
American Employers Are Hung Up on Hiring PhDs - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-27/american-employers-are-hung-up-on-hiring-ph-d-s
======
nostrademons
I worked with a bunch of a Ph.Ds at Google, and my dad had one. I myself have
nothing more than a bachelor's, and no desire to get anything more.

I've heard and observed that the Ph.D teaches you one crucial skill - how to
take a vaguely defined research problem that nobody has done before, where
you're not even sure that a solution exists, and make tangible, rigorous
progress on it. Your actual doctoral topic as a Ph.D student will probably be
useless. Most of your coursework is the same as what any master's degree gives
you. But the experience that sets you apart from B.S. and M.S. graduates is
that of slogging through a dissertation, trying to make an original
contribution to knowledge.

There are other ways to develop this skillset. Founding a company does it as
well, as does developing a new product from scratch. High-level creative work
(eg. writing a novel, getting traction for your band, producing a theatrical
performance or radio show) does as well. Companies love to hire candidates
from these backgrounds as well, but most don't want to work for someone else.
(Interestingly, depression and anxiety might actually be a feature of
developing this skillset, not a bug - these two mental disorders are endemic
among these fields as well.)

The reason employers get hung up on this is because the economic returns to
innovation are at an all-time high these days, and so developing that
blockbuster new product or highly-efficient new process makes a lot of money.
And part of the reason returns to innovation are so high is because so few
people are actually innovating. While there certainly exist people with just a
bachelors or even no degree at all who are capable of innovating, a large
number of bachelor's holders do not have the toolset or mental fortitude to
break out beyond what everybody else knows and create _new_ knowledge.

~~~
ska
Here is a hand-wavy characterization that is hopefully useful. A bachelors
degree in X is meant to take you from nearly zero to "thinking like an X", it
is the high points of sometimes centuries of thought in an area, summarized
and you are handheld through the process. A masters degree will bridge the gap
between the "nice" standard courses and the "messy" current research front.
It's meant to get you to the point of reading current research effectively. A
Ph.D. is mean to bridge you from understanding to contributing (as the focus
of your work). When you've finished it, you should be expert in one or two
very narrow areas, but also have the tools to make yourself expert in others.

Of course you can learn things without this structure, but having a phd is a
reasonable short hand for ability in independent innovation, perhaps companies
lean on it a bit much, but that is not unique to phds.

The main problem I've had bridging phd's to commercial work is hitting the
right focus on skill development in areas that were deficient/missing in their
course of study. A classic example, a lot of technical phds who have
programmed every day for many years ... are not skilled programmers. They can
become so, but have to want to learn (and not dismiss it as "trivial")

~~~
entee
I'd add that a PhD in the sciences is like getting punched in the face by
mother nature every day with a, "hah! try again!". The rigorous thought
process that cultivates by the end is hard to replicate without those very
hard constraints. It's possible to do, I've met tons of people who have that
same rigor without having wasted the time in a PhD, but it's quite an
effective method.

When I've worked with non-PhDs in a science environment, it's the rigorous
breakdown of experimental approach that's often missing. Unless the individual
had a really strong track record demonstrating this skill, I'd heavily favor
PhDs for biotech/science positions on a leadership track.

That said, I'm quite biased, have to justify the years I lost somehow :)

~~~
rxhernandez
I haven't seen that at all. To preface the rest, most of everyone I've worked
with over the past 6 years had a PhD in electrical engineering, physics or
chemistry from top 10 universities (about 20+ people). Maybe 30% had the
ability to pick apart an experiment rigorously, most of them would hand wave
themselves through the steps in experiments leaving obvious gaping holes that
required unnecessary iterations on the experiment. I rarely trusted
experimental results unless it came from those 30% of people. Frankly, I have
come to see a PhD as expensive piece of paper that is unique in that it
indicates you're not a complete idiot.

Moreover, I only have a bachelor's, but I had 6 years of training and
humiliating embarrassments from those 30% of people, which I believe strongly
contributed to my experimental rigor. I dont know that every person with a PhD
has dealt with that kind of pain and would be biased against people that
haven't dealt with that pain.

~~~
hnuser355
I mean PhD might be a piece of paper but most people I know who do them in
marketable fields don’t pay tuition and get paid assistantships

~~~
rxhernandez
When I say expense, I mean your time, your youth and the fact that you could
have been getting paid a lot more in that time period; all of which are very
expensive things to ask of anyone.

