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Why I'm Getting a PhD

johnbender.us

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Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#61

Post by Lewisham »

burntsushi wrote: post #18

Is anyone else doing their PhD (or did their PhD) just because they thought it was a lot of fun and a great way to learn a lot in a short time period? Not that it's the only way to do any of those things, but I've found the lifestyle of a graduate student in CS to be extremely appealing. My mentor once suggested that a PhD is only worthwhile if you plan on doing research after you graduate. But as he got to know me b…

Isn't that enough?

Well, yes, it can be. During my PhD studies I met a couple people who could be considered "lifers" who were clearly very happy doing graduate-level research work. Maybe you are one of them. Their optimal career path would be a cushy postdoc job so they continue to keep doing what they are doing but without paying tuition fees.

I'm sure you know, but for others reading, there are reasons why most people don't do this.

1. There is a strong psychological toll on doing original research. It's liberating and exciting, but also intensely frustrating and isolating. Writing papers, and their inevitable rejection, is a very disheartening venture that can't be accurately described without doing it.

2. If you're in the sciences, which I assume most people reading here are, you stand to make significantly more in industry research than post-doc research.

3. Research takes over your mind, you can't turn it off. When I was doing my PhD, I was essentially "on" all the time, it can never be a 9 to 5 job. Despite your best efforts, research will always have a toll on your family.

So if these things aren't a problem for you, then it certainly is enough. Research is a uniquely rewarding career path. But your mentor uses that line as a way of helping/warning others. You aren't the stereotypical PhD student, and PhD students are already skewed all the way down the spectrum of "normal". The majority of the population, and most PhD researchers, struggle with these problems. If you're not committed to it for the long-haul, which is what your mentor is alluding to, it's not worth doing it.

EDIT: Now I've done my PhD, people often ask me "Do you think I should do one?" and the unsatisfyingly true answer is "I don't know, I'm not you" (and, perhaps even worse, is that you aren't you when you finish the PhD from when you started, you change and grow a lot, which affects your viewpoint dramatically). That's another reason why your mentor has that saying, it's more easily digestible by those who are unsure.

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#62

Post by Lewisham »

burntsushi wrote: post #58
fixxer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started my PhD as a fun learning experience. I didn't (and still don't) care about credentials. As I've gotten further into the degree, I've realized that academic research is as plagued by corporate-style politics as any other venture. The fun started to die. As it is, I'm looking for the door (dissertation to be completed while working).

> As I've gotten further into the degree, I've realized that academic research is as plagued by corporate-style politics as any other venture. The fun started to die. I've actually gone through precisely the same realization, but it hasn't ruined the fun for me. Namely, I seem to be an observer while the messy politics are played by the faculty members. I entered graduate school with the intention to become a profess…

I decided not to continue with academia after my PhD not because of the internal politics[1], but the external. I failed completely to find external funding, and with NSF only funding 11% of applications, that's typical. And when you going for external funding, you're having to do what they want you to do, not the blue sky research I naively thought I'd get to do when I started my PhD.

If I'm going to have to justify what I'm doing all the time, I'd rather do that in industry, where people have deeper pockets and you're closer to the source of the money.

[1] The internal politics is actually easy to understand. It moves very slowly, and it's based entirely on getting a critical mass of influential people in the department to be on your side. It requires a lot of closed door chats to get things done. But no-one is ever actively looking to bury you as I have heard can happen in law/accounting.

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#63

Post by arethuza »

fixxer wrote: post #54
burntsushi wrote: post #18

Is anyone else doing their PhD (or did their PhD) just because they thought it was a lot of fun and a great way to learn a lot in a short time period? Not that it's the only way to do any of those things, but I've found the lifestyle of a graduate student in CS to be extremely appealing. My mentor once suggested that a PhD is only worthwhile if you plan on doing research after you graduate. But as he got to know me b…

I started my PhD as a fun learning experience. I didn't (and still don't) care about credentials. As I've gotten further into the degree, I've realized that academic research is as plagued by corporate-style politics as any other venture. The fun started to die. As it is, I'm looking for the door (dissertation to be completed while working).

My experience of 6 years in academia is that I thought the politics there was far worse than anything I've found in the years since then. As Wallace Stanley Sayre famously said: "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low".

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#65

Post by Lewisham »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #55
bfe wrote: post #15

For something like an opposite perspective, there's "Why I'm leaving [my job as a CS professor at] Harvard [to join Google]": http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvar... Shorter version of both posts: "Working at (university/big tech co.) frees me from all the distractions of working at (big tech co./university) so I can spend all my time hacking on the problems I find most interesting."

Where I get stuck: "we only accept PhDs at [GOOG/MS/FB] research." I want to be in these communities (preferably somewhere with funding + needs, likely to be a BigCo), but they don't make themselves very open.

