Hacker News Reader

Comment by xyzelement | Hacker News Reader

I have a horrid memory of interviewing "a kid" for an entry level engineering job during on-campus recruitment. The "kid" had just finished his PhD in chemistry following a master's and bachelor's in the same field.

He was now closer to 30 to than to 20, was interviewing for the same job that a BS-grad can go after, and wasn't competitive compared to them.

I asked him why he had spent so much time in chemistry just to pivot and he just literally didn't know. It was hard to look at his graduate education as anything other than a wasted decade that actually has set him back career wise.

One interesting question is how does someone do that to themselves?

Another interesting question is - what is the value of a PhD when someone uninterested in the field and not-that-thought-out about it can get one? We think of PhD designating that someone has committed to the field and pushed a little edge of the frontier forward through sheer motivation and brillians and it was just hard to imagine this being true for this guy.

View on HN

A friend of mine did a PhD in computer science solely and specifically so he could prove to himself that he could do a sustained, multi-year solo project and complete it. He then got a job he totally would've gotten 4 years earlier as well, with just the MSc. When asked (eg by recruiters/interviewers), he always said "because I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it" and personally I find that a very satisfying answer.

All I'm saying is, not everyone doing a PhD and then leaving academia was accidentally climbing up the wrong ladder. Some did it on purpose, just to admire the view.

That's a good answer. Not the answer I got in the story.

"I don't know" is not a very strange answer if you are talking to somebody at a carreer fair who is introverted. I know lots of folks who would answer like that. Once you get to know them and talk to them in a quiet non-stressful environment where they can think a little, they often open up about their real motivations.

Nobody is going to tell you the story of their grandmother with whom they shared a chemistry hobby and in whose memory they wanted to acquire deep knowledge of the field before getting a well-paying job in a different field if they are introvert and you give them the vibe of being judgemental of their life choices.

I so appreciate the compassion in this comment. It’s rare on the internet.

Oh hey that’s me! Not literally me. Probably I was a little better off. But I was recently in a similar position, and feel like my PhD was a lost decade in some ways.

The answer, as I’m sure many already know, is idealism and a certain kind of naïvité. It’s not an absolute naïvité, but it is some kind of belief in the value of doing something that isn’t “mere” careerism. You think it’s noble to contribute to science. And you do contribute, a teeny eensy weensy bit. You also find out that it’s not everything you imagined it would be. And then you’re 30 and one day you unblind yourself. You look at the job market, and how much money various jobs actually pay. More importantly, you realize quite suddenly that money can actually make your life better, and that, whatever damage it might have wrought on your soul to pursue it, it would at least have enabled you to own a home one day. Maybe have kids. Shit. And the fresh grads who went straight into tech and finance making $300k (hold on, you can make $300k? Wait a second, that’s not a senior executive salary? That’s a normal-ish bourgeois white-collar HCoL salary that people make fresh out of school? Hold on, that’s basically a starting salary in that world? WHAT?)… just naturally understood.

Then you try to explain this on a message board or something. You don’t want pity (after all, your life is very good in the scheme of things), you just want some connection, or maybe even a, “that’s ok, that’s how we learn, life is a twisty path.” But half the people call you a class traitor. The other half call you a mediocre sucker.

> it would at least have enabled you to own a home one day. Maybe have kids. Shit.

ding ding ding. This is the real kicker. This is why it’s a waste of time to pursue. Want a PhD? A home? A family? Pick one or two. With the amount of time and effort it takes to achieve those these days, you won’t get to have them all. So you have to pick one. At 17/18 it’s easy to see the coming decade as longer than it really is, and opportunity cost will catch up to you quick.

> That’s a normal-ish bourgeois white-collar HCoL salary that people make fresh out of school? Hold on, that’s basically a starting salary in that world? WHAT?

Some people. That's very field-specific and won't last forever. Basically FAANG programmers and finance bros.

Yeah, in that world. You realize this, and the next thing you realize is that you’re at the tail end of it and have about a year to escape the permanent yadda yadda yadda…

> hold on, you can make $300k? Wait a second, that’s not a senior executive salary? That’s a normal-ish bourgeois white-collar HCoL salary that people make fresh out of school? Hold on, that’s basically a starting salary in that world? WHAT?

