Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#191

Post by barry-cotter » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 12:34 AM UTC

anonytrary wrote: post #128

rdlecler1 wrote: post #98

I wish we’d move to a 3 year PhD program now that you have 5-10 year postdocs if you even have a career in you’re field at all.

Three years is not nearly enough time to finish PhD thesis work as an experimental physicist. Even if the goalpost was lowered for a PhD, a three year PhD program in physics would just be a glorified masters degree. Plus, if it's even easier to get PhDs, we'll just end up with even more people having PhDs and the status associated with the PhD will be even lower. PhDs are becoming relatively commonplace, and the vast…

The University of Cambridge disagrees with you. You arrive with a Bachelor’s or a Master’s, start immediately on research and should be done in three or four years.

https://www.phy.cam.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/degreesoffered...

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#192

Post by neuromantik8086 » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 12:53 AM UTC

noodlenotes wrote: post #185

gervase wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But also because it makes the PhD not much different than working in industry. I believe this is viewed as a feature, and not a bug. For the most part, academia serves as one of the few reliable ways to emigrate to the U.S., and exploits that fact to generate a large pool of inexpensive labor. In exchange, these students are rewarded with a US visa and a comparatively well-paying job. Neither party expects these gr…

I've observed this myself and it's creating a weird dynamic in data science. More often, companies are requiring PhDs for their entry level data science positions. (Because there's a surplus of people who want to enter the field and it's difficult to tell who will ultimately be successful. Possessing a PhD is a good predictor of success.) But there are very few American-born students going on to get PhDs who are inte…

When you say "data science" does that encompass traditionally educated statisticians and business intelligence folks? If you only count the practitioners out there who self-identify as data scientists you get a pretty incomplete sample of what the field actually is.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#193

Post by Fomite » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 12:55 AM UTC

chuckkir wrote: post #162

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…

In general a professor is an entrepreneur. They are running a small business where they sell their product ("knowledge") to customers (business and industry) by means of sales and marketing (conferences and papers). Grad students are employees of this business, and of course the prof's incentive is to keep the good ones and fire (graduate) the bad ones, thus the reward for the student working hard is more hard work.

Two notes:

1) I am evaluated on the progress of my students. While bad ones will actually be fired, good ones are more useful to me if they go off and get postdocs etc. Some of the most powerful "businesses" in the field are created by the network of people who all trained with the same PI and then went on to found their own labs.

2) A burnt out, trapped graduate student is not actually one that produces good work, in my experience.

3) Several grants, which are how I fund my lab, will look very poorly on trainees making no progress. There's very little exploitation that's worth a program officer at the NSF wondering if I'm worth there time.

Are there bad, exploitative PIs? Absolutely. But these people are assholes, not the only logical outcome of the system.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#194

Post by Fomite » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 12:56 AM UTC

kkylin wrote: post #170

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…

Part of this difference is due to how departments are funded: math departments teach a lot of "service" courses for non-math majors. So there are enough TAships to fund most students who want them. Most other programs do not have enough TA positions to support all the students they have. Source: I'm on the math faculty at a large public research university.

Indeed. By way of comparison, my department has zero TA lines.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#195

Post by neuromantik8086 » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 12:58 AM UTC

_delirium wrote: post #23

brightball wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, that’s what needs to happen. Thin out the ranks of professors as they move to greener pastures in the workforce and eventually you’ll see schools get in a position where they have to work harder to recruit. Better pay, benefits, support, etc.

That's pretty much happening in computer science in the US. Pay for CS faculty members has been rising significantly faster than inflation, and faster than other fields, although still not nearly as fast as in industry. A brain-drain of people at all levels of seniority to high-paid tech jobs is a big part of it, although increase in demand is another part of it (the number of incoming freshmen declaring a CS major i…

> Still plenty of stuff to complain about, but the job market looks far different than in the natural sciences or humanities.

Yup. Economics [0] and comp sci are basically the only doctoral programs worth going into at this point (at least if you're an American citizen). You can debate which one is _more_ worth it, but the fact is that if you're doing anything else, you're in a for a world of pain.

