
Ask HN: How do you get a “PhD required” job without a PhD? - mezsmi
Computers.  It used to be a strong academically controlled field.  It was an area where you needed needed a PhD in Math to even touch the machines.  That was then.<p>I want to get deeply involved in a field that was started by academics.  It is dominated by academics.  Guess what their minimum requirement is for a job?<p>I don&#x27;t have a PhD.  My academic credentials suck. However, the field fascinates me.  It&#x27;s getting to the point where I&#x27;m reading papers on the subject in my spare time.  What realistic options do I have?<p>I want to build something that goes beyond NASA&#x27;s Curiosity.
======
alanctgardner2
If you really have a PhD level understanding of the topic, you could probably
try to prove that in an interview. You have to seriously ask yourself, is that
true? Reading papers in your spare time isn't dedicating years of your life to
that topic. I can read CS Master's and PhD theses, and even give feedback, but
that doesn't mean I could do research at that level. I'm working with a PhD in
maths right now, and he is completely on another level; it's not just the
technical knowledge to be able to read and understand papers, he's also
immersed in the field to the extent that he has strong opinions and ideas
about current research.

I guess my question is, if you love this field so much, why not do your PhD?
Dedicate a whole bunch of time and effort to actually becoming an expert in
this field, make a significant contribution by publishing papers. Then you'll
know you're qualified, and you'll already have gotten to do the job.

On a side note, what field is this exactly? There's a big difference between
wanting to do stats for machine learning, and wanting to write control systems
for nuclear power plants.

~~~
marme
the problem is at the majority of institutions you will not get the phd
experience you are expecting. Most of phd work is doing what your professor
tells you until he decides you have essentially apprenticed him long enough
that you can graduate. If you really enjoy your subject you will become a
master of the topic but just as many people go through the motions just enough
to graduate but dont really care that much about their subject and end up
being bad researchers

~~~
ylem
I have to comment on this--my advisor told me very early on not to become a
technician--to understand what I was doing and why. At least in physics, the
usual pattern is to give a student a project to work on--as they advance, they
gain more independence. Sadly, some people never reach this stage...

------
duked
In my opinion there are two kind of jobs out there: 1- PhD required for real
2- PhD required but not really ;)

Let me explain what I mean for 1, PhD is required because they expect you to
publish your work. And I have to say unless you did a PhD you might find it
very hard to publish in top tiers conferences, understand the review process
and of course be familiar with the state of the art (mandatory citations or
your paper would suffer terrible reviews). Or they need the new hire to be a
PI on some NSF/DARPA fundings and it's expected that the PI has a PhD.

Case 2, startups or big corp like to show off PhD in their work force just to
impress customers/investors or they genuinely look for someone that can narrow
down a problem, read about it and solve it. PhD have track record of that to
get their degree but a talented engineer could achieve the same.

My personal advice, is stay away from jobs 1 as you probably will have a hard
time fitting in. However you can definitely ace the interview for 2 and show
what your capable of.

------
angersock
I'll be a bit coarse here.

 _" I want to build something that goes beyond NASA's Curiosity."_

Ain't nobody stopping you--build the thing. Metal doesn't care whether its
machinist is a doctorate or a dullard, it responds the same way to the bite of
a tool.

 _" However, the field fascinates me. It's getting to the point where I'm
reading papers on the subject in my spare time."_

There's a world of difference between being fascinated/lusting after
something, and actually taking steps that will culminate in the achievement of
goals. Idly reading papers and things is well and good, but you need to start
actually designing things, hacking on little projects, and doing something
other than intellectual voyeurism. Real artists ship, my friend, and do so
without thought of whether they are qualified to do so or not.

To your beginning point, near any technical field nowadays was started by
academics--and that doesn't matter a hoot in hell. The biggest advances in
electronics and power generation were made by people screwing around in their
free time (Edison, Marconi, etc.). The best driving work in video games was
done by people that never finished college (Carmack).

Get out there and _do_ something, credentials be damned!

At the end of the day, most successful companies are started and staffed by a
bunch of people whose works finally caught up with their promises.

