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Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

> Ph.D. is generally a different story, so let's save that for a different time

Can you explain this in more detail?

Also, hkmurakami said in his reply to you that "A PhD also makes it more difficult to find a job." Why would that be?

A PhD makes it more difficult to find a job because bigcorps (1) want to indoctrinate and mold you based on company doctrine and culture, and (2) pay based on age.

(1) Japanese bigcorps have extensive on the job training programs which bring relatively specialized new grads up to speed. In fact I think it does a great job at getting nearly all new hires up to median performance within the company. Think of it as relying on mass producing "good employees", rather than focusing on finding "great employees".

(2) Japanese bigcorps are organized such that promotions and pay increases happen based on seniority. This is especially the case at the lower ranks, where everything is very methodical and planned out. Promotion cycles tend to happen every 3 years, with boolean results. Raises happen methodically every year according to HR's tables (though these get phased out when you get more senior -- part of the cost cutting efforts in the last 20 years).

Combine these two factors and companies want young, cheap "good enough" talent to join their company, after which they will train them according to their corporate flavor. Hiring a PhD means that you have to pay them higher than the undergrad, even though you're going to put them both through the same training cycles. Unless there's a really good fit between the doctorate candidate's research and what a team wants (or lab-corporate connections), companies will shy away from hiring PhDs.

What about for jobs where research skills are specifically necessary, like in corporate science and technology labs? Do the bigcorps find more value in hiring an undergrad and providing them training on how to do research?

For such jobs, big corps do hire PhDs. These jobs are almost always in a research department (i.e. they won't hire a PhD to code). But these jobs are maybe 1% of all jobs in big corps.

Nowhere near 1% in my experience. Also, even in research arms, many masters level students are accepted (though it really depends on how low level the research activity is at that particular company, so this is going to vary wildly among different companies)

So what happens to the rest of the PhD students? Or are there just not many students who go on to get PhDs?

They come to America? For what it's worth, I know several PhDs from Japan working here in the SF Bay Area, all in biotech.

any position that requires phd level math/physics/chemistry etc is extremely rare even in the west.

job descriptions like to say phd level blah blah blah but rarely do they actually require such a theoretical background.

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