Is this world as normal and common as you describe? To me it seems more like a byproduct of a brief era in tech, today only accessible to people already in the system or creme of the crop students going to the right institutions and who have the skills, connections or luck to string together events that lead to them working there. Today, I know loads of people who did the right thing, but my current generation of graduates definitely isn't aiming for $300k starting salary, not even the best people I know can dream of that. Maybe it would be better to use a more grounded example, since many average workers in many careers will still take home considerably more than most PhDs - instead of using what feels like a closing window from a gold rush.

> But half the people call you a class traitor.

That doesn't make sense. You don't even change your class, you go from working for a wage to working for a wage. I only see the other reaction you mention, the "you're done, it's over, you wasted your life".

No, of course $300k is a very high salary even on a US basis, never mind a global one. I’m not confused about that. I went my whole life thinking $100k was like “you’ve made it.” But it turns out that if you have what it takes to get into a top technical degree program, you’re among people who have the opportunity to make that kind of money, and most of them know it. This is a very surprising fact. It did not fully occur to me that this was what so many people were struggling for and fighting over in their Stanford applications. My parents told me it was all about “natural curiosity” or something. I believed them. It offended me a whole lot, at first, when I was disabused of that fairy tale.

And, yes, it certainly is a closing window for a gold rush.

> You don't even change your class, you go from working for a wage to working for a wage.

True, but I’m literally employed as a capital-C Capitalist now. You’re technically right, but…

Yeah, at the end of the day I didn't say you were confused or wrong in your assessment, I just wanted to say that there's a more poignant version of that argument that can be made by using more 'normal' examples of low-6 figure careers that are ever-present and can be reached by more people.

> I’m literally employed as a capital-C Capitalist

What do you mean, is that your job title? Or do you own capital? I thought the class separation was only in whether you were recurrently paid to work for someone else or if derived your wealth from owning something.

Academia is not a waste of time just because it doesn't translate into "productivity" and wealth. Some people enjoy the pursuit of knowledge, and find great meaning in it.

Increasingly the arts are being defunded based on a similar argument, and humanity as a whole is worse off because of it.

He did not seem to enjoy it or find meaning in it.

Something could be valuable despite being "useless" but not in this case.

Why do we need artists anymore? I can just ChatGPT to draw me pretty pictures if I want.

There is a real conflict here. People are getting loans for their education. A loan is an investment, and should only be taken if it will pay off.

If you are getting education because you are interested in the topic but won't get a job in it: I fully support this. However you should not take a loan out to get this education: there are too many other things to do in life that you also will want to do. Worse the loan means you cannot change your mind later if you are wrong (or you can, but you will still have to pay for the mistake instead of whatever you are interested in today).

There is one other reason for education: to become a better citizen (don't fall for bad politics). However that should be to everybody and I haven't seen much evidence that higher education really helps much.

It's very rare and extremely un-recommended to get a loan for a PhD. For most people, at worst, you're losing money by opportunity cost.

While it would be insane to get a PhD if you had to pay for it, at least in the US you are paid a stipend (if not a good one) so you can generally avoid any debt. There is definitely an opportunity cost though.

Most people undervalue their time.

If a PhD cost $0, it still costs a craptonne of time.

All the smartest people I know left school when they were 15 (or earlier).

> People are getting loans for their education

In some countries they do, in some they don't, in others every PhD student even gets a scholarship. Every person I know who did the PhD did it because they loved the topics they were studying. The author of the blogpost is from Russia, I bet he didn't have to pay for his PhD.

I would fo so faras sayingif that's not why you are going for a PhD then you should not do it.

While I agree with you, I also have to acknowledge the absurdity of some schools having kids define their own crazy undergrad majors, while plunging them into large amounts of debt. They should at least have to sign a waiver that says, "I acknowledge that this degree will likely not be a good investment".

Yeeees, but .. now is very much a time when you're going to have to justify that investment to the funding system and the broader public. I generally agree with the "pursuit of knowledge" framing, but there's a big advocacy gap.

Your needlessly condescending description of the event coupled with the power imbalance of the situation suggest to me that you got the answers you expected to get simply because that’s what you were looking for

This is so interesting as a response. I feel like any description of a problem state can be described as "condescending" or "unempathetic" or what have you, which prevents our ability to talk about and solve problems.

The bottom line of the story is this man had invested a decade in a field in what I could at best describe autopilot - it didn't seem like he had and lost passion or was simply making a finance-driven decision.

At the end of the day this is pretty much what happened and to dress it up would hurt our ability to connect to the problem and think about it.

