
What do Stanford CS PhD students think of their PhD program? [pdf] - suuser
https://archive.org/download/phd_student_survey_summary_report_0a5c/phd_student_survey_summary_report_0a5c.pdf
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wallflower
Philip Guo's "The Ph.D Grind: A Ph.D Student Memoir" is an amazingly well-
written and sage chronicle of getting a Ph.D at Stanford from 2006-2012.

[http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir/pguo-PhD-
grind.pdf](http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir/pguo-PhD-grind.pdf)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4179982](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4179982)

~~~
pgbovine
thanks! AMA.

(no guarantees that i'll be able to answer via text, though; maybe i'll make a
video later. been trying to minimize my computering time off-hours due to
increasing wrist pains ... PSA: take care of your wrists, everyone!)

~~~
hackpert
Thanks so much for writing this memoir! It is absolutely brilliant.
Considering you had a somewhat unconventional PhD with your independent
projects, what was the main role of your advisor? How do you make the most of
such a situation to extract knowledge out of professors who may not have an
incentive to be directly involved in your project to the usual degree?

~~~
pgbovine
thanks! that's a hard problem! i frame it in terms of critical path:
[http://pgbovine.net/critical-path.htm](http://pgbovine.net/critical-path.htm)

if you can't get on someone's critical path, then you have to make it very
easy for them to help you with very little time commitment. e.g.,:
[http://pgbovine.net/how-to-ask-for-help.htm](http://pgbovine.net/how-to-ask-
for-help.htm)

~~~
hackpert
That makes a lot of sense, thanks!

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asafira
I was grad council president at that Harvard physics department a couple of
years ago, and I helped organize a similar survey.

My first impression here is that things aren't too bad. Some people are
commenting, for example, about projectors not having enough cables ---
obviously a nuisance, but if those are the issues the department is having,
great. (Obvious, easy solution and a relatively small problem to begin with)

Second, I don't really think this is a particularly comprehensive survey. I'm
surprised there weren't more pointed questions about job intentions (academia
vs industry vs not sure), feeling respected by those around you, the
prevalence and (separately) severity of the racism, sexism, and general
harassment, etc. Not a single question about teaching, nor a question about
actions they'd like to see taken. Relatively few culture questions outside of
"do you feel like a community" (something like that).

At Harvard physics, there were more pressing concerns regarding sexism,
racism, the quality of the required courses, and professional development. The
department did reciprocate and make great changes to the required courses, but
deeper biases make the other categories much more difficult to tackle.

I have been helping a lot of students deal with considering industry, as in a
physics department it's looked down upon to just be considering industry, let
alone pursue it. Or, even if not explicitly looked down upon, it's definitely
the culture and general feel, and many students and postdocs prefer to discuss
it in private. (I did an internship at Waymo last summer, so people are
especially keen on asking me about transitioning to industry)

The survey results are unfortunately not public, so I can't share them. Kudos
to the group of students or administrators that put together this data! I'd
love to hear what they learned from it and changed as a result of it.

------
ordinaryperson
This doesn't answer the question I fundamentally want to know: do they think
it was worth it?

In my CS master's programs profs often warned against the PhD, said companies
wouldn't hire you, that they'd view you as "too smart" and potentially be
bored by everyday work.

Not true for certain disciplines (AI, e.g.) but I don't think every CS PhD is
walking out the door with 300K/year offers hitting them in the face.

~~~
throwaway080383
I don't think Google has ever turned away an applicant for being "too smart".

That being said, five years in a PhD is probably not as good for your career
as five years' experience at $BigNameTech. PhD is probably more fun, though.

~~~
tranchms
I have many friends in PhD programs, including CalTech, Stanford, and
Berkeley, pursuing CS, Genetics, Biomededical Engineering, and EE.

To characterize their program is “fun” is a gross mischaracterization, and
demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of the rigors involved in any
technical/science/engineering PhD pursuit.

PhD programs are hard. They’re often lonely. They’re frustrating. They’re
tedious. And there’s a tremendous amount of pressure. And it’s academia:
highly bureaucratic and political and often unfair.

Unless you possess a serious passion for the subject, you’re unlikely to
survive.

On the other hand, my friends getting the PhDs in subjects such as education
(Stanford) and conservation biology (Mississippi State) have described it as
the highlight of their life. After their first two years, they’re basically
getting paid to do whatever they want. They audit classes. Apply to grants.
Travel. And they write.

~~~
throwaway080383
The irony of this reply is that I did do a PhD, in pure math at a top 10
school, and while I might describe it as hard, lonely, frustrating, tedious,
and high pressure, I would also describe it as having been fun. Certainly more
fun than my current job at $BigNameTech.

Thanks for the lecture about my Serious Misunderstanding, though.

