Hacker News Reader

>I thnk it does occur to people, but that's a choice for nepo babies and aspiring monks.

Maybe you've only spent time around PhD candidates at Ivy League schools where people are more likely to have access to wealth, but if you've spent any time at all around PhD candidates you'll find this is generally not the case. As a PhD candidate from a lower SE class, I've found that the majority of my peers are from a similar class. However, I am not connected to a private university though I am in medicine.

Studies on this show great variation across doctoral fields. Economics doctoral students tend to come from more affluent backgrounds, while the majority of Social Sciences doctoral students are from a lower SE class. Overall there seems to be a trend that doctoral students in fields with more lucrative career prospects tend to come from a higher SE class.

From what I have read, your claim only applies to the majority of faculty members, which tend to come from backgrounds with an income that is higher than the national median income.

> while the majority of Social Sciences doctoral students are from a lower SE class

I am speaking solely from anecdotes, but Social Science grad students generally have a Rabbi from early on their career. That is, they are favorite students, close students to at least one powerful/influential figure in their field. A lot of favoritism and a different kind of nepotism play an important part Social Sciences academia.

And to be successful in Social Sciences academia, you need a "mentor"/"Rabbi", and also be a proponent of a certain kind of politics.

Do you mean that to succeed in social sciences academia you have to think Nazis are bad?

This is such a bizarre comment through and through.

Every PhD applicant needs letters of recommendation. You get those from faculty members who think that you are skilled. If you go look at the incoming class of CS PhDs at the top 20 schools, you'll find that basically every single one has a good relationship with at least one faculty member. Callouts of social sciences and the use of "rabbi" are baffling here.

LoRs are there in every field.

But when you are in the social sciences, your mentor takes responsibility for whole of your career.

They see to it that you are ultimately "placed" in life.

Also, what papers are deemed good or influential depend a lot on who you have good relations with, as there are no clear definitions of good/influential like there are in exact science fields.

I am just saying what I have seen.

If you are familiar with 90s-00s vocabulary, you will know what I mean by "Rabbi". It has nothing to do with Judaism or Jews.

> rabbi

> (noun) By metaphor from the Jewish religious role, an older, more powerful or higher-ranking person in the corporation where one works (but usually not in the chain of command) who can give good advice about office politics, and may be able to pull strings, remove heads, or otherwise provide protection from hostile forces.

You have a precise definition a good and influential paper in CS? Can I see it?

Anyone who has watched The Wire will recognize the use of the term here. (Minor spoilers ahead)

In season 3 (I think) Herc caught the mayor doing something inappropriate in his office and his silence was rewarded with promotions. Later on, someone told him "[The mayor] is your rabbi. If he loses the election, your career will go no further."

Pure chat

I don't get it.

I was neither a nepo baby or aspiring monk. What I was, was a kid from a non academic family who wanted more than my small town education could provide. I wanted to push myself to learn at a deeper level and prove it by becoming one of a different crowd of technologists. Maybe these are misguided motivations but they were undeniable and not at all about asceticism or idle riches. It was absolutely worth it.

Ya but, based on the brief resume in your profile, you've also probably made out quite well, no? Is that a completely incidental thing, or do you think you'd feel even a little differently if what you earned throughout your intellectual journey ended up leaving you financially vulnerable, whatever that would mean in your geographic region?

To me it's a question of how much cost a person should reasonably incur in order to pursue one's interests, and I think the amount of people with absurd student loan debt and time spent, compared to their earning potential, is at meme status for millennials and zoomers.

To be clear, I do think the motivations aren't inherently misguided, but they could be, and my guess is that people are taking their potential outcomes more seriously.

In STEM, PhDs are probably not terrible financial outcomes in general (in that they probably mostly avoid a huge amount of student loan debt and may offer a leg-up for some commercial opportunities), but they also may be sub-optimal financially in many cases relative to just landing a job out of academia earlier.

Ya you may be right, at least in terms of expense, but I'm also considering the external cost vs reward even if debt is zero. A woman struck up a conversation with me yesterday at a cafe and we got to chatting. She had already had two careers, first in film, then teaching film, and now starting a PhD in philosophy, which I think is fantastic. But... she's a retired grey hair who owns her home, and the topic of whether her former students or myself would even continue to feasibly attend school or stay present in the community was unavoidable. There was no malice or particularly negative sentiments exchanged in our brief conversation, there didn't need to be, but there was more of an exasperated acknowledgement that there's no possible scenario wherein myself, her students, or her own adult children could secure a house remotely like hers in the broader municipal area by our own means, without winning a literal or figurative lottery with immense career success. Land is too expensive, prospects don't pay enough and they're too volatile.

She wouldn't have been able to either, it was just plausible, though still probably pretty expensive for her at a different time, likely with another income.

It's not impossible to make some pursuits work, but tbh some things are not worth pursuing if they ain't gunna pay. It's an existential crisis that people are well-aware of; why invest ones finite resources into something that won't even let you form a stable adulthood?

Getting a PhD in retirement is great if that's what floats your boat. (I know someone who basically did and another who did as sort of a mid-life crisis.) I don't think I'd have any interest because of all the BS associated with getting a credential. It does provide some structure around an activity. But I just can't personally imagine having that much structure unless I had a real objective in mind.

It is expected, at least where I'm from, that a PhD in an engineering discipline is going to go get a decent tech job. It is not by any means required, so it remains a personal choice and changed the nature or the jobs you'll be offered to a certain extent.

For me, my employability vastly improved when I graduated, and subsequently worked where I did (which was only unlocked because of my grad work).

Also I just love computer science. It's magic.

Well, that's where it's a viable investment, right? I'd presume that if the overall amount of PhDs severely drops, then the ones still pursuing them will be doing so because it's a clear win on the investment front after factoring in the personal expense of doing it. The same would clearly be true of MDs, some careers just have that requirement.

> learn at a deeper level and prove it by becoming one of a different crowd of technologists

The “prove you’re special” motivation is definitely a strong third reason that does not align with the nepotism baby or monk archetypes

Labor specialization is not a deeply suboptimal strategy. Is that a better way of putting it?

So you are in the group perusing money.

Money was not the motivation. One of my lab mates left to join the startup scene and now is crazy wealthy. I just loved the study and being outside with robots trying to do good work. I don't know why this is so hard to believe. Now I do ok as most senior software engineers do, but about 1/3 or 1/2 of a starting FAANG comp, let alone senior.

I think it's hard for some people to understand why other people would choose to be poor.

And so it must be that people who choose to get a PhD come from means.

When the choice is between being (perhaps, somewhat) money-poor and being intellectually poor, it's easy to understand. But not everyone is wired that way.

> IMHO, long and difficult educational programs should be designed to guarantee a high chance of a reasonable stable and comfortable outcome.

You've hit the nail on the head. Education is now regarded transactionally. A PhD simply isn't about that; if you ever thought so, you've been lied to.

I'm a PhD student and I'm certainly not being 'taken advantage of' or anything of the sort. Please broaden your perspective and stop basing your entire view of a topic on a few sob stories from people who either couldn't hack it or made terrible, self-sabotaging decisions and now regret it.

There's a huge crowd out there for whom this was not their experience, and hence have no reason to moan about it online.

> I think it does occur to people, but that's a choice for nepo babies and aspiring monks.

This is my experience. Or in another way of saying it: either they persue the money, or they have already the money, or yes, want to be "monks" but that must be like 0.01%. Most of the people I know come from rich families, or want to be the next rich familiy.