I notice a lot of negativity and "do not recommend" regarding pursuing a PhD on HN recently. That raises the question: Why would you go for it?
In some ways, it is not so different from being an entrepreneur, as in both cases you are forging your own path trying to do something new that a certain community likes.
One of the tough things about the education route is that winning at entrepreneurship can result in huge tangible life changes, but it seems like the effects of winning at education is harder to visualize.
I get to put PhD after my name, but what else?
If you can run a successful ideas business for 10+ years in multiple locations and convince several gauntlets of committees to keep supporting you, then there's a great deal at the end for choosing this education route--your business gets a significant degree of permanent support and protection (tenure)! But to get to that point, you have to sell your ideas and develop a product that will get buy-in and support from others in your field.
There are no limits on how hard or how much you can work. There are also no guarantees that working hard will pay off either. There's a lot of luck and sometimes the market just isn't buying what you're selling at that time, even if your product is great.
At least for me, that was actually worth the hardship. Although there was a lot of hardship. It was still an incredible, and ultimately empowering, experience.
The journey is long and hard and there are a ton of bumps along the way to complain about. But the overall journey is worthwhile.
I think it is similar to marriage. If you meet someone who's been married for 50 years, and you ask them how it has been they will say it was wonderful and then immediately start telling you about all the tough times them and their partner went through. THey might tell you how hard it was when they both lost their jobs or when they almost broke up 10 years in, but they still love the other person and are happy to have had them.
To an outsider it feels like these aren't compelling reasons to get married, but the married person has other feelings that are hard to quantify like the joy of being next to their partner during the hard times, the ability to share in the joys of that new job, the ability to offload some of their stress, or even the joy of waking up next to them each morning. Those outweigh the shitty things, but the shitty things often get mentioned the most because they stand out.
I think the same thing is true for the PhD. It takes most people 3-7 years (averaging around 4.5) to get a PhD. This is a significant journey that will have ups and downs. You hear all the shitty things on here. But there are joys of learning something you truly love at a detail of focus that is not possible with any other degree. There is the joy of breaking new ground with research and the satisfaction of being the shoulders that future generations will stand on with their own research. The joy of having a paper published or the networking that you get to be a part of. The journey is worth it. It is unique for everyone and you are in control. Its a ~5 year journey that will inheritly have ups and downs. Do you need a PhD to succeed in life? Certainly not. But can it be one of the core pillars of your life if you choose to do it? 100% Yes.
Wouldn't change it for the world though, and anecdotally most people I know who ended up finishing the PhD feel the same way.
Main shortcoming of the (American) grad school experience imo is lack of preparation to join the corporate workforce (in my field, there are easily >10x the graduating PhDs each year than there are available university jobs). Academia has done a terrible job preparing grad students for the harsh reality of a non-academic career. Keeping this in mind throughout grad school will help a lot -- you can see the difference in non-academic career trajectory between people who had a backup plan and those who didn't.
Depends on whether you won federal grants though, although most of those end up thrown at PHD students from Ivys and Stanford (sadly?).
You should really only go into a Ph.D. because you really want to, which sounds tautological but basically you need to want to go into academia or get the kind of industry R&D job that requires one (several of my graduating colleagues). If you're on the fence about doing Ph.D. - don't. There's a very real opportunity cost.
2. You will develop the invaluable skill of not giving up even when all the odds are against you
3. You will be able to swim by yourself, parsing enormous amount of literature, identifying what is useful and useless and solve problems that no one else before you has solved.
4. Access to academic positions that offer stability
5. Access to academic network that provide infinite talent
This depends highly upon your field, the current needs of industry, and your own work ethic. For example, if you want to write or architect software for a living, a PhD in computer science really doesn't get you much. Neither is it a good idea to go for a PhD just because you can't think of anything better to do to further your career. But if your goal is to make new discoveries in a field you are passionate about, then that would be a different story.
Also I have met a lot of PhDs who are absolutely not experts on anything at all, except for knowing how to thrive in the socio-political academic system by being "book smart," and writing bullshitty articles/papers.
> You will develop the invaluable skill of not giving up even when all the odds are against you
Are you saying people don't wash out of PhD programs all the time? Even if this was somehow true, you don't need to throw money at a PhD program to learn this!
I can accept the argument that a unicorn startup might have higher tail monetary benefit compared to a PhD. But a startup job will not open as many research job opportunities as a PhD. These are typically the highest paid individual contributor jobs in companies.
Of course if managerial track is your thing, you should probably not waste your time doing a PhD.
This one reads like a bitter joke :/ not sure where you live for this to sound true to you! But the rest are good takes.
Reminds me of how many entrepreneurs don't become entrepreneurs to become rich. They do it to become free from having bosses. Except for me, I'm not sure I'd be able to make it as an entrepreneur if I only chase what interests me instead of what a market wants. If I chase what the market wants instead of what interests me, my motivation drops. Been there, tried that. So... here I am. Even though it's painful right now.
But still I generally do not recommend people do it. You have to be in it, because you are very interested in the field. You have to feel rewarded by learning, and by solving problems. And also there is a lot a lot of luck involved: advisor, topic, ideas etc.