
Why I'm Getting a PhD - johnbender
http://johnbender.us/2013/09/16/why-im-getting-a-phd/
======
burntsushi
Is anyone else doing their PhD (or did their PhD) just because they thought it
was a lot of fun and a great way to learn a lot in a short time period? Not
that it's the _only_ way to do any of those things, but I've found the
lifestyle of a graduate student in CS to be extremely appealing.

My mentor once suggested that a PhD is only worthwhile if you plan on doing
research after you graduate. But as he got to know me better, he noticed that
I was _actually enjoying_ the act of obtaining a PhD. Isn't that enough?

~~~
Lewisham
_Isn 't that enough?_

Well, yes, it _can be_. During my PhD studies I met a couple people who could
be considered "lifers" who were clearly very happy doing graduate-level
research work. Maybe you are one of them. Their optimal career path would be a
cushy postdoc job so they continue to keep doing what they are doing but
without paying tuition fees.

I'm sure you know, but for others reading, there are reasons why most people
_don 't_ do this.

1\. There is a strong psychological toll on doing original research. It's
liberating and exciting, but also intensely frustrating and isolating. Writing
papers, and their inevitable rejection, is a very disheartening venture that
can't be accurately described without doing it.

2\. If you're in the sciences, which I assume most people reading here are,
you stand to make significantly more in industry research than post-doc
research.

3\. Research takes over your mind, you can't turn it off. When I was doing my
PhD, I was essentially "on" all the time, it can never be a 9 to 5 job.
Despite your best efforts, research will always have a toll on your family.

So if these things aren't a problem for _you_ , then it certainly is enough.
Research is a uniquely rewarding career path. But your mentor uses that line
as a way of helping/warning others. You aren't the stereotypical PhD student,
and PhD students are already skewed all the way down the spectrum of "normal".
The majority of the population, and most PhD researchers, struggle with these
problems. If you're not committed to it for the long-haul, which is what your
mentor is alluding to, it's not worth doing it.

EDIT: Now I've done my PhD, people often ask me "Do you think I should do
one?" and the unsatisfyingly true answer is "I don't know, I'm not you" (and,
perhaps even worse, is that _you_ aren't you when you finish the PhD from when
you started, you change and grow a lot, which affects your viewpoint
dramatically). That's another reason why your mentor has that saying, it's
more easily digestible by those who are unsure.

~~~
andrewcooke
(1) is (only) your personal viewpoint - i certainly never felt that.

(3) can apply to any interesting job, if you let it.

only (2) is an impartial criticism of research.

~~~
tellarin
Of course I can't claim that my personal experience is representative of all
people. But you're the first person I hear say that did not feel any
psychological effects of doing a PhD.

Every single person I know that did a PhD (including myself) has mentioned
feeling frustrated/isolated/depressed/etc at different stages in their PhDs.
It is interesting to see that some people are actually not affected that much.

~~~
burntsushi
I guess I'll just chime in and say that, going into my fourth year, I've never
felt frustrated/isolated/depressed more than I thought was normal. (I mean,
does getting frustrated with GHC count? :P)

I'd actually say it's the opposite: the process of getting my PhD has been one
of the more wonderful experiences of my life thus far. Although, I tend to
believe that at least part of this is due in large part to one particularly
awesome professor that I've worked closely with (and isn't my advisor).

------
zmmmmm
I see a lot of people saying getting a PhD limits your options for employment
afterwards and you should only do it if you want an academic career.

I'm currently completing a PhD, and that was one of my primary concerns prior
to starting. However I've eventually become more at ease with it. For one, I
see a new appreciation for PhD level knowledge thanks to Google et. al, who
have repopularised the value of having a PhD with their hiring practises. The
advent of machine learning has made higher level CS knowledge more valuable
again where for a while it was even actively spurned by much of the software
industry. At the same time the basic bachelor CS degree is becoming
commoditized and its value is decreasing. Partly because of outsourcing,
partly because of MOOCs, and partly because it is becoming evident to
employers that people without college / university training can be as
effective as people with that training.