~~~
cglouch
Do you regret doing your PhD in math? Reason I ask is that I thought about
going to grad school for math but decided against it. It just seemed like it
would be postponing the inevitable of finding a job that had little to do with
my "passion". I definitely see the appeal of doing a PhD in a field with
better industry employment prospects (e.g. AI in CS if you're into that), but
less so for fields like pure math that aren't as employable outside of
academia. I'm curious if you felt the experience was worth it, though

~~~
tgb
I did a PhD in math and if I were to do things again, I'd do applied math
because I think I enjoy applied math at least as much as pure math (this is
_not_ true of everyone) while also having it have more obvious job prospects.
I did pure math in part because I was told it was easier to go pure->applied
than applied->pure. I still think that is true and was a not an unreasonable
way to choose what to study. I fundamentally had a very good time in my PhD (I
would absolutely describe it as fun, though that would only be part of the
picture) and learned a ton and now am transitioning to applied math in exactly
the manner that I had been told would be possible (though I feel like I did
this more by luck than by it being systematically possible).

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henrik_w
I did a Master in CS, worked as a developer for 5 years, then went back to do
a Ph.D. I stayed with it for a year before deciding it was not for me, and
went back to SW development.

My key reasons for not continuing with the Ph.D.:

\- Many problems you study are chosen because you will be able to publish
something, not necessarily because they need to be studied.

\- You don’t need to be a (Ph.D.)student to learn - you can work and still
learn

\- A Ph.D. in itself doesn’t make you smart

\- Narrow problems vs broad problems - I prefer to work on something where all
parts need to be good enough, vs on finding the best possible solution to a
very narrow problem.

\- Having worked before starting the Ph.D., I could compare working in
industry vs studying for a Ph.D., and I realized it was very stimulating in
industry.

\- Much better pay for 5 years

I've written more on why here: [https://henrikwarne.com/2016/03/07/ph-d-or-
professional-prog...](https://henrikwarne.com/2016/03/07/ph-d-or-professional-
programmer/)

~~~
ordinaryperson
This is exactly what I wanted to know, thanks.

As someone with a CS master's I almost wish there was an alternate PhD path
where you didn't have to do research, like a Masters++ program. There were
many classes I never got to take for my degree, like in category theory or AI
or distributed databases.

Some of the PhDs in this thread have said they tried $BigTechCo and found it
boring, but to me that just means you were working at the wrong company or on
the wrong project.

I feel like my master's equipped me to be able to read and study theoretical
computer science at a high level, that the PhD program would be a strain on me
and my family without much reward.

Although I do daydream about being independently wealthy and getting a
master's in mathematics just for fun

~~~
henrik_w
Thanks! I had (and have) the same feeling of missing some classes. That's why
I was very happy when MOOCs appeared a few years ago. I've taken several
courses there, for example on algorithms, databases and SW security. I've
reviewed the courses on my blog:
[https://henrikwarne.com/tag/coursera/](https://henrikwarne.com/tag/coursera/)
and [https://henrikwarne.com/2011/12/18/introduction-to-
databases...](https://henrikwarne.com/2011/12/18/introduction-to-databases-on-
line-learning-done-well/)

------
sjroot
I am still intrigued by the idea of a CS PHD but I stopped after my Master’s.
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of finding an advisor you mesh well
with.

------
w8rbt
Hah, I actually used Klee doing a CS Masters at Georgia Tech. Small world.

[https://klee.github.io/publications/](https://klee.github.io/publications/)

Edit: And most of the bugs seem to be gone now ;)

~~~
sus_007
Is Klee something like LaTeX ? What is it actually ?

~~~
Cyph0n
No, it looks like a symbolic execution-based software testing framework. Here
is a link to the paper that started the project:
[http://llvm.org/pubs/2008-12-OSDI-
KLEE.html](http://llvm.org/pubs/2008-12-OSDI-KLEE.html).

------
hqian
Noticed the year 2015 has several unique distributions. Curious what the
insights are.

~~~
majos
CS PhD student (not at Stanford) here. Based on the survey timing, 2015
respondents were in their 3rd year when answering this survey. I have
personally heard and read that 3rd year is a hard year for many PhD students
(and the experiences of my peers and I largely bear this out), so the
dissatisfaction here tracks with that idea.

There are many possible explanations:

1\. Most people have their master's degree by third year. There's a sense of
"if you're going to drop out, now is the time to do it." If you're miserable
in your program but hate quitting stuff, third year might be the year that
finally breaks you.

2\. Coursework is largely over by 3rd year, and a student should be doing
research close to full time. This can be a hard transition. Granted, most
Stanford students probably have substantial research experience coming in, but
even that is not the same as doing (often very unstructured) research all day
every day.

3\. The "honeymoon" is over. You're no longer a young student, and pressure is
growing to publish, know your area, network, and so on. At the same time
you're still quite junior, so you know you're probably not very good at any of
these things yet. This can be a frustrating combination. Kind of like
adolescence. Also, if you've been unlucky with conference reviewing, you may
have a stack of 2-4 papers that have been rejected at least once or twice, and
you despair of ever doing anything externally recognized as useful. In the
other direction, some of your peers now have half a dozen accepted papers at
good conferences, and you feel inferior (never mind that these are small
sample sizes, and peer review is noisy).

