
The Ph.D Grind: A Ph.D Student Memoir - unignorant
http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir/pguo-PhD-grind.pdf
======
Xcelerate
Wow, I can't believe I just read that whole thing. Maybe it was the excellent
writing quality or maybe I just find things like this interesting.

As someone who just graduated with a B.S. in chemical engineering and will
start work toward my PhD in the fall (also in chemical engineering, but will
actually involve a TON of programming), this strikes a chord with me.

A few takeaways from the article:

-The author does not give himself nearly enough credit. "Self-deprecating" is probably the right term. He considers himself average, but he is far above average. I mean this as a compliment of course.

-I think some of those tools he wrote could actually help me with my work (particularly CDE) -- I'll have to go take a look.

-I am going to have to learn how to focus, and very quickly. I consider myself very motivated/stubborn but I get distracted so easily that it's ridiculous, and this is not going to work for grad school unless I alter my behavior substantially before I get there.

-Before reading his book, I too had the idealized notion of "brilliant idea, years of writing one paper about it". The reality isn't quite as fantastic, but I appreciate learning the truth over belated disillusionment.

-Just realized the author is pgbovine -- excellent work! I currently have a completely free summer to do whatever -- would you have any tips on how I should prepare before I get to grad school? I already know which professor I will be working with, so I'm trying to figure out what level of "initiative" I should take before I arrive.

~~~
needAnAccount
I'm also in chemical engineering and am looking to integrate programming into
my work in grad school. What did you find to work on that's programming
related?

~~~
Xcelerate
Find a grad school with access to a supercomputer. There's a lot of fun ChemE
problems that require one of these to solve. Simulating classical or quantum
systems (molecular dynamics) takes a lot of algorithmic knowledge from CS and
a lot of chemistry knowledge to understand the principles. Then the
engineering knowledge is for scaling it up so that you can make something
practical with your results.

------
strlen
[ Short on sleep, so the post may sleep incoherent. Excusing myself from any
egregious offenses against the English language ]

I read this in its entirety, unable to go to bed before finishing. This is
amazing. I'll admit that I started out with skepticism towards Philip's
initial research goals.

Instead what I found is an application of immense talent , culminating in
software projects that are nothing short of amazing. For what it's worth,
something like CDE seems like a holy grail in many scenarios. I've spent some
time time thinking about distibuted cluster management software (Google's
borg, MS auto-pilot, Hadoop YARN) and the problems these system tend to run
into when encountering stateful services. Naturally, I'll spend a bit of time
reading up CDE after this.

As Xcelerate said it's quite obvious that the author is _nowhere_ close to
average, even in a top-tier program like Stanford. I also admire is that the
author was able to maintain this healthy degree of self-deprecation while
still doing the inherently (to a research or developer) distasteful but vital
work of selling.

Many of my team mates at my current and previous jobs hold PhD. I come from an
academic family: my dad was a full professor (e.g., habitulation et al) in our
home country, my mom completed her PhD dissertation but wasn't allowed to
defend for reasons best answered by a Google search[1]. However, this writeup
still shocked me in many ways (the sheer grit and tenacity required on top of
extreme mental horsepower). Thank you for sharing this.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=jews%20in%20soviet%20univers...](https://www.google.com/search?q=jews%20in%20soviet%20universities)