All up, I'm a lot less worried about this point than I was before I started.

~~~
btown
I had a similar decision to go through, and I'm in a PhD program in machine
learning now myself! PhD's might not be the trendiest thing in the startup
world, but they're not a detriment at all from what I've heard and seen.
Interned at a well-funded startup with 40 employees at the time, and we
interns were literally the only tech people there without advanced degrees;
many were ex-Googlers and the like. Similarly, at Microsoft I heard from many
that as long as you can demonstrate that you haven't lost your touch for
coding (do implementation + theory!), you're at no disadvantage relative to
where you were before the PhD, and quite possibly at an advantage if you want
to do more research-oriented things. Me, I may end up catching the academia
bug while I'm here, but I'm not worried about losing my "in" in industry.

...now back to that problem set...

~~~
hconceic-HN
I'm almost done with my PhD, and for people that don't want to stay at
academia, I find extremely important what btown says about not doing only
theory. Very rarely you will find a job where you'll only have to do theory,
and even if you think you still remember everything you learned in your Bsc,
you probably don't. Also, some of the things you might still remember, may not
be of any use in the job market anymore. From my experince, I recently started
being contacted and going to job interviews at major companies and I had to
spend some time going through some course material and MOOCs, even if I been
doing some code during my PhD.

Regarding the PhD experience, choose your advisor and group very carefully.
You'll spend a lot of time with them. Also, during almost 2 years I was
working with a really bad crazy advisor, that was pushing me to the limit for
his interest. I was almost quitting but decided to change advisor and I'm
really enjoying this now.

------
ssw1n
Here is a different perspective, all be it in a cynical tone:
[http://crypto.junod.info/2013/09/09/an-aspiring-
scientists-f...](http://crypto.junod.info/2013/09/09/an-aspiring-scientists-
frustration-with-modern-day-academia-a-resignation/)

And here's another, with much more objective tone:
[http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm](http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-
memoir.htm)

My take on the subject matter is that:

\- When getting into the PhD. track, one should be aware of what he/she is
getting into, and be prepared for the resulting lifestyle.

\- One should have an extraordinary drive (even to the point of personal
obsession) to search for answers towards the unsolved problems in his/her
field of study despite knowing the consequences that will be imposed onto
his/her life by this intellectual journey.

\- One should find a PI whose personality clicks with his/hers, and whose
research he/she is motivated to work on. It is pretty rare to match these two
parameters perfectly, but one can weigh trade-offs, and work with the best
available while still maintaining his/her aspirations.

\- One should realize that, regardless of popular belief, academia is business
with its own business model: understanding the intricate business logic behind
the model will facilitate one greatly in his/her quest.

\- One should realize that like every human society, academia has its own fair
share of personalities and egos, and intrapersonal skills matter, a lot.

~~~
pgbovine
wow that's a great summary of key points :) and thanks for mentioning that my
memoir has a more objective tone than the other student's rant. i tried hard
to present both the good and bad sides of academia, as viewed through the lens
of a naive Ph.D. student. ah good times.

------
jofer
For whatever it's worth, as someone who just finished, you're doing a PhD for
all of the right reasons.

You do it because you want to. Because you like getting to delve into a wide
array of things. Because you want to focus more on interesting problems than
interesting solutions. (Obviously, those two aren't mutually exclusive.)

If you're doing it with a career focus, it's not worth it. A PhD can be a
hindrance in the corporate world, and jobs in academia are difficult to get.

Do it because you want a chance to do what you find most interesting for 5-8
years. (CS is probably shorter... In the geosciences, a M.S. is 2-3 years, and
a PhD is an additional 4-6. Typically, you switch institutions between an MS
and PhD, as well.)

Also, from what I've seen, people who come back to graduate work after working
for awhile are generally more successful than folks straight out of undergrad.

On the other hand, a PhD can close more doors than it opens in the corporate
world, at least in my limited experience. For reasons I don't understand, most
people view a PhD as meaning specialization. You'll be seen as "too
specialized", regardless of your actual experience and skillset. At least for
me, the opposite is true. My graduate work required me to be a generalist.
Everyone I know of came out of undergrad much more specialized and became more
of a generalist over time.

~~~
jseliger
_For whatever it 's worth, as someone who just finished, you're doing a PhD
for all of the right reasons._

That's true. I think it's telling, however, that the writer doesn't mention
getting an academic job, or tenure. I hope his PhD works out for him and his
family, who are implicitly along for the ride.