~~~
dxbydt
> you could have been getting paid a lot more in that time

I'm sure you are familiar with the concept of fuckyou money. Its a different
number for different people.

Say that number is 5. I will give you many examples below. Every example is a
real living person. I personally know every one of these people.

(enterprise programmer in stodgy bank in usa) 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5

(enterprise programmer in stodgy bank in poor country) 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5 + ... +
0.5 = 5

( steady progress in startup until faang acquired it) 0.5 + 0.8 + 1.2 + 1.2 +
1.3 + 6 > 5

( many failed startups in valley until 1 success) 0.5 + 0.8 + -2 + 0.5 + 0.7 +
-2 + 0.5 + 20 >> 5

( phd student whose invention was purchased by salesforce ) 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 +
0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 15 >> 5

( phd student who ended up in fang ) 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 2 + 3
> 5

etc.

~~~
rxhernandez
I mean if we're going by anecdotes:

\- I made more on my first day of work than almost any of my professors will
make on their last day work.

\- I also personally know 3 PhDs at tech companies in the Bay that make
substantially less than me despite being 4-6 years older than me.

\- I am also acquainted with two people that made an obscene amount of money
from their tech skills; one maxed out at a high diploma and the other a PhD.

\- The other 20 or so PhDs I know don't make substantially more than I do.

\- I've also seen a few PhDs at my last company end up as systems engineers
which is incredibly depressing because they could have been employed in that
same role if they stopped at a bachelors.

~~~
Osmium
> I've also seen a few PhDs at my last company end up as systems engineers
> which is incredibly depressing because they could have been employed in that
> same role if they stopped at a bachelors.

It’s only depressing if they feel like they didn’t get anything out of their
PhD :)

------
stirfrykitty
Very few jobs require PhDs. Tech most certainly doesn't. I've been in this
industry across three decades now, and by far the most talented people I've
worked for or with have had nothing but <wait for it...> HS diplomas and AS
degrees. That's right. The bottom rung education levels.

My dearest mentor, a man who has forgotten more about *nix, coding, and about
anything else than I will ever know has a HS diploma and can and does run
rings around everyone else. He has a mind like a steel trap. All of the great
coders I have known had, at best, a BS or BA, none of them in an actual IT
discipline.

Anyone can learn to code, be a great sysadmin, or a network guru. All it takes
is want power. If you want it bad enough, you will get there. In fact, I'll
hire a person who has changed careers into IT who is smart and hungry over a
simpering PhD candidate who thinks they are the cat's pajamas. There are some
calls for PhDs, but not many. It's a badge of some sort for companies to show
they have "smart" people. PhDs are great at research, not so much at actual
doing things. This has been my experience with working with more than a few.

~~~
JamesBarney
I've thought about this before because I've found the same thing. I think it's
caused by an over reliance on education as a signal.

If you have a stack of resumes you're likely to interview everyone with a PhD,
but only the ones with the most stellar github profile if they have no formal
education.

During the interview if the PhD says something silly you'll probably disregard
it. But the person without a formal education needs to be on point.

These and other filters means that a mediocre PhD can get through the hiring
gauntlet but only the most kick ass high school graduates can make it through.

~~~
x0x0
I'm a hiring manager who interviews a lot.

In my experience, high performance in difficult degrees at good schools are a
very strong indicator of future success.

We find gems outside the above profile, but it holds true even across the
people we've hired from code schools.

~~~
pmiller2
Didn’t Google find no useful correlation between either GPA or school attended
and job performance? I’m not sure if they categorized people by “easy” or
“hard” degrees.

~~~
ylmm
What defines a "useful" correlation?

~~~
pmiller2
Strong enough to bother trying to figure out if there’s a causal relationship.

------
freyir
Throughout most of my career, my PhD has felt like a liability. Especially
when I've sought out a non-research-oriented position. Employers seem
skeptical that I might rather spend my day coding a product I believe in,
rather than solving esoteric research problems.

In the case of many PhD degrees, you devote yourself to studying a niche topic
in great depth for several years. In the end, employers might see that you
wrote a paper like "Electron vortex beams with high quanta of orbital angular
momentum" (picking some academic paper at random), and have a tough time
connecting that to their day-to-day needs. So I understand why employers have
been cautious.

Not to mention, a non-negligible number of PhDs are incompetent at doing
anything hands-on. And even when it comes to research, many are experts at
coming up with overcomplicated solutions to non-existent problems.

