
Should I Get a Ph.D.? - johndcook
http://shouldigetaphd.com/
======
marknutter
Anyone else surprised the site wasn't just a blank white page with the word
"No" in 200px font?

~~~
ascotan
Lol. Yes the answer is no. I realized too late that salaries in the computer
industry follow the "reverse hockey stick". Even badly trained programmers do
pretty well and if you spend those early years before you get married with
kids collecting a good salary you'll be in a better position then the guy that
spent 7 years racking up student loan debt to get a phd. Now if you love
research - go for it. Otherwise get a job early and make money. Frankly there
are a lot of fun things to do in CS without the need fora phd. Honestly
spending time fishing for money to do research is probably a lot less fun then
spending your time at a start up or just working.

~~~
jamesaguilar
You paid to get your PhD? I thought that was pretty uncommon?

~~~
akiselev
You usually get paid a stipend in the STEM fields, but it's probably well
below minimum wage (we're talking the equivalent of $3-5/hour) with such a
huge time commitment that earning money on the side is practically impossible.
If you live in a city with a higher than average cost of living or you're just
starting a family or have health problems (that university insurance can be
pretty crappy as you transition from your parents' plan) you can very easily
be forced to get student loans... Which you often can't discharge through
bankruptcy even if not strictly used for tuition AFAIK.

I'm not sure about the humanities but with the disproportionate amount of
funding focused on STEM (relative to number of graduate students) I wouldnt be
surprised if some people did have to pay to get their PhD.

~~~
t__r
In Europe you get a salary for a PhD. It's not a lot but in most countries
(especially western Europe) it's actually quite OK.

~~~
reuven
My PhD stipend (at Northwestern, a major private US university) was about
$1200/month. That's enough for a single, unmarried, childless person who is
sharing an apartment with one or more roommates.

It was laughably low for someone like me, married with three children. Health
care alone in the US was about $1200/month for my family. Rent was another
$1200/month or so. Food cost us a few hundred a month.

Not surprisingly, I ended up doing lots of consulting work during the PhD,
something that I had to keep hidden from the program. My wife's earning
potential was quite low, so this was the most economical way to do it, if not
the most relaxing.

An OK salary is very much relative to the person receiving it, as well as the
city in which you are living. We were in Chicago, which is far less expensive
than Boston or San Francisco. I can't imagine what we would have done there.

~~~
collyw
Of course, we should be paying more for people who have wife and kids. Forget
meritocracy.

~~~
reuven
I'm actually not of the opinion that the stipend should be higher for married
couples with children -- just that someone in that situation should understand
that the PhD student's spouse will need to have a good, full-time job to cover
expenses during the period of study.

I do think that it was immoral for the PhD program to charge a fortune for my
wife and children to get health insurance, but that is a reflection of the US
health-insurance system as much as anything else. And things might well have
changed since I was living in Chicago.

------
mdup
I'm honestly surprised to all the comments in here. This is not my experience
at all. I thought I may share my perspective.

I'm currently pursuing a PhD program here in France. This is a special kind of
PhD, called "CIFRE" which roughly means "PhD in a company". You're employed
for 3 years by both an academic lab/uni and a company. The goal is to solve an
industrial research problem that benefits both the lab and the company.

Personally I'm very happy to be doing this kind of thesis. I'm not in a major
lab, so I'm pretty sure I won't be able to fight much against Ivy League PhDs
but I'm still getting the degree and I'm okay with it. In the future I don't
seek to teach a lot but to do mostly research.

Besides having a good relationship with my advisors I'm also super happy that
I don't have a student debt (French education is mostly free -- even for top
engineering schools). The pay is good, not as much as an engineer but plenty
of people with lower degrees would already be happy with it, so no reason to
complain. With this company-linked PhD I also get to study 100% while being
officially employed as an engineer, it's on my contract. If I ever want to
hide the PhD from my resume (I'm sure I never will), I can basically write
"I've been a research engineer for three years" and this would be the truth.

I also get to see how it works in the industrial world and to be more aware
when, after the degree, I have to choose between going back to the engineer
path or getting further into the academic road.