I also hope that, in three to four years, the OP writes an essay about what he
thinks after he's gone through the academic grinder.

For an alternate perspective on academia, see Philip Greenspun's "Women in
Science" ([http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-
science](http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science)).

------
geebee
I truly wish you the best of luck, and for an excellent outcome.

One thing - you just can't say "why I'm getting a PhD", even from an elite
school, the way you'd say "why I'm getting a law, medical, or business
degree". Even if you've been admitted to an elite program, you can really only
say "why I'm rolling the dice on the possibility of getting a PhD".

At elite programs, there is essentially no involuntary attrition in JD, MD, or
MBA degrees. Yale law school has no 1L attrition. Columbia's JD 1L attrition
is 0.3%. Attrition rates at elite med school is typically well below 1%.

[http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2008/04/law-
school-r...](http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2008/04/law-school-
ra-1.html)

(I'll stop with the googling of links here...)

Attrition rates for engineering PhD students appear to be about 33%. This (to
me, atrocious number) is way better than science or humanities.

[http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/07/doctoral](http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/07/doctoral)

Unlike JD, MD, MBA programs, I don't believe that the numbers are better at
elite schools.

[http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~wicse/index.php/papers/li...](http://www-
inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~wicse/index.php/papers/lindareport2.pdf)

I dunno, maybe Berkeley is a risky program, it is a notoriously harsh school.

In spite of all I've said, I'm always hesitant to give anyone advice. There
are still remarkable careers to be had in academics. Good luck.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
> Attrition rates for engineering PhD students appear to be about 33%. This
> (to me, atrocious number) is way better than science or humanities.

Perhaps this is because an engineering Ph.D. student is far better positioned
to get a high-paying job than their 1L or med school counterparts. The
engineering candidate doesn't _need_ to be there to get a job.

~~~
zenbowman
Exactly. 33% isn't bad to be honest.

When my advisor quit, I left my PhD without thinking twice, because I got a
job at a much higher pay than my PhD stipend, and leaving my PhD didn't
present the kind of financial burden that it would have were I in a humanities
field.

Now I'd like to complete it again, but I'd want to do it part-time, and I have
a much better idea of what I'd like to do. As engineers, we are pretty lucky
to be in that position, even when things don't quite work out as planned, we
still end up pretty well off. So there's not quite the same determination to
make a particular course of action work.

------
001sky
Career Path

...

Unfortunately, the problems I gravitate towards are not normally assigned to
engineers and attempts to marry my interests with my domain of expertise [1,2]
have met with understandably tepid responses. ,,, All of that makes perfect
sense but it means I can't focus on the problems that I'm interested in.

\---

What Interests Me

The things that keep me up past midnight working and learning are technical.
Problems both large and small that remain unsolved or problems where the
solution seems unsatisfactory to me. A short and incomplete list in no
particular order:

...

A few of these might align with a job posting somewhere but most don't. More
importantly, I'm not as interested in the implementation as I am in conceiving
a solution and understanding its value. ...

===

I guess you could say I'm taking The Fourth Path™.

While I may be new to the academic environment, I have taken efforts to ensure
that my impressions are not naive.

===

I think what is Naive here is that even with a phd you will be working for
someone. to do something. So, not having a functional goal for your work is
Naive. Even if its research it has a "market". There are people who value it
or they don't. The trade may be "in kind", be it social favours or
prestige/ego polishing, if not in discrete financial incentives (grants, etc).

Its illusory to think your "career" is independent. At best, you are captive
to customer if nor directly to your employer.

This all might be formalistic oversights for a blog post, but still...your a
mid-career executive...this stuff shouldn't be off the radar entirely.

Good luck.

~~~
PeterisP
A big point in academia is that you can research whatever direction and niche
you want, but you'll get paid only to research directions and niches chosen by
others..

If those directions happen to overlap at the right time and place, you can
have a great time getting a PhD; if they stop overlapping (possibly suddenly),
then the choices aren't that nice.

~~~
cossatot
Successful research strategies typically involve working on what is funded,
and simultaneously bootstrapping what isn't until the early results are
sufficient to get funding or at least collaborators on board. It's maybe
tougher overall, but it's the only way to have interesting work longer term.
It's also nice when you're mind is blown-out and you're stuck and sick of your
current project to do something shiny and new for a little while.

I would assume that this is exactly how most businesses operate; you have to
not only serve your current customers but line up new ones as well.