Happy to engage. referring to him multiple times as a "kid" in quotes from a "horrid memory" is not useful context. It sets the tone in a judgmental not open to interpretation way.

An alternative view of someone choosing to change career paths later in life is that you gain access to a different background than the other candidates in your pool. that may not be valuable in your case, but often it is. At the very least he's recognized a sunk cost and cut ties, which can be hard to do.

I appreciate what you are saying, I really do -- and I think there are scenarios where your second paragraph is completely applicable and true (I hired plenty other PhDs for these kinds of jobs so it's not an inherent bias) -- but in this case the hour I had spent interviewing him led much closer to the picture I painted in my first comment even if I phrased it unkindly.

But I do think there's communication value at describing things sharply. "John has been affected by alcoholism" and "John has fucked up his life by drinking - his wife left and took the kids" can refer to the same event, and while the first phrasing is more pleasant and respectful - it is the second phrasing that drives home the severity of what's actually happening.

I think some people get on this train and they don't really know where to get off or what to do whenever they do get off. So inertia keeps them riding along, doing something that is comfortable (even if they don't enjoy it) to postpone figuring out what to do next. Eventually the train gets to the end of the line and they have to get off and figure something out.

I think this is part of the tragedy of our parents generation pushing college at all costs. It is very hard to know what you want to do for the rest of your life as an 18 yo. Even worse to take on all the debt in the world for something you don't end up loving or without a good path to repayment. In previous generations, some of these people would have done a stint in the service or taken a gap year but now there is too much pressure to know "now".

> I think this is part of the tragedy of our parents generation pushing college at all costs.

I can’t blame em, they seem to have lucked out and been around just at the right time.

I currently live in a smaller blown out rust belt shithole city. It used to be a fairly sized industrial center even through the decline of the region. I meet a lot of middle aged and older people here who will opine on about their father the chemist who invented some everyday, but notable item for [chemical conglomerate] in the 80s/90s. Some people here have established a fair bit a wealth for their family through their patents even.

Even here on HN I keep nothing commenters talking about their father the physicist or their mother the biologist. Nowadays those people seem to be struggling to figure out where if anywhere they can afford to start a family (or just giving up on the prospects)

Some of us find it very hard to know what you want to do for the rest of your life at twice that age. There are a lot of trains.

> Another interesting question is - what is the value of a PhD when someone uninterested in the field and not-that-thought-out about it can get one?

The value of a PhD is what it brings to you. It will cost vast amounts of unpaid toil and tears, and it will not give you a well-paid job afterwards. But if you love the idea of discovering something genuinely new about this world, having the sheer freedom to dive into a research question without fear or restraint can be exhilarating.

And sure, you can also get a PhD by doing the minimum and letting your supervisor carry you through. But why would you throw years away on something you didn't care about, with nothing but a subsistence living allowance as a reward? You're only cheating yourself at that point.

> The value of a PhD is what it brings to you. It will cost vast amounts of unpaid toil and tears, and it will not give you a well-paid job afterwards.

This should probably be legally mandated to be printed on the application forms, like a Prop 65 warning.

At the age of 17 or 18 how do you actually know? My kids are going through this now. He's like I don't even know if I want to be an engineer, people just tell me I'd be good at it.

One thing I always hated about university education is how it’s entirely designed nowadays as a sort of “coming of age experience” for teenagers coming out of high school.

I don’t have any higher education. I was stupid and arrogant and thought it would be a waste of time and money. However even if I did attend at 17/18, I almost certainly would have squandered it. I wouldn’t have been mature or aware enough to understand how and where to focus my time and energy in such a setting.

By about my mid-late 20s I felt like I had a better idea of what I could or could not get out of such an experience, but by that point I had a life and bills to pay and a job to attend to allow for any of that. There’s barely any time or money for education now. I’ve thought about trying to go back for the last decade, but it just becomes less realistic every year.

I think that gap you described of not ready but able vs ready but not able is exactly what the college experience is for. I also don’t think everyone needs to bridge that gap by going to college.

For me personally, I had a ton of fun squandering my college years taking a wide variety of classes that could have become a passion but ended up not. I would not have been able to do that outside of a structured environment that gave each subject a pass/fail opportunity in my life that cost only a semester.