~~~
tfgg
Most of the comments seem to be referring to US programmes. I chose to do my
PhD in the UK and not bother with US programmes, which seem to have a toxic
culture (similar to interns in banks working ridiculous hours for no reason).
I accept that I'll probably have to do a postdoc before being considered equal
to a US PhD, but that's a low cost for not being abused as free labour and
having the opportunity to get out with something. I also wonder if in the US
not having to have a masters first, four year undergrad masters courses are
the norm here for hard sciences, makes it harder for people to make informed
decisions.

Ultimately, does the UK, or other countries with different systems such as
France, produce less good science? No.

~~~
sporkenfang
How difficult do you think it would be for a U.S. master's student with
published research to get into a PhD programme in the UK, France, or just
somewhere !US?

------
blt
Someone help me... I am applying for CS Ph.D. programs right now. I've been in
industry for a few years and I have become a skilled programmer but I never
get to work on really interesting problems. I am sick of wiring up buttons and
sitting in UI design meetings. The kind of problems I want to work on require
a lot of heavy math/algorithms that I don't know like Control Theory and
Machine Learning. I have learned a lot from listening to online courses but I
never actually do the projects/homework because my boring day job programming
makes me too burnt out on programming to dedicate a lot of time to side
projects. I want to get the Ph.D. to become a highly skilled expert R&D
engineer so I can go back to industry and do the most interesting jobs instead
of the menial ones. Should I do it? (of course I'm going to finish my
applications, I can always say no, but seems like people in this thread would
have useful input...)

~~~
albertzeyer
I think it was Yann LeCun who said on a Reddit AMA that if you want to go into
Machine Learning, a PhD is very much mandatory.

I'm doing a PhD myself right now in Machine Learning / Deep Learning. I
started half a year ago. I don't have any bad experience yet. But I haven't
heard too much bad things at all in Germany. My chair:
[http://www-i6.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/](http://www-i6.informatik.rwth-
aachen.de/)

~~~
brational
Yann's answer was in regards to machine learning specific research. If someone
merely wants to work on hard computer science and engineering problems that
require ML knowledge, a PhD is not required. Though it will definitely not
hurt in any way.

------
harveywi
I've been through it all - from qualifying exams, to candidacy, to defense, to
postdoc. To me, these sorts of articles are comparable to "join the army and
see the world" propaganda. You never hear about legs blown off, brains addled,
suicides, shrapnel, shellshock, and other likely outcomes.

But the PhD experience is so varied that it's not really the fault of the
interviewees/authors! They probably really did have it this good! There is
also survivorship bias. And people who have the grit to finish a PhD probably
don't want to openly admit weakness on the Internet or, more likely, burn
bridges (it's hard to be anonymous about this sort of stuff). Even after they
finish the PhD, they still have to worship the ground of their overlords to
keep those letters of recommendation flowin'. So we have mostly these rosy
happy "learn you a PhD" stories. Not good.

I know you are out there: Young, highly motivated, highly intelligent,
unbeatable willpower. You need to know just how bad it can be. You're not
getting the whole story.

I'm not talking about "oh no, I might not finish" or "oh gee, maybe it will
take me eight years but I'll try real hard and get through." I'm talking real
life risks to your mental and physical health, destruction of relationships,
opportunity cost, and (potentially) the vaporization of that awesome
scientific career that you spent over a decade building because the one person
in charge of you with no oversight decided they didn't like you.

I've seen so many amazing, kind, bright, talented, _hard-working_ people
exploited for years on end only to be thrown out into the academic garbage
can. But the stakes go far beyond academia - what will you do about the panic
attacks that continue for years, and years, and years after you finish? How
about the insomnia and screaming nightmares? I bet that at least one of your
fellow students will wind up in a psychiatric hospital. It could be you.

"Oh come on now," you say. "It's just science! What's so scary about a math
problem or writing a few paragraphs. You're either a marshmallow, you're
overreacting, or maybe you just didn't have what it takes." The science is the
easy part. The hard work is the easy part. It's the people who will rule over
you, the people who can (and do) ruin you. These articles always talk about a
benevolent best-chum advisor/faculty that you have long conversations with and
then go have another cup of tea with. But you never hear about that one
narcissist/psychopath on your committee that has done everything in his power
to get you out of the program, the micromanager, the manipulator, the
grotesque exploitation.

In PhD land, you are at the complete mercy of a very small collection of
merciless people who know that you exist to be exploited, and they know that
they have you right where they want you. You better hope that those people are
benevolent or neutral. In the case of many people I know, this was not the
case.

When people write articles about "choosing an advisor" and "how will I know
he/she is the one for me," they make it sound like a decision about whether to
get a puppy or a kitten. Consider this scenario: You open a dialogue with
someone whose work you have studied for years, they offer you a position in
their lab, you quit your job and drag your family halfway across the US for
this "golden opportunity", and then you find out that this person is by far
the biggest jerk that you have ever met and you cannot work with them. What do
you do then? Where do you put all of that expertise that you acquired? I've
seen this happen over and over again: You start from scratch - time to grind
and level up all over again, but now you're not so sure you're good at the
thing you're doing - you could be terrible at it.

I could go on and on. Maybe I will someday.

Well, hopefully this will inspire a little more well-rounded picture of what
else it can be like to go through with a PhD.