FWIW, Peter Norvig was asked at an intern tech talk at Google "Do I need a PhD to work at Google?" and he replied "No, and most of the people here don't have one. What we are looking to hire is people who have the original thinking mindset that makes them able to do PhDs, even if they haven't done one."

When you're working at Google/Facebook/Microsoft you're working on problems that are new to you, even if they aren't new to the rest of the company. You're learning, which is the fun bit of research. Many of the products you will work on may never have been attempted at the size/scale you are going for, and so that's research.

Industry has a lot of the R of R&D, you just need to recognize it when it's happening.

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#66

Post by betterunix »

burntsushi wrote: post #18

Is anyone else doing their PhD (or did their PhD) just because they thought it was a lot of fun and a great way to learn a lot in a short time period? Not that it's the only way to do any of those things, but I've found the lifestyle of a graduate student in CS to be extremely appealing. My mentor once suggested that a PhD is only worthwhile if you plan on doing research after you graduate. But as he got to know me b…

The problem is that you might find yourself at a point where it is just not all that enjoyable anymore. Your adviser stops caring about your research, or you are told that you need to get N papers published by the end of the year to stay in the program, etc. Maybe you find that you are unable to work with your adviser, and there is nobody else who will take you on as a student. I have seen a number of people leave grad school over such things.

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#67

Post by betterunix »

blah32497 wrote: post #45
hayksaakian wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I may need money someday, but right now I don't, so I might as well take advantage of the situation. That's partly why many people see a Phd as a luxury or as something not entirely useful or necessary. Many people NEED to make money RIGHT NOW.

In the US you get paid to do a PhD - either as a research assistant, grants/fellowships, or if you get the shit end of the stick - TA'ing

You do not get paid a lot in a PhD program. Where I am the pay is barely enough for one person to live on. There is also the time commitment -- a lot of programs demand 60 or more hours per week from their students. The combination basically means that starting a family is impossible while you are a PhD student, unless you have a spouse who has a comfortable income / family money.

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#68

Post by ssw1n »

Here is a different perspective, all be it in a cynical tone: http://crypto.junod.info/2013/09/09/an-aspiring-scientists-f...

And here's another, with much more objective tone: http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm

My take on the subject matter is that:

- When getting into the PhD. track, one should be aware of what he/she is getting into, and be prepared for the resulting lifestyle.

- One should have an extraordinary drive (even to the point of personal obsession) to search for answers towards the unsolved problems in his/her field of study despite knowing the consequences that will be imposed onto his/her life by this intellectual journey.

- One should find a PI whose personality clicks with his/hers, and whose research he/she is motivated to work on. It is pretty rare to match these two parameters perfectly, but one can weigh trade-offs, and work with the best available while still maintaining his/her aspirations.

- One should realize that, regardless of popular belief, academia is business with its own business model: understanding the intricate business logic behind the model will facilitate one greatly in his/her quest.

- One should realize that like every human society, academia has its own fair share of personalities and egos, and intrapersonal skills matter, a lot.

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#69

Post by geebee »

KrisJordan wrote: post #59
geebee wrote: post #34

I truly wish you the best of luck, and for an excellent outcome. One thing - you just can't say "why I'm getting a PhD", even from an elite school, the way you'd say "why I'm getting a law, medical, or business degree". Even if you've been admitted to an elite program, you can really only say "why I'm rolling the dice on the possibility of getting a PhD". At elite programs, there is essentially no involuntary attriti…

I suppose I am part of your Ph.D. 'attrition' statistic. It's less atrocious than you'd think. I enrolled in Brown's Ph.D. CS computer program immediately after undergrad. In retrospect, I was too green to do proper due diligence to find the right fit with advisor and research area. The advisor relationship is extremely important. Within the first year I realized two things: 1) there was no way I'd be happy going dee…

There's room for disagreement about whether this is atrocious. But at its core, do you think that the 33% attrition rate is a problem?

Re: Why I'm Getting a PhD

#70

Post by microtonal »

burntsushi wrote: post #18

Is anyone else doing their PhD (or did their PhD) just because they thought it was a lot of fun and a great way to learn a lot in a short time period? Not that it's the only way to do any of those things, but I've found the lifestyle of a graduate student in CS to be extremely appealing. My mentor once suggested that a PhD is only worthwhile if you plan on doing research after you graduate. But as he got to know me b…

I did a PhD exactly for that reason. I had an offer from a company, I was sort of bootstrapping a company with a friend, and I had an offer for a PhD position[1].

I decided to do a PhD, since it's much easier to roll in to a PhD right after finishing a Masters than ten or twenty years later, and I thought it would offer the opportunity to deepen my knowledge in a particular field. When I started my PhD I didn't have the ambition to start an academic career.

[1] In the Netherlands being a PhD candidate is a normal employment. You get a decent salary and benefits and you have four years to focus on actual research, with very few teaching responsibilities, or having to follow courses. It's just a researcher position where you also write a thesis.

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