~~~
coliveira
You're talking to the wrong people. Get out of any job that doesn't appreciate
what you have. Many companies, especially the big ones, are crazy about
getting PhDs to do work that requires a lot of analytical thinking, instead of
simply writing the next CRUD app in javascript.

~~~
HenryKissinger
The point of the article is that companies, especially the big ones, shouldn't
be so eager to hire people with PhDs.

------
ylmm
I think it depends a lot on what it is that you want to do. For example, there
are entire teams at companies like Facebook (Core Data Science) and Netflix
that hire exclusively people with PhDs. Amazon especially is famous for hiring
economists. Microsoft pours huge sums of money into Microsoft Research where
the only goal is to fund research with relatively little (short-run) profit
motive.

But if you're not on one of these research-oriented teams, then I think it's
easy to look at PhDs on your own team and think of them as worthless when in
fact they were trained for a pretty different set of things. There's the thing
about judging a fish's ability to climb a tree. People seem relatively eager
(see other comments) to rip into people with doctoral training for some
reason.

~~~
tinyhouse
But there's a difference. Microsoft Research indeed hires mostly PhDs as
researchers. That makes sense since they do academic research and publish
papers like they are in academia. People with PhDs spent years in grad school
doing exactly that.

In other places it makes less sense. And it's good not to make
generalizations. If we take ML as an example, there are many excellent people
without a PhD and also many PhDs that are great engineers and can write code
as good as the best engineers.

~~~
ylmm
Ah, I think you've misunderstood entirely.

I meant the teams in those companies as opposed to the companies more broadly
(e.g., Core Data Science at Facebook, not Facebook in general). I mention
those companies together because they're well-known for investing a lot in
research (e.g., by hiring PhDs). And in these cases, they're hiring PhDs for
reasons that are totally different from the reasons for which they hire
engineers (who may also have doctorates). For example, there is indeed a
difference between the institution-level goals of Facebook and Microsoft
Research, but that difference is less substantial between researchers at Core
Data Science at Facebook and researchers on the Computational Social Science
team at Microsoft Research.

I'm making the point that there is a difference in the value of a PhD
depending on where in the company you work. For the research-oriented teams,
the value of a PhD lies in the fact that you've ostensibly been trained to
contribute to what we know, rather than just applying it.

Going along with your ML example, the difference would be like comparing
Athey, Tibshirani, and Wager's work on generalizing random forests against
building a random forest using scikit-learn. I'm not saying that someone
without a PhD can't write the paper that they did, but it's for sure not at
all just a matter of who's better at writing code.

------
apo
I didn't see anything other than anecdotes to back up the claim in the title.
Did I miss something?

Also, anyone thinking about a PhD owes it to themselves to understand
firsthand what that means before getting started. There is an excellent, low-
cost way to do this by joining a research group in your field of interest at
your undergrad university.

In every case, the students I saw who had the roughest time during their PhD
were those who had not even bothered to try doing research during their
bachelors.

A PhD degree is about conceiving and completing _original research_. If you've
never done it, it's easy to overlook these points:

1\. Your research project will isolate you. Almost nobody will really
understand your project and few will care.

2\. It will be thankless, praiseless work for the most part. Don't look to
your advisor for high-fives.

3\. Your project may fail after years of effort.

4\. Your research group will have a lot to do with your success. You won't
even know what to look for until you've seen a research group in action
firsthand.

If any of these points bother you now, seek answers to your questions pronto -
and don't even think of enrolling in a PhD program until you're ok with 1-4.

~~~
Eridrus
This is yet another anecdote, but have a look at ML roles at tech companies,
most write that they want someone with a Masters/PhD. They will hire people
without it, but that's what they write on the tin.

------
freyir
The current "PhD hang up" in tech, if it exists at all, seems to be driven by
the competition for ML talent (edit: _ML research talent_ ).

To some extent, this is understandable: a typical undergrad CS curriculum is
terrible preparation for ML research. I'd even say almost any analytical
field: statistics, signal processing, physics, math, etc. is better
preparation for working in ML than a conventional undergrad CS curriculum. But
PhD in CS with specialization in ML/AI would be ideal for most employers,
since exposure to more advanced stats, linear algebra, estimation theory, etc.
becomes likely.

