
The first two years of my PhD - rachitnigam
https://rachitnigam.com/post/first-two-years/
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helixc
Chatting with friends or their kids, I often got asked if I liked my PhD
study. They tried to figure out if PhD is worthwhile for them or their kids to
pursue.

I liked it a lot because: 1) I had a great relationship with my professor. 2)
I published often. 3) I traveled a lot, to carry experiments in national labs,
to present in conferences, to visit universities and other research groups. 4)
My living cost was low, and I enjoyed my lifestyle.

As a matter of fact, in any career, these 4 things (working with great
leaders; being productive; expanding a professional network; maintaining
positive cash flow) can lead to a happy life.

~~~
Gimpei
I think it all depends on your supervisor and so it can be a real crapshoot.
My supervisor was largely absent (saw him two times a year) and unhelpful. I
didn't enjoy my PhD although I am glad I learned the material.

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BazookaMusic
Thank you for the insight on the PhD life. I just finished my master's thesis
and working on a paper submission for an automatic RCU framework.

I was recently hired by a FAANG company and wil be starting soon but I have a
nagging feeling that the life path I would prefer lies in academia. I have
seen a lot of posts detailing the horrors of PhDs and was surprised at the
balance of your post. You lose some battles and you win others. In all cases,
I bet the feeling of overcoming the hurdles with a stroke of inspiration makes
the experience worth it.

So thank you for this post!

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throwaway4585
PhDs can be markedly different depending on your boss (advisor). They are also
_very_ different from America to, say, Europe.

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dunefox
In which regards do they differ in the US vs. Europe?

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throwaway4585
Many PhDs in America expect you to be self-supporting, so you have to take up
a loan. I believe the practice is explicitly forbidden in most European
countries, so you have to earn funding before starting your research (I could
be wrong on this, especially regarding the social sciences). PhDs in America
also last way longer, 6+ years vs. 5 years max, generally 3 or 4 in most of
Europe.

Also, and this is veering into anecdotal stuff, PhD students in Europe tend to
be fresh out of university, in their early to mid twenties, and their life is
still a bit of a mess in many aspects, much of it due to their being in the
middle of a PhD with a close and looming deadline. Their American counterparts
tend to be more stable and 'adult', have a spouse and kids, maybe partly due
to the fact that they start later and take longer.

There are other aspects such as many American labs being much larger so the PI
can become some sort of distant god-like figure that you hardly ever meet. Of
course all of it is a huge generalization from my lived experience and that of
people I know, so other people should feel free to chime in and correct what
I've said.

Some things don't change though - everyone is underpaid.

~~~
aroch
I don't think you have a great grasp on the PhD process in the US

A vanishingly small number of people are paying for their own PhD in the US.
You are expected to be _funded_ though. Most programs give you 1-2 years of
guaranteed funding (either through research or teaching assistantships) to
give you time to find a PI if you didn't start the program with one and apply
to grants. Having to secure grants is much different than paying your own way.

Most PhD students are either directly out of a bachelor's program or worked,
maybe 2 years, in the field they want to do a PhD in. They're still most
definitely in their early to mid-twenties. Are you thinking post-docs?

Length of stay is really dependent on your field of study and your specific
work. I have friends who took 3 years to do computationally focused doctorates
and some who took 6 years to do biology focused ones. You simply cannot make
living things grow faster through sheer force of will.

I guess my last note would be that there's a reason US biology/biochem/bioME
PhDs are paid a premium over their European colleagues internationally. And
that's probably related to time spent getting their degrees and the depth and
breadth of their experiences in the process

~~~
throwaway4585
Like I said, this is my (limited) experience and that of people I know. It was
also a number of years ago. But good on you for taking the time to correct me.

>there's a reason US biology/biochem/bioME PhDs are paid a premium over their
European colleagues internationally

Are they though? In many academia institutions wages are fixed.

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aroch
The vast majority of STEM PhDs are not staying in academia. The handful of
recent grads I know who did stay in academia are, as I would put it, in
academia-lite. They're in industry and privately sponsored positions or
institutes, that pay quite well. Take a look at, say, the Broad Institute at
MIT or the Allen Institutes in Seattle. Both are large, academic institutions
that pay industry competitive wages.

~~~
throwaway4585
Oh, then if you're counting industry PhDs I'm not sure how your argument about
Americans getting a premium is that well-founded. The US (like many Western
countries, but to an even greater extent) has a very strong NIH syndrome, and
Europeans themselves are often taught endlessly to sell themselves because
they're not assertive enough in their presentations, CVs, SOPs, what have you.

And of course there's the matter that most wages in Europe in the qualified
labor force are way lower in general than their American counterparts. I've
always thought it was more or less due to research being underprioritized in
Europe but maybe that's about to change in the light of current events ;-)

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melling
“ I kept feeling that the OCaml codebase was slowing me down so I rewrote
Dahlia in Scala and implemented memory views.”

Wonder if that’s because he was more familiar with Java? OCaml appears to be a
simpler language than Scala.

~~~
rachitnigam
Author here.

\- not really. I have a bunch of experience writing ocaml. I wouldn’t ascribe
any good technical reason to this. A lot of research prototyping is finding
something you enjoy writing rather than finding the optimal thing to use.
Often you’re the only person working on it over the course of many years.

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marceloabsousa
Seems pretty standard -- expect more of the same :-) Congrats on the PLDI
paper!

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Sol-
Interesting to read about your experience, thanks for sharing!