~~~
sytelus
So how is this really different from getting a job? On the job you would also
have a _manager_ who has exactly same position and powers you attribute to
adviser. You are probably moving across US to get some job X, just to find a
manager who is jerk and being a new person you probably have less credibility
and mobility. Sure, changing jobs are easy but nevertheless you can't do that
endlessly. I guess only big advantage I see is that you probably get paid
more, although I doubt fair because you would be considered fresh out of
college anyway. In return, you probably have much more higher stress and tight
definitive schedules.

So if your choices comes down to getting a job in industry vs doing PHD -
there are few advantages for sure but everything you have described seems to
apply to both options more or less.

~~~
pfisch
This is really just not true. Mostly because in a normal job you don't receive
all of your pay in a lump sum at the end of 5+ years. The degree of lock in
you see in a phd program creates this kind of strange indentured servitude
situation where the phd candidates have basically no recourse in most
situations. In a real job you can just quit when there is sexual harassment
happening, you basically can't in a phd situation without losing everything.
You generally can't even switch PIs without losing years of work.

~~~
throwaway120934
Exactly. I knew someone working for a professor in the US under the Fulbright
program. They were supposed to have limited hours of work so that they could
also take classes. It was the professor's first year participating in the
program. The professor had the same course load as normal but offloaded it all
on the Fulbrighter.

The professor would yell and treat the Fulbrighter the same way an emotionally
abusive parent would (I saw emails). It caused crippling anxiety. But the
student thought there was nothing they could do, it was a prestigious program
they had worked hard to get accepted into. It was a huge honor and everyone at
home was proud.

It was a small school where the professor was the also the head of the
department. The person could complain to some external HR or appeal to the
Fulbright program to be reassigned or something, but that might not work out,
might make things worse with the professor, and at best would set the person
back a year to try again with someone else the next year; and what if that
someone was also a sociopath?

------
cossatot
Although this isn't the same in all disciplines, in those that have
significant fieldwork components, graduate school can offer some amazing
experiences for young people that are difficult (though certainly not
impossible) to get elsewhere.

I did my MS and PhD in geology/geophysics and did a good amount of fieldwork,
including 8 international field campaigns in places like the Lesser Antilles
and Tibet. It's a cool experience to be 23 and send to Nicaragua with a ton of
scientific equipment and run small team for a month or two. There are aspects
of it that are like tourism, but you go off the backpacker circuit more and
interact with the locals, and actually have inescapable intellectual
challenges and responsibilities. It's also a bit less heavy than the Peace
Corps.

This is pretty common in the earth sciences, although not required. Lots of
people in the social sciences have analogous opportunities.

In any case, I think that the overall discussion in the article and in the
comments here provide a good range of possible experiences and considerations.
But I just wanted to add my piece because it hasn't been mentioned, and it was
what really tipped the scales on going to grad school for me. And that was,
for me, a great decision.