------
auctiontheory
"Fascinates" is a terrific start, but it is not enough. What have you built or
accomplished in the relevant area?

You seem to be focusing on academic credentials. (I realize that's what the
job posting asks.) But at the end of the day, credentials are only proxies for
ability to do the job. And the best way to prove ability is to demonstrate
past success in similar or related projects.

Industry, even an industry apparently dominated by PhDs, is not academia.

------
JoshTriplett
Exactly the same way you'd get a job that requires a B.S. when you don't have
one: prove that you're already working at that level without the credential. A
Ph.D. purports to demonstrate that you can do original research and
effectively communicate that research. So, successfully publish papers in the
peer-reviewed conferences of your target field.

~~~
infectoid
Probably one of the more succinct and constructive comments here so far.

Could not agree more. In short, follow your passion and the rest will fall
into place.

Here is a previous HN post that helps to illustrate the point...
[https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/8f381aa6bd5e](https://medium.com/this-
happened-to-me/8f381aa6bd5e)

------
Pitarou
> It's getting to the point where I'm reading papers on the subject in my
> spare time.

Sorry to rain on your parade, but you've still got a way to go. You're an
occasional jogger. A PhD is a marathon.

Which isn't to say that you shouldn't go for it, but its a hard road.

An academic paper needs:

\- solid background research (think "literature review")

\- a bright idea

\- implementation

Guess which are the hard parts. If you can do those then go ahead, write some
papers, and publish your work. Given your outsider status, people will forgive
you for not publishing in a peer-reviewed journal, but you need to publish
equivalent material on a website.

But would it be so much harder to just do a PhD?

------
pcvarmint
Work for 15+ years in high-performance computing, have 3+ references, and give
a nice but concise (45-minute) technical presentation.

That's how I got a job at a national lab, after being a college dropout, but
self-taught and still motivated. Once you get in, Ph.D. or other labels matter
less than results.

------
graycat
Curiosity was a huge project with many quite separate parts with people with
qualifications of enormous variety. Thus, Curiosity was not just some one
thing. Also, going "beyond" Curiosity might be an objective to be considered
by a committee reporting to the head of NASA but is not really a suitable goal
for just one person.

One way to look at Curiosity is that it is just a platform for a collection of
devices for making scientific measurements. Each such device was developed by
a team, and no doubt the teams were largely independent. A single device team
had experts in maybe geology, chemistry, optics, mechanical engineering,
electronics. Likely the leading academic subject matter experts had Ph.D.
degrees, but I have to doubt that usually more than 50% of a team did.

Once Curiosity was ready to be launched, there was the rocket, the ground
stations that communicated with the rocket and its payload, lots of people
back at JPL working on trajectory, guidance, data analysis, software updates,
etc., lots of people with likely less than 10% of them with a Ph.D.

If you want to make a big splash in, say, 'autonomous vehicles', then making
progress in some part of that field might be a suitable goal for one person.
So, look at what has been done at Google, Stanford, CMU, etc. and funded by
DARPA, etc. Also consider aviation from early autopilots to autonomous drones
and what more that people want. Consider sea-based autonomous vehicles. And,
of course, the hypersonic scram jets will have to be autonomous until they are
big enough and trusted enough to carry a person, which stands to be a long
time.

For sending humans to Mars, my approach, which you are welcome to borrow if
you want, is first to do a lot with autonomous vehicles. So, before even the
first human leaves earth, have dozens of autonomous vehicles on Mars, awash in
redundancy, with a good camp set up and running, and able, reliably, to launch
payloads back to earth. Then, almost as an afterthought, let a team of humans
go, with appropriate cosmic ray shielding, etc. So, don't send any humans
until apparently nearly all the risk is gone. So, do nearly all the work with
autonomous vehicles first. Maybe there's some work there you'd like to do!

But, be careful: Even if autonomous vehicles are your real interest, you may
find that mostly the qualifications needed are in mechanical engineering,
aeronautical engineering, control system engineering, software engineering,