So some self-selection occurs in the third year, and the group that sticks
around to year four is usually smaller and happier (and, of course, some
happier fourth years used to be miserable third years).

~~~
hqian
Thanks! This is definitely making sense to me. I'll bookmark this and hope
they do another survey next year (and share). Looking forward to the
comparison of year 2016 next year.

------
andrewl
I recently emailed somebody a few quotes from Freeman Dyson on the PhD system,
which I include below. I can track down the sources when I'm back in my
office, although anybody can find them easily enough. Dyson is not obscure.

“I’m very proud of not having a Ph.D. I think the Ph.D. system is an
abomination. It was invented as a system for educating German professors in
the 19th century, and it works well under those conditions. It’s good for a
very small number of people who are going to spend their lives being
professors. But it has become now a kind of union card that you have to have
in order to have a job, whether it’s being a professor or other things, and
it’s quite inappropriate for that. It forces people to waste years and years
of their lives sort of pretending to do research for which they’re not at all
well-suited. In the end, they have this piece of paper which says they’re
qualified, but it really doesn’t mean anything. The Ph.D. takes far too long
and discourages women from becoming scientists, which I consider a great
tragedy. So I have opposed it all my life without any success at all.”

From a different interview:

“Well, I think it actually is very destructive. I'm now retired, but when I
was a professor here [Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton], my real job
was to be a psychiatric nurse. There were all these young people who came to
the institute, and my job was to be there so they could cry on my shoulder and
tell me what a hard time they were having. And it was a very tough situation
for these young people. They come here. They have one or two years and they're
supposed to do something brilliant. They're under terrible pressure — not from
us, but from them.

So, actually, I've had three of them who I would say were just casualties who
I'm responsible for. One of them killed himself, and two of them ended up in
mental institutions. And I should've been able to take care of them, but I
didn't. I blame the Ph.D. system for these tragedies. And it really does
destroy people. If they weren't under that kind of pressure, they could all
have been happy people doing useful stuff. Anyhow, so that's my diatribe. But
I really have seen that happen.

And also, of course, it wastes a tremendous amount of time — especially for
women, it's particularly badly timed.

If they're doing a Ph.D., they have a conflict between raising a family or
finishing the degree, which is just at the worst time — between the ages of 25
to 30 or whatever it is. It ruins the five years of their lives.

And I see the difference in the business world. My daughter happens to be a
businesswoman, so I meet a lot of her young friends.

The life there is so much easier for women. They start a company when they're
20; they go bust when they're 22. [Laughs] Meanwhile, they have a kid, and
nobody condemns them for going bust. If you're in the business world, that's
what's expected: You should go bust and then start again on something else. So
it's a much more relaxed kind of a culture. It's also competitive, but not in
such a vicious way. I think the academic world is actually much more
destructive of young people.

[The Ph.D. system] was designed for a job in academics. And it works really
well if you really want to be an academic, and the system actually works quite
well. So for people who have the gift and like to go spend their lives as
scholars, it's fine. But the trouble is that it's become a kind of a meal
ticket — you can't get a job if you don't have a Ph.D. So all sorts of people
go into it who are quite unsuited to it. [...]

Anyway, so, I'm happy that I've raised six kids, and not one of them is a
Ph.D.”

~~~
a-dub
CS and engineering PhDs seem to fall into a kinda weird category of
"industrial" PhDs where it seems more people go in from the get-go with no
interest in staying in academia. I think some CS/engr programs actually have
built-in expectations of doing internships with industry, which seems _really_
backwards to me.

~~~
chrisseaton
> I think some CS/engr programs actually have built-in expectations of doing
> internships with industry, which seems really backwards to me

Why do you think this is backwards? Industry often has more resources for
research than academia does, so doing an industrial internship is usually a
way to supercharge your research and get better data and try more things.

How is that backwards?

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acbart
I much prefer divergent stacked bar charts for likert/1-5 ratings, rather than
these side-by-side bar charts. It's really hard to compare the distributions.
Even a box plot would be better, I think.

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Sreyanth
On a different note, it would be interesting to know how many respondents
opted for the eGift card for completing the survey. And if the responses
deviated a lot when the data is pivoted with that variable.

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debbiedowner
Looking at the qual exam charts, and then looking at the qual requirements for
stanford cs online, I just think: "some people have all the luck"

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crb002
Curious. Stanford sounds like it needs to bring in adjunct ML faculty from
industry to serve as academic advisors. Also their weed out "breadth" classes
sound dumb, most would hate the program.

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namelezz
No racial profile but there is a section about racism in the CS Department.
LOL

~~~
dang
"Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets
more divisive."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