I'd also add that anyone with an interest in both earth science and coding
will find that if they really learn the 'earth' part of the sciences, there
are very many opportunities to use relatively simple computations to make
advances that a lot of the field scientists haven't worked through yet, and
lots of industry opportunities if you're into that as well.

------
jvdh
The most important advice I tell people who are thinking about getting a PhD
is that they have to be really really motivated. 100% of the PhD students have
at least one moment during their PhD work that they are seriously considering
quitting. And this can happen at any point during the period, ranging from
after one year, until year four.

If you are motivated, it is one hell of an experience that you are very
unlikely to get anywhere else. This of course depends highly on the group you
are joining and the research field that you are going to be in. It is very
likely that you get to travel the world and meet interesting new people.

But it is no picknick, and I can confirm some of the other horror stories that
you read here. Then again, these made me a better, more focused person.

------
return0
You should get a PhD if you want, and you should see it for what it is: a job,
with an end date and a certification. Many of you here act as if the PhD was a
life-forming experience that defines your life. It's just one of the many
things that can define your life.

In my experience the academic world is a closed society of people with
similar, often pointless anxieties, an interesting, but quite uniform culture,
and often a vague connection with the rest of the universe. I mean, things
like publishing, impact factors, tenures and ego-bashing, are things that _do
not matter_ in the end, only the science matters, yet many academics' life
incessantly revolves around it.

Another place where i have seen a similar "closed world" is the army. People
there obsess over mindless pointless things all the time.

I think you should get a PhD because the world is getting richer and you can
afford to do this, but make it about learning rather than anything else. If
you dont build huge bridges in academia, who cares, you can always join a day
job or start your own business. These are exciting times.

~~~
danieltillett
If a Ph.D is not a life-forming experience then you have not done a Ph.D. You
might have been enrolled in a course and handed in a thesis, but unless you
are changed by it you have missed the point.

~~~
return0
I went there because i wanted to learn and i did. I also did pretty well and
came out wiser, that was the whole point for me. What point did i miss?

~~~
danieltillett
A PhD is more than x numbers of years of research. If it wasn't we would not
have them at all. It is supposed to change who you are and how you approach
the world. It certainly did for me. It is actually this part that made doing a
PhD worthwhile as the domain knowledge I gained has long since become
worthless.

------
bcantrill
These are really solid interviews. For those considering a PhD, I would also
recommend "Getting What You Came For"[1]. When my mother was considering
getting her PhD, I bought it for her -- and also read it myself as someone who
aspired to get a PhD. My mom loved the book (and did indeed get her PhD, a
requirement in her field), but the book inspired me to consider non-PhD
options. Once I started exploring those options, it was clear that they were a
better fit for me -- and I have never felt the desire to return for a PhD.
(Though given my genetic predisposition to late-in-life PhDs -- my
grandfather, mother and aunt all earned their PhDs after the age of 50 -- I
suppose I should say only that I haven't felt the desire yet.)

[1]
[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/460669.Getting_What_You_C...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/460669.Getting_What_You_Came_For)

------
danieltillett
You should get a Ph.D if you want to change who you are. Doing a Ph.D gave me
the strength to take chances that I would never have risked unless I had a
Ph.D. It gave me confidence in my ideas and that if I single handly focused on
something I can do it. This has proven to be very valuable.

I also had some of the best times of my life as Ph.D student (and also some of
the worst), but it is not something I have regretted doing for one second
since.

------
reuven
I finished my PhD about 6 months ago, at the age of 44, married and with three
children. It took me 11 years, and cost an enormous amount of money. Before I
started, I was an independent consultant. After finishing, I'm an independent
consultant. I never planned to go into academia.

So, why did I do a PhD? I was told that I would learn lots of new things, and
meet lots of new people -- and escape, to some degree, the frustration that I
was experiencing with my consulting business.

It's true that I met lots new people. And it's true that I learned a _ton_.
And I'm very proud of the research that I did, resulting in a Web site that is
used by thousands of researchers and students every week. (The Modeling
Commons -- [http://modelingcommons.org/](http://modelingcommons.org/), if
you're curious.) And I also go to experience a different sort of frustration
than I have had when consulting.

And yet, was it worthwhile? I continue to wrestle with that question. My
family and I were hugely stressed for more than a decade. Our finances are
improving (thanks to my consulting work), but it'll be another year or so
before we're back to where we were. I'm frustrated that I didn't create lots
of products and businesses during those 11 years.

And the incredible frustration of the PhD process, and of having an advisor
who drove me completely and utterly batty, cannot be ignored.

If you want to do research, then you should do a PhD -- but you should know
what you're getting into beforehand, and be really sure that you want to do
research.

If you don't want to do research, but want to boost your creds, and if you're
single and young, then it might be worthwhile.

If you're like me, in your mid-30s, married, with children, and the primary
breadwinner, then you should think long and hard about whether you want the
PhD. Several of the others who did PhDs mid-career in my program had spouses
earning good incomes, didn't have children, or both.

I do believe that having the PhD has already helped to boost my career a bit,
helping me to find newer and bigger clients who somehow think that having a
PhD makes you smarter or better than the rest of the population.

But would I recommend it to someone else in my position? Not without a lot of
thought and consideration. And an understanding that what you think will take
5 years or so might take much longer than that.

------
lisper
Lisper's second law: the hardest part of getting what you want is figuring out
what it is.