Edit: one _tiny_ suggestion -- pgbovine, I like how you've planned for the
book to be accessible to those outside of computer science/software
engineering fields (e.g., explaining what device drivers, Python, et al were).
That said, I still think there are a few pieces that could be improved in
terms of the paper's accessibility to non-CS folks: going into more details
into potential sources of bugs (to explain the motivation behind your initial
research), the full pain of systems' environment management, etc... You should
definitely publish this for a wide audience (at the very least gearing this
for students or professionals in all natural sciences and other quantitative
fields).

~~~
Estragon

      > it's quite obvious that the author is _nowhere_ close to average
    

I agree with you in general, but he meant he's at best an average _academic_ ,
because he didn't find a way to frame his work so that an academic community
would welcome him. It's a fair assessment, but it's obviously not going to
impede him from accomplishing great things.

------
physicslover
The part that hit home for me was his description of the Prof's frustration
with the speed at which he was implementing the enhancement to Klee and the
fact that most grad students are not as smart as their advisors.

Most grad students are exhilarated to work with a brilliant researcher but it
can crushing when one learns his or her own limitations.

Like the author says, probably 1 in 100 are the equal of their advisor and
capable of becoming a professor at a comparable university.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Different strokes for different folks. It takes a special kind of person to be
a professor, but this doesn't have so much to do with aptitude. There are many
ways to contribute to the world, getting a PhD is useful even if you are not
dreaming of being a professor.

------
azarias
This is great, and thanks for writing it up. I don't think many graduate
students would consider doing this right after graduation...I certainly wasn't
in a mood to write another detailed document after getting done with my
dissertation (also a couple of months ago, and in computer science).

I wanted to add a little about the end-game. For me, the decision of what to
do next followed a slightly different path. In the fall of my 5th year, while
planning to graduate, I had to really think about what to do next. Academia
sounded interesting, so I went ahead and applied to tenure track jobs, and did
interviews. Come winter, I had an offer from an Ivy League school. But I had
also wanted to do startups for a while.

From my experience, working on projects that were not provided/sanctioned by
advisors was somewhat like working on a startup. You have to build things that
others find useful/interesting, sell the crap out of it in publications,
presentations etc, and I also had to fund it.(my research was building systems
software that improves user experience in poor network environments, like
those common in developing regions. One of the definite perks was travelling
lots and deploying stuff I built.)

In other words, I have no idea why _most_ PhDs are not be expected to go work
on a startup when they finish. They are domain experts, and are expected to be
good communicators when it is all said and done.

So, when it came time to make the call---an assistant professor, or a startup
founder---I chose the later (and disappointed my advisor). Some friends tell
me I could have done that without a PhD, and it was a waste of time. I think a
PhD naturally leads to a start up. The Grind, as the op calls it, is something
that teaches you a lot about yourself, and surrounds you with some of the
smartest people you'll find. Your job, every single day, is to innovate [with
a more flexible runway]...and you can make (and learn) a lot out of it.

~~~
b2rock
When looking at it from a start up point of view...isn't is possible to
emulate most (all?) of the lessons you learn from grad school in the start up
environment?

------
tomcam
Wonderfully written and a page turner. Bookmarked it but ended up devouring
the thing in one sitting. Deserves widespread publication. Guo is a remarkable
dude, and brutally honest. It's a tale of perseverance and canny self-
promotion from a guy who is spectacularly good at learning from failure. I
felt an almost parental joy upon reading the outcome. Publish this on Kindle,
Mr. Guo!

~~~
pgbovine
wow, thanks for the compliments! i'm looking into rendering in a Kindle-
friendly format soon.

~~~
wslh
Yes, +1 for the kindle/mobi version

~~~
pgbovine
done -- epub/mobi versions online at:

<http://pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm>

~~~
wslh
Excellent and with high quality. Thanks

------
Mindless2112
As a current graduate student skeptically considering working toward a Ph.D.,
this has helped me confirm my suspicion that it's not for me. I started doing
research as an undergrad, so I have become somewhat familiar with academia's
publication game... and I find it distasteful.

Knowing what goes into a Ph.D. is invaluable in making such a decision, and
this book was quite helpful in that regard. Thank you!

~~~
pgbovine
i have a big fat disclaimer in the preface that this isn't meant to be
anything other than me telling my own story; it's one data point, and there's
a huge amount of variation in Ph.D. student experiences.

maybe i didn't make the disclaimer big enough, though :)

~~~
Mindless2112
I read the book with that disclaimer in mind.

Please don't take my comment as "you ruined my motivation for further
education"; it was meant as "you saved me the trouble of finding out the hard
way that this really wasn't what I wanted".

