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Comment by tomohelix | Hacker News Reader

I think the only reason I was able to get through my PhD was because I am used to the work culture and expectations. After going into the industry in a relatively healthy and good company, I realized just how much stress I had and how bad it was in academia.

In a way, the grinder serves as a test of willpower and discipline and those who could persevere through it can say they have the mental fortitude to handle stress and still achieve results despite adverse circumstances. Whenever I am kinda stressed out, I recall my time in school and it gives me something similar to "I have been through worse, I can make this work".

On the other hand, I tell everyone who bothers to ask that no, a PhD is not worth it. Get a master and go to work. Or better, get a BS and make the company sponsor that master degree. That PhD will drain both your life and energy and once you got it, you will still need to compete against people of your level. Nothing changes except a permanent mental scar.

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> Nothing changes except a permanent mental scar.

That's a very broad generalization. Everybody has a different experience, depending on the field, their advisor, their lab, their skills, their personality and so on...

To me, a PhD was pretty much like any other job. The last couple of months were bit harder because of the final deadline, but nothing drastic when you're young. My current job in industry is more stressful overall.

What sucked for me was after the PhD, being an academic, but it's another story.

Indeed. For me, my PhD was eye-opening in that it was the first opportunity to work the way I wanted to work, and realizing how much more productive I could be that way.

What field?

Epidemiology

Several startups back, I worked for a pompous boss, ex-Goldman-VP, who told me that people who get masters are worse programmers, especially if it's from a better school than their bachelor's. You'll be surprised how many nutty biases people have out there.

As strange as it is, I think there's validity to it. Master's degrees filter more on having the money to cover tuition than test scores, and it's easier to just buy your way into a good school than with undergraduate.

I remember taking courses alongside Master's students who were anecdotally less impressive than my fellow undergraduates. This experience (along with my dwindling pocketbook) helped dissuade me from staying the extra year or so, rather than immediately starting work.

In well-funded fields with lots of jobs (like CS) graduate students often don't have to pay tuition (or heavily subsidized tuition). Everyone I know that got a Masters/PhD in CS actually got paid for it (it was like a job at the university, albeit not as well paid as working in tech).

Very different in the humanities.

Strongly disagree. You can get a full masters from UT Austin with specialization in AI/ML for about $10k. Fully remote. https://cdso.utexas.edu/msai . Compared to a typical bachelors which is what, about $50k?

Bachelors degrees from selective private schools now cost $50k/year.

Rather than spending an extra year getting a state school masters, you can also gain a year of ML work experience for a net positive six figures first year out of school. Which is more valuable?

I think it's 100% individual. I didn't feel like I learned enough, so I stayed in grad school. If you feel otherwise, you absolutely should follow you own path. I've interviewed and worked with hundreds, ranging from bootcamp to PhD, ivy league to city college, and i've seen so many - both - failures and successes, that reducing signals even to education in general, let alone some specific combo of it, without hearing out the person first, is a straight up bias.

Sounds pretty weird to me. I'm just too old to have gotten the BSc+MSc combo here in Germany (some unis had it, mine didn't) but from my experience most people here would just stay at the same university and tack on the MSc just after the BSc (this is in CS).

Oh, but for comparison my degree was officially 9 semesters (most people used 10-12), so getting "just the BSc" was a) much shorter and b) not as ingrained as the default and then going the extra mile, the combo package was more like the full replacement for the old Diploma.

> Master's degrees filter more on having the money

I was a TA and RA, didn't have to pay a dime for grad school, in fact got paid a livable salary, that was UC. No scholarships or anything special at all, just regular TA and RA work. Not sure how "typical" that is, but that money filter certainly did not exist when i was there.

And I've heard such people say the opposite. "Oh, Bachelor? You mean those guys that are certified failed university 'grads'?" As in, master's is what it's at. Anything below it and you might as well not have gone to university.

Isn’t this a pretty universally held opinion?