The other factor is that ML research is moving quickly and knowledge is being
rapidly disseminated in academic conferences. A PhD has an advantage there
over a typical undergrad, since they've already spent years learning to parse
academic literature.

~~~
valzam
Have you ever worked on ML systems in industry? 90% of all your problems are
engineering problems. The myth that you should hire some STEM PhD because they
are good at math is ridiculous.

I have worked at several AI/ML firms. Only in extremely rare circumstances do
your problems require PhD level ML knowledge. But the amount of tech debt
produced by 'scientists' is horrendous.

Can someone who studied CS 15 years ago and has since worked as a webdev
produce robust ML systems? Probably not without significant training. But
someone who has done a CS Masters in the last 5-7 years and has shown interest
in the subject will run circles around a PhD who never had to write non-
academic code.

~~~
newen
From my experience, 90% of CS undergrads hate math and don't want to do math.
And make that 80% of undergrads doing "research" in machine learning. PhD is a
pretty good filter to filter out people who don't like math.

Also PhD's simply have more years experience in writing code than MS
graduates. So your comment about circles don't make sense. What makes you say
PhD's write worse code? And please don't compare the code they write alongside
their research to production code, because research code is throwaway code
(seriously).

~~~
throwawy201903
For a CS PhD, I think it's safe to say they got into CS because they have some
interest in coding. But that's not _always_ the case for students in other
STEM fields. There are plenty of PhD's who were never formally trained in
software and their advisors (especially older advisors) consider programming
ability akin to operating a TI-83+.

------
ivalm
I think technical PhD is simply used as a filter for people who:

1) Have some aptitude for intellectual activity (in a quantitative field)

2) Had to drive a project and face failure

3) Can learn things on their own

Technical expertise is I think usually a distant fourth, since if you have the
first 3 you can generally learn whatever is required.

Do you need a PhD to have these things? Definitely not, but it's a simpler
weed out process.

~~~
o10449366
Agreed. ML is a particularly hot field right now and there are plenty of ML
positions that are locked behind having an advanced degree. That doesn't mean
there aren't people with bachelors degrees working in those positions, but in
my experience unless you have years of experience or a personal connection it
can be very difficult to get your foot in the door. A PhD provides evidence of
a candidate's expertise that's difficult to obtain without an expensive
interview process that's flooded with unqualified applicants.

------
spectramax
I work in a semiconductor company and we have process engineers as PhDs.
Development of a semiconductor process has little deep technical work and more
about managing suppliers, process characterization and lots of statistics.

But we have folks with deep technical know how and PHD in some esoteric
subject of proton-proton collision inside a nuclear reactor core developing
ball attach processes on BGA chip packages or working on chip shooters. It
makes no sense.

Also, these PhDs are terribly unhappy and usually on H1-B visa locked in and
unable to change jobs.

~~~
sevensor
I used to work in the semiconductor industry, and I left to get a PhD.
Unlikely I'd go back. The PhDs we had were a statistician and a materials
characterization engineer. The former was ignored and then fired because he
kept telling people that their statistical procedures didn't work, and the
latter spent a ton of time doing TEM sample prep.

~~~
HenryKissinger
> The former was ignored and then fired because he kept telling people that
> their statistical procedures didn't work

Why did they hire him then?

~~~
sevensor
He was supposed to reassure them that their statistical procedures worked, not
explain how they could be fixed. His technical notes were an education for me,
but they bruised too many egos.

------
king_magic
Work as a data scientist in AI. Have seen absolutely no evidence (either from
my own personal observations, or from others) that PhD/masters are
quantitatively or qualitatively better than folks without, outside of very
specific scenarios (materials sciences, or very deep specific applied
statistics - and even then, stats BS majors can generally knock balls out of
the park).

~~~
minimaxir
Unfortunately, hiring for data science is now pretty much exclusive to having
a Masters/PhD beforehand as a filter. (it wasn't _as_ bad a year ago, but data
science now is at a point where candidate supply is outstripping demand)

~~~
stakhanov
Honestly, I don't think that it's a bad thing at all to require a Masters/PhD
as a prerequisite for being a data scientist. There are too many people in
this field who just run data through a library in the most obvious way and
when it doesn't work they're out of ideas because they don't understand what
happens inside the library. They're ruining it for the rest of us, because
they're undermining the credibility of the whole field.

Using a library is something you can learn over the course of a vacation by
working through a book or tutorial. But understanding what happens inside the
library is something that you will never just pick up on the job. You do need
actual time, actual training, and interaction with people who already
understand this sort of thing very well over the course of many months or
years.

~~~
king_magic
I don’t disagree with the overall sentiment, I just haven’t seen evidence that
folks with masters/PhDs are actually any better at the above than folks
without, outside of exceptional scenarios.