I have never been interested in being a professor, so I would be in it
entirely to push my limits. But if I know I won't enjoy it (and as far as
Ph.D. programs and publication go hand-in-hand, I know I wouldn't), then is it
really worthwhile? That isn't to say I wouldn't emerge a stronger person at
the end, but I would rather find ways to push myself intellectually that I
will enjoy. I believe they're out there.

Edit: I just read a post about your book at
<http://blog.regehr.org/archives/743> which you might be interested in.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
You could always attend a more relaxed PhD program outside of the first tier
schools. These are still great schools and won't exactly be easier, but the
pressure dynamics are a bit different and you'll have more time to experiment.

I really enjoyed my PhD experience; I had time to explore who I was and was
able to accomplish what I wanted to. It wasn't so much of as a useless grind
as it was a journey to enlightment, but my experience is unique.

------
mdwelsh
Pretty amazing memoir. Does a nice job of capturing the ups and downs of the
grad student experience. Phil - consider distilling this down as a blog post
or two - lots of good lessons here, but given the length they might be lost on
most or your potential readers.

~~~
pgbovine
hi matt - wow, i was gonna email you tomorrow, but HN scooped me.

re: distilling -- my main intention in writing this memoir wasn't to provide
advice, since it's hard for me to determine how much facets of my experience
generalize. i do have plans to convert the "lessons learned" section from the
epilogue into a talk, though.

i have this other article from the beginning of my third year that's more of
the "advice" type, although again, I'm wary of making generalizations about
Ph.D. life: <http://pgbovine.net/PhD-life.htm>

(other fun fact - i used one of your blog quotes as the title slide of my
Ph.D. oral defense)

~~~
FrojoS
Oh, that was from you, too?

I just read this a few days ago (was actually recommended here on HN [1]) and
thought it was terrific.

That might be one of my biggest problems in science - I have a hard time
memorizing people's names.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4141353>

~~~
FrojoS
Turns out the author wrote about that problem, too [1]. The advice is mostly
on how memorize names when you get introduced personally, but admittedly this
is an even more important problem. Recommended read.

[1] <http://www.pgbovine.net/on-names.htm>

------
pgbovine
whoa i'm astonished people have the attention span to read this on a friday
night :)

here's an HTML version too ... <http://pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm>

~~~
unignorant
Hey, sorry for scooping you if that messed something up :)

I heard you'd graduated, so I wandered over to your site today. Didn't realize
you'd put up this article so recently.

~~~
pgbovine
oh, no worries at all! in fact, i just shipped today. thanks for posting,
ethan.

------
scott_s
I'm only halfway through this, but it rings true to my experience. The
circumstances are different, but the emotions and lessons I had to learn are
much the same. Near the end of my PhD, when I knew that graduating was just a
matter of time, I had difficulty explaining to people what the process had
been like, and how to answer people when they asked if they should do it, too.
In the future, I'll point them to this.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I've been out for 7 years now (ended about the same time this guy started). I
actually had some experience working at Dawson's bug finding startup a bit at
the end, which was an interesting experience, but not what I was interested
in, so I went to EPFL to work on Scala for my post doc. I can sympathize with
the author's struggles!

I'm only halfway through this, but everything is true, especially about
research agendas and insider academic sub-communities.

~~~
pgbovine
oh thanks for reminding me ... i should forward this to your advisor!

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Ah, you MIT guys all know each other :)

While you are at google, you might consider continuing to engage with the
academic community to a limited extent. Onward! is very different with a
new/improved community that is interested in bridging gaps between
PL/HCI/systems and isn't so concerned about the publishing rat race.

~~~
pgbovine
actually i don't know wilson, but he went to grad school with my advisor, so i
figure i should ping him!

re: Onward! yes, i've heard good things about it; will keep a look-out.

