Software jobs, PhDs and over-qualification

1. Your PhD has real-world applicability. Which is not hard.

2. Your potential employers could apply those skills.

3. You can actually code pretty well, too.

I think this third item is often the issue. PhDs often have underdeveloped programming abilities compared to industry vets the same age -- too much classwork, not enough larger-scale projects. There are good ways around this: graduate research assistantships that require reasonable code, collaborative research that requires you build your part of a system, internships, etc.

At least for the places that I've worked and do work now, if they think you can get the job done, you're in good shape. Then again, I don't apply to the 1000-monkeys on 1000 typewriter coder/body shops, either.

I left academia for two reasons: pay and a preference for programming to the drudgery of publication. I started my programming career near the peak of 2000 tech bubble and had doubled my salary within with a couple of years. Six figure programming salaries are far more common than six figure salaries in academic research.

An additional bonus which I did not anticipate was the competitive advantage I would have. Competition for academic positions is quite intense involving many capable people. This is likely why salaries remain low. In programming the typical skill level is much lower.

Wrong. Usually employers look for someone to get the frickin job done without rethinking the problem. Classic example right now: I have PhD in Strategic Planning telling me to make the algorithm calculate the Economic Order Quantity when creating the Purchase Order. The Buyer immediately gave me 4 reasons why that will never work in the real world: the vendor will have to interrupt set-ups for plan changes, the bank will never approve that line of credit, the rev level may change before the end of the run, and oh, by the way, that many won't fit on the truck.

"...trying to get a plain ol’ developer position..."

You have an attitude problem. There's nothing "plain ol'" about what we do every day. While you were busy in your ivory tower for 8 years, someone had to keep the world moving.

"companies want the 20 year-olds to code quick and turn out an app with a 6-month lifetime"

On what planet? You were obviously too busy in college to actually find out what really goes on in the real world.

"6-8 years in graduate school under constant stress torn your ego into to pieces"

Poor baby. Get a job. Feed, clothe, and shelter a family. Deliver something every day to someone who is depending on you. For those of us who have been doing this for years, earning a PhD sounds like a vacation.

Case in point, if you want a lower level position, remove the PhD from your resume. Stop over-thinking the problem. It's a perfectly valid solution to say you have a masters or bachelors instead so you can feed your family. Employers are perfectly valid in excluding PhDs if they are concerned about over qualifications costing more or leading to boredom.

I think the other major problem is that people take PhD's that won't help them get a job. I've known forensic scientists who've been stuck in deli counters, because there's only a handful of available jobs in the entire western world. I've known journalist grads who've been flat out rejected because of their degree, because it teaches them poor skills (the main skill desired now is the ability to write with personality, which journalism courses actively discourage).

So I'm sure there's a lot of ways that can contribute to a PhD making you unemployable, however it's probably always down to poor choice or poor judgment.

Personally I'd love to get a PhD in physics out of pure interest. However, the one thing I'd worry about, and I've told to friends going the PhD route, is that taking a PhD keeps you out of the career field for 10+ years. So you have to really evaluate if 10+ years of experience is better for you career wise than a PhD and 0 years experience, because all the fields I'm interested in (career wise, not academically) don't give a damn if you have a PhD, so even though I'd like to have a degree in something I'm not going to waste my time.