------
jpm_sd
This sounds insane to me. I will never hire another PhD if I can possibly
avoid it.

I would estimate that I have worked with around 30 PhD-holders in my career.
Consistent issues: no ability to hit deadlines, no sense of the big picture,
easily distracted by irrelevant details.

This kinda says it all.

[https://dilbert.com/strip/2019-01-21](https://dilbert.com/strip/2019-01-21)

~~~
throwaway441
That's funny, because I avoid hiring non-PhDs. They typically don't seem
capable of understanding the concept of sample size and tend to stereotype
large and diverse groups of people based on anecdotal experiences.

------
quotemstr
This is the logical consequence of the watering down of undergraduate degrees
over the past several decades. Employers use education as a way of screening
hires for intelligence, diligence, and other factors. Since undergraduate
education has become something everyone "has" to do, the graduated-from-
undergraduate flag provides minimal signal. The PhD still does, for now.

This signaling game is really wasteful though. As others rightly point out,
people getting these degrees aren't really using PhD skills on the job.
They're wasting some of their most productive years in a zero-sum status game.

More and more lately, I've come to believe that tech companies should just
decline to play this silly game. Hire promising people right out of high
school and tech support them the necessary skills --- bring back the E1 level.
Issue your own aptitude tests if you want. You'll be at a competitive
advantage relative to the people who demand that candidates do well on the
credential treadmill.

------
siruncledrew
Regardless of people's positions on working with PhDs, the article falls flat
in explaining how employers are "hung up on hiring PhDs" based on some low-
level exploratory analysis.

For example, the article's graph of "PhD Proliferation" shows a 20k increase
of PhDs from 1970s-2010s.... but that is a fairly unremarkable presentation to
make on its own when the US population has increased 100M people from 1970 to
2010: [http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-
population/](http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/)

How is the graduate education population different from 1970s to 2010s? What
percentage of college students go on to get PhDs? Is the PhD per capita lower
or higher today than it was back then? What is the PhD breakdown by field over
time? What other factors affect this?

Also, my hypothesis is that employers hire PhDs for their particular research
experience and thesis topic relevant to their business; not just because
someone has a PhD in a technical field. For example, a hedge fund is probably
more likely to hire a PhD quant analyst with a research speciality in
econometrics vs. autonomous driving. Therefore, not all PhDs are equal when it
comes to hiring because the demand varies.

Further, the author says "Master’s or even bachelor’s degree holders are often
highly talented, and many can learn Ph.D.-level research skills on the job as
they go." While it may be true, it's not the point. PhDs are hired not just
for research, but also analysis and insight. Why would an employer pay a PhD
more money than a pure researcher unless they are getting something else out
of it? Nothing says someone needs a PhD to be able to research, but there's a
difference between knowing a skill and having the capacity to learn a skill
over time, which is the distinction in hiring.

------
6gvONxR4sf7o
I wonder how much of this is that bachelor's degrees and many masters don't
require independent work. If you want someone who can ace a class, those
degrees can be great indicators, but a PhD is an indicator of something else.

There aren't many degrees that would indicate the ability to design and run a
good experiment with little guidance, and doing well in a statistical methods
class doesn't cut it, sadly.

~~~
jackcosgrove
My MS program had two paths: coursework only, or 75% of those credits plus a
thesis. I chose the latter as it kept open the chance of getting a PhD, but
ultimately chose to leave after the MS was completed. I found the thesis
experience to be more valuable than the coursework, as I changed focus from
what I studied, and because it taught me what you could call "research grit".

------
coverman
As a data scientist with a BS and MBA, I can attest to having experienced
disqualification for jobs specifically because of my lack of a PhD. What's
troubling is employers _think_ they need PhDs. It often doesn't matter if I
have 10 years experience applying data science in industry, without that PhD
companies think I'm unqualified.

From my perspective, the best data scientists strike a balance between
technical and business knowledge. And it's the business knowledge that PhDs
coming straight from academia often lack.

------
makecheck
My advice would be, interview PhDs _extensively_ and resist the urge to hire
them into senior positions “just because” (as it feels like some of my past
jobs were doing).

I say “interview carefully” to avoid generalizing, as there certainly can be
PhDs that are excellent. It would be wrong however to assume you can glaze
over any lack of experience as if a PhD is some special sign of brilliance;
frankly, they may suck.

