
Consider applying for grad school - robertwiblin
https://80000hours.org/2017/11/consider-applying-for-a-phd-program-now/
======
dwaltrip
One point jumped out at me, which I haven't seen anyone respond to:

> We are concerned about untrained amateurs going directly into trying to
> solve very difficult global problems. They can then cause harm overall, by
> lowering the average quality of analysis or launching ill-considered
> projects due to a lack of experience or understanding. A PhD reduces the
> risk you’ll accidentally do this.

This point is operating off of a different fundamental paradigm than the
comments here that are talking about opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is
looking at personal benefit, while the above is looking at the effectiveness
at solving hard, large-scale problems.

Obviously, money is important, but for many (often those who are fortunate
enough to have reached a certain income level), it isn't the only thing or
even the primary thing.

I don't have much insight into how true the point actually is, but I found it
to be interesting.

~~~
sebleon
It's not an unreasonable opinion, but I doubt a PhD can make up for lack of
real-world experience. Likely, the best way to get better at solving global
problems is by doing just that for years, preferably alongside others with
more experience.

IMO learn to swim in the pool.

~~~
dwaltrip
I've wondered if working for 10 or so years and then getting a PhD could be a
good strategy.

~~~
rebeccaskinner
I've been in the industry for 12 years and I've been deeply considering going
back to school for a PhD. I love working on fundamental CS and I'd greatly
enjoy the sort of work that I'd have access to during and after a PhD. The
challenge is that, for folks who haven't won the equity lottery or racked up
FAANG RSUs, it's a huge financial challenge to consider going from an
engineering salary to PhD stipend. Considering I still have student loans from
my BS, and a spouse who doesn't work that is also being supported on my
salary, it's almost impossible to figure out the logistics of working on a PhD
full time.

I've found a few programs that are open to considering part-time candidates,
but they are few and far between, and most of the ones who consider it still
strongly recommend against it.

~~~
fouc
Have you heard of
[http://www.mrmoneymustache.com](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com) ? If you
still have student loans after 12 years in the industry, you might want to re-
examine your spending/saving patterns

~~~
rogue7
Just discovered this website, this philosophy looks really interesting! The
ultimate goal of early retirement is appealing, so the discipline has a
purpose. This might get me somewhere, instead of saving for the sake of
getting richer. Thank you for this discovery!

------
nolemurs
> PhDs are intellectually demanding, and not everyone will be able to finish.
> In the US between 41 and 78% of people who start PhDs have finished them
> after ten years, depending on their sub field. Computer and Information
> Science has the lowest graduation rates (41%)

Right...

I've met a good number of PhD dropouts - I am one myself. None of them dropped
out because it was too "intellectually demanding." They all dropped out
because the work was unrewarding, the odds of employment in academia were
poor, and the work in academia was unappealing.

Looking at Computer and Information Science in particular, I might suggest
that high availability of high paying jobs in the private sector is worth
looking at rather than the "intellectually demanding" academic program.

~~~
retsibsi
While I suspect you're right, anecdotal evidence must be fairly weak here. Not
many people would admit to themselves that they weren't up to the intellectual
challenge -- let alone admit it to other people.

~~~
alimw
I guess I'll admit I wasn't up to the intellectual challenge in that, all else
being equal, being smarter might have got me through.

------
Eridrus
I think the context that most commenters are missing here is that this is not
an argument that you will make more money with a PhD.

The focus of 80,000 hours is on "effective altruism" where the goal is to have
the greatest positive impact on the world.

And it's not super hard to believe that there are quite a few jobs that
require a PhD, often due to plain credentialism, that have significantly more
impact than your average software developer at a well paying company.

I'm still not going to do a PhD, but I'm really not the target audience here,
and it's sort of not surprising since 80,000 hours is an outgrowth of academia
itself.

------
3minus1
I was expecting reasons why now is a better climate to apply then in previous
years. That would be interesting, but instead it's a list of generic reasons
to apply for a phd. Yes, I know that phd's can open doors.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
I read the whole article, including the "why not to get a PhD part." I still
thought it was way too kind to the "get a PhD" side of the equation. PhDs
represent a tremendous opportunity cost, and I have not seen good evidence
that they _causally_ improve outcomes in the vast majority of cases.