~~~
PeterisP
Yep, the funding requirements typically meant a process somewhat like - if
you've got result A done or nearly done; then you apply for funding to do "A",
but in fact do B for all that time. Then you apply for funding "to do B" while
working on C for that funding... repeat ad nauseam for decades. Amazingly, it
results in a process where each individual step is technically fraudulent but
the total result is the intended one.

But this is not how most businesses operate, academic funding is a very
different mindset. Well, perhaps defense contractor companies need to plan
about their funding in similar terms.

------
bfe
For something like an opposite perspective, there's "Why I'm leaving [my job
as a CS professor at] Harvard [to join Google]":

[http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvar...](http://matt-
welsh.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-im-leaving-harvard.html)

Shorter version of both posts: "Working at (university/big tech co.) frees me
from all the distractions of working at (big tech co./university) so I can
spend all my time hacking on the problems I find most interesting."

~~~
mattgreenrocks
Where I get stuck: "we only accept PhDs at [GOOG/MS/FB] research." I want to
be in these communities (preferably somewhere with funding + needs, likely to
be a BigCo), but they don't make themselves very open.

~~~
Lewisham
FWIW, Peter Norvig was asked at an intern tech talk at Google "Do I need a PhD
to work at Google?" and he replied "No, and most of the people here don't have
one. What we are looking to hire is people who have the original thinking
mindset that makes them able to _do_ PhDs, even if they haven't done one."

When you're working at Google/Facebook/Microsoft you're working on problems
that are new to you, even if they aren't new to the rest of the company.
You're learning, which is the fun bit of research. Many of the products you
will work on may never have been attempted at the size/scale you are going
for, and so that's research.

Industry has a lot of the R of R&D, you just need to recognize it when it's
happening.

------
pmelendez
I bet I will see this entry tomorrow : "Why I'm not Getting a PhD"

~~~
mbreese
More likely - Why I wish I hadn't have gotten a PhD

------
plainOldText
I know many people have conflicting opinions about PhDs, but I think this is a
pretty good explanation of what a PhD is: [http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-
school-in-pictures/](http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/)

Disclaimer: I don't have a PhD :)

------
hopeless
I wish you the best of luck.

I went into my PhD with totally the wrong reasoning and eventually left after
3 years. All I can say is: the PhD is about _the process not the end results_
; and it's _a qualification to conduct research_ and nothing more

This was my collected rant: [http://jamie.ideasasylum.com/2008/07/things-i-
learnt-during-...](http://jamie.ideasasylum.com/2008/07/things-i-learnt-
during-and-about-my-phd/)

~~~
jlees
Your experience mirrors mine in many ways (especially Hunt the Supervisor..
oh, the fun we had). Sounds like you were/are also in the UK -- 3-4 years for
a PhD is considered fast over here in the US!

I think the most unexpected part of my PhD experience was the sheer mind-
numbing slog that research can become, either your own project or assisting
your supervisor. Writing a pretty easy script and then running it 1000 times
with different variables on different datasets. Reviewing a metric ton of
papers for a forced lit review. etc.

I loved the freedom of thought, and learned a lot about what I was interested
in and motivated by. I loved the structure of academia, the familiar support
networks, and I found I really enjoyed teaching. I particularly liked thinking
up bizarre ideas and having the skills and tools at my disposal to see if
anyone had done it before and quickly knock up a messy but functional way to
test it out.

For me, it boiled down to wanting to do work on messy, imperfect data that
came from the real world, which was at odds with the highly curated and neat
datasets that can get you nice, repeatable results suitable for a PhD. Would I
have stuck it out if I could have done the research I really wanted? Having
seen friends go through the writing up stage and break under the pressure, I'm
not sure. I'm not intending to go back and finish it, that's for sure.

Side note: the font size for your Joel on Software quote is insanely large
(Chrome/Windows).

------
evincarofautumn
Your interests align with mine. I have considered academia, but for now it
suffices to work on language research projects in spare time. I _did_ get a
job in compilers and build tools last year because of my language interests,
so it’s certainly not impossible. Compilers experts are not in high demand,
but when they are needed they can go for a pretty penny due to short supply.

