
What do PhD Scientists in America Have in Common with Unmarried Women in China? - strategy
http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2013/12/10/game-theory-tuesdays-what-do-phd-scientists-in-america-have-in-common-with-unmarried-women-in-china/#.UqeKa_RDt8E
======
auctiontheory
I completely disagree with the opening premise, which is not supported by any
data, that PhDs "are in short supply."

I don't know Chand John, but if he really is an expert programmer, and was
unable to get a programming job in Silicon Valley in today's economy,
something else is going on. Either he is very, very picky, or employers are
turning him down for reasons other than his PhD.

Professional success has much more to do with focus and assertiveness and
ambition and other personal qualities than with grades, test scores, and
degrees accumulated. Learned this the hard way myself.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
I've certainly encountered more than one PhD who couldn't program worth
anything.

Understanding the theory and the practice are different things.

~~~
Jagat
Couldn't agree more. One of my professors wrote a 200 line Matlab code to
extract a column from a csv file.

~~~
thret
I'm sure it was perfectly spaced though.

~~~
Jagat
It was. A single line of awk/cut would have sufficed.

------
MrScruff
The article is based around the assumption that people will in general choose
to hire people less qualified than themselves when given the choice, but no
evidence is given.

~~~
001sky
It should be self evident: all firms are hierarchies and all employees are
hired by superior rather than inferior rank. The more controversial implied
judgement is that man seek to outrank women in marriage, in effect making the
spouse an inferior 'vp' to 'ceo' relation. Although, there is plenty of data
to support such a _preference_ empirically (ie, partiarchy). <dons flame suit>

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
Anecdotal, but: Once when I was interviewed, I was almost rejected by the
interviewer because it seemed like I had been programming for longer than he
had been (he was thinking out loud).

When he realized he'd started at a younger age, and had maybe a year on me, he
decided it WAS OK, that he did have "more experience."

He's a smart guy, but I've always wondered at that -- wouldn't it be BETTER to
hire people smarter than you, rather than the alternative?

~~~
001sky
Its important to distinguish (a) talent from (b) rank. The latter is best
thought of as Rank=f(talent, experience). It never makes sense to hire the
_wrong rank_ , or to invert the rank in a junior/senior reporting role. Hiring
top talent is really a separate qustion, but its implied that A players with a
lead in experience will outdistance A player of lesser experience...as they
both acquire experience linearly together.[1]

[1] Hence you are more likely to successfully hire and incorporate A talent
only if you have it to begin with. Senior rank B talent struggles when junior
experience A talent is aquired. The benefit of increasing experience accrues
disporportionately to the higher talent A, and eventually a rank conflict
ensues as the Junior A group catch up and surpass the (previously) Senior B's.
A messy promotion/re-organiztion situation typically ensues.

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
Interesting point. We certainly did end up clashing in the years we worked
together, as I am not shy in expressing my opinions about what needs to be
done.

It came to a head at one point, and the result was a reorg so that he was no
longer my direct supervisor; I threatened to walk if the situation continued.
The manager I reported to next wasn't particularly higher "rank", by your f(),
since I had at least equivalent talent and more experience, but he was
comfortable with the relationship(instead of acting like he felt threatened by
it), and as such made a much better manager.

------
varelse
I think the answer is to have all the younger guys dealing with princess
sickness:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_sickness](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_sickness)

start dating the "leftover women" who are defined as anyone 25 or older.

I entertain no such hope for guys over 30 to figure this out, but for the ones
dealing with women like this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEKDZ0ceXHg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEKDZ0ceXHg)

I know 40ish women in Hong Kong who are driving their traditional parents
crazy dating guys in their 20s.

~~~
bobbles
Interesting that the exact same symbols have been translated two ways lower
down in the article:

Princess Syndrome(Gōng Zhǔ Bìng 公主病)

