A Survival Guide to a PhD • Hacker News Board

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#81

Post by dilly_li » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 3:57 AM UTC

sndean wrote: post #60

PeterisP wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What "graduating class"? In undergrad studies, your peers are your classmates, but in PhD studies, your peers are the global community of your sub-subfield. For feeling like you're the best, your competition will be someone across the ocean who happens to work on a topic very close to your thesis, and most of students in your department will be largely irrelevant since they'll work in a different field and interact w…

> What "graduating class"? Many universities have a "College of Science." Many of those universities give out some sort of "Top Doctoral Student" award, with a different name. And I largely agree with what you say. That would be how any rational person would measure themselves, you would think. But in reality, you're comparing yourself to the people you're surrounded by, not with the smart guy in Iceland.

Nice comment. In my opinion, in reality you are not comparing to your peers. Instead, you are your peers. There is a quote, something like, you are the average of your best 6 friends. To some degree, I think it makes sense because they basically serve as your inspiration and collaborators.

Personally I would not want to attend a second-tier school/lab as a PhD student, spending half a decade with some mediocre people. I mean, if one truly wants to stand out among the peers/crowds, isn't it a better idea to do really excellent research rather than lower your peers' quality.

Currently I am in a top research group and I might not be the top 1% of my graduating class; yet, I am confident that I am having my best time to learn from my great peers.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#82

Post by robotresearcher » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 4:01 AM UTC

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…

> Much of your freedom goes to learning to play politics

That's crazy. The way to get a great reference is to do outstanding work. If by 'playing politics' you mean not pissing people off by being an asshole or being unreliable, then, yeah, take care to be a good colleague. But almost entirely: do really good work.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#83

Post by tgarma1234 » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 4:04 AM UTC

Chinjut wrote: post #53

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…

Hm... are there any options other than hoping against all odds to successfully navigate the tenure-track rat-race, working for The Man as an anonymous cog at BigCorp, or starting a business and pouring myself into businessy businessperson busywork? I'm afraid... I'm afraid I may be a defective individual in that none of these sound terribly appealing as a way to spend the bulk of my life.

Please, don't do a PhD. The tenure track treadmill is brutal and on the wane. You would be much happier just getting a job. A normal job. With ordinary people. And I say that after a masters degree, many years in a PhD program and the having a normal job. A PhD is sort of useless at this point in history.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#84

Post by akhilcacharya » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 4:05 AM UTC

> You’ll struggle with the realization that months of your work were spent on a paper with a few citations while your friends do exciting startups with TechCrunch articles or push products to millions of people.

Love Andrej but really, this isn't a common experience.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#85

Post by dilly_li » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 4:06 AM UTC

morgante wrote: post #51

These reasons for getting a PhD seem extremely one-sided and, frankly, inaccurate. > Exclusivity. There are very few people who make it to the top PhD programs. Top companies are even more exclusive than PhD programs in terms of acceptance rate. > you’re strictly more hirable as a PhD graduate or even as a PhD dropout and many companies might be willing to put you in a more interesting position or with a higher start…

> Top companies are even more exclusive than PhD programs in terms of acceptance rate.

Acceptance rate is meaningless unless the base populations are the same. Considering only the (hopefully) top graduates are interested in applying for PhD, whereas most graduates have to look for jobs, acceptance rates between grad school and companies are really comparable.

> I think it's patently ridiculous that professors get "authorship" credit on papers even when they had a minimal, at best, role in it.

Think of professor as a spiritual mentor. I don't think Jony Ive put his hands on the drawing of latest apple watches anymore, and he gets to sit in the white room every year. It's the philosophical guides he puts into his team that earn him the privilege.

In terms of material compensation, I totally agree with you that companies generally pay much better. The credit part is really nominal. I've know some people working in google, facebook. Their projects range from google cardboard, google daydream, fb live video, to fb 360 video. Honestly, I have never seen their names/credits anywhere else but our private conversations. It's nowhere to be found.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#86

Post by tgarma1234 » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 4:13 AM UTC

johan_larson wrote: post #28

gajjanag wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

My claim is based on my own experience as a CS PhD student and my conversations with other graduate students within the department and outside it during my studies. Christ, there was so much bitching. And it consisted of the kind of grim complaints I never heard during undergrad days or later on the job. That said, CS PhDs are pretty lucky. The worst case fallback position of a job as a software developer isn't bad.…