> I’m not as interested in the implementation as I am in conceiving a solution
> and understanding its value. I'm sure that will sound like laziness to some…

Not at all. People like you are the reason that people like me have so many
great papers to work from. The world needs people on both sides of that
divide.

------
traviscj
Good luck. I'm just finishing mine. It's been a hard path, but also incredibly
stimulating and awesome in a lot of ways.

I'm an applied math-type, but your list of topics looks like a great start. My
most successful peers knew exactly the things they wanted to work on and have
nailed it.

Cheers!

------
djcapelis
Yes people often feel this way in their first year.

Look, I'm not saying the author shouldn't do it, I'm in a grad program now.

But things usually change and feelings usually get a lot more complicated
before they get clearer.

------
mikevm
A few books that might be helpful:

[http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-memoir.htm](http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-
memoir.htm)

[http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Your-PhD-Survival-
Doctoral/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Your-PhD-Survival-
Doctoral/dp/3642158463)

------
011011100
"Because it's my life and I believe it's worthwhile to me." I don't understand
why people bother to defend personal choices, like education, as if they're in
some sort of formal argument. This says more about culture and your own
insecurity.

~~~
6d0debc071
Maybe they value others opinions/encouragement/feedback. A degree of
insecurity isn't necessarily a bad thing, it can stop you making mistakes. I
wish I'd taken some of the questions of my friends at school _Why do you want
to get a degree anyway?_ more seriously years ago.

------
priley
It's totally not worth it unless you want to be a professor. Trust me.

~~~
cli
Suppose that I want to do basic research in, say, physics. How would I do so
without a PhD?

~~~
mbreese
If you were doing that, you'd likely either be a professor (of some kind), or
on that track post-doc, etc... or the national laboratory equivalent. I don't
know how many PhD-level "staff" positions there are on the big physics
experiments.

It's probably more accurate to say "unless you want to be an academic" as
opposed to "unless you want to be a professor", but since becoming a professor
is usually the goal of an academic career, it's a fair statement to make.

~~~
cli
Thank you for the reply. So the only, or at least best, way of doing science
research is to be an academic, or work at a national laboratory (does that
count as academia?)? Thus, the statement "only reason to do a PhD is to be an
academic" is isomorphic to the statement "only reason to do a PhD is to do
basic science research"?

------
javert
I feel like he's leaving out something quite important, which is what he plans
to do once he has his PhD. Professor (research or teaching?) or industry (big
business or startups?)?

~~~
tensor
This isn't actually very important. At least if you are in STEM. The point of
the PhD is to learn. That's valuable to all career paths.

~~~
freyr
Wrong, it's _extremely_ important.

You're devoting the next 5+ years of your life to a single task. You're
forgoing your programmer salary for the next 5+ years, which could easily add
up to $300k - $500k in opportunity cost. Your forcing your wife and kids to
come along for the ride. You're going to end up a world expert in a tiny niche
that, quite possibly, nobody outside of academia cares about. You should have
a _pretty good_ idea where you want this all to lead.

There are practical reasons for having a goal in mind:

* If you want to land an academic job, you should be planning for that from day one. Academic positions are _extremely_ competitive, and you need to make yourself an _extremely_ competitive candidate. That means you must present and publish your work aggressively often, networking extensively, and choose a popular topic of research that will garner you many citations, etc.

* You have to make many important decisions right from the start of grad school (who to choose as an advisor, what topic to research, etc.). Choosing poorly will have ramifications for many years to come. Having relevant criteria (such as some long-term goal) can help you with these decisions.