~~~
Nimitz14
This may shock you, but some people prefer doing research to working a normal
job and earning lots of money. Those are the types of people that should and
will do PhDs (there are unfortunately a lot who think like you and still try
and do a PhD for god knows what reason).

~~~
TTPrograms
You don't need a PhD to do research. All information is free now. It's fully
possible for individuals to self teach in a working environment and be capable
of performing effective research with 2-4 years of good experience after
undergrad. To assume that the only way to accomplish this is via PhD is silly.
This is especially the case when talking about computer science fields, where
the barrier to entry is basically owning a cell phone.

~~~
newen
Not everyone is a certified genius like Grigori Perelman who can do great
research while living in a vacuum. You need great advisors who will guide you,
and fellow grad students who you can ask for help and bounce ideas off. The
academic enviroment is invaluable for someone doing their PhD, and it's pretty
much impossible for someone with somewhat above average intelligence (and
let's face it, most PhD's are not geniuses) to do good research with just a
computer.

The "all information is free and you can study anything using just a computer"
is a stupid meme that doesn't work for the vast majority of people.

~~~
TTPrograms
My statement is not that people can't benefit from a PhD, but that it is not a
strict requirement. You are presenting a strawman.

~~~
newen
What is that strawman exactly? You are saying that anyone can do PhD level
research with just a laptop and the internet. I am saying that that is
extremely difficult and impossible for the vast majority of people.

~~~
coolwhhip
Maybe I’m misreading, but the strawman seems to be that research can be done
in a vacuum without collaborating.

The parent commenter seems to be suggesting that a PhD isn’t a requirement to
work successfully on interesting research problems. It’s possible to go online
and read the same papers everyone’s reading. You can still talk to people to
get guidance and find out known things that are not published.

~~~
newen
Ya I guess it was something of a strawman. But it's pretty close to the truth
since it's very hard to get good guidance outside academia or places like
google with lots of phds around.

------
sevensor
Nothing in the article about what one really learns in a Ph.D. program. Here
are the things you only learn in a Ph.D. program, more or less in
chronological order:

1\. What kind of information you will find in each section of a research paper
in your field.

2\. What are the major research programs in your field and where they
disagree.

3\. How to identify where a paper's author stands with respect to the major
disagreements in your field.

4\. How to decide that a paper isn't worth your time without reading all of
it.

5\. How do you write a research paper?

6\. How do you decide what research to do? (This decision will often be made
for you for the first couple of years.)

7\. Where you stand with respect to the major disagreements in your field.

8\. How to synthesize half a decade's work into a realtively brief document.

Notably, these skills don't help you do any of the following:

1\. Manage a research group in an academic setting.

2\. Teach undergraduates.

3\. Manage people in industry.

You might pick up applicable skills along the way, but these are incidental.
Any specific skill, any particular knowledge, can be obtained without getting
a Ph.D. The Ph.D. teaches what you need to know to advance the field.

I'd like to return for a second to talk about teaching undergraduates. It's a
very important thing to do. Ph.D. training _ought_ to include pedagogy.
Standards for university instruction are shockingly low, and professors are
rarely held to account for failing to teach the material well, especially at
R1 institutions. However this comment is not about what you should learn, but
about what you'll actually learn in a Ph.D. program if you decide to enroll
tomorrow.

~~~
adminprof
I agree with your main point here, but I think you're trying to paint and
overly broad claim about PhD programs, which are extremely different between
institutions. It's like saying "working at a company is like this... you learn
this but not that."

Specifically,

1\. Senior PhD students in many research groups can become de facto managers
of the group, especially when the professor is on sabbatical. PhD students are
often involved in the funding, presentations, recruitment, and represent the
group. Some PIs/professors empower their PhD students to run a mini research
group within their group.

2\. I've seen some PhD programs have a strong emphasis on teaching
undergraduates, both as in teaching undergraduate courses directly (which many
PhD students in the humanities and social science already do), serving as
teaching assistants with a substantive educational role (not just grading),
and mentoring them in research or more general advising. For example, Brown
University and Princeton are known to have a good research-teaching balance
for PhD students. Brown has a large number of programs that help PhD students
get more involved in undergraduate teaching
[[https://www.brown.edu/sheridan/programs-
services/certificate...](https://www.brown.edu/sheridan/programs-
services/certificates)]

------
s0rce
Huge opportunity cost for 5-8 years, think carefully. Also, very very few jobs
in academia so don't plan on those. Was interesting and learned a lot, not
sure the most useful use of those years.