Yes... the two languages requirement is A LOT easier in technical field than in the humanities. Try being fluent or functionally fluent for an exam in two human, spoken, academic languages vs learning a couple of programming languages. At least that was the experience I had. Learning enough French and German to read and write in French and German at the PhD level was absolutely soul destroying whereas now that I have had several normal business jobs and been asked to learn various programming languages as part of the work was basically... easy by comparison. A few jobs in software development are rapidly becoming the "webmaster" of our time.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#87

Post by robotresearcher » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 4:20 AM UTC

ppod wrote: post #64

>Over time you’ll develop a vocabulary of good words and bad words to use when writing papers. Speaking about machine learning or computer vision papers specifically as concrete examples, in your papers you never “study” or “investigate” (there are boring, passive, bad words); instead you “develop” or even better you “propose”. And you don’t present a “system” or, shudder, a “pipeline”; instead, you develop a “model”…

> Many otherwise good students don't get taught this coded language.

Almost no one is taught this coded language. You absorb it by reading tons and tons of papers, then more papers. Karpathy is unusual and fun to make it explicit like this. He's a canny person.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#88

Post by Ar-Curunir » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 4:55 AM UTC

shas3 wrote: post #63

glangdale wrote: post #61

I had a very different personal experience, but Karpathy did a wonderful PhD and I did a very marginal one (at a good school, which in many ways makes it worse). From the perspective of the "anchor" rather than the valedictorian, I'd say that he's right on almost all points as to what you should look to do if you decide to be a PhD. However, I do take exception at the rather false dichotomy between industry and acade…

I think it's more of a continuum than you suppose in your comment. It's not a binary of "great" vs "average" PhD. There's plenty in between and many types of averages. Karpathy had it good, as did Might, Guo, and other purveyors of wisdom on PhD. But that doesn't invalidate their arguments and observations.

I wouldn't say Guo had it good, I mean his book is called the PhD grind; that's not a particularly happy sounding title.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#89

Post by Ar-Curunir » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 4:57 AM UTC

throwawaymsft wrote: post #49

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much of your freedom goes to learning to play politics and manage up to a level employees never have to. Yeah, internal corporate politics never gets people's entire project canceled with no notice in the corporate world. That would just be mean, so it doesn't happen /s. (Guess what I found out last Friday?)

That sucks, but politics in the workplace can be dialed from mega-corp to startup to consultancy to freelancer to anonymous author of a SaaS. How much politics did patio11 deal with when running Bingo Card Creator?

Pretty sure that the same applies for academia. It depends on your department culture and lab environment.

Re: A Survival Guide to a PhD

#90

Post by glangdale » Thu, Sep 08, 2016, 4:59 AM UTC

shas3 wrote: post #63

glangdale wrote: post #61

I had a very different personal experience, but Karpathy did a wonderful PhD and I did a very marginal one (at a good school, which in many ways makes it worse). From the perspective of the "anchor" rather than the valedictorian, I'd say that he's right on almost all points as to what you should look to do if you decide to be a PhD. However, I do take exception at the rather false dichotomy between industry and acade…

I think it's more of a continuum than you suppose in your comment. It's not a binary of "great" vs "average" PhD. There's plenty in between and many types of averages. Karpathy had it good, as did Might, Guo, and other purveyors of wisdom on PhD. But that doesn't invalidate their arguments and observations.

I think I covered some of that. And yes, it definitely is a continuum, agreed. A semi-superstar could probably have a pretty decent life working very comfortably on an interesting problem, if not necessarily a Hot Problem At The Best Institution.

However, continuum aside, there are a LOT of PhDs produced worldwide, and a LOT of good ones, and very few particularly good academic jobs. A lot of my observations of why things are kind of shitty lie not from my own career (which was largely my fault) but from observing smarter, harder-working, more organized people a couple of rungs up and realizing what a cruddy experience they were having in the middle tier. And also thinking: "man, if I just got my shit together and worked insanely hard for a few years, I could be as unhappy as Professor XYZ".

I wouldn't say "don't do a PhD". Just "know the odds"; i.e. know how many of the positions you could see yourself doing are available vs. PhD students emerging at a similar tier, and ask yourself whether you're going to be in that percentage, and what your plans are if you aren't. I learned a lot from my PhD, even if I sucked, and it turned out my backup plan was really much better than I realized it would be.