I haven’t seen this bias personally, what is the thought process behind it? If they were any good they would just have gotten a job or something?

Exactly. The cynical view: If you were any good you wouldn’t need the master’s degree. If you were good and wanted to learn more you’d do a PhD. But you didn’t learn what you were supposed to in undergrad, or could not get/do a job, or need a visa. So you paid a bunch of money to some school that wouldn’t let you into undergrad or a PhD, but will take your cash for a full fare professional masters degree mill. I’ve seen this in industry and in academia.

See my other comment, would be fascinating to know if the general perception has changed in countries where the Bachelor's + Master's system has not be the norm forever, i.e. 10-15y ago I knew no one who only did a Bachelor's, then a few started doing that in Computer Science, but still kinda rare. Maybe it's different now. (Of course the degrees still being basically free compared to the US makes a huge difference if you're willing to stay another year or two..)

I think it's very much a US-centric thing.

I guess this applies to places like the US. In Europe, a master’s degree costs the same as a BS (close to nothing).

For me, the biggest drawback was doing all of the life things later. I graduated at 27, which is on the earlier end, then met my partner a year later, got married 2 years after that, bought a house 2 years after that, and then 2 years after that finally felt settled enough to have our first child (second was born 3 years later). Money was usually gating each step.

We’re going to be pushing 70 before our children have children, if they take the same path.

First kid at ~33 doesn’t strike me as particularly unusual for reasonably well off professionals where I live, but maybe I’m biased by how my parents went through life and you yours.

35 is considered geriatric pregnancy

Technically yes, but in major western cities these days the professional class tend to start having children in their 30s. I know plenty of people here that had their first child in their late 30 or even at 40 (both women and men) - probably more than the amount of people i know who had their first child in their 20s!

The fact that it is more popular to have children over the age of 35 doesn't change the medical realities of it. Anecdotal, but I know more couples with fertility issues than couples who have successfully had a healthy child.

I'm not saying it's a good idea medically, just that "having first child at 33" is hardly out of the ordinary, it's pretty much normal and expected these days. I wouldn't really expect someone with only a B.Sc. to have children earlier than that either.

Buying a house at 31 is not only "not-late" it's even pretty early these days!

Here geriatric doesn't refer to the average age of first birth, it refers to issues that the mother and child will experience during gestation and delivery. Isuues such as :

    High blood pressure and preeclampsia

    Gestational diabetes

    Miscarriage or stillbirth

    Labor problems that require you to have a C-section

    Premature birth

    Low birthweight

    Chromosome disorders like Down syndrome

getting phd at 27 is suuuper early. Granted, friends might start to work at 23 or 25-ish but we're talking about a doctoral degree, which makes a visible difference on job hunting in the field of computer science I'm in.

I don’t know if jobs ‘in the field of computer science’ are the same as jobs as a programmer but I think there exist plenty of very good programming jobs for which a phd doesn’t particularly matter, at least where I live. The people I know who got phds finished around 26/27 so I think it depends on the country/system.

No it isn't. For instance, in the US one starts a BS at 17-18, finishes at 21-22. Median CS PhD is in the 5-6 year range (this site, based on actual data, says 5.7: https://gradschool.duke.edu/about/statistics/computer-scienc...). So if you go straight to the PhD program (common) that puts the median finisher at 27-28.

Assume there are countries, where the usual path looks a little different. The US is not a standard for all things. In some regions you usually don't start studying at a university or institution of higher education before 18-19, a bachelor usually takes 3-4 years, leaving you at 21-23. For starting in a doctorate program, you require a master's degree (in some places this has to be in some related discipline), which again takes 1-2 years (depending on how many credits you got during the bachelor's), usually leaving you at around 23-24 before starting a PhD - at the earliest. A doctorate are 3 years minimum, more likely being around 5 years, so we're at 26-29, and this is with very little time in between to actually do anything else. Additionally, a doctorate may not enable you to get a job that pays well, but possibly do quite the opposite by leaving you on a public service salary for years, and even excluding you from certain jobs outside of academia that could be used to amortize the economical drawbacks.