I have seen “PhDs” flounder worse than any new grad, and have basic problems
with critical skills like programming. It is frustrating, as you see the slow-
motion failures generated when people are given lots of control without
_really_ having spent a significant amount of time working in teams or
building skills, etc. or even _communicating_.

------
ska
In my experience there are two good reasons for hiring PhDs in some tech
contexts.

1) you need specific, state of the art knowledge, and this person was actively
publishing in that precise area with significant impact.

2) you need good general problem solvers with some technical depth in an area.

If you hire #1, you should build a program around them to capture the
knowledge. This is probably the most efficient way to absorb this as
institutional knowledge. The ratio of these people to other engineering roles
should be 1:fairly big number.

If you hire #2, you should already understand that you are not hiring general
tech employees, and define roles accordingly. If they are new to industry they
will probably have significant skill deficits (as well as significant skills)
and you need a plan to deal with it. They probably are strongly motivated by
spending quite a bit of their time on innovation. Plausible exceptions for
people whose academic work was long ago.

If you're hiring because you think "smart programmer" you're probably doing it
wrong, and will probably both regret it, in my experience.

There is a third model which is essentially building a internal academic
environment, but that is expensive and long term enough not to apply to most
situations.

~~~
fogetti
> They probably are strongly motivated by spending quite a bit of their time
> on innovation

I would rephrase it as spending time on research. Which might or might not be
innovative.

I know for a fact that there is a plethora of applied ML papers where people
simply toy around with the sample set and publish their results. There is
nothing innovative about it. Although it requires some knowledge in feature
analysis and some other in related algorithms and in basic statistics but
that's nothing that cannot be picked up by taking a few months of courses in
applied machine learning.

So really, in fact the only case where that extra knowledge is justified is
your case #1. And even then I am not convinced that these PhDs actually have
ever done anything innovative. There is just too much of a chance that they
simply iterated on existing research ideas in their field and they can only
continue to do so. Which is again not very innovative I think.

------
smn1234
I heard somewhere that stress resilience is at least one skill well-nurtured
while in pursuit of terminal degrees. This can be argued in itself. However,
if correlation is significant - does it become the next valuable "signal" for
employers?

Else, Is this a signal merely because "everyone" is trying to pursue grad
school to stay competitive with bachelor, and a new benchmark is needed?

------
externalreality
The question is: Is a PhD more likely to have the skills necessary to do the
job I need them to do? In my experience the answer is, all else on a resume
being equal, "Yes". Some one with more training and familiarity with research
roles should be given the shot. Also I agree with others in that PhDs are
really good at throwing something workable together. In my experience throwing
something workable together is all we do in tech.

------
tinyhouse
Well, at least in the US many PhDs have one only because it is the easiest way
to immigrate to the country. The majority of CS PhDs are foreigners. It's
easier than finding a job and getting a work visa. PhD is usually fully funded
and tuition is waived. Unlike Masters which most international students cannot
afford since financial aid is rare.

~~~
pfhayes
It's also much easier to get visa sponsorship for a foreign worker who has a
PhD than one who does not. Someone with a PhD has a stronger chance of being
eligible for an O-1, whereas someone without likely has to go through the H1-B
lottery

------
analog31
I got my PhD in physics 25 years ago. One thing I quickly noticed about the
article, is that it doesn't differentiate PhDs by field. When I was in school,
science students got PhDs in higher proportion than engineers. This might have
had to do with the stronger job prospects for engineers in industry. But if
you were hiring PhDs, it meant you were hiring scientists. This is definitely
still the case in my workplace. PhD engineers are quite rare.

In my view it's inevitable that as one moves up the educational ladder, the
amount of variation between candidates is going to increase, as will the
presence of alternative paths. There is no "hiring PhDs" as if we're a
fungible commodity. Much as it would gratify me for people to believe that all
PhDs are magical wizards, I can't defend my entire cohort, nor should I want
to. My job is to sell myself on my own merits, that's all. Don't hire anybody
without looking under the hood, and without considering alternatives to what
you think are your selection criteria. That's just good business sense.

At best we're going to reach the same conclusion that was discussed in recent
threads about college degrees: The wisdom of economists and other experts
disagrees with the collective wisdom of the market on the value of higher
education. At worst, we will assign a derogatory label ("signaling") to that
difference without understanding it.

------
halfeatenpie
I think the discussions here are missing a critical point. Just like those who
mention that their colleague or friend who only has a BS degree or only
graduated from high school are able to run circles around those with PhDs,
there's a vary level of PhDs as well.