I am a Hong Kong Girl with 公主病 (Gung Jyuh Behng)

~~~
yskchu
The first one is the Mandarin pronunciation in Taiwan (Gōng Zhǔ Bìng), the 2nd
one is the Cantonese pronunciation in HK (Gung Jyuh Behng)

Taiwan and Hong Kong both share the same written text (Traditional Chinese
Characters) so the symbols are the same.

------
iskander
There's definitely a shortage of science research jobs in fields like biology
and physics. On the other hand, having exposure to math & empirical thinking
makes you ridiculously employable outside your original field. This seems to
be overlooked in the current discourse about "too many PhDs". If, for example,
you get a PhD in physics from a decent university, and you're willing to adapt
to a different domain, then you will with very high probability get a well
paying job.

Also, I share the skepticism some other people expressed here about Chand
John's unsuccessful job hunt. Maybe he only wants a job that's a direct
extension of his research? Or maybe he has a very strong personality that
spooks his potential employers? Or maybe he just never learned how to code? In
the absence of some compelling and uncommon reason, I can't really imagine how
a PhD in Computer Science (from a good school!) could fail to get a job right
now.

------
tostitos1979
One would think more young PhDs would start companies. I think the challenge
comes down to funding.

I was speaking to a friend who is a VC about this. She suggested that a VC
would have a hard time funding a group of unproven PhDs. She suggested a
career path where one works for Google, Yahoo, and ships a few products and
then get the street creds desired by VC. That isn't unreasonable.

What is a bit discouraging is being put into the same camp as a fresh graduate
(out of undergrad). A lot of interviews seem to test for CS 101 or the CS
algorithms course. Every PhD I've spoken too is frustrated by this. The game
to play is spend a month with the Cormen book while cursing yourself for doing
a PhD :-D

~~~
dragonwriter
> One would think more young PhDs would start companies.

Why would one think that? _I_ would think that young people interested in
starting companies would not be pursuing PhDs.

~~~
tostitos1979
If you go with the articles premise that the "picky" A class PhDs are the
people getting leftover by traditional employment options, what else are these
people to do?

------
pgbovine
if you have a Ph.D. in science/engineering and want to get a job related to
your speciality, then yes, that's the case. also, it's a no-brainer since
there are very few jobs (in either industry or academia) where you can be paid
to work on your ultra-specialized field of expertise.

but if you want to get a well-paying job _period_ that doesn't involve your
dissertation work, then there are far more options. in fact, the best paying
jobs out of Ph.D. are those that have nothing to do with your dissertation
work (e.g., finance, engineering at top firms such as Google/Facebook/etc.,
management consulting).

~~~
RK
I agree there are far more options if you look outside your small field, but I
think it's not uncommon for employers to be skeptical of hiring someone with a
PhD. Some of their reasons may be borne from experience and some may be simply
due to stereotypes of PhD holders (e.g. too easily bored with "normal" work).
My personal experience has been that many prospective employers seem to think
that someone with a fresh PhD is both over and under-qualified (which is twice
as scary?).

------
wizzard
What is strange about the Chinese situation is that top women are not chosen
_despite an oversupply of men_. You can't make the same argument about there
being an oversupply of positions for PhDs. The article itself says there are
"limited academic positions," and who would expect a company to hire a PhD
when an MBA would suffice? What PhD would feel satisfied with a job an MBA
could handle?

~~~
afroviking
This analogy sort of works because despite what we see in media, men aren't
typically the choosers when it comes to relationships, especially when there's
an oversupply.

In this case PhDs, like women, aren't choosing to settle either.

------
cdcox
I suspect the bigger reason is because Ph.Ds are difficult to accurately
assess. When a company wants to hire a candidate, they give preference to
someone who has a connection to the company or to someone on the inside. Ph.Ds
are extremely unlikely to have any meaningful connections in this regard. This
makes vetting them difficult as there is no one to vouch for them.

Location of papers is a decent metric, but more and more it's an indicator of
whether the Ph.D comes from an 'in lab' in an 'in field'. Quality of
publication would be the best metric, but that is extremely difficult for an
outsider to judge.

This leads to a shortage as there is a shortage of people a company can
reliably hire at the price they want with a skill set that justifies the
price.

~~~
analog31
There's a lot of truth to this. A PhD is to a considerable extent a product of
their project, and no two projects are alike, even for students working in the
same lab. In fact, a physics problem isn't necessarily going to be solved
using physics techniques. My lab mate solved his problem by developing new
theory. I solved mine by overwhelming it with electronics and code.

------
Xcelerate
Well someone forward all these overlooked PhDs my way, because when I start my
own company I'll have a good selection for a good price then.

(Edit: With some of the replies, I feel I should clarify I am about halfway
through getting my own PhD in chemical engineering. I was actually kind of
poking fun at the article's assumptions.)

~~~
squintychino
More education != More value.

We currently have 3 PhD's that were hired in our department. No actual
experience in the job/field, yet they were hired on based solely on their
degree. They are doing work than an entry-level employee would be doing. What
is the value for their overpaid salary? Their actual job performance? Or the
piece of paper that says they went to school for X number of years?

You can have those overlooked PhD's. They are overlooked for a reason.

~~~
tostitos1979
You realize every PhD isn't the same? People with PhDs in systems are good at
building shit. They might very well suck being data scientists. Similarly,
someone with a Machine Learning PhD might suck at fault-tolerant middleware.