One way to look at it is that with increasing life expectanties, 70 will be the new 60 (or even 50). The probability that you'll see your kids have kids is going to get higher and higher. Also, it may be better that you had kids later because they'll grow up in a more financially comfortable situation with more aged and experienced parents.

Think of age as a fine wine, not milk :)

In the US, life expectancy isn't really increasing.

It's been fairly flat for the last 10 years or so. [1][2]

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?location...

[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Li...

Unless we do something to reverse dna damage I don’t think that median quality life expectancy can be extended.

The variance in quality of life after your 60s is crazy high. There are many super healthy 60yo, there are also 60yo who are completely devastated from health problems.

And sure maybe you can drag it on for another 5-10 years if you have let’s say Alzheimer’s, but what is the point ?

A lot of longevity interventions (e.g. dietary antioxidants, sunscreen, reducing alcochol consumption) do slow DNA damage.

Getting people to take preventative measures is tough, but it's probably easier than reversing damage after it's done.

If something drastically changes with climate change then maybe you are right, if not then life expectancy will fall.

The timeline you described is the new normal. I'd say you're even slightly ahead.

Normal for the kind of people who get postgraduate degrees, a small minority of the population.

Normal for the professional class in major global cities.

That sounds so exhausting. Was it all worth it? Would you do it the same way again?

I wouldn’t do a PhD. A PhD is really an elite training program (as in, it is required for people occupying elite jobs). However, most people don’t get elite jobs, such as professor, scientist, or designer/architect if in industry. When I graduated, like many PhDs, I took a job in data analysis and quality assurance that could be done by a BS graduate. And there I have have essentially remained because your first job tends to be your career without an immense effort to change.

As a result of my middling career path, I’ve become much more interested in family and hobbies, and I think to myself that I could have been doing those things several years sooner if not for the PhD

Thank you for explaining all this!

Do you have a mortgage on the house or is it actually yours?

Buying a house without a mortgage is something available to a privileged few. Even if the option is available, it’s arguably unwise until you have to prioritize cash flow in your retirement.

Are you aware of how privileged you are?

When discussing with someone, proper manners enlightens a discussant to avoid painting them into a proverbial corner, since such is a negative interaction.

From what I read, the person worked their tush off to get through a graduate program, then pushed for more money in a career.

What aspect of this do you find privileging? Working their tush off? Pushing for opportunities?

A small set of comments online tells one nothing about the background of a person, unless one actively looks for dog whistles and shibboleths.

It appeared they rant about how "doing all the things in life later" was the biggest drawback and continues to contradict the point by providing a timeline that places them at 33yo with all of the listed life goals achieved, starting with a graduation (I assume by the context, with a PhD, at 27). Some of such life goals are not even achievable for some. It sounds like a simple attempt to humble-brag.

Assuming that they worked their tush off or pushed for opportunities also sounds coming from some privileged background, as it seems to assume that hard work and proper initiative would be sufficient in achieving such things, while for some people the first guard is already getting the necessary elementary education, while being in a stable and safe environment.

Paradoxically it is privileged to think that people who didn't get sufficient, necessary elementary education yet did bust their tushes to succeed in academia don't exist in sufficient quantity to be seen on a high traffic internet board.

Rather than looking at your neighbor's privilege, it's better to introspect on our own and how we can use to for others.

> Rather than looking at your neighbor's privilege, it's better to introspect on our own and how we can use to for others.

Then why don't you tell that to the other guy who openly complained about a PhD time-shifting their life plans???

Because I don't view that as privilege. I view that as goals accomplished, which _may_ have been influenced by privilege.

Do you have anything specific to add to the conversation? Immediately starting off taking away things is a not so good start.

