Comment by ska | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ska | Hacker News Reader

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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")

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.

>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!

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 like this characterization a lot. Thank you!

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