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Comment by optimuspaul | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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...

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 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.

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