I actually don’t understand the idea of privilege. Things like having two loving parents, a stable household, and good health are seen as privileged. There’s an underlying assumption that people should feel bad for having nice things because some people don’t have them. But aren’t these just things we should be trying to provide for everyone? Privilege is the dividend of running a successful society, a reflection that we aren’t in a constant state of nature.

Why not just be happy for them? Does bringing them down bring everyone else up or is that maybe just a second best you're willing to settle for out of spite?

I am truly happy for them, but I would like to see that this is placed in the appropriate context for this public forum. From an international viewpoint, this is the exception, not the norm. "Ranting" about a rather exceptional life path seems misplaced, without providing additional context.

Why would that need to be placed "in the appropriate context"? How does that help anyone who is worse off?

Because they are stating this story as something negative, some drawback. Perhaps it is, for them, but that's where the context and perspective should come in. To me it sounds like an incredible success story. Most people I know, me included, don't have any of those things, although some are well on their list of goals. Having achieved all of them at that young age is a privilege, maybe also due to privilege (I don't know), but certainly not a burden or drawback.

How about just let them enjoy their success and strive to achieve your own instead of policing it?

Not only privileged (in terms of outcome and socioeconomic status of a post-PhD career and family), but also rather ideological. The person you asked the question to casually equates "life things" with family, house, career. It's surprisingly a conservative worldview, and IMO a PhD should expand a person's thinking more deeply than to accept ideology that way. To me this says a modern PhD education is too careerist and subverts the purpose of it, and some professors have pointed this out as well.

The only thing I've gathered here is that progressives are exhaustively drab and annoying to deal with. They will examine things from the point of view that is precisely aligned with only theirs, calling other people's careers useless in a rather amusing turn of events, and then say, without even slightly being self reflective, that these people they are examining are backwards and narrow minded.

To me this says profoundly nothing that was not already known, but needed to be demonstrated in full view of as many participants as possible. To say the least, derailed, but does anyone know the purpose of this derailment? It can only be explained by a progressive in the most whimsical way possible.

> The only thing I've gathered here is that progressives are exhaustively drab and annoying to deal with.

Would you find it reasonable if someone judged whatever political ideology you identify with by the behavior of a few assholes? Trust me, I can find far worse examples of any ideology you can name than even the worst on display in this thread.

And the only thing I've gathered here is kneejerk reactionism against "progressives" consisting of failing to read at the university level which lets them engage in projection by accusing people of attacking other people, rather than focus intellectually on a reasoned discussion of biases and ideological worldviews, and the social structures that give rise to those ideologies.

> consisting of failing to read at the university level

I haven't felt a need to do that since my defense around 2 decades ago. I don't think I've needed to flex that muscle today either, you're welcome to prove me wrong, but I don't really trust your judgement going by your standards today, maybe you should bring along one of your peers instead.

It’s arguably an artifact of an increasingly competitive society. The base “cost” of existing keeps rising, its simply becoming impractical to not be career focused. While I’m sure it benefits professors to have an idealistic employe who will work for peanuts… it’s not sustainable.

While a grad student is expected to be paid - they would need a 1 hour commute to afford the housing options around my rural alma matter.

> It’s arguably an artifact of an increasingly competitive society. The base “cost” of existing keeps rising, it’s simply becoming impractical to not be career focused.

The cost of practically every manufactured good and of food have been dropping for decades if not centuries. Average living space per person has likewise been getting for decades. Healthspan likewise.

In what sense has it become impractical not to be career focused? The average salary for a public high school teacher in NJ is $69K and the top $129K[1] while the average salary for a full professor in the NJ public university system is under $100K and the top is $174K[2] for the overwhelmingly dominant 9 month contracts. If you just want to get paid and you’re capable of doing a PhD you can just do a Master’s instead, in a much, much easier field and then do another job to get paid more.

[1] https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Master-Teacher-Salary-...

[2] https://www.univstats.com/salary/average-professor-salary-at...

