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Comment by bachmeier | Hacker News Reader

You should not get a PhD for the money. That's always been the case. It's a research degree. If it will open doors for the type of work you want to do, that's the only time it's worth it.

Traditionally, the reason to get a PhD was that it was the only way to get an academic job. In 2023, I don't recommend academic employment. Sadly, it's just another type of employment today. I started my first academic job in 2002 and things were different back then.

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What do you feel has changed in the last 20 years? (This has been discussed a lot but my impression is that people compare today to the 1960s more than to the 00s).

It's not a 0 dollar difference, that would be doing something not for money, but a huge negative difference is doing something for negative money. Bad idea IMHO. Life isn't a video game; you only get one play thru.

Somebody has to do it. We wouldn't have the civilization we have if we had no scientists. Similarly, we need teachers, caretakers, stay at home parents, and somebody has to repair the phone lines and pave the roads. If every person on the planet simply pursued the maximum pay career available to them, we wouldn't have much of a society at all.

You should certainly be aware of the financial sacrifice you're making to do socially impactful work and consider this in the decision calculus, but I don't think you can say zero people should ever make that decision.

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