electronic engineering, etc., and each of these is a more definite academic
field. That is, even if 'autonomous vehicles' is a good goal for you, it may
not be a very solid academic field for you to stand on to achieve your goal.
To know more, just look at what there is.

On your past academic background, that might not mean very much. A Ph.D. is
nearly all about just three things, research, research, and research, and
nearly no one teaching in K-12 has even as much as a weak little hollow hoot
of a tiny clue about research. Instead, in K-12, have a lot of babysitting
where the teachers, nearly all women, want good little students, mostly the
girls, to sit still, be nice, write neatly, be nice, be quiet, be nice, jump
through little hoops, be nice, etc.

For me? In grades 1-8, all the teachers in the school agreed -- I was poor
student. Apparently my standardized tests of talent said otherwise, but that
didn't impress the teachers. So the teachers treated me like dirt, and I gave
up on trying to please them. In the eighth grade, my handwriting just sucked
(common for boys). My 'clerical accuracy' sucked -- it still does, so to get
something detailed correct I have to do it one day, wait at least a day,
better a week, and check it. Somehow that issue doesn't hurt my work in
software; somehow the mistakes I make are ones a compiler easily catches; in
all the code I've written over all the decades, I'm not sure that even once a
clerical accuracy problem became an actual software bug problem. Since I have
some actual talent in math, my understanding of the algorithms, etc. of eighth
grade math was fast without doing the homework.

So, on tests, I didn't do very well: E.g., I didn't care enough to try very
hard. I didn't even know why or how to try hard at academics. So, with my poor
handwriting and poor clerical accuracy, when I had to, say, multiply two four
digit numbers, in my intermediate work the columns would not line up and I
would make simple errors.

So, at the end of the year, my eighth grade arithmetic teacher gave me a D and
fervently advised me never to take another course in math.

My father was actually good in education, understood that actually I was
learning enough, and laughed at the arithmetic teacher. Dad was correct. For
the next four years, I was likely the second best math student in my grade.
It's a good bet that since then I've been by a good margin the best math
student from the school ever. The eighth grade arithmetic teacher knew nothing
about math. Nearly none of my K-12 teachers knew anything important about
academics. Likely none of them knew anything about research.

Doing well in K-8 or even K-12 is not a very good predictor of being good at
research. Moreover, doing poorly in those grades doesn't mean much, either.

Don't let the K-12 system evaluate your potential for research or even
academics. Why? Because for anything significant in either research or even
just academics, nearly no one in K-12 has even as much as a weak little hollow
hint of a tiny clue what the heck they are talking about.

For a view of some of the excitement of research and some of what in
'originality' is crucial, look at the YouTube lectures of Eric Lander on
microbiology and genetics. E.g., for a course home page,

    
    
         http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/biology/7-01sc-fundamentals-of-biology-fall-2011/
    

Can download course text materials at

    
    
         http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/biology/7-01sc-fundamentals-of-biology-fall-2011/download-course-materials/
    

A TOC of the videos for the course are at

    
    
         http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF83B8D8C87426E44
    

See also Lander's

    
    
         http://www.princeton.edu/WebMedia/flash/lectures/20100419_publect_lander.shtml
    

Not all academic research is that exciting, but Lander's emphasis on the
excitement and crucial role of originality is right on target quite broadly
across STEM fields.

For more, look at the background and work of, say, Craig Venter. One little
thing he did was take all the ideas and planning of the Human Genome project,
trash and junk them, use a radically different approach, and totally knock the
socks off all the NIH team. Except for Venter, the genome project might be
looking to be done maybe in year 2200! As I recall, a Venter remark was that
the NIH team was not looking to sequence the human genome but to set
themselves up with permanent jobs!

If you want to get a Ph.D. in a STEM field, might take a fast read of, say,

    
    
         https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5849936
    
         https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5849938