College really isn't that hard or complex. All that's required is you attend classes, study, and pass tests. Where's this narrative coming from that one has to "be mature and aware enough to focus my time and energy in such a setting"? what setting? class? the same concept we've all participated in since kindergarten?

online school, commuting, and part time school are all valid options that result in a college degree.

> College really isn't that hard or complex. All that's required is you attend classes, study, and pass tests.

Sure that’s all that’s required. And simple people such as yourself may be content with that and see it as the end-all

But anyone with an avoids room temp IQ understands that the real value of a university education isn’t the classes. It’s the people, the opportunities to do things become

> online school, commuting, and part time school are all valid options that result in a college degree.

Again the fact that you think that exclusive value of university is a degree it’s quite showing. I’d even argue online education strips some of the more valuable parts of an education away. I wouldn’t recommend that to anyone but those looking for a quick conic status booster like through Nursing. Indeed better to save your money otherwise. I’d put my money down that you’re some sort of CRUD monkey.

> I want to be [whatever]

That isn't the right question. The right question is can you do it, and will it pay enough to provide "a good life" (whatever that means to you). If you love [whatever] more power, that is the best case. However don't lose track of the fact that in the end no matter what job you pick there will be times when you have to do something you hate (not something unethical where you should quit, just something you hate), but you need to do something to be a good citizen.

If your kids already have a good career picked out I encourage a secondary study in some hobby thing. Go ahead and sing in the choir even though as an engineer it is a waste of time - that is fun and that is good (there are thousands of other fun things). Just don't lose sight that the goal is a good life and this will include things you don't want to do but have to anyway.

That resonates. I just advise to make decisions that broaden your future options. And you don't have to choose now, just get in take some classes, look around. He is in the local orchestra (one of the youngest), coaches skiing and kayaking at a pretty high level. His grades are off the chart so he's got to go to university, I wouldn't be inclined to push that now days but his results are too exceptional to do that to him. I just say get a degree, get a trade (coaching fits that well enough), start a business - those could be your five to ten year goals right now.

The problems is those set you up for the rest of your life. Nothing wrong with a trade - but many of them wear the body out, and they don't pay well. I would argue it is worth paying the price now for an engineering degree which will pay more in the long run.

Of course if he starts a successful business that can pay better than engineering. Does he want to - I don't have the personality to do well there but that shouldn't stop him.

These aren't either or propositions, he can do a full time white collar job, have a serious skill or trade (he's already got that with three ski coaching) and have a side business all at once. I expect that they will wax and wane over the next twenty years. Part of it is I want my kids to see there's a way past the AI distopian future being portrayed.

I don't think they are necessarily supposed to know. They are supposed to make intentional, well-considered choices: to weigh the tradeoffs, understand the consequences, and choose the option that works best for them.

Unfortunately, educational systems tend to be biased toward a utilitarian view of education rather than one centered on judgment, self-understanding, and the ability to make meaningful choices.

Does he have a college scholarship? If so, he should take it, and take some engineering classes. It's a way to find out if he likes it, at least to some degree. But he should also take some other classes - science and humanities, to find out what else he likes.

If he doesn't have a scholarship, same thing, but at a community college.

But the people telling him he'd be good at it see something. "I'd be good at it" is not the same as "I'd like it", but we often enjoy things we're good at more than things we're bad at. (Also, it's often easier to get jobs in things we're good at.)

You must be blessed. To always know why you do stuff?

Umm yes, what I did for 10 years and why is a reasonable question especially of someone on PhD level.

This whole chain of consequences probably started around "why did you start studying chemistry when you were 19 years old?".

Maybe bit sad. Very common. And also a life.

Agreed. It's like a sad state in my mind more than anything. But also an interesting prompt for reflection - if something sad happened to you due to your own decisiona, do you reflect on those decisions and learn?

Not as much learn, but - are you able to pull yourself out from a local optimum?

It is not the learning but the action that is missing here.

At least chemistry is objectively useful knowledge. Even if he would rather work in software engineering, there are a lot of places where domain expertise like that is very valuable. Plenty of software in the sciences.

A PhD demonstrates the ability to think deeply about something. It thus isn't useless for any good job. However there are often better trainings for that job.

most jobs don’t require deep thought.

in LLM terms low to no reasoning is better than ultra.

I think it mostly proves how much you're willing to submit yourself to hard, complex, frustrating and unrewarding work. You don't get the PhD just for the thinking.

