> From the discussion here, it seems that HN turns out to be a very money centric place.
It’s not HN. It’s the fact that doing PHD is only a reasonable choice if you either want to get into academia long term or you come from wealth. (Historically science and research was a rich people thing, and only became accessible once student loans were more accessible)
I genuinely considered doing PhD after my Masters degree. No matter what I couldn’t justify spending 5 more years, borrowing more money on top of my tens of thousands of student loans just to stay afloat. I would still be living roommates well into my 30s, have no prospects when it came to dating, rely on student loans and my parents to support me, while literally any job I did would put me in a better position. Like I could bartend full time and I’d be making more money than the stipend. All of this in the hopes of what? That I’d have a dissertation in super specialized field, not necessarily the one I want in because I won’t have the advisor I need and the one I have only wants me to do very specific things they want. And that dissertation may or may not be relevant to the industry or even academia in a year or two.
And if you decide after your PhD, that you’ll join the industry, you’ve lost out on 5 years of compounded growth financially and personally. It’s not like a PhD gets you more money in 95% of the jobs.
Realistically, the only people with me who ended up committing to doing this were people who had no other prospects or were looking for a full time role in academia.
Strongly agreed. The reality of doing a PhD is that you serve the interests of your advisor while living like a pauper. Hardly surprising people are finally realising that it’s usually not worth it. Just part of the needless proliferation of education.
I was more or less enrolled in two and got cold feet each time for the same reasons the grandparent post says, it didn’t make financial sense, and my experience of research to date had not been stellar.
Ironically, the first was ML back before ML was hot, so if I had done it I’d probably be in a very different position today. However the reasoning still stands.
> And if you decide after your PhD, that you’ll join the industry, you’ve lost out on 5 years of compounded growth financially and personally. It’s not like a PhD gets you more money in 95% of the jobs.
5 years of professional experience beat a phd title in 98-99% of IT job searches, no question there.
I would even more deeply probe such a candidate for good personality match with rest of the team and company overall, ie sometimes one has to suck it up and do non-ideal solution instead of having endless discussions about ideal one. And IMHO folks form academia are sometimes tad too idealistic and need additional 'baby-sitting', pushing them even further into junior less-ideal box. Smart alone is mostly meaningless when not harnessed efficiently.
No project I ever delivered in my 20 years of work was ever perfect, shortcuts and even 'hacks' were needed. We don't live in ideal world, budgets are constrained, changes come at last minute that sometimes require massive refactoring, you get unexpected delays on weird bugs or processes taking too long or other teams facing issues or their processes taking too long, and so on and on.
Business doesn't care nor understand any of this, they want their features, without visible bugs, on time, the rest is mostly irrelevant academic discussions for them. I don't say its ideal but this is world I live in and worked in, all big companies are same in this regard. They just don't view IT stuff as something unique and super fragile and treat it and expect form it cca same level as from other parts of their businesses. I've never worked for FAANG type of company as you can see, IT is always just a cost center.
I give stakeholders honest feedback with taking into account their view and expectations, and never ever over-engineer things since from what I've witnessed its mostly selfish endeavor of bored brilliant people or CV chasers, not something business would want to see since risk exposure is a big '?'. KISS is really above it all and business loves it, especially long term. Can't sell a lot of BS with it but thats not my style. I call it being a dependable professional.
That is NOT what he wrote! Is about finding an optimum of all the variables. Also "the best technical solution" is not always the best solution for a company, which at the end, cares only about making money.
Even if my background is different, I did not have debt, and would not directly have incurred in debt by doing a PhD, there was no way I could justify it. At some point I would have to start earning serious money for me and my family. No way I could delay all 5 years, to have a title that would help me in no measurable amount to earn more money later. The ROI of a PhD (if you see merely as a financial decision) makes just no sense.
> PHD is only a reasonable choice if you either want to get into academia long term or you come from wealth.
‘The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’
- George Bernard Shaw
I was going to say something in my own words, but I don't think I can do better.
It’s not HN. It’s the fact that doing PHD is only a reasonable choice if you either want to get into academia long term or you come from wealth. (Historically science and research was a rich people thing, and only became accessible once student loans were more accessible)
I genuinely considered doing PhD after my Masters degree. No matter what I couldn’t justify spending 5 more years, borrowing more money on top of my tens of thousands of student loans just to stay afloat. I would still be living roommates well into my 30s, have no prospects when it came to dating, rely on student loans and my parents to support me, while literally any job I did would put me in a better position. Like I could bartend full time and I’d be making more money than the stipend. All of this in the hopes of what? That I’d have a dissertation in super specialized field, not necessarily the one I want in because I won’t have the advisor I need and the one I have only wants me to do very specific things they want. And that dissertation may or may not be relevant to the industry or even academia in a year or two.
And if you decide after your PhD, that you’ll join the industry, you’ve lost out on 5 years of compounded growth financially and personally. It’s not like a PhD gets you more money in 95% of the jobs.
Realistically, the only people with me who ended up committing to doing this were people who had no other prospects or were looking for a full time role in academia.