* It's not entirely unusual for candidates to languish for 7+ years in their program, often due to lack of direction or because they expected their advisor to motivate them and keep them on track. You need to motivate yourself. Having some direction from the start can help with this motivation, and also help you from getting swallowed up by all the time-sinks that will eat away at your productivity.

~~~
tensor
This sounds a lot like you are telling us what _you_ value in life. There are
no rules in life and it's not a requirement to have your whole life planned
out at every moment in time. Most people don't, including highly successful
people. That's ok. What's important is taking advantage of opportunity when it
is presented.

If a goal of yours is to learn, then a PhD is a great opportunity for this.
The value of the PhD is not even gaining expert knowledge in a small area.
It's _learning how to learn_. It's learning how to focus so hard on one thing
so as to surpass or build on what the best of those who've come before you
have done. It teaches you do deal with the fear of not knowing and having
nobody to tell you the answer.

On the other hand, even if you end up coming to be concerned about money, it's
still not a big deal. Sure, you don't go into a PhD for money. But wether you
go into industry or succeed in academia afterwards, you won't be wanting for
money. Hell, you can even leave part way through and get a well paying job!

Besides, your counterparts who ran the corporate treadmill will only be
incrementally richer than you anyways. If you really want to be rich, you need
to take on big risks such as starting a company or the like. Talking about
putting your wife and kids in a tough spot! That said, I hope you put
something in life above money.

Edit:

Regarding your edits, those are concerns that you do need to consider. Though
it's really not the end of the world if you don't. Simply always trying hard
goes a long way to doing alright in most scenarios and there are always great
fallback options.

~~~
omnisci
[bill lumbergh] I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you on that.
[/office space] (My PhD is in behavioral neuroscience, so YMMV)

I've found that if people want to learn, then they will learn. You don't need
a PhD for that, and the process of going through a PhD doesn't really teach
you anything more than you couldn’t have gotten yourself. Passion drives
someone to learn, not getting accepted into a PhD program.

~~~
_delirium
In theory I agree, but I _very_ rarely run into people who actually do so on
their own. Even fewer who do something recognizable as contributions to a
research field, in the sense of writing up something of peer-reviewed paper
quality, which indicates the author is familiar with existing research,
appropriately explains how the new contribution relates to concepts and
techniques that already exist, and presents the results in a convincing format
(whether that's statistical analysis or a good case study or whatever). It
doesn't even have to actually be published; I'm fine browsing papers on arXiv
too, or things circulated as whitepapers or tech reports.

They exist, but they're uncommon, and many of the people doing that kind of
work are in sort of para-academic jobs, like long-time librarian at a big
research library, or senior staff member at a (government or corporate)
research lab. Even in an environment like Google, the majority of the papers
and paper-like writeups seem to come from either people with PhDs, or people
with long track records in a quasi-academic environment, like Google's sizable
stable of ex-Bell-Labs researchers.

I don't really say that out of any particular love for institutionally tied
research, but more out of the opposite, a frustration that it's so rare to
find DIY research that really contributes to a research field. Some of that, I
assume, is just incentives: if what you earn money on involves getting
something to work, all that really matters is that you come up with a
technique that works. Understanding how your technique relates to existing
techniques, explaining whether it's completely novel or a variant of an
established one, and doing the detailed analysis to figure out why precisely
it outperforms existing techniques (e.g. is there one particular tweak that's
critical, and if so, why is it critical?), is not always something
incentivized in that context, but is important to advancing the state of
knowledge in a field.

~~~
omnisci
Hey Delirium, very well put. I’m curious about your experience (phd program,
country etc) as I have a different perspective and I frequently wonder if it’s
just my experience in the biology side of academics.

“In theory I agree, but I very rarely run into people who actually do so on
their own” This board is full of people who actually learn on their own:)
People learned to code, people learned how to run businesses and people have
learned how to build purely based on their passion to learn/build and
contribute to the world. The reason why this is less so in science is that the
resources are behind a paywall. I recently left my academic life to start a
business and as such, I don’t have access to scientific papers anymore….this
limits my ability. This is also the major motivation for my startup which will
bring raw academic scientific data to the public…but I digress. The fact is
that you are surrounded by those people, but they aren’t bringing their ideas
to science because the process by which science is done doesn’t allow for
it…and that is a problem.

Re: peer-review papers/quality: ahha, I’m not sure I agree. Peer review in
theory is great, in practice it’s BS/politics/$$$$. Also, in my experience
(YMMV), a lot of references in intros/discussions are “oh shit, you have to
reference Joe Schmoe’s 2008 paper here because he is on the editorial board.”
Not to discredit your point, I agree that peer review papers, citations and
the like are important, but they are being abused now (at least in bio).

This is long winded, but my point is that we don’t see a lot of people
contributing to science because they don’t have the resources to do so. I
think that needs to change soon and I’m working to make that happen.