> It was hard to look at his graduate education as anything other than a wasted decade that actually has set him back career wise.

> One interesting question is how does someone do that to themselves?

Some people pursue knowledge because they are interested in it and not because it maximizes their income potential. I find that admirable. Even more, I find the opposite pretty sad.

>One interesting question is how does someone do that to themselves?

Because the system arounds you encourages it.

Many would dream to be top scholars of their field, to the point it feels like a personal mission. The reality kicks in for the first time when you can’t progress through the system anymore, be it 25 or 30.

Graduate school is not about passion and pushing frontiers. It is about training new researchers. It is it not a place that I would recommend to anyone who has real passion or brilliance in any field.

Most graduate school students don’t do research and don’t go on to do a PhD though? And what’s wrong with having more researchers?

> what’s wrong with having more researchers?

Nothing wrong with it. However what is right about it? The world needs research, and that means researchers. However for every person in research the world needs a very large number of people in non research. The guy who works at the local sewer plant isn't doing research, but the world would fall apart if nobody did that job, while the world would still continue with nobody in research (I wouldn't want to live in either world, but the world of no more research is better than the world of no more sewer systems)

You think that researchers lack passion and cannot push frontiers?? Research and passion are not dichotomous, they are (or at least should be) synonymous.

(I am genuinely sorry for whatever bad experience that's led to this bitterness, though.)

I think that graduate schools do not filter on passion and ability. They filter on people that can play the game, where such things can be a liability.

Edit: “research” in academia now revolves around grant writing and publishing. That is an anti-filter for individuals that do not want to play that game and would rather spend that time doing actual research.

In my situation I started my PhD in a time before AI, and now that AI solves the problems I’m grappling with whether or not I should continue in this profession.

As another poster mentioned, I also wanted to add that this attitude is why there is so much stress and pressure on kids these days to figure out everything in their lives by the time they're 22. It's pretty amazing to me that anyone can look at a PhD in Chemistry and say that was a wasted decade. Why was he not competitive? What skills were you looking for? In what way are you already biasing candidates based on your preconceived notions about what makes someone helpful, useful, intelligent, etc. I know broad generalizations aren't too useful, maybe this specific person had real significant shortcomings compared to the other 22 year olds you interviewed, but I encourage you to consider why we are doing "all of this" anyway (is it money? productivity? prestige? big houses?) and why someone might prioritize going so far in a field to actually CONTRIBUTE something new to the field (as one does through a PhD). Maybe consider why someone might not slot perfectly into your idea of the perfect economic pawn, though nevertheless have chosen an absolutely fine way to spend ones life (or ten years of it).

I agree with you. So many variables at play and every 7-10 year cycle stacks and compounds knowledge and skills if one does it right. A stint as a PhD in Chemistry is extremely valuable substrate to build upon, especially if the person was interested in it and understands it deeply.

I think if that time was spent productively, it's not a loss at all. With AI the coming iterations will favor different kinds of combinations of perspectives and experiences towards identifying esoteric solutions. Or otherwise stated, people who are deep learners will find that they are able to deeply learn faster and at a larger breadth now too and this will produce new kinds of solutions to problems that in some cases haven't even been defined yet.

I think this will be a critical thing in the near timeline that Elon and others predicted, when more things can be automated. There will still be a lot of increasing demand for thought workers and researchers and engineers including those who started out in other thought-based disciplines. I believe tokenization of financial instruments or for development of new ones means an additional productive substrate layer to the economy and that is why big/smart money are flowing into it. Those + AI will be a big driver in growing the power of that new layer and driving wages for those people/teams pushing the envelope further there.

We have a lot of control over this kind of thing these days...meaning we can be productive in creating such incentives and possibilities because the yield is far greater. It produces and will produce way more knowledge and products/services in the future. I think people are severely underestimating the potential of the American system to produce 0 to 1 innovation in literally everything at huge scale with the right incentives/environment set up for people. Productivity here is not the issue, the problem is legacy notions on what is valuable and how to fund it. Legacy meaning no longer functionally or logically sound due to the advanced possibilities afforded by decades of compounded gains since WW2 or the Industrial Revolution or the Printing Press.

I would have interviewed him too.

I would have felt that he was at least technically savvy; and, beyond that, he might have the spark of one of the best qualities of a future colleague i.e. interesting-ness - one can't underestimate that.

On the other hand

> he just literally didn't know

That would have been disappointing to hear.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com