post by Fomite »

thebooktocome wrote: post #63
raziel2701 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you go to school that you were able to pay a mortgage and have a family while doing your phd? I'm paying a wee bit more than half my monthly salary on rent alone. Am in Bay Area though.

> Am in Bay Area though. That's the problem. The housing market isn't literally insane in the whole country.

This. One of my graduate students just bought a house here, because the housing market isn't utterly disconnected from reality. Could they afford to live in the Bay Area? No.

Can I afford to live in the Bay Area? Also no.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#159

Post by grigjd3 »

awelkie wrote: post #97

I think CS PhD programs in particular can be a little strange. I decided to go back to school to pursue a CS PhD after chatting with a retired mathematician about his PhD. He was talking about how he took classes for two years to explore different areas of mathematics and to pass the general exams, then he decided on a branch of mathematics (topology) and approached a professor in that area to be his advisor. After w…

It's pretty rare that PhD programs let you truly explore what you want to do. PIs (generally profs) get the vast majority of outside funding so you pretty much have to find a way to align yourself with a prof from day one.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#160

Post by csa »

throwawaymath wrote: post #147
Fomite wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm at an American university, and while technically this is true, an advisor going to the committee and saying "I want this person and I have the grant funding to support them" is profoundly influential, to the point that I would be shocked if the committee said no.

True, but: 1) It's still ultimately up to the graduate committee, 2) Once admitted, students will have requirements outside of research, for better or worse. I'm not making an indictment of the American PhD system, I'm just pointing out that direct advisor admission and unilateral research focus are very uncommon (non-existant?) in the US.

This is about 180 degrees from what I advise anyone asking advice regarding PhDs in the US. Specifically, I tell them that it is best if they know before they even apply who they want to work with and in what capacity. This accomplishes a few things:

- Removes several potential surprises about what they end up researching. It is very sad to see someone expecting to do research on topic A (which they love) but end up doing research on topic B (one they care about much less) because that’s where the money is or that’s where the open advisor is.

- Helps admissions considerably, especially in competitive schools. If an admissions committee denies an applicant that the professor wants, there will be a lot of explaining to do. I assume that you are not talking about “professional” doctoral degrees like JDs or MDs — those are very different than academic-oriented degrees.

- Helps clarify funding. Will you be a research assistant (the answer should be yes if you want to be an academic), a TA, or what?

- Helps clarify what knowledge needs to be known or learned before entering so they can hit the ground running. This helps with course selection (when there are options), project selection, team selection, etc.

- Know the pluses and minuses of their advisor. The best grad students I have seen have read at least some of the research of all of the tenured professors in the department, and they know who is strong and who is weak. They will also have a feel for the politics. These folks are rare, but they are usually the future big time academics.

As someone alluded to elsewhere in this thread, the biggest winners in the academic game hit the ground running for their phd. The folks who come in with an open mind and are looking to learn often will have extremely dim career prospects.

> I'm not making an indictment of the American PhD system, I'm just pointing out that direct advisor admission and unilateral research focus are very uncommon (non-existant?) in the US.

This might be true in schools or departments with very weak research programs. Even then, an advisor advocating for a specific applicant, even if it is a rare occurrence, would most likely be accommodated.

Note that highly talented (relatively speaking) doctoral students are rare. If a professor can get one that’s a great fit, s/he would not be wise to cross their fingers and hope that person gets in and gets assigned as their advisee. Just thinking of a professor leaving that much up to luck makes me laugh — it would never happen.

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