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selfpost
I was planning to apply for a phd, and not so sure. Thanks for such a nice
post. Really helpful.

~~~
Balgair
I'm biting the bullet this fall too. Having worked in a lab for the past year,
I can see what the good ways to do it are, and the bad ways too. I hope to do
it in the good ways.

~~~
selfpost
either good or bad ways, I'm just afraid of being stuck in academia. writing
some papers and starting to every sentence with " according xx (1910)" are
boring sometimes, you know well, I gyess :)

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jrobbins
John, it's great that you want to learn more about those topics. But, don't
misunderstand. Earning a PhD is like 10% learning about the topic, and 90%
learning the process of research and the business of research. Based on your
blog post, it's going to take a while until that other 90% really hits you.
Reading papers is easy compared to writing them.

Also, PhD studies and the academic life at a research institution are
emotionally stressful and extremely time consuming. You have to consider the
negative impact of that on your family, regardless of how supportive they are.

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dsugarman
As someone who was recently persuing a PhD, I would say anyone getting one is
making a huge bet on the future of traditonal higher education institutes. In
general, I am scared for the future of pure science

~~~
stephnexus
I think the right time to be scared for the future of pure science was in the
1970s. Pure R&D institutions started dropping like flies after that, and we
almost lost our innovation edge.

I think the Internet brought us back from the brink -- except now it's not
large institutions sponsoring R&D, but rather small companies and individuals.
Pure science suffers in comparison to small tech (like apps and web stuff)
because it's expensive, but I think that could change as we perfect crowd-
funding mechanisms and as enough people accumulate enough resources to start
privately funding pure science research.

I don't think traditional higher ed institutes are safe by any means -- but a
PhD itself is still a worthwhile use of time, whether used for its intended
purpose or as a pivot.

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stephnexus
The problem with a PhD is that it requires a laser focus on a narrowly defined
topic. I'm much more interested in the connections between different areas.
Thus, no PhD so far. I also wouldn't want to put myself entirely under one
advisor's control to the degree that PhD programs typically require.

I do think it would be an interesting way to re-structure my time, though.

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ryanSrich
I've always been passionate about education and hope to one day be in a place
where I can get my PHD. Unfortunately I've opted to relocate and travel for a
couple years which has showed me that online PHDs virtually don't exist. Has
anyone done an online PHD in CS or something similar?

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kyro
You're lucky to have a wife that supportive. I'm about to do something
considered equally as risky, and the support of my SO helps in extinguishing a
lot of the fear and anxiety. I have friends who are not as lucky with SO's
demanding they continue down one career path or another.

Best of luck to you.

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namarkiv
This is awesome! I also have very similar interests and I'm applying for a PhD
this year.

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jamesjguthrie
Good on you John, best of luck.

I'm going to be applying for engineering PhD programmes by this coming January
and I'm in a similar position to you: 28, wife, 2 year old kid, trying for
another, etc.

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tankbot
As someone who assigns little value to academia I would like to say, without
irony or pretense:

Best of luck to you, sir! I hope it's fulfilling, but never to the point of
satisfaction! :)

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kirk21
My main challenge is to keep focus and motivation.

My weekend project to keep me motivated during my PhD:
[http://bohrresearch.com](http://bohrresearch.com)

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hugofirth
The 23rd marks the "...first day of instruction in the first academic year of
my PhD in Computer Science..." at Newcastle University. Good luck :)

------
educating
> Descriptive declarative languages that aren't

Sounds like Ruby! I mean that in a good way.

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marincounty
I never wanted to leave college. Why leave--it's fun and the social benefits
were unbelievable.

Although, I think a college degree is overrated. I truly believe a determined
individual can use the Internet as a substitute for a college degree,
especially Programmers. When I went to school I thought General Education
requirements were a waste of time, but as I aged, I'm glad I was exposed to
philophy, and psychology courses. I'm amazed how many people go through life
not knowing what the Placebo Effect is.(yes--Strunk would be mad, but tired.).

------
polaris9000
Looking back, I regret not having pursued a degree in Physics or Mathematics.
I took the "easy way out" and pursued a liberal arts degree just to be done
with college and move on.

In retrospect, it would have been great to have majored in something that,
perhaps, may have been more difficult but more rewarding in the long run.

Therefore I suggest that, if you have the opportunity to do so, pursue your
PhD. You never know when older age will sneak up on you and you will no longer
have enough time to do so :)