~~~
shoo
indeed. a few folks in the FIRE (financial independence / retire early) space
talk about being able to save enough money to be retired or semi-retired from
7-8 years of full-time work (this doesn't require FAANG scale salaries, just a
combination of working somewhere that pays pretty well, not spending much
money, building up investments, and luck to avoid getting clobbered with huge
medical expenses. and the luck to start from a context where this might be an
option for you at all)

edit: adding a few links to reading material

One of the main things is to focus on maximising your savings rate, i.e. your
amount of savings divided by your revenue (for most people this would be their
income from their job, minus income tax). You can increase this by making
lifestyle changes that let you sustainably decrease your expenses, and by
getting a job that pays you more, or other sources of income.

William Bernstein has written a bit about investment and asset allocation. He
has a free publication titled "If You Can" geared at young people to help them
plan for retirement:
[http://efficientfrontier.com/ef/0adhoc/2books.htm](http://efficientfrontier.com/ef/0adhoc/2books.htm)
One of his general pieces of advice is to invest 15% of income every year into
low-fee investment funds, i.e. to achieve a savings rate of 15%. If you do
this consistently for around 30 or 40 years, you can retire.

Things get much more extreme for higher savings rates. For example, if you hit
a savings rate of around 75% year after year (saving three quarters of what
you earn after tax) and invest this, then with some assumptions about rates of
return on investment, after about 8 years there should be enough income from
investments to cover your expenses:

[https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement](https://networthify.com/calculator/earlyretirement)

[https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-
si...](https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-
behind-early-retirement/)

You need to be a bit careful re: assumptions about stock market returns over
the next few years or decades, some markets (e.g. the US stock market) are
priced very highly compared to historical prices, so assumptions about rates
of return from investment that seemed reasonable a decade ago are probably
over-estimates now.

~~~
BadassFractal
Interesting, where does one learn more about that?

~~~
cmpolis
[http://reddit.com/r/financialindependence](http://reddit.com/r/financialindependence)

------
dm8
Looks like author is focusing on grad school as in PhD only. PhD highly
depends on the field. For example in hardcore sciences, to accelerate career
PhD is often helpful. However, in applied fields it depends on industry to
industry.

I was doing my masters with focus on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). I was
considering PhD but after talking with academic advisor, I realized having PhD
will limit my options to either research labs or academia, for which jobs are
few and far between. For industry jobs, I felt I didn't need PhD. Yes, you
might be few steps below in the ladder but you can quickly catch-up as you
climb.

So everyone should seriously consider where they want to end up. If research
is something they fancy and their field has ample research opportunities or
can be leg up in the industry with PhD then PhD is a great option given the
opportunity costs.

------
teekno
I'm very interested in (applied) AI research positions but wasn't quite
prepared to commit 5-8 years to a PhD program. In order to validate my
interest in research, I've enrolled in a two year Computer Science Master's
program at Tsinghua University. This program has a thesis component, allowing
me to participate in research and potentially get a publication. Depending on
how much I enjoy the content, I plan on applying to AI fellowships, a PhD
program, or Machine Learning Engineering positions after graduation.

Thought the program hasn't started yet, I hope that this is an alternative
path for those interested in research but not quite ready for a full PhD.

------
azhenley
If anyone wants a PhD by studying how to make software engineers more
productive, my website is in my profile.

~~~
jarsin
To increase productivity of engineers include the following in all employment
contracts:

"All engineers will become as rich as the founders and investors if this
company succeeds."

Instant productivity increase.

~~~
analog31
This is a tautology. The more you are paid, the more productive you are by
definition.

~~~
azhenley
This morning I listened to the Freakonomics podcast from July 18th about “Why
we choke”.

About 22 minutes in, a researcher is discussing a study he did where they paid
participants a months wage for a single task to see if they would perform
better. They didn’t. They actually performed worse! A follow up study at MIT
found this to be particularly true for cognitive tasks.

Would this apply to a job over time instead of a single task? Probably not,
but I’m also not convinced that salary will increase productivity after some
relatively low amount.