[0] http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/if-you-get-phd-ge...

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#196

Post by CostanzaKing » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 1:00 AM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #122

mikec3010 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> before I learned how fucked-up our immigration system is. Fucked up because they give higher-educated people preference, or fucked up because corporations lobby for more H1B workers to depress engineering wages industry wide?

It's fucked-up because there are very, very few ways to actually get into the US legally. And in this case they're not giving educated people preference. They didn't come here on a rule that says that people with postgraduate degrees get to come to the US. They came here on a student visa because coming here on a student visa is one of the few ways to get in at all, and it just so happens that a student visa can be u…

About 1,000,000 people legally immigrate to the US each year. That's hardly indicative of a "fucked up" system.

Sure there are 7 billion people in the world outside of the US, but we can't just open our borders and let everyone come in. It would be chaos and destroy the country and all the reasons for coming in the first place.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#197

Post by adenadel » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 1:00 AM UTC

drharby wrote: post #188

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.

This terribly punishes military servicemen who wish to return to normal life and attempt a phd Note:just making an observation

Can you explain why you think this? I entered a PhD program at the start of the summer and I can't think of a way that veterans would be punished in the application process.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#198

Post by ISL » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 1:06 AM UTC

drharby wrote: post #188

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.

This terribly punishes military servicemen who wish to return to normal life and attempt a phd Note:just making an observation

Why?

If a qualified member (bachelors in physics, within UW Physics' normal acceptance criteria for grades/GRE/etc.) of the armed services stepped up and said to our research group, "I think gravity is the coolest thing in Physics, I'd like to spend the next 5-7 years measuring it, and here's why!", that person would have a big leg up in admissions to our department.

I've worked with a number of current and former military in our group. To a person, they've all been great and know how to get things done. Indeed, one of our research scientists is a former submariner.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#199

Post by ISL » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 1:08 AM UTC

throwawaymath wrote: post #132

gms7777 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think different schools have different philosophies as far as that goes. There are schools that admit to the department and have students do very little research for their first two years, and there are schools that admit by advisor and you start research immediately. My PhD was the latter, but for me it was actually one of the major selling points for me on the program. I had a pretty good idea of the area that I…

With regard to your first paragraph, I don't think there are any American universities that admit students by advisor. As far as I'm aware, your admission is a decision made solely by the graduate admissions committee. Even if you have an advisor ready to take you on the most they can do is recommend you to the committee, not supplant it. When you're admitted there are still criteria aside from research to work on. I…

It can vary by specialty. A friend applied to several schools for graduate work in geology; the admission process was explicitly admission into a designated professor's research group.

Re: Why some PhDs are quitting academia for unconventional jobs

#200

Post by neuromantik8086 » Tue, Jul 24, 2018, 1:09 AM UTC

privacypoller wrote: post #117

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…

>> 2) High levels of impostor syndrome. I felt this, but was surprised that while there were a few genuine genius-level people in my program, the vast majority spent most of the effort trying to look like a genius but were far from it. One of the things I tell people when they ask me about grad school is, "I thought everybody would be smarter".

> I felt this, but was surprised that while there were a few genuine genius-level people in my program, the vast majority spent most of the effort trying to look like a genius but were far from it.

An astounding amount of time is wasted in academia on puffery. I'm not sure how it compares to industry because there's never been a systematic comparison (and I don't really believe such a comparison would be feasible). My personal experience was that the "mediocrities" who kept a low profile and stayed out of departmental politics as much as possible seemed to actually be accomplishing the most work with any actual substance. Some of these folks were working in state-sponsored institutions rather than universities. All of them seemed to be in their 50s and 60s, tenured (or tenure-equivalented) before higher ed became a hypercompetitive shitshow.

This pretension really comes through when scholars don't respect the limits of their expertise / properly delegate to specialists. In software and IT especially, you find academics using technologies that are a poor fit for their work, not understanding budgeting and concepts such as total cost of ownership for compute resources, and reinventing the wheel.