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American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

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Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#151

Post by x0x0 »

yowlingcat wrote: post #127
x0x0 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I keep anonymous on here, sorry. People are unable/unwilling to not take any random thing I say as an official position of my company.

I don't work for a FAANG.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#152

Post by seanwilson »

stakhanov wrote: post #146
seanwilson wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

+1 on that. I have a PhD, and whenever I join a new workplace I feel like building credibility is an uphill battle where I fight against the ghost of some guy who worked there before who had a PhD and who fit the stereotype of the dysfunctional academic. I wish that, just because I can do one type of thing well, people wouldn't jump to the conclusion that I can't also do another type of thing well. As in: Just becaus…

I feel it mostly comes from insecurity rather than from experience working with academics. Someone feels threatened by someone else having a credential they don't have so they put that person down in some way to make themselves feel better

e.g. "I didn't see the point in going to university because it's all theory and I think practice is more important", "those who can't do, teach".

> I wish that, just because I can do one type of thing well, people wouldn't jump to the conclusion that I can't also do another type of thing well. As in: Just because I understand math, please don't jump to the conclusion that I don't understand databases and can't write clean code. Just because I can see the "right way" to solve a problem, doesn't mean I can't also appreciate arguments in favor of the cost-efficient way of solving 20% of a problem if it gives you 80% of the benefit. etc. etc.

Yeah, it's a combination of insecurity, cliched thinking and gatekeeping. It's quite feasible to get to expert level at many things.

It depends on your PhD as well. Some involve no programming, some just quick prototypes, some more complex projects etc. Generalising how all PhD students must be is stupid.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#153

Post by meh2frdf »

bane wrote: post #135
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find there are 2 kinds of PhD holders in engineering, those who are diligent and capable and were able to follow through on a difficult problem for years; and those whose problem solving abilities are so impractical that they stayed in school for as long as possible. The first is worth their weight in gold, the second is fairly easy to detect after a few git check-ins. Actually I lied, there's a third kind, brillia…

There's so many people in the second category for so many reasons, its pretty much made "PhD" a "don't hire unless good reason" filter for me. Reasons might include: couldn't make it in real jobs and delayed joining the the job force for as long as possible doesn't want to be held accountable for actual working solutions and likes working towards "novelty" enjoys approaching every problem with the most complicated po…

Very similar experience here. I would also add generally a complete lack of comprehension of making something concrete that satisfies production.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#154

Post by black-tea »

stirfrykitty wrote: post #9
black-tea wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a PhD and completely agree with you. I did a PhD because back then working in software wasn't attractive to me (open source was not normal and Linux was seen as this weird geek think). But it set my career back a good few years really.

And if you ever get to a point where you are financially secure yet want a non-stressful job, you could always teach something like Yearbook at a HS. I know a guy who did this. He cashed out of his IT job after making almost a million. He wife is a nurse. He got tired of the burnout, on-call rotation, and got his teaching certificate, got hired at a high school teaching Yearbook creation and media. He's off 3 months…

What does "teaching Yearbook" mean?

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#155

Post by anthony_doan »

Yep, applied for a few places they want PhDs to build models. I'm only getting a master.

I've seen and worked with non stat major PhDs handling model process especially data. I think master in statistic is good enough for modeling and handling data and more so than others for most traditional models.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#156

Post by IshKebab »

black-tea wrote: post #5
stirfrykitty wrote: post #3

Very few jobs require PhDs. Tech most certainly doesn't. I've been in this industry across three decades now, and by far the most talented people I've worked for or with have had nothing but HS diplomas and AS degrees. That's right. The bottom rung education levels. My dearest mentor, a man who has forgotten more about *nix, coding, and about anything else than I will ever know has a HS diploma and can and does run r…

I have a PhD and completely agree with you. I did a PhD because back then working in software wasn't attractive to me (open source was not normal and Linux was seen as this weird geek think). But it set my career back a good few years really.

Yeah I'm the same. I did a PhD because I originally wanted to do engineering (real engineering), but ended up in software anyway because the pay is just insanely better and it's easier work.

I definitely could got where I am without the PhD. Hell I wouldn't have needed the engineering degree either and I'd be pretty rich by now, but I don't regret doing the degree because I learnt loads and had fun doing uni things.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#157

Post by pragmaticlurker »

copperx wrote: post #25
umvi wrote: post #15

PhD programming candidates at my work seem completely clueless to industry standards when it comes to coding because they've been mired in academia land for decades...

That's an example of something that can be quickly learned on the job, 1-2 days tops.

after working for more than 2 years with PhDs, they never learned standards or better coding practices, because they refused to look for them

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#158

Post by mmmmpancakes »

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…

>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.

I’d like to elaborate on this a bit further. In my experience as an academic researcher in a technical field (math), one of the most important skills is the ability formulate precise statements/hypotheses that satisfy several criteria. First, they should relate to the existing body of research in your field in a meaningful way. Second, they should have non-trivial answers (in the context of math, i mean that the proof of your hypothesized theorem should be legitimately nontrivial, not merely obfuscated to appear that way, as good mathematicians will be able to tell) or reveal something that was previously unexpected (such as a connection between two previously different topics). Finally, they must be testable/verifiable/provable/etc using your available methodologies and within a predictable timeframe.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#159

Post by bane »

meh2frdf wrote: post #153
bane wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's so many people in the second category for so many reasons, its pretty much made "PhD" a "don't hire unless good reason" filter for me. Reasons might include: couldn't make it in real jobs and delayed joining the the job force for as long as possible doesn't want to be held accountable for actual working solutions and likes working towards "novelty" enjoys approaching every problem with the most complicated po…

Very similar experience here. I would also add generally a complete lack of comprehension of making something concrete that satisfies production.

Same. The real problem in my mind is the paradoxical complete inability to learn new skills that are suitable for the workplace and instead a complete reliance on the training they received in their programs...sometimes decades old.

Considering a PhD is supposed to provide skills for learning and tackling problems, the incredibly high percentage of PhDs I've worked with that are completely unable to do so has really really put me off of the credential.

Re: American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs

#160

Post by sevensor »

HenryKissinger wrote: post #83
sevensor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work in the semiconductor industry, and I left to get a PhD. Unlikely I'd go back. The PhDs we had were a statistician and a materials characterization engineer. The former was ignored and then fired because he kept telling people that their statistical procedures didn't work, and the latter spent a ton of time doing TEM sample prep.

> The former was ignored and then fired because he kept telling people that their statistical procedures didn't work Why did they hire him then?

He was supposed to reassure them that their statistical procedures worked, not explain how they could be fixed. His technical notes were an education for me, but they bruised too many egos.
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