Ask HN: Is a phD a good way to focus & motivate you?

i've worked on code written during a phd that eventually graduated to a product. my role was making it production ready.

code written during research is a complete mess, and necessarily so: you don't know what you're going to end up with. you try this, you try that, you hack it, you tweak it six different ways. often things only work in a few very specific situations; generalising to more useful situations can be difficult.

a phd won't motivate you. the right environment will educate you on the latest techniques though and teach you to be critical of them and improve them.

you'll also learn how to write code quickly---i find deadlines in academia more intense than my industrial experience (perhaps because the outcomes are far less predictable).

i wouldn't do a phd part-time:

1. it's intense.

2. you want it to be over as soon as possible.

I left a career to do a PhD at age 42. It definitely helped me take on challenges that require much more technical knowledge than if I had stayed on the "tinkering" path.

The distilled version of my lessons learned: 0) Hard to do a PhD part-time. Consider "retiring" for a while.

1) Your advisor will be focused on cranking out publications to advance their career. Not always the same as increasing the amount of knowledge in the world. You might be viewed as free labor in this effort. Protect yourself.

2) Your advisor will not help you manage your time or set goals. In fact they might need help in this area themselves.

3) If you haven't been in school lately, or deep into work related to your topic, expect to spend a lot of time "getting the rust out". Painful but useful.

4) The younger brain can solve problems more quickly, the older brain can pick better problems to solve. Your advisors won't know this either.

5) A storied career in academia is unlikely for an older student. (See Robin Milner for a great exception.) Keep your business network alive and growing the entire time you are in school.

6) The #1 goal is to finish. OK to repeat that to yourself over and over. Your thesis need not be the last word on a topic to be acceptable or even good.

7) You will feel like an idiot every day until you suddenly realize nobody can answer your questions anymore. That day you should start writing the answers in your thesis and finish it asap.

Finally, other than all the pain and anguish, it is an invigorating experience to find the brain still working.

This sounds harsh, but I'd rather be honest and risk that.

I have a PhD in physics and work supervising doctoral students and early stage post docs.

A PhD will not help you personally unless:

a) You want to prove to yourself that you can do something original AND

b) You are incredibly fascinated by a certain field, to the point of obsession AND

c) You are capable of continuing to work, unaided and unsupervised for up to 6 months (or longer!) at a time with no encouragement and no external pressure.

I don't know what CompSci is like, but I cannot imagine that it is so different to physics or mathematics, which is where I have some experience.

I wouldn't recommend doing one, if those given above honestly are your reasons. Seems like you should take a part-time job working for a small startup (commercial) or join a well-run open source project (not-so-commercial).

Otherwise, look at ways of motivating yourself using external tools. Set deadlines, make lists and allow yourself rewards for ticking off items on your list or hitting those deadlines.

If you do start a PhD, it sounds to me like you risk giving up half way through, having wasted 3-4 years of your own free time.

Some great tips here. I am 30 this month, having been working in industry for the last 6 years. If I were to take this on and were to make good progress, I would consider "retiring" for a year or so to finish things off.

The point you make in 1) and 2) echoes a lot with what others are saying about finding the right adviser. I will certainly pay a lot of attention to this.

My two cents (take with salt, as I'm a math Phd student, not CS):

A grad program absolutely CAN motivate you, IF you are motivated by failure and feelings of inadequacy. In math there is a real divide between being book smart and being able to do research (to put it mildly, it's more like a chasm). Most students have been validated their whole lives by being better than the rest, and finally coming to an obstacle that doesn't yield can be life changing.

For me, my self identity was absolutely tied up in proving myself as a mathematician, and my first few years of research were HELL. Total self sacrifice, total commitment. I came out the other side of the blaze a new person, and better for it, I think. I've lost the desire to do math, but I've gained the self confidence and mental integrity to disappear into a cave for years to work on a project with no sense of validation from others.

There were other motivating factors: wanting to compete with other students, wanting to impress my advisor, etc. NONE of those motivations survived the pain of research. And, to be honest, now that I've proven myself, not even that desire exists anymore. As of now, I can't fathom doing a PhD again. The only thing that can motivate me now is working on a really interesting problem, and to be honest academia ISN'T necessarily the place for this. At least in math, there really isn't that much freedom in what you can research.

If you can find a good research project that involves enough people to keep you motivated from social pressure, I say go for it, as it sounds like you're really jonesing for interesting work and simply need the motivational factor. Otherwise, if you can find some other way to stay motivated, I'd say do research on your own.

(As a side note, I have a Mech Eng friend that just got his PhD. He released much of his research as an open source library which apparently has attracted a pretty substantial user/contributor group. So it is possible to write quality code in an academic setting, especially if you've already have commercial experience and a desire to hold yourself to that level. Most academics have simply never been in a position where they Needed to write commercial quality code).