You probably shouldn't get a PhD | Hacker News Reader

You probably shouldn't get a PhD

old.reddit.com

12 pointscercatrova8 comments

Well, there are other topics besides CS one might want to get a PhD in. Also, this is more than a bit hyperbolic:

Imagine you had a million dollars of cash right in front of you.

Just because you don't get a PhD doesn't mean you'll get a FAANG salary. And even then there are these things known as "expenses" and "taxes". A cool million in savings, post-tax and disposable is more than a bit of a stretch.

And it doesn't take a PhD to figure that out.

A PhD isn’t for everyone. It’s hard work for an uncertain future and in most cases not that much money.

If you are smart, driven by the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and passionate about a difficult problem then go for it.

It’s like loving the hill climbs in the Tour de France.

And sometimes the commercialisation of and idea can make you rich but probably won’t.

Keep in mind that the user discloses that they are only in their second year of a PhD program, yet is still making broad claims about the employability of a PhD recipient without citing any studies or statistics.

>People who've done their PhDs and are now in the CRUD job market competing with 22-year-old new graduates, or working as untenured adjuncts or lecturers at colleges.

The writer assumes that a PhD recipient earned the PhD to apply to entry-level programming positions or teaching, instead of a research and development role, a financial analyst job, a data science role, or anything else where a PhD is a clear advantage over a competing applicant who stopped at a Bachelor's/Master's. To cite real statistics that imply most PhDs aren't working in entry-level work, the National Science Foundation reported a median salary for Computer Science PhDs at about $120,000 USD per year. [0]

>If you're truly talented—and by that I mean at the very top of your class, with multiple papers published as an undergrad, and it's clear that you're a gifted person who will almost certainly make a mark in your field as a researcher—a PhD might be a worthwhile investment.

A bold claim that a PhD only "might" be worthwhile if you are at the top of your field as an undergraduate, followed by sentences that assert that the academic job market is competitive, ignoring the value of a PhD for industry work or non-monetary value.

>Don't go to graduate school, unless you're an actual demonstrated genius, or you come from a silver spoon and can afford to spend 5-6 years doing something just because you think it's "adventurous" or "intellectually rewarding".

To summarize the assertion: according to the writer, a PhD's value is only monetary, and the only reason why someone would want a PhD for a non-monetary reason is because they are privileged and come from a rich family. The arguments to support this are then heavily laden with emotional language and speculation, not even supported by personal experience (the little that is present consists of: the user is in their second year of a PhD, and they're envious that their peers who didn't choose to get a PhD are making more money at this stage in life).

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/job-seeking-ph-d-holders-look-t...

Why the focus on PhDs?

The exact same argument could be made for highschool, or even elementary school.

Don't waste time learning how to read. Go straight into child labour and make a fortune by the time you're 20!

Eh, there's a large difference between basic education and higher education. For high school or college, you make a ton more money by completing those than if you hadn't; it's easier for CS degree grads to get CS jobs, and same for other majors. In contrast, a PhD is much harder to justify if you're interested in making money. Of course, if you want to do one to advance the body of human knowledge, go for it, but know what it is you're getting into and what it is you actually want.

yeah but the argument at its core is that, while having a phd will generally land you a higher salary (provided you don't specifically choose to stay in a low-paid profession, like academia), in general this comes at the cost of earning potential sacrificed during your phd, and that the increase in pay typically isnt enough to make up for wages lost during your studies. right?

which sounds like a nuanced argument at first, until you realise it's exactly the same argument for any level of education. if you work from age 6 to 20 instead of going to school and then basic college, the increase in pay from having a basic education will not be enough to make up for potential wages lost over 14 years. Especially if you invest part of it in the meantime.

Obviously I'm not saying this is a good idea. The point is, if one were to treat the financial argument as the only argument worth considering, this would be the logical conclusion, and PhD would be no different from elementary school in that regard.

But obviously, even though it's the same argument, it sounds different when talking about PhD instead, because of this whole deprecation culture trend people seem to have towards academia these days (which doesnt seem to have reached basic schooling. yet.)

> while having a phd will generally land you a higher salary

But that's not what the argument seems to be however, discounting even the opportunity cost. People are saying (I don't have experience as a PhD to know myself) that a PhD is not only lower in opportunity cost but also in getting a job as a dev, as some places look down on PhDs as "overqualified."

No. Far from it. Obviously, exceptions exist, but PhDs generally get offered much higher salaries in practice (and typically for good reason).

Also, nobody ever gets rejected as 'overqualified', except when that is a euphemism for 'underqualified': i.e. you spent an unreasonable number of years watching water boil without bothering to pick up any transferable skills whatsoever in the process, so you're stuck being good at a very particularly niche thing that nobody can put to practical use, and such at everything else.

But this is an extremely unlikely outcome for a PhD, and very rare in practice. Typically one will exit their PhD with an improved understanding of how science works, the ability to navigate complex projects having a high degree of uncertainty with minimal hand-holding, the ability to compile and communicate information to a diverse audience, the ability to critically analyse literature/competition, quickly pick up complex topics and design valid studies and experiments to make progress in the field, and a bunchload of other transferrable skills which justify their added value beyond what their PhD topic was specifically about.

Not to mention it's a pretty decent self-selection marker for people who lack such advanced skills, since these are typically necessary to navigate a PhD in the first place: not everyone who starts a PhD gets to finish one (in the UK for example, about 1 in 5 exit early or fail their viva)!

What does makes sense is the opportunity cost argument. If you do a PhD solely on the basis that your salary will be higher later, this completely discounts the wages lost during the PhD. E.g. for a hypothetical scenario, if you start in your 20ies with a 30k salary, accruing 1k raises per year until you're 25, you will have made 160k in that time. Typically there is no kind of "PhD bonus" that would make it financially better to start earning with a 5-year delay (though it's not that hard to 'catch-up' either). E.g. assuming you have 40 more years of work left after 25, in order for your PhD to "break even", you'd have to guarantee that your 'added value' from the PhD adds at least 4k per year on top of what you would have earned without one.

But this kind of argument is overly simplistic, and designed to be reductive. I doubt anyone who goes into a PhD thinks about surplus salaries and breaking even as their main motivators for doing one, any more than a parent sending their kid to school after kindergarden instead of sending them off to a factory for the same logic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com