~~~
regehr
I expect that Wilson will enjoy your writeup, definitely forward it to him.
He's a Googler you should get to know anyway...

~~~
pgbovine
ha you're another person i meant to email today ... i should get on that soon!

------
rdudekul
Once I started reading the memoir I couldn't put it down. As an entrepreneur
three points stood out for me: i) Give and ask for help: Asking for help is
crucial for the success of any venture. But providing help opens many unseens
doors. ii) Give and attend talks: By giving talks you expose your work to a
wider audience, more importantly you will get real-time feedback and find a
potential customer or two for your product. iii) Network with amazingly
talented people: Just a half hour or an hour meeting with smart, highly
experienced people can light up possibilities that you may have never
considered. Then there are chances that they will introduce you to the next
investor or big customer.

------
redwolfb14
"One possible reason I dreaded was that nobody had previously built something
like CDE because it was impossible to get the details right to make it work e
ffectively in practice. Maybe it was one of those ideas that looked good on
paper but wasn't practically feasible"

No, there was autopackage, alien and any numerous other programs and
battles/discussion long email threads that worked not just for python but for
any language. Technically speaking as I see CDE, it is useful for python and
standard installs in very select cases. For large research projects where the
variables and runtimes will differ with no rhyme or reason other than "That's
what we started with". It's probably a lot more of an issue to get running
properly.

I'm sure there is no easy answer, it's really a human problem. What would
really be highly useful is for standardization on a linux distro specifically
for research but even then that would only be useful for at most an
organization/institution/research lab. Getting researchers to stick to such a
distro as a general rule is impossible without weapons.

~~~
redwolfb14
Also, good read.

------
colonel_panic
I had no idea you could get faculty from another institution to be on your
thesis committee. More importantly, I had no idea PhD students could do summer
internships to supplement their measly stipends. If I knew that I might have
applied to grad school already. It seemed like the only people in my undergrad
program who had a good idea of how to plan out their academic careers were the
ones whose parents were university professors. I felt alienated and left to
fend for myself and I still don't know how to break back into that world.

------
shriphani
Philip, I first read your blog 2 years ago when I was starting to think about
a PhD and I had a decent academic admit season in Fall 2011 when I finally
applied (headed to CMU later this year). Recently, I was going through a slump
since a paper out of my undergrad thesis I submitted to a conference was
tossed out with very harsh reviews. This manuscript once again has come at a
very opportune moment. You are an extremely gifted writer. Congratulations on
finishing.

------
rgregory
This rings true for Humanities Phd's as well. It's difficult to describe the
cycle of guilt, drive and passion somehow all wrapped together. This is a
great overview.

~~~
jkimmel
I'll second the motion from the biology department. The trials of finding the
right mentor, navigating the waters around the Cape of Publication, and
maintaining your passion seem to be common throughout academia. Definitely an
informative read, regardless of the specific academic field.

------
mturmon
I just read the first chapter. Very insightful.

Especially early on, I was so personally attached to my work that any problem
(eg, an upper bound not working out right) was devastating. But then, when it
did work, ecstasy. And then, uncovering bad algebra in the derivation caused
despair. And then, error corrected, euphoria. Round and round.

------
jared314
The Google Tech Talk mentioned in the story:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XdwHo1BWwY>

------
da02
"He was an ardent pragmatist who cared more about achieving compelling results
than demonstrating theoretical 'interestingness'..."

Are those people actually rare in academia?

~~~
arethuza
I worked in academic research for 6 years (in AI/systems engineering) and I
never encountered anyone who was succesful _and_ interested in pragmatic
issues.

~~~
arethuza
On reflection, this is perhaps a bit harsh to some of the very bright people I
used to work with.

What I meant was that in the context of a highly competitive research
environment those who were succesful had learned that to succeed they couldn't
afford to focus on anything that wouldn't progress their own careers - and
that meant (and presumably still means) publications in the rights places
which are usually completely uninterested in practical details and focused
more on pure mathematical/conceptual concepts.

------
carterschonwald
I must confess, while the grad school parts resonated for me, the part that
was most engaging was the vein of applied provenance tools.

Having recently left my program (but enjoying research), I've actually been
spending a huge amount of time planning out and slowly executing building a
better tool chain for data analysis, and one of the really exciting details
that has popped out of my design is a very nIce support for incremental
computation and computational provenance, while having all of the constituent
parts be libraries (rather than needing to mod a run time)

Point being I was really intrigued to see the thinking behind other folks
getting drawn into that space

~~~
pgbovine
thanks; this might be a presumptuous suggestion, but if you're interested in
these topics, please take a look at my dissertation. at the very least, it's
useful as a bibliography of work in this field ...