The median rent in New Jersey is 2500/month. Meaning our hypothetical teacher will drop 55% of their take-home on a median rental at entry level, and 32% of their salary when maxed out. Presuming that rent does not change relative to salary over the next 30 years - our teacher will be either struggle to afford housing or be rent burdened their entire lives. Most services and goods purchased locally have fees proportional to the local rental costs meaning that the remaining 2k per month buys fewer goods and services then you might expect depending on your local cost basis.

Meanwhile, the median rent in NJ rose 14% in 2022 and have risen 4.1% YTD. To make a meaningful dent in our teachers housing costs, our teacher will need to make a 20% raise every year to get ahead of housing.

A grad student can sometimes avoid housing exposure due to institutional housing, but once they are out of institutional housing - they’ll be exposed to these price dynamics.

My experience as a graduate student tends to disagree that the university housing will be morr affordable. They tend to be more expensive that the median off campus options.

That cynicism is the basis of every form of conservative argument, of the form: "It is not practical/sustainable/expedient/pragmatic/realistic...(insert any other uncritical value judgment)... and the problem is because of hypercompetitive capitalism out there, not the agency of particular individuals (some who succeed and many who shall fail under said system that is source of unsustainability) who are speaking and acting right here." It is a clever, cynical argument that reinforces status-quo thinking about the social order, and is therefore a conservative response.

Hmm I wouldn’t associate this with a conservative argument. The argument provides a claim that we are building an unsustainable system which is not producing the outcomes that we want.

Encouraging competition and unrestrained capitalism is typically considered a defacto conservative argument in the US. However the lines are blurry in different decades and in different countries.

It's conservative because it excuses agency. It's given in the middle of my paragraph.

Perhaps this is a locale specific definition of conservative? I’m unfamiliar with a general or even common definition which aligns to this.

Unless the law grants him special permissions that others dont have, he is not privileged.

I called out the prior comment already, but this also needs to be called out. There are more channels for privilege than special permission in the law. Social mores, law, and luck in birth are the three channels from which privilege can elevate someone's starting point over someone else. I think limiting the source of privilege to only legal permissions misses the discussion, either disingenuously or naively.

So i did a masters in engineering(3yrs), worked for 2 years then went into med school (4yrs) and finished residency (3yrs) in the same time a friend of mine did a PHD in engineering…

I was shocked when i found out he had just finished the PHD when i was graduating residency.

Just curious, what inspired you to pursue medicine. I have been a SDE at a FAANG with 7 years of experience, but I am curious in maybe pivoting into medicine or at least combining the two fields.

I have been feeling extreme boredom and dissatisfaction and was hoping pursuing medicine would give me some renewed passion.

I've dealt with extreme boredom and dissatisfaction and changed professions (albeit from software to information security) and after years I am again facing the same issues. I feel like there may be deeper problems here. In retrospect, while a career change hasn't damaged my career prospects, (on the contrary, it seems like I am probably more employable) I certainly don't have as much experience in either field as I would have if I had just stuck to one (although, through diligence, I have kept on top of my software skills, at least in my particular set of niches). As such, I can't necessarily recommend pursuing this type of solution to your particular problem (although medicine definitely seems distinctly different to tech so maybe it WILL solve the problem).

I guess what I'm trying to say is, maybe consider other options such as trying to completely understand the root cause for your dissatisfaction and extreme boredom. Believe me, I know this isn't easy, but at this point I am at a loss for other options and feel like I must figure out exactly what causes me to feel like this in order to avoid having this happen a third time.

Thank you for sharing! It is nice knowing others feel the same, although I hope you can find what you are looking for.

I am curious, what were you two careers?

Did you try various types of surroundings like management, self-employment etc?

I guess the best explanation is that I liked engineering but it didnt 'fulfill' me. It's something tough to explain.

In any case make sure you know what you are getting yourself into ( speak to medical colleagues ) as medicine has changed a lot in the last 5-10 years. I suspect in 10 more years medicine will be completely corporate run, as things are going now, small practices are being absorbed and being merged into larger and larger groups.

