31–40 of 46 posts
As it happens, I'm defending my dissertation tomorrow (neuroscience, U.S.) and this post pretty well sums up my sentiment. I particularly agree with the ending: Oh you’re saying I’m a dreamer, and that simply never happens? Well what about those thousands of internet start-up companies? They waste their time as well, trying to become another Facebook or another Google. Yet they still do it, because it’s their dream t…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow. In Norway, there is a similar problem with the "four-year" rule, which means it becomes very hard to fire someone who has worked for an employer for over four years. Now the PhD of course also takes four years, and PhD students are employees. In practice, almost no-one claims the four-year rule following, say, the PhD and a short-term research-assistant engagement (there was a recent case where two people in Osl…
The PhD contract is just a single contract, and a position only becomes permanent after a third contract in a number of years I think. Once you get your PhD, and you're rehired at the university, you get a different position, starting the counter from 0 again. But no, if Norway had the three contract rule as I described, the people you know would have been fired already.
I guess you're right, though who knows what those pesky unions might have said.
After weeks of PhD bashing here is one article which successfully defends it against a lot of arguments against a PhD. I especially like the comparison of an academic career with the startup track.
As pointed out elsewhere the comparison don't hold up. Startups are high risk high return. That can't be said about PHDs
Normal people don’t study philosophy, and if they’re into computer science, they don’t care whether P!=NP — they just learn Java, Objective-C, Python or whatever else they find useful for becoming a successful software engineer. I resent that. Most programmers I've met find theoretical CS interesting, and learn things simply for the intellectual value of it. They just want to build things people use.
My experience is almost exactly the opposite. Most programmers care little to nothing about any sort of CS or theory. I've met successful programmers with years of experience who'd never even heard of even the simplest CS concepts like linked lists. How their language of choice actually works below the surface is a complete black box to them, and they're quite happy to keep it that way. If you meet a programmer who c…
There are people who are passionate about what they do, and then there vastly more people who are doing it simply because it's a job.
I'll defend the PhD for different reasons. It educates you further. You acquire knowledge you don't get elsewhere. You get a range of skills and learning opportunities you don't get elsewhere - some of which are very useful when trying to discover new human knowledge. Research labs in universities do - and have traditionally - discovered much new human knowledge; they are good at it. Using earnings as the sole measur…
>> Of course, if you view a PhD purely as training
>> for academic positions, then clearly something is broken,
>> because there are very few academic positions.
Well, I don't want to sound like a douche or anything, but they really do know how to pick their words, don't they? Following the same logic only Plato would qualify as a true philosopher (he's the evil mind behind all this "academia" concept anyway), while Democritus, one of the few philosophers who actually knew what he was saying, would just be seen as an amateur.
As it happens, I'm defending my dissertation tomorrow (neuroscience, U.S.) and this post pretty well sums up my sentiment. I particularly agree with the ending: Oh you’re saying I’m a dreamer, and that simply never happens? Well what about those thousands of internet start-up companies? They waste their time as well, trying to become another Facebook or another Google. Yet they still do it, because it’s their dream t…
Break a leg! I defended mine last month, and let me tell you- the sense of relief afterwards is amazing.
I'm happy I'm currently in the middle of my PhD, but this article makes a bunch of errors. It generally strikes me as the naive impression that undergrad have of grad school until they spend some time talking to post-doc and professors. I'll just identify a couple of obvious ones. 1. "We all read the PhD Comics and we all hear about how many hours of coursework or admin-duties a typical US grad student has. I don’t k…
I'll defend the PhD for different reasons. It educates you further. You acquire knowledge you don't get elsewhere. You get a range of skills and learning opportunities you don't get elsewhere - some of which are very useful when trying to discover new human knowledge. Research labs in universities do - and have traditionally - discovered much new human knowledge; they are good at it. Using earnings as the sole measur…
My dad has worked at a grocery store for almost 33 years, and he's 50 years old. He always made good money (especially for not having a degree), and did a good job, but I never felt like he actually liked his job, especially with all the crap he has to go through from both employees and bosses. He's been salary for a long time, and has worked probably an average of 60+ hours a week for the past 12 years. This always…
Now you know of one.
As it happens, I'm defending my dissertation tomorrow (neuroscience, U.S.) and this post pretty well sums up my sentiment. I particularly agree with the ending: Oh you’re saying I’m a dreamer, and that simply never happens? Well what about those thousands of internet start-up companies? They waste their time as well, trying to become another Facebook or another Google. Yet they still do it, because it’s their dream t…
Have a ball tomorrow!