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Comment by pc86 | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, this post is about a literature Ph.D., not one in a field like Mathematics or Computer Science. Not that the job outlook is a lot rosier on that side, but it's an important distinction to be made.

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I think we should clarify that the research-job outlook is not rosy in CS. There are plenty of corporations that want to hire CS PhDs for non-research work. And there is always the entrepreneurial route (the smart VCs aren't going to hold the PhD against you).

That's true, though if you want a job in industry doing non-research CS work, the case for going beyond a B.S. or an M.S. in the first place is considerably weaker. You could do a PhD if you want to spend a few years in grad school out of personal/intellectual interest, presumably the same reason one would do the same in literature, but it's not going to really open career doors unless you're interested in research.

Agreed with one caveat. If one is interested in something obtuse, doing a PhD gives you the opportunity to work with the greatest minds/personal heroes in the subject. I got the opportunity to interact with a few Turing award level people in my career so far. It is hard to put a dollar value on that.

One other point is that resources like YC did not exist when I started my PhD. I was about to finish as YC came out and I felt finishing up my PhD was the better option. I had some friends who had just started their PhD programs and they quit to pursue startup opportunities (undoubtedly a good move for almost everyone). Timing and luck I guess.

In Germany there are plenty research-jobs, but most of them in civil service, so no CS-PhD want it. The industry just pays much better.

Last year there was something in the news about the payment of professors, which was about $5000 a month. This is an entry level pay of a software developer (without Master or PhD) in Germany.

There are lifestyle considerations too. Academic work year, no crazy work hours, etc.

Academic work year and no crazy hours? Sorry, but you clearly don't work with research.

Working all days of the week is incredibly common.

And, unfortunately, crunch time specially near major conference deadlines is almost becoming the norm. Of course, the focus on publication is another problem related to that.

People can work as much or as little as they want, once they make tenure. It's not that different from the startup model: hard work for a few years up front, then cash in your chips, with 2-3 decades of guaranteed income until government retirement age.

This would only be the case if every research job was in a university and in tenure track, which is definitely not the case.

Many research positions are in industry, or are postdocs or non-tenure track. Besides the fact that many countries don't have anything similar to tenure.

Also, not everybody on tenure track reaches it.

Having worked in academic research and co-founded a startup I would admit that the working hours weren't that different. However, in a startup you have a much wider set of pressures - making payroll at the end of the month, keeping customers happy, investing your own money to keep the business going, hiring/firing/managing people etc. (it's a very long list).

Having had my own co-founded company gone bankrupt, I have to agree with you.

"...which was about $5000 a month. This is an entry level pay of a software developer (without Master or PhD) in Germany."

Where? I'm near what, as I understand it, is considered a good area for high-tech workers (Ruhr area), but I don't see many jobs paying this much (maybe I'm looking in the wrong places?)

I'm from Stuttgart, made my B.Sc. in 2011 and make about $5500 (~4220€) am month as a GUI-Dev. When I read the "IT-Payment" polls in the news I get the impression this isn't nearly as much as it could be. :D

Well, that's the point - if you get a computer science or physics or biology PhD, then it's likely to be useful also in a bunch of non-research industry jobs.

If you get a literature or anthropology PhD - then outside of teaching it's useful mainly as a hobby.

There is still field work to be done in anthropology, but I have it on pretty good authority that grants are very thin unless you have a last name like Leakey. My friend was on the faculty at Harvard; now she's a lawyer because she doesn't want to retire in poverty.

It's actually a lot rosier on the CS side in my experience. I got my PhD from a middle-of-the-pack school (i.e. not CMU, MIT, etc) and received a tenure-track job offer (at a 4-year liberal-arts college) before I had defended. After working as a professor for a few years, I have decided to go back to industry, and have been besieged with job offers. My understanding is that hiring my replacement is turning out to be difficult because there aren't enough people with PhDs who want to be teaching-oriented professors.

Basically, right now, a CS PhD can find a tenure-track job if they are willing to broaden their search to include non-research-only professor jobs. Of course, this should not necessarily inform whether a person should get a PhD in CS, as it takes 4-6 (or more) years and who knows if this will still be true then.

When has their ever been a research-only professor job? The name of the job is professor, not researcher.

Almost every R-1 institution has them. But the difference I was articulating here is the difference between being required to teach 1 or 2 classes per year versus teaching 7 per year.

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