~~~
analog31
I think there's "productivity" from two standpoints. In the worker's eyes,
she's more productive if she's paid more, by definition. In the employer's
eyes, she's more productive if she produces more for the company, by
definition.

A classic "efficient" market should close any gaps between these two
definition, but it doesn't work perfectly in practice.

------
mchahn
I assume this refers to a PHD. The masters degree I got is also post-grad.

I'm not sure if anyone else covered it but you have to have a certain amount
of money to get a PHD. I was approved to enter a doctorate program at
Stanford. I couldn't afford it so I went to HP to earn some money. After the
five-year approval expired I was disappointed that I could never afford it.
(We're talking astronomical numbers here).

~~~
analog31
When I was a student 30 years ago, the rule of thumb was: Don't get a graduate
degree unless someone else is paying for it. In my field (physics), a first or
second tier school would provide free tuition plus a stipend if they expected
to get any students.

Don't know how things are now, or how they are in other fields.

Now, of course free wasn't exactly free, because studying in grad school was
potentially at the expense of working a regular job. That's another topic.

~~~
Fomite
Yep. If they're not funding you, it's both _a bad idea_ and a soft reject.

Hell, last I looked, Standford won't even _let_ you self-fund all the way
through, at least in my field.

------
scottlocklin
Getting a Ph.D. for career reasons is like taking up drug addiction for
creative writing reasons. Source: I have a Ph.D.

------
syntaxing
I'm a MechE so this is probably different compared to software. A masters is
far better in terms of ROI compared to PhD. I seriously contemplated to
complete my PhD after my masters but an additional ~4 years of school was not
worth it financially. Your wage is not much different (though the type of work
and responsibility might be different) and sometimes masters + 4-5 years
actually make more than a PhD grad. Also, you make a full wage 4-5 year
earlier. That meant a lot for me in terms of starting my own family and such.

------
pazimzadeh
I can't wait until you can make new strains of E. coli on your desktop/iPad.
Time in grad school is often spent cloning. It would be really great if there
were more community-accessible Core facilities available on a subscription
service.

~~~
rubatuga
I remember specifically looking at cloud labs because of your sentiment above.
Unfortunately, they aren’t that advanced yet.

------
ransom1538
I know this isn't popular. But I will say it - since I know it goes unspoken
in the industry. When I see a CS MS degree I assume the person is terrible. I
am _always_ proved correct. I can count on one hand resumes of people that
gets a CS BS degree _THEN_ a MS degree in CS [15 years of looking at resumes].
In the US, if you get a BS in CS you usually take off doing cool stuff. CS
Master degrees are full of people not majoring in CS for the right reason [eg,
never played with computers as a kid]. If computers were your passion you
would have got a BS in it.

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
My experience is the opposite of yours. Oh look, we cancel out. Hurray for
anecdotes and biases!

~~~
monocasa
I mean, if they're coming from a different major, it's the equivalent of
hiring people after sophomore year. If they haven't been programming outside
that, that frankly isn't enough time to be a good programmer.

~~~
BugsJustFindMe
What a weirdly specific statement that has little connection to the parent or
reality.

Remember that we're responding to:

> _I can count on one hand resumes of people that gets a CS BS degree THEN a
> MS degree in CS [15 years of looking at resumes]._

In fact most people who get an MS in CS got a BS in CS first. And all MS
programs have prerequisites.

------
miguelrochefort
I always wanted to get a PhD, but I don't have a BS.

Is there any way I can skip the BS?

~~~
BadassFractal
Bill Gates did it, so I guess it's possible?

~~~
chrisseaton
Bill Gates didn't do it - he doesn't have a PhD at all. He has honorary
doctorates, but that's not really what we're talking about here.

~~~
DoreenMichele
I think that's the entire point: Gates has honorary doctorates without ever
getting a bachelor's. So, yeah, some people have gotten a doctorate while
skipping the BS (if we assume BS means Bachelor of Science).

