Hacker News Reader

Comment by timtadh | Hacker News Reader

I think it is great that Jean (and Philip) both wrote these up. But, to be honest it 100% depresses me to read them. Graduate school has not been easy for me and I had no first author paper submissions for 5 years and ended up having to being part time for 3 years to support myself and my family. (My research is well in hand now. I finally submitted my first paper and have 2 more going out this calendar year. Sometimes it takes a while to find your passion/research area.) Given my family situation I am not able to do internships and in many ways I don't want to. I am going to go back to coding now because this is too depressing to read.

View on HN

I feel that the US PhD system is extremely bad not for students, but for human beings. Other countries like Australia or Germany have a much more stringent timeplan - maybe 4 years, usually 3 years. I often talk to researchers from the US and it's always 7, 8 years spent, with maybe one publication, or even 0 - the time is spent interning, or drifting between departments, taking various university courses that really lead nowhere (like OP), or drifting along without a real project, or you're the cheap work monkey of the supervisor (the last one seems to be extremely common in the US).

I think that's the universities' fault - Australian unis force you to have a project proposal after the 6 or 12 months mark, and then you have about a year or two to do that project, then you have to write. There is very little time to do courses, and if you take a course, you lose one out of 3 possible time extensions. If you don't make it in time your student visa will expire (I think maximum is 4 years?) and you have to leave the country. If you're a citizen your scholarship will end at the same time. And these are good scholarships, usually about $500-700 per week.

My PhD experience was nothing like OP's or yours, much more focused, much less time wasted, much more publications too! I think our bioinformatics group's record was 12 papers in one PhD (3 first author). I had 2 first author and a few more middle author papers, one of them in Science.

The primary output of a PhD is not a good project -- it's actually the European system that's geared towards quick cheap labor for the PI's idea. Instead, the output of the US system is researchers capable of forging their own path. No surprise Jean landed a professorship at CMU after all this. That's useful for anyone in a thought leadership role, e.g., PI/CEO/CTO. (Though yes, for related reasons, US CS systems PhDs probably also have a higher impact factor, e.g., they're actually implemented as is discussed in her post.)

As for the bean counting: her first-author PLDI best paper is the field's equivalent of a Nature paper, and she got one in her first year.

    geared towards quick cheap labor for the PI's idea.

I am not sure the phrase "quick cheap labour" really gets to the heart of the matter.

The real reason why most PhD students work on their supervisor's ideas is different. Most students would drown in the ocean of possible ideas, would simply fail without strong guidance from an experienced supervisor. It's probably best to see a PhD as a warm-up exercise for future research. The ocean of previous research one must master before being able to do original research in mature fields is simply so large that most students can't handle it on their own. Supervisors would love PhD-students who are intellectually mature enough to come up with their own ideas and execute them to a publishable standard. In my experience, at best 1 in 5 PhD students can do this.

I used to think my own PhD work was 100% self-invented. But now, having supervised a lot of my own students, I see clearly how my intellectual mentor gently nudged me in the right direction at all critical junctions where I would have gone astray otherwise. Without him, I too would have failed.

US PhD typically last a lot longer than UK PhDs, so comparing the two is difficult. I'd say UK PhD+postdoc is a probably comparable with an US PhD.

> it's actually the European system that's geared towards quick cheap labor for the PI's idea

Hmm I thought it was the other way around. In the UK PhD students rarely do work for their supervisors like teaching undergraduate courses, which seems to happen a lot in the US. When I started my PhD in the UK I was told I needed to come up with my own project from the start. I only did one paper that was sort of related to my supervisor's project, and I only did a hundred hours teaching over my entire PhD, and that was voluntary.

The other big difference between the US and UK PhD approaches is that in the UK a PhD student doesn't do any courses. Day one on the PhD is day one working towards their research project and thesis.

Not sure how to edit, but I was overly harsh: my point about the European programs is that many combine their short duration with requiring a project proposal going in, which often is used by PIs to work on the next ~deterministic step of their existing research program. For students in that situation, a postdoc (or darwinian trial by fire as a professor) is necessary to learn how to lead research.