~~~
akiselev
+1 to all of this. I don't know of any easy solutions to this but I do have
some fun long term ideas to add on here. The better you are at networking and
seeing and grabbing opportunities, the better your outcome will be. If you can
show that you learn very quickly and know what you're doing where it matters
(and are clear when you don't), then the lack of a Ph.D. will only limit your
choice of employers, not fields. This sounds corny and obvious but you always
have to actively keep the thought in your mind.

Look into NASA space center/R&D internships and the like (JPL, Goddard, etc.)
if you're interested in aerospace. Also look around for local universities
with strong aerospace programs with project based graduate classes. If you're
near a top aerospace program (Caltech, MIT, Cal Poly Pomona, Embry-Riddle,
etc.) those classes can land you free or even paid work on satellite projects
that get launched. As a concrete example: I took Aero105 class at Caltech
while still a senior in high school and got to work on aRResT, a Caltech-
University of Surrey formation satellite tech demo that should get launched
this year or next. If you can get security clearance with NASA then getting in
through a university that works with them is relatively easy (sadly the
clearance is what got me).

I'm assuming that if you're asking this question, you already have quite a bit
of experience in your desired field so I'd like to emphasize universities. You
can't just walk into a company and volunteer to work on their projects. Best
case scenario you have to apply for an internship because the company can't
legally accept free labor, fully trust you when you have nothing invested,
etc. Universities, on the other hand, are free game. You'll want to do some
due diligence and try to find labs that work extensively with industry (again,
Universities with emphases on project based courses are more likely to have
such opportunities, i.e. Franklin W. Olin College). Once you find a few labs,
try to find some way to contribute to the project without getting in the way
of the researchers. Try to find a github library someone in the lab wrote and
contribute to it, clean it up, etc. or try to make a hardware project related
to what that lab is doing. If you approach the lab with something that shows
you understand what they're working on and could actually be a resource
instead of a hindrance, the door is wide open. Note there are other, less
expensive of getting your foot in the door but this tactic has worked best for
me.

I've found a lot non-profits to be similar to corporations. Scared of
liability when it comes to engineers volunteering. Unless they go out to
developing countries to build stuff like Engineers without Borders, the
nonprofits usually only have restrictive lab internships and the like. It's
also much harder to get from "foot in the door" to paying salary. Since many
professors are largely funded by grants and have tenure, they are for the most
part the King in their own little world and can tolerate you hanging around
the lab till they can pay you or pass you along to someone that has money for
you.

If you're interested in autonomous vehicles in our atmosphere, play around
with quadcopters, UAVs, and then try to make your own small, light weight and
maneuverable hummingbird robot. Control theory is very approachable if you
have some experience with math and computer science. Be forewarned though: I
know brilliant people who have spent years at university making control
software, it is a deep deep field. On the upper hand, if you manage to write
software that can control a small flying robot as well as a hummingbird can
fly, you'd win the hypothetical Nobel Prize in Robotics. If there are
competitions that don't restrict entrants to universities, join and try to
make an impressive show.

You want to have something to show to everyone that screams "I KNOW WHAT I'M
DOING" because that's pretty much what everyone thinks a PhD is (ahem: "I was
paid less than minimum wage for half a decade or more"). In most of my
interactions with academics, I've found that the PhD club is quite like any
other tribe, arrogant and full of itself. But don't worry, those doctors are
_mostly_ harmless and use the almighty PhD certificate as a defense mechanism
and risk management tool. They're rational people who know determination and
intellect when they see it.

------
Fomite
Publications may help - and as folks like duked mentioned, there are some jobs
that are actually "We'd really rather prefer a PhD but we might be able to
swing it for the right person".

But honestly, if they _mean_ PhD required? Odds are the answer is get a PhD.
It's not just that its an exposure to the field thing, though that's part of
it. A PhD is equal parts credentializing, expertise building and a cultural
thing. It's possible that they need a PhD for things like competing for
grants, and even if they don't, it's likely going to be an odd cultural fit.

------
goodcanadian
I have done this . . . sort of. The job ad did not explicitly require a PhD,
but it was the sort of position where one would be expected (notionally, a
postdoc). If the position is meant to be research, you are almost certainly
going to need a PhD and a record of publication. Seriously, a PhD by itself
isn't even worth much any more. However, there are plenty of job ads that ask
for a PhD which are not research and do not really require a PhD. What I did
was to contact the decision maker (sometimes it is easy to find out who that
is, sometimes not), and then talk to him. You can ask if he is willing to
consider someone without a PhD, and then give brief account as to why your
skill set or experience is appropriate for the job. Keep in mind, this usually
doesn't work. You may have misunderstood what the job entails, or the decision
maker may simply be unwilling to consider someone without a PhD (rightly or
wrongly), or there may be a whole line of better candidates who all have PhDs.