PhD means you've had and accomplished that formalized level of training. There
are those who formalized training works very well for, there are also those
who it's just not a good fit. That's fine. Just like there's a varying
standard and quality of people around in this world, there's a varying
standard and quality of people in PhD programs. Just by having a PhD degree
simply states that you've gone through the program and learn how to do
research. There's a major difference between how academia approaches a problem
and how the industry approaches a problem, but what I've understood is that
PhDs (in engineering) know how to expand and innovate in a much easier and
more structured way than those in industry.

When generalized, most research I find in the industry is mostly "look I
changed this thing and it's improved accuracy this bit more in my use
scenario!" It's a bit less common to find papers or research done
(Engineering-wise) in the industry that fully understands the benefits and
limitations of the method improved upon, instead it's mostly "see, here I did
it and now try it on your own and see if it works for you!".

All tools and methods can be improved upon or all models are inherently
incorrect. I want to know the proper "surface area" that the method can be
applied to and what the proper parameters are. Too many times (especially with
some international papers) I've seen methods applied to problems that had to
be "shimmied in" to make it work. It's like using pastebin.com as a CDN to
store your ASCII data of a 3D model for your game (seriously, I've seen this
happen...). I mean, it's not the right tool, that's not how it's supposed to
be used, but I guess ok?

Source: I'm getting my PhD in engineering in Massachusetts. I've also co-
founded a startup and am currently going through another similar experience
right now with a "project" that we'll also be transitioning into a product.
PhD is something I wanted after seeing what's in the industry.

~~~
bob_theslob646
>but what I've understood is that PhDs (in engineering) know how to expand and
innovate in a much easier and more structured way than those in industry.

Why do you think that is?

------
umvi
PhD programming candidates at my work seem completely clueless to industry
standards when it comes to coding because they've been mired in academia land
for decades...

~~~
copperx
That's an example of something that can be quickly learned on the job, 1-2
days tops.

~~~
randcraw
I disagree. Production code has to deal with anomalies and failure in a
graceful way that allows recovery and identification of the fault. That's not
something that's taught in academia at any level, perversely.

And it takes time to learn how to use software tools effectively in a standard
way in a production environment that others can understand and extend and
maintain. This isn't taught in academia either, and usually it takes several
years in the real world for these skills to mature and integrate into the
practice of writing good pro code.

A PhD offers no advantage in this school of hard knocks.

~~~
walshemj
As opposed to some one fresh from a BSc who got through the interview by rote
memorisation who will be just as clueless.

~~~
umvi
Well at least with them you can pay them an entry level salary without looking
bad.

------
KorematsuFred
It might be worth looking at the breakup for this job requirement as immigrant
vs non-immigrant workers. Many job ads that mention "Phd" as requirement might
be simply to complete the PERM process of already hired employee and not a
real criteria.

Secondly, in many cases bright kids from India/China/Korea come to USA to only
do a Phd and end up on these jobs giving wrong signals that Phds are
important.

------
kilo_bravo_3
Not everyone is piling open source frameworks on top of each other in order to
sell ads and personal data or throwing ML and AI spaghetti at the wall and
seeing if what sticks turns them into the next Gordon Gekko.

------
gumby
At least this is a nice change from the prior environment in which a PhD was
often a _negative_ in the private sector ("head in the clouds" "no practical
experience").

------
AlexTWithBeard
In my humble experience, people with PhD, especially those who spent a lot of
time in academia, tend to be very result oriented. I'd say _too_ result
oriented.

As an example, I ask a guy to implement me a LinkedList during the interview.
The result usually works, but designwise... Oh, my god...

And that makes a perfect sense: once an article is published you usually don't
need to maintain your code for another decade.

------
daemonk
It really depends on the field in my experience. I probably wouldn't place too
much emphasis on requiring a phd for tech. But I would probably prefer a phd
in biotech jobs (bench or computational).

------
IloveHN84
Worked with bunch of PhDs so far, had the delightful experience of seeing them
being lower performer in comparison with the rest of the team (myself have a
MSc. Degree).

While they might be good at research, on the other side they have some
limitations when coming to concrete work. The last one wanted just code and
skip all the theoretical work (reading docs, specifications etc), bringing us
to let him go, because he wanted only his IDE and no more (not even
considering other tasks such as taking care of his own work)

------
sinuhe69
I believe for these employers a PhD servers as a signal only: somebody who is
(super?) smart, has grit and can innovate. Are we not saying “he is smart
(because) he has a PhD” all the time? However, I argue there are another ways
to achieve similar signs, albeit with lower cost. Winning prestige
competitions, interesting and valuable personal projects/work history, high IQ
would serve the same purpose without wasting years of your life for something
you don’t value (not to mention tons of money, too ;) )

------
blululu
I think that if I were to rank the people I knew in high school and college by
intelligence, the order would be the same at age 21 (before anyone started
grad school) as it would be at age 28 (after most people have finished grad
school).

The people who were smart in high school are still smart today, regardless of
their credentials. Some of the smartest people I know have PhDs, and some do
not.

------
kozikow
In some companies, e.g. quantitative hedge funds, PhDs are a selling point by
the company. If you have two equal hedge funds to invest in, you would
probably put your money into one with more prestigious university Ph.D.
quants.

Edit: Or startup pitching, M&A or even some sales - basically our deck team
slide is "X PhDs, Y ex-Googlers".

