Why (Not) Do a PhD in Computer Science?
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Why (Not) Do a PhD in Computer Science?
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Re: Why (Not) Do a PhD in Computer Science?
#2You need to be aware that PhDs often make less or the same income as a "professional" degree holder does (for a higher student loan burden). That means if you feel that the experience will be personally enriching, the fact that it might not be financially enriching may not matter.
Re: Why (Not) Do a PhD in Computer Science?
#3Never do a PhD for the money. Ever. It's not worth it, compared to using your skills to get a good education BSc / MSc and then start your career. You miss so many years of good income, plus income growth and will always stand out as the theoretical type.
That being said: it's all about curiosity and people. So if you're curious and have the time / money... go for a PhD!
Re: Why (Not) Do a PhD in Computer Science?
#4You need to be aware that PhDs often make less or the same income as a "professional" degree holder does (for a higher student loan burden). That means if you feel that the experience will be personally enriching, the fact that it might not be financially enriching may not matter.
A CS PhD student doesn't generally take out any student loans; at most universities, students are funded by research and/or teaching assistant appointments and internal/external fellowships.
Re: Why (Not) Do a PhD in Computer Science?
#5I like the reasons described in the post. I would like to add one more that was really important for me when deciding to do a PhD in CS - learning to write papers.
While it may seem like a burden for some people, I think that describing your research in a very limited space (something like 8 pages) teaches you very valuable skills. You should also write it in a way that most of the readers will understand your ideas easily, considering the fact that the readers and even conference/journal reviewers often have very different backgrounds. I have seen papers with very good results being rejected because of bad explanations and also not so impressive papers that get accepted because they are very nicely written.
Re: Why (Not) Do a PhD in Computer Science?
#6I've been recently faced with the same choice. I'm finishing my master's degree (in Europe, where a master is a prerequisite for a PhD).
There were a combination of things that decided me. One is that a PhD is not that much of an asset in the workplace. Especially considering the consequent time investment. Another is that you have to deal with all the BS of academia: doing research that doesn't interest you with your promoter, writing papers with little to no interesting content, etc...
Academia also has that "symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before". There are many topics, often well studied which could use a clarification/simplification of the theory. Or you could make a tool for a particular domain that doesn't suck.
All in all, I think I prefer to get a "regular job", and toy on the side.
Re: Why (Not) Do a PhD in Computer Science?
#7I've been recently faced with the same choice. I'm finishing my master's degree (in Europe, where a master is a prerequisite for a PhD). There were a combination of things that decided me. One is that a PhD is not that much of an asset in the workplace. Especially considering the consequent time investment. Another is that you have to deal with all the BS of academia: doing research that doesn't interest you with you…
Only do a PhD if it can get you the time to pursue topics you are truly passionately interested in. It sounds like you shouldn't pursue one, which is fine.
Re: Why (Not) Do a PhD in Computer Science?
#8Never do a PhD for the money. Ever. It's not worth it, compared to using your skills to get a good education BSc / MSc and then start your career. You miss so many years of good income, plus income growth and will always stand out as the theoretical type. That being said: it's all about curiosity and people. So if you're curious and have the time / money... go for a PhD!
I know of three PhD's in comp sci that went straight into Goldman Sachs (and one hedge fund) where they immediately started earning far more than those of us that left Uni with our Bachelors.
They work in high frequency trading mainly using Java.
Re: Why (Not) Do a PhD in Computer Science?
#9I've been recently faced with the same choice. I'm finishing my master's degree (in Europe, where a master is a prerequisite for a PhD). There were a combination of things that decided me. One is that a PhD is not that much of an asset in the workplace. Especially considering the consequent time investment. Another is that you have to deal with all the BS of academia: doing research that doesn't interest you with you…
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Re: Why (Not) Do a PhD in Computer Science?
#10Never do a PhD for the money. Ever. It's not worth it, compared to using your skills to get a good education BSc / MSc and then start your career. You miss so many years of good income, plus income growth and will always stand out as the theoretical type. That being said: it's all about curiosity and people. So if you're curious and have the time / money... go for a PhD!
I know of three PhD's in comp sci that went straight into Goldman Sachs (and one hedge fund) where they immediately started earning far more than those of us that left Uni with our Bachelors. They work in high frequency trading mainly using Java.
Interesting. I wouldn't have though Java was suitable for HFT due to garbage collection pauses playing havoc with your system determinism and performance reliability.
I supported a derivatives trading system written in java that was canned due to performance issues, and where I am now we had java FIX protocol gateways that we've replaced with C++ components, again for performance reasons.
I'm not saying java has performance problems in general, I do understand that for many applications it's a good and performant option, but when you're dealing with sub-millisecond response times it has issues. If anyone is using Java for applications like this, I'd love to know how they get round these issues.