The above is not always true, but when it is, I view the US system as fulfilling its mission better. Whether everyone is suited to the US system and leading innovative projects is another story.

At least here in Belgium, project proposals (which are indeed required) can come from either the student or a principal investigator. Many of the most talented students pick their own topic, and the topic is accepted or rejected by an independent jury, not by the person who would advise you.

In the US, there's generally a proposal process two years in to determine this, and even there' it's not surprising to see a pivot a year or so after that once preliminary data is in. By pre-agreeing to a problem (and part of the process), too much of the research definition process is skipped.

While half the PhD is about learning how to get to the solution, the other half is in learning how to pick the right problem. In terms of HN, making a startup solve a niche is great, but knowing how to grow it into a bigger space is better.

In Australia it's officially 3 years (with an optional 6 month extension), but out of all other students I knew in grad school there was only one that finished in this time (I'm not sure she ever left her office in that time). I took 7 years, which was not uncommon in my department.

What usually happens is that after the three years (+ extension if you're lucky) is up, you don't have a scholarship any more, and for most people this means they have to find a job to support themselves, which leaves little to no time to work on the thesis. I was fortunate enough to get a teaching position at the same university, but even that was very demanding and my progress slowed to a crawl, though I did eventually manage to finish.

Universities only get paid if the student completes, so they tend to be pretty flexible. If they kick you out at the three year mark they lose; if there's indications you're likely to complete at some point, they have a chance of getting paid, so there's some flexibility here.

I came to the conclusion that ultimately the timeframe doesn't matter - what counts is that you get it done; it takes as long as it takes. A friend of mine was at it for 20 years, but eventually finished. University administration were not exactly pleased with this timeframe and she went through a lot of difficulties because of this, but a remark she made once really stuck to me: "You succeed in spite of the system, not because of it".

Caveat: Both of us are Australian citizens; I can see how the limit would be extremely problematic for international students due to visa rules.

> I came to the conclusion that ultimately the timeframe doesn't matter - what counts is that you get it done

That seems like a bizarre bit of reasoning. When I go grocery shopping, the important part is that it gets done, but that doesn't mean I want to be stuck in the store for five years. At a certain point the cost/benefit ratio becomes insane, not just from a financial point of view but academically as well.

It sounds bizarre as a starting point, but several years in having still not completed, I decided to adopt this attitude as a way of avoiding the immense stress about the thing taking so long. Forgetting about the timeframe and focusing on doing whatever it took (and persisting as long as necessary) is what got me through. Completing was important enough to me that I wasn't going to give up.

i am in the US but have looked abroad for a ph.d. program. there's one in germany that is in english. it is meant to attract students across the world and not just the US. US students are actually rare in the program. but back to my original point, the program has no teaching duties, tutoring or anything of the sort. the coursework requirements are very straightforward and not bloated. it has a very strict timeline, but that's great. you spend 3-4 four years doing nothing but your work, with both an advisor and a supervisor separate from your advisor. it's a great system. i've applied before but went to a US school. i ended dropping out of that ph.d. program with my master's. i sort of wish i hadn't have been in a relationship at the time of going to graduate school as i might have done the german program.

in graduate school, i learned a lot...in the first year. after the fire hose of the first year, i was rather tired of courses, but still had to take 3 full-time courses while teaching and tutoring. ignoring the fact that there were almost no advisors to choose from (that you'd want as an advisor), i had no time to pursue anything being bogged down with homework and exams, which became very tedious. any time i was trying to read on my own, i couldn't concentrate because i knew i had homework and exams to study for.

i went to graduate school based upon a very enjoyable NSF REU. that was fantastic because you picked a problem at the beginning and spent the whole summer working on that as your project. it ended with writing a paper and most of us presented at conferences later in the year. it was an absolutely fantastic experience that had no parallel when i was in my ph.d. program.

and my "failure" in graduate school was even from someone who had never failed on anything. it was like hitting quicksand. i had even read up a lot on how to be successful in graduate school, but it didn't matter. i left because i was miserable and earning $15,000 a year. a mere 6 months or so after leaving i had a job paying $70,000. it would have been sooner, but i was an idiot and thought i'd go back and finish a second bachelor's since i had taken so many courses as an undergrad.

the strict timeline can be a lie. yeah, on paper, you have a 3 year plan, but it fails most of the time so students wind up taking unpaid years to finish.

