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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")

>Here is a hand-wavy characterization...

I had never thought about degrees in those terms, but that feels like a surprisingly terse and accurate description. Thanks!

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 :)

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

I dare you to write a study to excavate and delineate the potential effects of this bias on hiring.

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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 :)

One of the reasons I like the PhD in my case is I consider it to be “fuck you education”. I don’t expect it to give me any significant income advantages in software company, but I feel like it opens enough different areas of employment and gave me a big and strong enough skill set that I’m not intimidated by much.

I suppose it might not work out in such a way for all research though. I was lucky enough that my coursework left me with enough math and statistical skills to either learn or fake my way through most relevant math intensive computing stuff while my actual work was things like parallel optimization schemes for neural network training (and lots of programming in the big frameworks)

It’s true, some people don’t. I went to a top program though even there I’d say we graduated some that weren’t great critical thinkers. That said I’d say that the closer you are to a “wet” bench in a basic science the more likely you build those skills. The more time spent dealing with in silico data or with theory the less feedback from cold hard reality you get. Nature doesn’t care if you graduate.

I’d also say that 30% is still not a bad ratio and better than most training sources on average.

Still it’s not a perfect screen by any means.

I like this characterization a lot. Thank you!

Interesting interpretation!

In undergrad I had a really nice meta course called GEOG 100: On Becoming a Geographer. Loved it. One slide I remember was that a bachelor's was becoming acquainted with the discipline. A master's is to become an expert in a domain. And a PhD is to drill deep into a domain and uncover something new.

Breadth vs. depth basically.

> 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.

I'm not convinced, or I should say my experience does not support this. I think it is more likely that those that already have that skill are the ones that pursue the Ph.D path.

Although employers don't care if it is a self selected sample or they learnt that skill during the PhD

Or that completing a PhD is a filter for a pre-existing skill. All three of those theories are compatible with employers rationally favoring candidates with PhDs.

I completely agree with your observation. It's not that the Ph.D. prepares you for it, but that most people that pursue Ph.D. have that attribute.

I don't think all Ph.D. students or any ordinary engineer can take a vaguely defined research problem and make it succeed. Ph.D. doesn't necessarily prepare you for the research part; it does, however, prepare you to advertise a very /bad solution/ as a novel contribution. It wasn't always like this, but it has come to it. It takes credibility, curiosity, character, and of course, research skills to solve a vaguely defined problem---none of which are given to you by a Ph.D. degree.

I have worked at two FAANGs, and more often than not my interactions with Ph.D. degree holders have left a bad taste in my mouth. Speaking of which, there was one person that was "selling" an event timeline as a root cause analysis system that does "temporal" correlation (with no filtering or association at all) :). And another person that was advertising a DFS compilation of a neural net during the training phase (as opposed to the typical BFS that people do) as a superior and novel contribution that changes how we think about neural nets or something along those lines.

A good engineer would have laughed at both after carefully considering all aspects of the problem.

I suspect that Ph.D. "engineers" are more desirable because of their broader skillset (they have worked with more tools and have taken more classes) and also the fact that companies can hire them at almost the same cost as a BS/MS degree holders. Plus universities have already done some filtering on Ph.Ds.

It’s a little of both, and like most debates with that answer, it’s not a particularly interesting question.

Some PhD-holders were self-motivated before. Others learned it at school. Still others were motivated, but unfocused, and had to become disciplined.

Everyone who has a strong opinion on the topic is, by definition, extrapolating from limited data. Moreover, even if every single PhD learned nothing in school, it’s still a useful signal if it enriches the pool of candidates who are self-motivated and independent.

I find there are 2 kinds of PhD holders in engineering, those who are diligent and capable and were able to follow through on a difficult problem for years; and those whose problem solving abilities are so impractical that they stayed in school for as long as possible.

The first is worth their weight in gold, the second is fairly easy to detect after a few git check-ins.

Actually I lied, there's a third kind, brilliant people that get bored with their job and write super-complicated frameworks to satiate that boredom. That's not restricted to PhDs but I see it more often with them.

There's so many people in the second category for so many reasons, its pretty much made "PhD" a "don't hire unless good reason" filter for me.

Reasons might include: couldn't make it in real jobs and delayed joining the the job force for as long as possible

doesn't want to be held accountable for actual working solutions and likes working towards "novelty"

enjoys approaching every problem with the most complicated possible solution they are aware of

thinks generalization is the only way to approach specific special-case problems, if they can't find a generalized solution then they think its unsolvable even when the special-case solution is fine

has grand research ideas they weren't able to convince anybody in academia to fund and think they can chip away at those ideas by cowing coworkers into working on it for them

likes being the "smart guy in the room" and builds a career of talking a lot with complex technobabble and buzzwords but has no idea what they're saying (I've encountered many many of these myself) -- often has mile long CVs as well

creditialists who think racking up pretend education credits is the most important thing in life

failed academics who point to their large private sector salaries as why they've ended up on the superior path than their old peers

and so on....these are literally descriptions of people I've encountered just in my current job over the past 5 years...it keeps going on and on.

Very similar experience here. I would also add generally a complete lack of comprehension of making something concrete that satisfies production.

Same. The real problem in my mind is the paradoxical complete inability to learn new skills that are suitable for the workplace and instead a complete reliance on the training they received in their programs...sometimes decades old.