~~~
noobermin
I'm curious, when does this ever happen? College? After college in an
internship? A dream with a flaming pie?

~~~
lisper
What, figuring out what you want? Yes, of course. Different people figure it
out at different times in their lives (and some never figure it out).

------
chuckcode
If you're really unsure, try out a masters. It can actually be helpful in the
job market and you get a couple extra years of advanced coursework and
projects. In my experience getting a PhD is more about doing something for
yourself, comparable to running a marathon for example. Where many can find
joy in a simple jog but it can be difficult to explain why it is more "fun" at
mile 20 than mile 2. PhDs certainly aren't about making money, or getting
famous, or having a rich social life and thus aren't for a lot of people.

~~~
zzleeper
They are quite different in practice, because in the PhD you are really at the
mercy of the advisers and have made a huge commitment compared to a 1-2 yr
masters).

~~~
bglazer
Hi zzleeper, you've mentioned here and above in your top level comment that a
bad adviser can make a PhD torturous. Perhaps this is a naïve question, but
can you switch? Is it possible to just find and study under better advisor?

Thanks for providing your perspective on this.

~~~
stevenbedrick
It depends on the program. One thing to consider is that your funding support
could be (and almost certainly will be) tied to your advisor, so changing to a
better advisor will probably have financial implications.

This sort of thing is exactly the kind of thing that prospective PhD students
should ask programs about before signing up, by the way. Don't be afraid to
ask lots and lots of questions about things like funding, what qualifying
exams are like, what happens to people who don't pass quals, whether anybody's
ever changed advisors, what happens if an advisor's funding dries up, etc.
etc. As somebody who's interviewed prospective PhD students, I _like_ hearing
those kinds of questions, even when I don't have good answers to them- it
shows that the prospective student is doing their homework.