------
BadassFractal
Interesting contrast to the recent wave of posts about how you should
absolutely not go for academia in the current market of having 1 job spot for
every 3 PhDs. What's one to make of this?

~~~
currymj
80,000 Hours is a website made by members of a very particular subculture. The
“prototypical” PhD they’re imagining is in computer science, probably with a
focus on machine learning, probably at a highly-ranked school, by someone who
went to a highly-ranked undergrad.

Job prospects are relatively good. Pay is bad but industry internships during
summer can compensate. Academic jobs are not quite as scarce, and R&D jobs in
industry are plentiful. There is not an air of failure or taboo about moving
on from academia after the degree.

The calculation on a PhD is very different compared to most other fields, and
certainly compared to humanities PhDs (which actually charge money to attend!)

~~~
gil_rutter
This, also their audience is people trying to optimise for improving the world
rather than making money.

------
j7ake
Of course here is a counterpoint from Jonathan Katz , a professor of physics,
about doing graduate school.

[http://katz.fastmail.us/scientist.html](http://katz.fastmail.us/scientist.html)

TL;DR. Don't do it!

~~~
pdfernhout
From that article: "Why am I (a tenured professor of physics) trying to
discourage you from following a career path which was successful for me?
Because times have changed (I received my Ph.D. in 1973, and tenure in 1976).
American science no longer offers a reasonable career path. If you go to
graduate school in science it is in the expectation of spending your working
life doing scientific research, using your ingenuity and curiosity to solve
important and interesting problems. You will almost certainly be disappointed,
probably when it is too late to choose another career."

People saying related things:

[http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-
science](http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science)

[http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/](http://disciplinedminds.tripod.com/)

[https://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html](https://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20130115173649/http://www.villag...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130115173649/http://www.villagevoice.com/2004-04-20/news/wanted-
really-smart-suckers/1/)

A previous comment I made with quotes from those links four months ago with
various replies (then the topics was "Time to talk about why so many postgrads
have poor mental health"):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16725676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16725676)

For all that, there are many good STEM-related jobs which seem to require a
PhD these days, so obviously there are nuances to the topic and whether a PhD
is worth it. If you are getting a PhD and someone else is paying for it
(current job or a fellowship) and you already know and like the professor who
you will be working for, and you already know of a good industry job prospect
(in five to seven years, so hard to predict), and you like academic work, then
it may not be quite as financially risky as otherwise (although it still may
be emotionally draining). Also, if you are independently wealthy and do a PhD
for fun, then again a PhD can make sense.

For people in the USA thinking about getting a PhD, consider schools in
Western Europe as they tend to be more research-oriented with less-to-no
classroom busywork.

It's sad things have come to this in a country with as much wealth as the USA
-- especially given how much advanced research can (in theory) potentially
improve people's lives if you are allowed to research such things.

Bottom line: as people have said here, a PhD represents a tremendous
opportunity cost with a significant risk of having nothing to show for it.

------
shawn
I'd like to. Do graduate programs accept devs who have been working the last
decade?

There are areas I feel I could be helpful with, e.g. creating reproducible
experiments or ensuring a codebase could be open sourced in relation to a
paper. It's a lot of grunt work that nobody really has time to do.

If that were possible, I'm not quite sure where to start with executing that
plan. (Chicago area, FWIW.)

~~~
hideo
I'm in the same boat - The PhD admissions proces over-indexes on Letters of
Recommendation from other academics. I don't think I can get those because I
have not actively stayed in touch with my professors.

I went through the existing process once and promised myself I would never
waste that much time again. But if there's a program that genuinely values
industry experience, and is willing to look past recommendation letters from
academics, I'd jump at it.

~~~
mxwsn
A significant number of PhDs drop out, and likely literally everyone undergoes
some sort of huge realization of how doing a PhD is completely and
surprisingly unlike what they expected (which is still true even with all the
advice telling people that doing a PhD will be surprisingly unlike what you
expect). Someone dropping out of a lab is a significant loss in time and
resource investment which labs would prefer to avoid, and the biggest
predictor for staying in a PhD is substantial experience doing research (to
have some sense of what the lifestyle is like) and little experience with
higher paying jobs (here at MIT, I see many PhD programs prefer people
straight out of undergrad, even though older people are orders of magnitude
more productive in the early phase of their PhD).