~~~
HenryKissinger
If I have two equal hedge funds to invest in, I'll probably put my money into
the one with the most consistent average annualized returns over the last
10-15 years.

~~~
nostrademons
If I have two equal hedge funds to invest in, I'd ignore both and put it in an
index fund. Past performance is no guarantee of future results and all.

~~~
walshemj
If your an "investor" an not a "speculator" you should not be investing in
hedge funds right from the off.

You should spend several years of investing starting with index funds then
moving up to more complex instruments before you invest in exotica like hedge
funds.

------
anthony_doan
Yep, applied for a few places they want PhDs to build models. I'm only getting
a master.

I've seen and worked with non stat major PhDs handling model process
especially data. I think master in statistic is good enough for modeling and
handling data and more so than others for most traditional models.

------
angel_j
The companies have been funding the research anyway, it's about time they hire
them too. The bigger problem will be a brain/knowledge drain at the
universities.

------
jb3689
My coworker is an older guy with a PhD. He's really smart (also a bit aloof).
We do the same job (typical backend software engineering)

------
musicale
So grad school isn't a total waste of time after all! Who knew?

------
DeonPenny
The valley in a lot time disregard it which I find refreshing.

------
xiaodai
I feel I have done original research but in a more piecemeal way because I had
a full time job. I also feel that I need to be given an opportunity even
though I only have a master's degree

------
bane
Anecdotes: I have an M.S. and mostly think it was a waste of time

For the last 15 years or so I've worked in environments with large percentages
of PhD co-workers and have come away with this conclusion. Having a PhD seems
to indicate that your brain was stretched to one side or another of extreme
human thought and left very little in the middle.

On the one side, you've lost the ability to make concrete contributions to
almost any project and are nearly incapable of delivering anything with any
focus or impact. Junior staff significantly outperform you in almost every
task and you seem to think the workplace is where you can come to pontificate
and consider all the rest of the humans here are grad students you can badger
around to do pointless and off-focus "research" that's really designed to get
lots of papers written for you to take to conferences.

On the other, you can figure out how to perform pretty much any of the work of
your peers, but can keep climbing the complexity ladder into abstraction
heaven and then often bring fire down from the gods to push intractable
problems forward.

I've never encountered somebody with a PhD who fit both categories and at
times I've been caught in confluences of multiple people of the first category
who made work life so unbearable I started having nightmares about it before
quitting. People of the second category are rare enough that its often just
more useful to hire people without PhDs if you don't have incredibly hard
research problems to work on.

The problem is so prevalent that I've known several people drop out of PhD
programs because they're afraid of ending up in category one.

One other anecdote, I've often noticed that managers with PhDs will have an
incredibly huge blindspot for people in the first category and allow them to
run roughshod over the workplace while penalizing staff with fewer credentials
who nevertheless outperform their better credentialed coworkers in nearly
every work task. It morale destroying and no amount of discussion or other
techniques ever seems to overcome that blindspot. I've had people quit over
more senior managers continuing to prop up obviously failed employees solely
because they have "PhD" next to their name.

I've never encountered this phenomenon among managers without PhDs.

I'm generally incredibly unimpressed by a PhD on a resume. I care much more
for a history of solid performance and delivery. But I'm definitely in the
minority and have seen dozens of terrible candidates hired because of those
three magic letters.

I'm so bothered by both the academic process of getting a PhD as well as the
"product" I've encountered in the real world that I decided years ago that I'd
rather pursue another BS or MS instead of a PhD.

this comment nails it far more succinctly than I have
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19506719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19506719)