Also I agree with the sibling comments by Arch and snakes.

You'll need to exhibit character like servant leadership to do well as a doctor.

And by that I mean not burning out. The demands on a M.D. are intense. At least from what I know of the ones I’ve talked to.

> make the company sponsor that master degree

Just a note that I jumped from academia to industry last century, and even then although my advisor and department (science) were horrified at the thought of aiming for anything less than a doctorate (masters? that's a consolation degree!), when I went to talk with the Dean (engineering) he gave me exactly the same advice: if you want a degree, get your company to pay for it.

What is your degree in? Because when I got a PhD in EE it was covered by either being a Research or Teaching Assistant. What school/dept would suggest aiming for anything less than a PhD as horrifying? Most students go that path.

Planetary science.

I went from finishing my PhD straight into consulting and I am happy about the reduced stress and better work hours

As a solid B student denied access to a PhD, folks that get PhDs for business reasons really bug me. Especially if they then go on to complain that it was hard.

You don't realise how much some of us want to do research but can't get into academia because other, smarter people take the spots for prestige or money. Like, go away and just work on wall street if you're not interested in doing actual science.

I'm sorry that you were denied access, gatekeeping is real, especially in STEM fields.

I just want to offer that not everyone doing a PhD is doing so for reasons of money or prestige, and not all of them are coming from money or prestige. And the gatekeeping doesn't end once you get in, either. If anything it intensifies the further along you get, and by orders of magnitude the more your circumstances don't parse to something like {age = <30, marital_status = single, kids = false, parental_income = upper_class | middle_class, parental_support = true, needs_to_work_to_survive = false, parent_has_bachelors = true}

I'm not sure it was gate keeping, I think there just weren't enough spots and my grades weren't as good as my competitors. Just wish the ones who didn't want to do it didn't bother so that more spots for us lesser graded people could have got in.

But even the grades are highly contextual. I am unfamiliar with how much they vary across the US, but usually grades depend a lot on the university itself and the professors teaching or grading the courses. The prestige of the university may be taken into account as well. Perhaps it wasn't possible to go to a "better" university, due to financial or simply personal reasons.

Diversity is a really important aspect in building PhD cohorts and research teams - only choosing the best candidates based on grades introduces a bad bias that may even exacerbate the situation.

Not criticizing your take, just curious–grades and GPA have never been a primary factor for any of the PhD admissions committees that I've been on or exposed to. Usually other factors like research experience, letters of rec, and other personal experiences easily outweigh grades, especially if they're just Bs (very low grades would be an issue). Where are your B grades affecting your grad school applications?

It was 20 years ago now, and you couldn't get into grad school with less than an A average. This was in Ontario, Canada.

> you couldn't get into grad school with less than an A average

Then no one "took your spot."

Hi clipsy, it wasn't a cut off, it was just that there were enough people with higher grades taking the spots. If some of those people didn't want to be there and didn't take the spots that they earned, I'm sure they'd have reduced the entry requirements. Best of luck in your future endeavours.

Apologies for my misinterpretation; I can't honestly say I agree with your overall point of view but my objection was misguided.

The main complain in my environment (composed by both doctors and dropouts) is not about "it being hard" but "it being disappointing", specially when you are interested in doing actual science but you find that will be a small part of the process and many times not as rewarding as expected. You add department politics, personal differences with supervisors or the whole publishing business to the mix and it can get really ugly really fast.

Yeah, but I do wonder how much of the reason you're experiencing that is because a lot of the people who make it miserable are there for the wrong reasons?

a lot of what you describe in terms of work culture, expectations, stress, grinder, test of willpower and discipline... is pretty much how high achieving students who suicide describe their lives. So, it's not fortitude, it's other supportive elements of one's emotional life that get one through it.

on behalf of the world i would like to express thanks to all scientists who have borne personal costs to advance our understanding and life quality wherever it really has done so

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