------
TimJRobinson
Being a startup forum I'm surprised no one has compared doing a PhD to
starting a startup. Has anyone done both and if so are they similar in stress
levels, willpower needed etc? What are the similarities and differences?

~~~
arethuza
I spent 6 years working on a PhD before dropping it and going off and co-
founding a start-up - from '89 to '95.

I wasn't terribly highly motivated about the PhD work towards the end - the
main thing I learned during the process was that I did _not_ want to work in
academia. I didn't see much point in a PhD as a general purpose credential and
basically used my time for the last 18 months or so getting our company sorted
out.

Having said that, academia - particularly post-grads, is a _great_ place to
meet people. I met my co-founder through a research project and a couple of
other people I knew from there came on-board as early stage employees and
worked out _really_ well.

------
geebee
Lots of interesting comments here. My biggest bit of advice to someone asking
if he or she should get a PhD is to phrase it differently.

If that person got into an elite Medical, Law, or Business School, they should
ask "should I get an MD, JD, or MBA". The reason it's ok to phrase it this way
is that attrition rates are typically below one half of one percent in those
degree programs at the elite (top 10) level.

Science PhD programs, even elite ones, often have attrition rates at 50%.
Engineering is a bit better, at around 35% attrition rates, though this varies
by program.

So you should be saying "should I take a 50% shot at getting a PhD" \- or, if
not, take a very objective look at why the 50% doesn't apply to you. I know,
if you got into the PhD program at Berkeley, you justifiably think you're
really good at this sort of thing, but really, everyone's good. The 50% who
drop or fail out aren't slackers or unintelligent. They're often exceptionally
smart and motivated people.

These degrees are very different from professional degrees at the elite level.
They are extraordinarily difficult to complete.

On a personal note, I was a PhD student in Industrial Engineering at Berkeley,
and I felt there was far too much failure and attrition for such a bright and
accomplished group of people. Nobody I knew ended up in an insane asylum (as
mentioned in other posts), but it was an emotionally rough experience for many
of them, and I could see it getting there. I felt the system did border on
being cruel at times.

------
jckt
A question for those who got their PhDs -- do you think there is a difference
between getting one in a European Uni versus getting one in the USA? I've
known a few science PhDs in the UK that seemed to be quite content in their
decision, while the people that seem to have a bad time tend to do theirs in
the USA (speculation in general, not just from the comments in this thread).
Would this be an accurate assessment or does the location of your institution
not really matter?

~~~
danieltillett
The big difference is the UK uni's are in a big rush to get you in and out in
3 years. I have seen people from the UK with Ph.Ds that are really just a
master thesis.

Edit. Australian degrees are about half way in between the UK and US system.
Most candidates take around 4 years.

~~~
jckt
What would be the UK equivalent of a US PhD? A postdoc position? And in that
situation would the stress be comparable? Or is the system just totally
different?

~~~
danieltillett
I can't really speak for the level of stress in the UK system since I have
never been part of it, but the candidates coming out of the UK system are in
general weaker than those out of the USA (of course there is huge variation).
I would put then 2 years behind the US graduates as far as research
experience.

~~~
xioxox
Well, it does take 2 years less! Most people hiring PhDs in academia are aware
that UK/European PhDs are going to have fewer publications, etc, than their US
counterparts. It may be a bit harder to jump straight to a prize fellowship
from a European PhD, but it happens quite a bit.

In the UK at my institution, there was only optional teaching load for PhDs,
you knew you had funding for 3 years before you started and there weren't many
taught courses, so you can dive straight into research.

~~~
danieltillett
I understand this, but I am trying to answer the OP's question. The UK system
puts a lot more emphasis in getting the student in and out in three years, but
of course this means the students coming out the other end have less
experience. There is really no right or wrong here, just differences.

------
robdoherty2
They should have more interviews with people who chose not to go for a PhD,
and whether they feel they were successful in spite of (or because of) that
choice.

------
alexalex
I* believe that implicit in the curriculum of a doctoral program is the
education on how to take on any question or problem and contribute to it. I'm
not a computer scientist but do a lot programming and work with many people
with a CS education. Many have an incredible ability to architect a solution
to a problem by breaking it down into straightforward operations. A PhD is
like that, but for questions and bigger problems. If you want to build
something that other people haven't built before, or answer a question that
nobody else has answered before, a PhD will give you great confidence and
experience in doing that. It is incredibly enabling and will change how you
approach problems for the rest of your life.

However, you also learn why nobody has done it before: because those things
take a lot of time. And in a PhD program time is not a limited resource, money
is. You will be doing stuff that is a waste of time by any objective measure.
You have to be very mindful of the time cost of tasks, work, and your choices,
because nobody else is. If you're not careful, a very meaningful period of
time will have gone by without a lot to show for.

My advice for people who ask me about getting a PhD is that it is risky
entering a PhD program without certainty in what you want to do. You can go to
college and figure out what to do. But in a doctoral program, you are too
likely to get lost in the system, have a bad experience, waste too much time,
and accrue too much opportunity cost. You will regret it if that happens.