<http://pgbovine.net/projects/pubs/guo_phd_dissertation.pdf>

~~~
carterschonwald
no, not presumptious, I've been trying to figure out where to find a good
bibliography of that space!

I'm actually right now figuring out if I can align the stars so I can just
support myself while working on this tool chain project of mine, but we really
should chat in more detail at some point! (lets one of us get around to
emailing the other in the near future)

------
iqram
Haven't read the memoir yet, but after reading John's review
<http://blog.regehr.org/archives/743> I'm looking forward to it. Good luck at
Google Phil.

------
cocoflunchy
This is absolutely brilliant. Extremely well written, I read the whole book
without stoppigng... Thanks for sharing your story with the world.

------
AdamTReineke
Nice read. Congrats on finishing pgbovine! Did you ever encounter other PhD
students taking a similar "entrepreneurial"/independent approach to getting a
doctorate?

Off topic, but I chuckled as I'm interning at Microsoft this summer and
actually came across a paper on Klee this last week as I was doing research to
guide my own testing project. I did a double-take when I saw the name.

------
istari
As I read I thought, wow this dude sounds just like my friend Phillip from
high school. Glad to hear you're doing well.

-Frank

------
andreasvc
The IncPy idea is very neat. A cursory look at the github repository indicates
that it is released as a modified version of CPython 2.6.x. This is
unfortunate, because it guarantees that it will soon be obsolete. Ideally it
should become a PEP and be implemented by multiple Python implementations; how
difficult would that be? From the repo I cannot see how much extra code is
involved here.

Another thought I had is whether you could implement this in pure Python using
the introspection features of the language. Finally I was reminded how with
certain languages such as Lisp, there is this notion of an "image", which is a
dump of the state of the interpreter. Does that achieve the same end as this?
If so, wouldn't that be a much more general solution?

------
franz12
Amazing piece of writing, can't praise it enough. I am at my second year in
the process and already sympathize with most of what you write. Thank you for
writing it, hope I will be able to learn from your experience.

------
RobMcCullough
Thanks for sharing, I find your writing style very engrossing. As someone who
doesn't have much experience in academia, I have a new level of respect for
Professors and Ph.D.'s.

------
freditup
While not a Clancy thriller, I appreciate the well-written insights from this
paper. I don't know the author yet, but thanks to him for taking the time to
write this.

~~~
pgbovine
thanks ... wow i hope my Ph.D. didn't have the body count of a clancy thriller

~~~
apu
heh, I assume you've read Olin Shivers' great writings on guns in academia.
Here's a small taste: <http://www.scsh.net/docu/html/man.html>

------
bobwebb
This is a really good read! I'm a first year CS student and I'm interested in
going into research later on.

Thanks for writing this.

------
wr1472
"involved some of the grimiest programming grind that I had ever done."

------
mikeytown2
More info on CDE (Code, Data, and Environment) without having to read the
memoir: <http://www.pgbovine.net/cde.html>

------
mailshanx
Awesome read, thanks for taking the time to write it :)

------
mrjoelkemp
Amazing post! Thanks for sharing.

------
taskstrike
Just read this in one sitting. In many ways, it parallels an entrepreneur's
journey from other stories I read, except at the end the rainbow, there is
only graduation.

I'm glad I'm not an academic

------
hoops
Ten mins on the website and this strikes me as all being very "needy". I'm
still struggling to understand why everyone feels these type of "little ole
me" stories are so fantastic. (It's not the author's first either...)

Just wanted to offer the counter opinion. Each to his own...

