Yes, We Have a Ph.D. Glut. | Hacker News Reader

Yes, We Have a Ph.D. Glut.

scienceblogs.com

32 pointsbarry-cotter20 comments

This article worded pretty nicely my doubts and fears. At first I wanted to do a PhD (computer engineering) but I would probably have to leave my city/country (Quebec/Canada, small city ~ 600K ppl) to find a job as a teacher/researcher. I'd close myself many doors by doing a PhD. What for ?

Are you saying that having a PhD will overqualify you for some positions? I have occasionally heard this claim, but I have found it to be pretty much utterly false. Almost everyone wants the most qualified employees they can get. I think this is becoming even more true as folks have seen Google's success in hiring PhDs.

When a hiring manager specifically excludes overqualified people, this is a pretty big red flag to me. Managers usually only say this when they have a very tedious or low paying job that they think a PhD-type will quickly abandon for something better. I wouldn't exactly call this a "closed door", I'd say it's more of a sign that there are lots of better opportunities for qualified people. If these other opportunities went away, then the tedious jobs would start raising their qualifications too.

PhDs also have many other "open doors" that other people just don't have. All those teaching and research jobs you mention are available to them.

"Almost everyone wants the most qualified employees they can get. I think this is becoming even more true as folks have seen Google's success in hiring PhDs."

One can only hope (but I doubt it). Google doesn't hire just any Ph.D. -- they hire the best people who have CS experience, and that's only a tiny sliver of the total Ph.D. pool.

That said, I've experienced the downside of the degree, particularly when interacting with tech people. Lots of geeks get their dander up when they find out you have a doctorate, and start hammering on you harder, as if to prove something to themselves. I've also had people explicitly question my interest in jobs, to my face. It's definitely a real phenomenon, and I can understand why people might want to remove it from their resume. (If only it were easy to explain that 5+ year gap in employment history....)

I've only experienced the upside to having a Ph.D. so far. As someone who was trying to get into the US and stay here, the doctorate made every step (and there are many) go a bit more quickly and smoothly than it did for other people I knew trying to get a Green Card at the same time as me.

Lots of geeks get their dander up when they find out you have a doctorate, and start hammering on you harder, as if to prove something to themselves. I've also had people explicitly question my interest in jobs, to my face.

I've had this happen as well, but once you overcome these obstacles, you are at an advantage.

On interviews, I get that initial skepticism that I'm too "pie in the sky". That vanishes after a coding test. As for my interest in jobs, I've been asked that, but it's always been a fair question (in fact, I've never been asked that about a job I really wanted).

I haven't had the degree long enough to know one way or the other if it's a net benefit. It's possible that it really helps as you get further along in your career. And truthfully, the downside hasn't been so bad that I've thought about hiding it on a resume (in CS -- I definitely thought about it while hunting for a job in biotech, for various perverse reasons).

I'm just saying that I've personally experienced the downside, so I know it's not a made-up phenomenon.

Somebody posted the original article here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1151369

This is a little off -- it's presuming that you only get a PhD to teach.

I'm on mine to do a better job in industry. And I'm not alone where I work, not by a long shot.

Depends on the industry. If you're getting a PhD in biotech, good industry jobs are only slightly less difficult to land than tenure-track positions. For the big names (Genentech, Amgen, etc.), getting a scientist position is just as hard, if not harder.

Why is it that people who are bright and want to do actual work have it astronomically harder than the bullshitting rainmakers and mediocrities who get to run the economy?

People can do anything they want. The problem is that they want to be compensated and need to spend money (supplies/facilities etc). In the case of research, they are most likely not developing anything that anyone will want to pay for, or else they'd be doing product development and be a business. So they are left to try and get money from others, some might say charity, so that they can carry out thier work. In the US and throughout the world a lot of them are financed through government taxes.

There are independent research labs and research positions in companies, but in general they are trying to solve business related problems.

"Those mediocrities who get to run the economy" - I'm not sure who you mean exactly, are probably involved in business and thus vvoluntary are interacting with people who value whatever they produce. If you are referring to politicians, well they are adept at spending other peoples money.

1. Because the rainmakers handle the money.

2. Because the scientists are taking little risk compared to the founders and investors who build the institutions that support their research.

3. Because humans are hard-wired to respect rainmaking and distrust science. Social behavior has been humanity's evolutionary killer app for the last 1500 centuries. Science has existed for maybe 5.

1. Upsetting, but true. One major virtue of many ancient societies is that they had social checks and balances that put those with talent and intelligence in positions of higher status and more power than those who happened to incidentally have the money. Ours fails in that regard.

2. The founders are not mediocrities. The people who come in later and use social manipulation to control resources they didn't create are the mediocrities.

3. Interesting and reasonable point.

It isn't fun to have a do-nothing job, especially for the type of person who would consider doing a Ph.D. in a biotech field.

However much that helps.

But how much does the Ph.D. glut argument apply to computer science? I've never found a solid answer, and that information is especially relevant to my future career path (and I'm sure many others on HN)

I'm biased (currently a PhD student), but I think your employment prospects are pretty good with a CS PhD, especially if it is (a) from a good school (b) in something practical (a PhD in theory might still let you get a job at somewhere like Microsoft Research, but it depends on what kind of theory; a theory PhD would be less helpful for most startups).

With a CS PhD, you have a lot of options: academia, industrial research (Microsoft Research, IBM Research, and so on), working for or founding a startup, etc. Happily, many CS graduate schools and professors explicitly recognize that many grad students don't intend to pursue a career in academia, which I think is less the case in other academic fields.

You can also see it conceivably helping with a start up idea that pushes the boundaries, something that requires you to do years of research to pull off well is probably going to be a bigger gap in the start up market that something that just does something in a crowded market slightly better and more efficiently.

Check out the Taulbee survey numbers to get more meaningful information on what CS PhD employment is like.

This was a horribly written post that was not even spell checked. The bulk of it quoted two articles. If this was an interesting topic that you would like to discuss, please post the link to one of the original articles. Feel free to HT the post and name the other article in the comments.

Yeah, I got to, "Before everyone freaks out (ZOMG!! YOU EATED ALL TEH GRANTZ!!)" before I realized I was reading a cartoon strip.

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