_______

*PhD in a Physics/Engineering program and research work in neuroscience and medicine. My one reccurring nightmare in life is waking up certain that I'm missing a credit, signature, or form and I'm still in graduate school.

------
red_dazzler
Friends don't let friends get PhDs

------
rrtwo
Any advice for someone who is about to finish a PhD in CS? Like pro/cons of
doing a postdoc vs. going straight to the industry, or best way to migrate to
the industry?

~~~
freyr
I did a ten month stint as a postdoc while I wrapped up some research and
looked for a job. This was common for people in my program at the time, i.e.
graduating from a top 20 school (but not top 10) in a weak job market.

That was a few years back, but in a recent job interview the interviewer
spotted the post-doc on my CV, raised an eyebrow, and asked "What's this all
about? Why couldn't you land a job after graduating?" Kind of jerky. I don't
know if it was a serious question or she was just looking for a reaction.

------
siege_engineer
Proxy question: Do you want to be a professor? If "yes!" go for a PhD. If
there's any uncertainty, don't.

I wish someone had told me that before I started.

~~~
emplynx
I wouldn't be so fast. Lots of people want to be professors, way more people
than there are viable jobs. Some of the interviews bring out that point.

------
pfortuny
If you are asking that question, you most probably should not get a PhD.

You either want to or need to but never should.

------
silverlake
If you go to a top 10 school: Yes. If you have full funding and want to do R&D
in industry: Yes. If you have full funding and just want to work on cool stuff
for a while: Yes. Otherwise, No.

------
DSingularity
My my. Just try it and if you dont like it leave after the masters. I dont
think every question needs to be answered based on others experiences.
Sometimes, you have to find the answer yourself.

------
GFK_of_xmaspast
If you have to ask, the answer is 'no'.

------
graycat
Yes, I got a Ph.D. in applied math from a famous research university and for a
while, for reasons having to do with my wife, was a prof in a well known MBA
program.

Yup, I've seen Ph.D. programs destroy a lot of really good people. People
crushed for life, suicide, etc.

I got through okay, but some of the politics was grim. I got into a fight, had
to take a year off, and, net, a department Chair and three profs got fired.

How'd I get through? Mostly just did the work on my own. Entered the program
very well prepared. Brought my own Ph.D. dissertation research problem, with a
good intuitive understanding of how to get a solution, with me to the program
and did the real research part independently in my first summer.

Along the way I _polished my halo_ :

One way was in a course, supposed to be really hard. The course was carefully
graded, and the intention was that the class be _competitive_.

But before the course, I'd studied the material, in part in courses but mostly
independently, over and over from a stack of the best books, elementary,
intermediate, and advanced, applied the material, understood quite a lot about
the corresponding numerical analysis, had written software for the material,
etc. I could have given all but a few of the lectures on the first day of the
class. So, on graded homework, tests, mid-term, and final. I blew away all the
other students by wide margins, and I wasn't even trying to be competitive.

In a course there was a question but no answer. So, I asked for reading course
as a chance to find an answer. Two weeks later, from working sitting by my
wife on our bed as she watched TV, I had a nice, clean answer, with more than
I'd hoped to get. Two weeks, course over. Work publishable -- did publish it
later.

So, I suggest:

(1) Be very well prepared, from undergraduate school, a Masters from another
school, on the job learning, independent study, whatever.

(2) Get an _applied_ Ph.D., say, in _engineering_ or "applied science* or some
such. Then for the research, start with a problem from outside academics. Get
at least a good intuitive solution before entering the Ph.D. program.

If the lectures, seminars, etc. of the program can give you some tools, ideas,
etc. to help you with your research, fine.

(3) Do not ask for a research problem or research direction from a professor.
Instead, just do the work independently. If there is any question about the
quality of the work, then publish it or at least get it accepted for
publication.

The big question, though, is why bother?

One point: Usually a person without a Ph.D. doesn't want to work with a person
with a Ph.D. The person without can feel intimidated and threatened, and that
one might guess that a Ph.D. might be relevant to his work he can take as an
insult. People without have a lot of ways to denigrate people with.