You mention building "something that goes beyond NASA's Curiosity." This is a
field that interests me, too. Most of the positions that actually build things
are engineering or software. Most of them do not require PhDs, explicitly or
otherwise. So, in short, I am not sure what position you are trying to get. If
it involves building spacecraft, and asks for a PhD, it is almost certainly
research, and it almost certainly really does require a PhD.

------
davimack
Firstly, is this about the tactical objective, or what you'd do if you managed
to get there?

If it's just the tactical objective, you'd need to find someone on the inside
who would be willing and able to convince everybody else that you were the
person for the job - and that includes the HR end of things as well. It would
be easier, actually, for that person to sell a new position than to get you
into a position which has the requirement of a PhD.

If it's the long-term you're considering, though, some of the other posters
have pointed it out: you don't acquire the skills simply by reading about the
subject (although reading about the subject is an immense part of the PhD).
You must also contribute something to the subject, in a particularly rigorous
manner - that creation, in other words, will be measured not simply by its
outcome but by the process used and the documentation of that process
produced.

The PhD isn't about understanding a field (that's a Master's). Rather, it's
about understanding how to conduct research in a particular field, on top of
having that mastery of the field. What you're seeing when you read papers is
only the content of the field, not the process by which that was generated.

You have essentially said, "I've looked at a lot of paintings, and I really
like paintings, and I know about different styles of paintings" ... but you
have not painted.

------
mikegagnon
Are you an expert in the field? If yes, then apply for the position(s). If you
are rejected for lack of Ph.D., then move on. It's not good to work in an
organization that values credentials over expertise.

If you are not an expert in the field, then become an expert. One way to
become an expert is through a doctoral program. Other ways include self-study,
apprenticeship, real-world work experience etc.

------
sjg007
Write a paper. Get it published. Easiest places are IEEE or ArVix.

~~~
Fomite
I'm not sure I'd really consider arXiv to be "published" in the peer-reviewed
sense - it's a preprint service, and while that can attract attention, you
need to get it in a genuine journal/conference (depending on your field as to
which is the bigger deal).

Also, outside CS/Physics/Math, be aware that standards differ, and arXiv is
often met with "...what?"

~~~
sjg007
Dude wants to build a space robot. That should be physics/cs/math.

~~~
Fomite
Agreed. More noted that for general reference. Or if he aspires to be an
astrobiologist ;)

------
nichols
Try challenging your interviewer to a dance-off. If you win, they're legally
required to give you the job.

------
doorty
You could try to get published or get similar field-specific attention by
making some advancement in the field.

------
eddyparkinson
A PhD answers a question, it is a process for answering a question. Do you
know the process already, do you know how to answer the question, do you
understand the research process. Are you able to tick all of the todo list
items that are used to do research.

How to Organize Your Thesis - describes the output of a PhD. If you already
have created output that includes most of the items listed, then sure maybe
you can skip the PhD bit, won't be the first time.

Bunch of PhD related links that I found invaluable:
[http://www.dmoz.org/Reference/Education/How_To_Study/Postgra...](http://www.dmoz.org/Reference/Education/How_To_Study/Postgraduate_Research/)

------
blueprint
PhD's are mostly devoid of value and often harmful to people's judgement in
and of themselves. The certification means nothing, implicitly. If someone's
PhD work is not contributive to society (I mean, let's look at quality of life
in society here rather than number of papers produced) then the PhD is not a
virtue of that person. On the contrary, it becomes an object of deception.

Anyone that doesn't realize this fact is cowed by an entity or knowledge-base
that you probably don't want to end up slave to. If they are requiring you to
have a PhD despite your ability then you may like to look into finding people
like yourself and working outside of the existing employment system you
reference.

------
ISL
One of the cool things about _getting_ a PhD is that you can get to work on
the cool problem you're interested in.

If you're working hard and get lucky in your research, a PhD can take < 5
years. Masters programs can be easier to get into, and if you're good, you'll
have an easy shot at getting into a PhD program. Not saying that a PhD is
necessarily the best choice, but it's a way in.

Some friends worked on the PanCam rover hardware as undergrads and parlayed it
into 'permanent' positions with rover operations without going to grad school.
Get in touch with the people who do whatever you want to do, make it clear
that you want to work for them, and do everything to get competent in the
field.

------
ylem
I've seen cases of people without phDs at national labs who are doing research
--but it's rare. I would suggest that you figure out who the actual
researchers are who are involved with the project and contact them
(personally, I would send and email and then follow it up with a phone call)
and see if you could chat with them about the project and where you might fit
in. It might be possible that there is a position that you might be able to
step in with your current qualifications and see how you like it and if you
want to pursue a phD while you work there. Do you live reasonably close to the
facility? Would you be able to stop in during your free time?

------
joshguthrie
Applying for the job is the first step to getting a "PhD required" job without
a PhD. Then it's up to you to prove not having a PhD doesn't impede your
skills in any way.

------
rdouble
If you have a specific position in mind, I would suggest trying to meet with
the PhDs. They often have work that needs to be done, but are unable to do it
themselves. I was interested in molecular biology about 10 years ago and was
able to get jobs working alongside PhDs in a lab environment because they
needed a programming lackey.

------
zura
Similar but more specific question would be - How do you get a "Postdoc" job
without a PhD?