P.S. The anti-PhD meme on HN really needs to stop.

~~~
shadowfox
> The anti-PhD meme on HN really needs to stop

Well. The most common way to feel superior is to put other things down. It
just happens to be focused on PhDs when academia related stuff comes up :P

------
rayiner
I don't know what the stats are for the PhD market overall, but one issue
might be trying to match up with the "highest ranked" company. Unlike MBAs,
PhDs are specialized and not fungible. You can't approach a PhD job search the
way a Harvard MBA approaches a banking job search (Where there is a clear
hierarchy of desirable employers).

The companies I used to work at, one wireless, one telecom, weren't Google or
Facebook, but we had a very high ratio of PhDs because we had very specialized
needs. If your thesis topic was networking formation algorithms, you might
find that a small company working in the mesh networking niche will find you
much more valuable relative to a BS than say Facebook.

------
hardwaresofton
Hmnn I was surprised at the lack of consideration for specialization -- if
someone has spent time to get a PhD in a part of computer science that just
doesn't have real-world profitability, it's pretty clear that it's going to be
hard to find a job in the market.

Also, I think the very male-driven culture of China was also not discussed
enough -- along with effects of new-found freedom found with less glass
ceilings.

But definitely a good read -- I don't think I have come in contact with this
"matching-down" dynamic as a possible explanation before

~~~
rflrob
> if someone has spent time to get a PhD in a part of computer science that
> just doesn't have real-world profitability, it's pretty clear that it's
> going to be hard to find a job in the market.

If they are only looking for jobs in their specialization, that makes sense,
but if the PhDs are looking for any job for which they hold the
qualifications, it's not obvious that having spent time devoted to
specializing ought to be a penalty. If the choice is between someone with a
bachelors in CS, and someone with a bachelor's in CS who also has a a PhD in
Finnish Basketweaving, why isn't the second person just as hire-able as the
first?

~~~
DavidWoof
Because time spent getting the PhD is time spent away from the field, and
that's a negative factor that may or may not be balanced by the specialization
of the PhD.

So, yes, all things being equal, I'd definitely want a new CS grad over the
basketweaving expert who hasn't touched a computer in 4 years. I'd also take
the dev with solid 5 years recent team lead experience over someone who thinks
his 5 years on a private project in school merits a senior programmer position
on a development platform he's completely ignorant of.

I'm not saying that's the guy in the article, I have no idea.

------
breadbox
For me the poster's point was undermined by my own personal experience of
interviewing and discovering the alarming frequency at which people with PhDs
will bomb the technical interview, simply because they can't program their way
out of a paper bag.

(And yes, this is my own personal experience, therefore it doesn't prove
anything. If you thought I was trying to prove something, you didn't come
close to understanding my comment.)

------
analog31
To make the argument less compelling and more realistic, you have to make the
rankings multi-dimensional and draw large tolerance bands around each person's
ranking.

------
DavidWoof
But is the market actually bad for PhD scientists in America?

Dismissing the personal anecdotes of Chand John, the numbers posted show that
half of PhD engineers have a job on graduation day, i.e., before most of them
even start looking generally, and that was true for other sciences up until
the big recession.

That looks like a pretty healthy market to me. If there's still high
unemployment after 9 month, that might mean something, but I'm not seeing any
hardship in the numbers provided.

~~~
Someone
It's bad everywhere. A professor with tenure will hold that job for 20-30
years. In that time, (s)he will graduate at least 5 (in some fields way more)
PhD candidates. If the field of specialization of the professor is booming,
(s)he may get replaced by 3 new professors. It is way more likely, though,
that there will be 20+ PhDs for every single tenure job. Even in 'hot' fields,
universities have little incentive to rapidly increase the number of well-paid
professors, if phD students and post-docs are willing to do similar work for
less money and risk (if that field becomes less hot, you can dump the post-
docs, but not the professors)

~~~
mbreese
They can dump the professors now too... tenure doesn't mean as much as it once
did. If you are in the sciences tenured professors are now only guaranteed a
minimal salary and an office. If you want to keep any sort of lab going, you
need to have external (grant) funding.

------
paternalist
> What do PhD Scientists in America Have in Common with Unmarried Women in
> China?

They're both virgins.

------
wfunction
tl;dr: Overqualification

------
squozzer
tl;dr: It depends on who does the picking and the assumptions they hold.

In both cases, the entity with less power (PhD, male) initiates the selection,
and the entity (company, female) with greater power says yea or nay.

A way to work around the problem might be for the lesser entities to not pre-
select their targets and instead set up an "open picking" a la recess
kickball.

It does fly in the face of the philosophy of "hiring people smarter than you",
not sure if an analog in the realm of personal relationships exists.