Some of the challenge of a Ph.D. is summarized by D. Knuth in a remark in his
_The TeXBook_ :

"The traditional way is to put off all creative aspects until the last part of
graduate school. For seventeen or more years, a student is taught
examsmanship, then suddenly after passing enough exams in graduate school he's
told to do something original."

That "suddenly ... told" can be a big shock.

Here are two common problems:

(1) Good Students.

Ph.D. programs tend to want only _good students_ as in PBK, _Summa Cum Laude_
, Woodrow Wilson, NSF Fellowships, etc.

Well, one of the more common ways to be such a good student is, in addition to
being bright, liking the material, being highly determined, and working hard,
is to be terribly afraid, of criticism, failure, failing to come up to what
parents wanted, what high school teachers _expected_ , of some relative saying
that they "expect great things", etc.

So, such a student can be a case of _anxiety disease_ , have done well in K-12
and in college just by making A grades and otherwise not thinking much about
anything else. Then the "suddenly ... told" can be a severe challenge, a risk
of failure, of the first criticism in life, a threat to self image as a great
student, etc.

There can be anxiety, stress, depression, failure, more stress, clinical
depression, and suicide.

It can help to have (a) a thick skin and (b) good grounding academically, etc.
before entering a Ph.D. program.

I got a thick skin in grades 1-8 -- the teachers treated me like dirt. With my
success in math in grades 9-12, I got a little better treatment. But the big
day was when the SAT scores came back and the teacher who'd had me in the
sixth grade read the Math score and, gulp, "There, uh, there, uh, must be some
mistake." Yup, there had been, hers and that of the rest of the teachers, for
12 long, painful, largely wasteful years where I'd been treated like dirt.

But someone up there liked me: I got sent to an NSF summer program in math and
physics.

I'd learned that there was no direct way I could ever hope to please the
teachers, but with math I could do work that neither they nor anyone else
could fault. So, math it was. And physics.

(2) Opaque Criteria.

Mostly students are not told just what the criteria are for the work, the
_social_ aspects of the field, the department politics, for research, for
publication, for a dissertation, etc.

So, students can do too little in some respects and get into trouble or do too
much in other respects, go too slowly, and again get into trouble.

My solution: Largely avoid the opaque stuff. For the learning, do that largely
independently. For the research, do that independently and well enough to be
publishable, e.g., "new, correct, and significant" and, in case there is any
doubt, just submit the work for objective, blind, expert peer-review and,
then, publication.

I haven't been at all interested in an academic career or much interested in
publishing, but all the papers I've written as sole author or co-author have
been accepted for publication right away; so, it's possible to follow the
_work style_ I've explained and get published. Getting published in academics
is much like making money in business -- lots of other potential problems melt
away.

For efforts, _work style_ , such as I have described here, independently
and/or in a grad program, is there any benefit? Well, all the best work I've
done in my career has been from just that _work style_. Currently I'm doing a
start-up, and the crucial, core _secret sauce_ is from just such work, with
some of the grad school work a big source of the prerequisites. So, if my
start-up is successful, then the _work style_ I explained above will have been
successful.

~~~
plinkplonk
Hey graycat.

Your 'work style' is fascinating. Is there a way to contact you, so I could
ask some questions about this approach to study/research? I couldn't find an
email in your profile . I promise not to take up too much of your time. Thanks
in advance.

(my email id is in my profile, if you prefer contacting me offline)

------
wyclif
Is this site new? Or simply new to HN? I had not seen it before, so thanks to
@johndcook.

~~~
emplynx
The interviews have been on my blog for a year:
[http://stiglerdiet.com](http://stiglerdiet.com). I put up the dedicate site
yesterday.

------
reality_czech
I was expecting this to be a static website that said "no."

Disappointing.

------
billpg
Answer: See _Betteridge 's law of headlines_.

------
uint32
Seems rather narrow in focus, given the general title.

------
sonabinu
You need to be young, you need to be a dreamer and you need to have resilience
... I know people who have taken over 7 years. You need to have that time!

------
edem
So is it a yes or a no?