Considering a PhD is supposed to provide skills for learning and tackling problems, the incredibly high percentage of PhDs I've worked with that are completely unable to do so has really really put me off of the credential.

I'm sure that it's at least rumoured in other degrees apart from economics (we are a cynical bunch), that the purpose of getting a higher education (aside from the ivy leagues where it's membership of a particular class) is not learning, but signaling to employers that you'll 'eat shit for a couple of years'.

Few better ways to take that to the extreme in many cases than a PhD.

Also, as a foreigner, can't help but point out that there seems to universally be a lot of assumptions made with academic qualifications and the like with many countries immigration laws and systems...

> I think it is more likely that those that already have that skill are the ones that pursue the Ph.D path

You might have a bit of that skill to start with but a PhD lets you practice and hone that skill, which you wouldn't be doing in a standard coding position.

> 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

I like the way you put this. I am researcher in academia, and my parents (who do not have advanced degrees and have never done research) always ask me "When you get into the lab, how do you know what to do?".

No one really tells me. My PI only gives very general research directions. It's up to experience and intuition, part of which was gained during my grad student years.

But also agree there are other ways to learn that as well. There will never be a one-size-fits-all solution.

My all-time best PhD moment, as the holder of one of those much-vaunted doctorate thingies, was last year when GlaxoSmithKline told me that too much time had passed since I obtained my PhD therefore it was no longer considered valuable. So watch out everyone, these advanced degrees apparently come with expiration dates now! Always check for freshness.

wow that border lines on age discrimination

Huh. I gotta go put my diploma in a ziplock bag.

>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.

Interesting, that was not the impression I had from 2 engineering professors at my local uni.

It sounded like I was going to be their assistant in studying their idea for up to 6 years.

And in return he was going to toss you a bone somewhere along the way to something nobody’s done (because he’s the only one with this exact setup).

> 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.

Pretty accurate. I was asked in a job interview once "what practical applications does your research have that would benefit us?" - they were surprised when I said my research results weren't useful to them at all, but the skills and broader knowledge I gained doing the research would be.

It's very uncommon you go seeking a company where you can directly apply what you did your thesis on. Your thesis topic pretty much has to be niche and obscure if it's on the edge of current knowledge.

I agree wholeheartedly. Developing a "blue-ocean" mentality lends itself very well to profit creation and market leadership. Since everything is new, you have to be able to design and iterate on systems and processes that can mutate very quickly, with few priors available. Knowing what to do when nobody knows what to do is a highly valuable skill.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ocean_Strategy

>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.

I’d like to elaborate on this a bit further. In my experience as an academic researcher in a technical field (math), one of the most important skills is the ability formulate precise statements/hypotheses that satisfy several criteria. First, they should relate to the existing body of research in your field in a meaningful way. Second, they should have non-trivial answers (in the context of math, i mean that the proof of your hypothesized theorem should be legitimately nontrivial, not merely obfuscated to appear that way, as good mathematicians will be able to tell) or reveal something that was previously unexpected (such as a connection between two previously different topics). Finally, they must be testable/verifiable/provable/etc using your available methodologies and within a predictable timeframe.

> 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.

Given how insightful your comment was, I was wondering if you could elaborate on this. Why, outside of comorbidity, do you think depression and anxiety might be related to developing this skillset?

If I may take a stab at it... I think it might have something to do with the disparate scales of thought vs emotion compared to what humans have evolved to deal with.

Today, when you're tasked with creating something new, and your identity is invested in such a mission, it's a much more gargantuan task than being indispensable to your local tribe. Competing at a global level is just not something we're generally wired to do. I would be curious if world-class athletes, movie stars, business executives, politicians, etc. also have similar emotional problems.

But our emotions do not work on such a scale. They're meant to deal with the anxieties of what a few hundred people in your community think and how to secure your next meal.

In creative lines of work (however one chooses to define it), one is trying to be the superlative best or first to achieve something valuable on the scale of billions of people. And you probably hope that such a creation outlives you. We have not been designed for such tasks at an emotional level.

This aside is more speculative and significantly based on personal experience doing 2 green-field products for one employer, founding 3 startups, and doing some internal research projects at Google...

But what I've noticed is that aside from frequently co-occurring with creative work, depression and anxiety are frequently the trigger to finding a non-obvious solution and making forward progress. In other words, they're not just mental disorders; they're feelings that can give you useful signal about how to proceed next, if you listen very carefully to them. Anxiety is basically your emotional systems being hyper-engaged, such that you get an emotional response from nearly everything. Depression feels like the opposite, a deadening of your emotional senses, but oftentimes escaping the depression actually points the way to escaping your real-world problem. If you can imagine a future where you are not depressed (which if you've suffered clinical depression is actually quite difficult), very likely that's a strong signal that that's what you should actually be doing, no matter how weird or unreasonable it sounds.

There's some evidence for this hypothesis here (2009):

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/depressions-evolu...

You could also think of the anxiety related to creative work in relation to System 1 of the brain in Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow. In highly ambiguous circumstances (which basically all creative work is), it makes sense for your brain to become hypersensitive to all available stimuli, and to quickly pattern-match on a course of action without too much rational consideration. We experience that sort of emotional overload as anxiety.

If the economic returns for innovation are so high why do we have so much wealth inequality... we are in a digression between innovation and economic growth. https://www.nber.org/papers/w24554