I did my PhD in The Netherlands. In my field (computational linguistics), the majority of people finished within the allotted four years. The working conditions are good: PhDs are generally employed as regular employees with vacation money and 13th month. The teaching duties were very light (typically TAing and later teaching one 7-week course), giving you a lot of time to focus on research.

Same in France: all the PhD students in computer science I know have finished in 3 years, or 3 years and 6 months (you can request a 6 month extension). You can't carry on after that duration because you have to be funded and be full-time (so no side job).

FWIW, these (IMHO absurdly) short PhD programs basically mean you need to do a postdoc for your CV to even be competitive with US CS PhDs -- assuming you want to do research in a top institution or research lab. So it's far from an obvious optimization.

That was not my experience. I did a PhD in quantum physics in the UK (Imperial College) in 3 years + 6 month extension. I collaborated with Oxford University and I was able to publish in Nature Physics, PRL, etc ... (in other words, the top journals in the field). I was offered post-doc positions but eventually went to industry.

I really enjoyed my PhD as a time to learn and think about deep and difficult questions. Regarding employment, I think it shows that you can commit to a problem. It shows perseverance and drive. And those are good skill to have at any technical job.

My comments should be interpreted as applying to PhD studies in Computer Science.

The view from Europe is that since students in US PhD programs spend their first two years doing courses they come out with similar actual research experience.

The view is wrong. In computer science -- at least at top programs -- students begin research immediately.

In my area, no-one has failed their 3 year plan yet, maybe up to 4 years taken - our area has very little Australian citizens so the incentives are large.

(there's an obvious Soviet joke here about 3 year plans)

Some European PhDs are worthless. Dr. med and Dr. jur (medicine and law) are a joke in Germany. You can obtain a Dr. med after one year of injecting $random_substance into mice and repeating the "experiment" until the p-values spit out by Excel are sufficient for the "thesis" to pass.

PhDs in e.g. Physics are harder though.

Dr.med. and Dr.jur. are not the equivalents of PhD/DPhil, they are the equivalents of MD and JD degrees, which in terms of research output are also a joke in anglo-saxon countries. In the US, medical doctors who wants to pursue medical research usually do a PhD _on top_ of their MD degree.

Oxford also puts PhD students on a pretty strict timeline. I don't think an Oxford PhD is a joke.

Grad school isn't easy for most people. I had quite a few years of rejections and then bam, bam, bam ... three first author acceptances in a row at top conferences. Even Jean mentioned she submitted to several top-tier conferences and didn't get any of those papers accepted.

I'm sorry to hear about your family situation. Internships provide much needed $$$ to supplement the crappy stipend if you are in North America. I lectured part-time and being a TA is also an option. The teaching was one of the better parts of my grad experience. One mistake I made was not work as a free-lance dev while in grad school. I know people who did and it pays well and also looks good on the resume (also a distraction so you maintain sanity).

Be proactive about getting a job after school. Sad to say .. the primary goal during the PhD is to get out of grad school (ideally with a PhD). The old style industrial labs are in bad shape IMHO. Try your very best to get a prof job ... I went for labs but friends who went the prof route got tenure around years 4-6. I am year 8 and still have to deal with work insecurities. The good news is that non-research jobs are plentiful and the PhD gives you a leg up. My overall suggestion ... lower your expectations and find happiness. A CS PhD doesn't mean success or status these days (not sure if it ever did). Good luck!

All I can say is, I was exactly where you are now. You sound like you're on the right track, sometimes getting publications accepted takes a long time. Good luck to you.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com