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A Survival Guide to a PhD

karpathy.github.io

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Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#31

Post by baby »

throwawaymsft wrote: post #3
michaelvoz wrote: post #2

"I’ll assume that the second option you are considering is joining a medium-large company (which is likely most common). Ask yourself if you find the following properties appealing: ..." Why is every conversation about PHDs always cast in the light of as-opposed-to-working-for-the-man? I don't see discussions ever bring up the plethora of other life courses one can take. It is though the author sees a very clear bina…

"Properties you find appealing..." * Freedom * Ownership * Personal freedom ... * Getting into a PhD program: references, references, references * Student adviser relationship * Pre-vs-post tenure * Impressing an adviser * (Topic) Plays to your adviser’s interests and strengths Much of your freedom goes to learning to play politics and manage up to a level employees never have to. Reading this, I'm so thankful I didn…

Spoiler Alert: politic is everywhere.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#32

Post by stared »

Well, I went from academia (after finishing my PhD) to industry, to get more Freedom, Ownership, Personal growth, Status and Expertise.

Here is a blog post on my transition from theoretical physics to data science (and how it made my life much better): http://p.migdal.pl/2015/12/14/sci-to-data-sci.html

I understand that Andriej Karpathy (my favourite author/lecturer in Deep Learning, by a large margin) had a wonderful PhD, in a fast-growing field, with a golden fall-back option. But most PhD students I know (including my former self) do things in disciplines no-one else cares about and are tied to their institute/advisor/place with little to no opportunity to change things when they go awry (cf. it's super easy to change a company). A non-trivial fraction of my friends suffered from depression or had a serious mental breakdown (again, including myself).

In this light, while it contain a large number of helpful tips and valuable pieces of advise, why is it called "survival guide"?

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#33

Post by baby »

aab0 wrote: post #25

All valid advice, but god is some of it depressing. Papers can be evaluated by flipping through and looking for pretty graphs and equations. Incremental, replication, or comparison work is discouraged. Never include the dead ends or what didn't work. Get into only the elite colleges and betwork at conferences as much as possible - it's not what you know but who you know. Hype up and make your paper as sexy and short…

> Incremental, replication, or comparison work is discouraged

I haven't read that. The author says that poorly incremental work is discouraged.

> Get into only the elite colleges and betwork at conferences as much as possible

It's about being part of the community, having brilliant people around you to push you and exchange ideas with, meeting people to collaborate with...

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#34

Post by enmi2015 »

gajjanag wrote: post #22
johan_larson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A PhD is super fun Experiences differ. A lot. Personally, I had an awful time during my PhD, and between the penury and the toil and the bleak prospects afterward, I'd say you're definitely in the minority on this one. I wouldn't recommend a PhD to anyone who isn't dead set on a job that requires one.

> Personally, I had an awful time during my PhD, and between the penury and the toil and the bleak prospects afterward, I'd say you're definitely in the minority on this one. Do you have any evidence for the minority claim beyond the personal anecdote? Also, this is field dependent, so a mention of the field could be helpful.

Good point. I did a PhDs in the humanities even though I am from a technical background. Had a great time.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#36

Post by eli_gottlieb »

michaelvoz wrote: post #2

"I’ll assume that the second option you are considering is joining a medium-large company (which is likely most common). Ask yourself if you find the following properties appealing: ..." Why is every conversation about PHDs always cast in the light of as-opposed-to-working-for-the-man? I don't see discussions ever bring up the plethora of other life courses one can take. It is though the author sees a very clear bina…

>Where is the discussion of starting a business? Of making your own company? Breaking free of the political shackles of academia and blazing your own path to glory?

The discussion of what now? Not everyone wants to start a business. Not everyone has the domain and market knowledge to start a successful business. "Blazing your own path to glory" fails 90% of the time, usually repeatedly.

If you're gonna be that damned persistent, you might as well have the freedom of academia.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#38

Post by throwawaymsft »

baby wrote: post #31
throwawaymsft wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Properties you find appealing..." * Freedom * Ownership * Personal freedom ... * Getting into a PhD program: references, references, references * Student adviser relationship * Pre-vs-post tenure * Impressing an adviser * (Topic) Plays to your adviser’s interests and strengths Much of your freedom goes to learning to play politics and manage up to a level employees never have to. Reading this, I'm so thankful I didn…

Spoiler Alert: politic is everywhere.

Yes, but (importantly) degrees vary. The politics of working for an adviser chasing tenure are different from, say, running a SaaS, writing an ebook, or selling a plugin.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#39

Post by hiq »

> You’ll sit exhausted and alone in the lab on a beautiful, sunny Saturday scrolling through Facebook pictures of your friends having fun on exotic trips, paid for by their 5-10x larger salaries.

You get around USD 70k per year in Switzerland for a Computer Science PhD in Switzerland (at ETHZ or EPFL). You could get up to five times this amount working in the industry, but usually not much more than that, especially when you have just graduated. It is definitely worth it to take the salary into account when you choose which universities to apply to for a PhD.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#40

Post by JoshTriplett »

tostitos1979 wrote: post #29
eanzenberg wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same! I was super-interested in research and that's why I pursued a PhD. I never thought of running a lab or teaching classes.

A friend and I (both PhDs) were just discussing how difficult having a PhD has made getting engineering positions.In the course of interviewing at top-5 companies, we both have experienced a$$hats/interviewers with complexes who seem bent on showing off how they are smarter than the PhD interviewee .. curious if you have run into this as well, and any strategies to guard against this? I've also seen people who think…

I didn't run into any of that in any of the companies I interviewed with; if anything, I found that coming in with a PhD resulted in correspondingly higher expectations. I'd treat any of the items you mentioned as warning signs and look for a better opportunity.

To specifically counteract the "can't code" item, have plenty of practical items on your resume; include your published papers and conference presentations, but also include projects you've contributed to and similar. (For people doing a PhD who plan to work in industry, make sure you present at some industry conferences, not just academic conferences, and publish your code as/into Open Source projects.) A CV for an academic position doesn't work unmodified as a professional resume (with possible exceptions if you want to work in an industry research lab).

In the specific context of CS, if you look at medium to large companies, you should already ask questions about the technical job ladder (such as making sure that one exists, rather than the only promotion path leading into management). Ask specific questions about how a PhD affects your starting position on that ladder. If it doesn't at all, then seriously consider looking for somewhere that it does. A company that values PhDs seems less likely to hold the misconceptions you mentioned.

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