~~~
pmb
Answer to the postdoc one: You can't.

People looking for postdocs almost always have a specific sort of funding and
it is attached to the credentialing.

~~~
Fomite
Yeah, I'm going to go with "You can't" for this one - "Postdoc" is inherently
post-PhD, and the expectations of the position will pretty much require one.
For example, many require establishing yourself as an independent researcher -
which means grant writing, which is next to impossible without a PhD.

~~~
goodcanadian
As I have just posted in another thread, I did in fact get a position that was
notionally a post-doc without having a PhD. In the end, I think it was due to
my specific skill set being more useful to the project than someone with more
research experience. I have tried to repeat the trick, but without luck, so
far. As GP mentioned, the positions are very often tied to funding that
requires a PhD be hired.

------
skaevola
Applying.

~~~
coherentpony
I'm sure OP already thought of that. Thanks, though, for your truly insightful
suggestion. I'm sure you'll go far if you ever look for employment in a
position that doesn't require you to state the obvious.

~~~
eli
Snark aside, I think that is the 100% correct answer. It's unlikely the job
actually requires a phd, they probably just need someone with skills
equivalent to those of a phd holder.

------
lanna
Step 1: Get a PhD.

Step 2: ?

Step 3: Profit!

------
socialderp
Academia has VERY different rules then the real world. Deal with it.

This whole attitude of "I'm better cause I say so hurrrrr" and "I'm gonna
(keyword, aka haven't) built some amazing" will NOT cut it. Getting a PhD is
no joke, takes a lot of commitment (years) and is usually very difficult in a
science based field.

I await the downvotes from the fealgood social gurus who themselves do not
have a degree in cs, which I do...

~~~
frou_dh
Candidates for an automatic downvote:

    
    
        * Downvote preemption
        * "This."
        * Article font/background griping
        * ...

------
orokusaki
FWIW, I won't bother with anybody in my life that requires a degree for
anything, even teaching. Having a degree for something is, IMHO, no better
than having a JD Power & Associates award, which is not very valuable. Now,
are there countless people with PhDs who are terrific and very intelligent?
Yes. Are they terrific and very intelligent because they received degrees? No,
and furthermore, they'll probably achieve less than their drop-out
counterparts (e.g., Steve Jobs, Bill Gates) or their "bad student"
counterparts (e.g., Albert Einstein). Even Napoleon Bonaparte dropped out of
Berkley at age 22... just making sure you were paying attention :)

~~~
ynd
FYI, Einstein was not a bad student.
([http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/12/albert-
einst...](http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/12/albert-einstein-did-
not-fail-at-mathematics-in-school/)). It's just a myth.

Having a degree does not magically make you more qualified, it's the work you
put it over the years to get your degree. The paper is useless, but the
experience learned remains in your head.

