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Comment by gallamine | Hacker News Reader

> their area of specialization doesn't really help in the role I'm hiring

Perhaps you should instead consider that their specialization is a specific example of them applying themselves to a difficult new problem and solving it. It seems unlikely to be able to constantly hire people already experienced with what you're doing. Wouldn't you rather hire someone who's demonstrated an ability to learn something new and succeed at it?

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Agreed. It's disappointing that there is a general skepticism of newly minted PhD's, since the degree generally involves extensive problem solving, independent thinking, self-organizing, commitment to a specified goal, receptiveness to feedback, critical eye of both one's own work and that of others, and the ability to communicate those ideas effectively.

Those are powerful tools. If the candidate wants a job that exclusively involves doing things related to their narrow field of study, then there is probably going to be a problem, but unless you haven't communicated the job description effectively, they're not applying for a job as an academic - they know exactly where to go if they want to pursue that career path.

Disclaimer: newly-minted PhD here, with no particular need to apply my dissertation topic directly to my software engineering work.

Newly-minted PhD's should consider casting a wider net. At the company where I used to work in D.C., probably 1 in 5 of the staff was PhDs. Areas where the tech industry is more "meat space" than "net space" seem to have more PhDs per capita among the engineers.

> Areas where the tech industry is more "meat space" than "net space" seem to have more PhDs per capita among the engineers.

Can you explain this a little more? I'm genuinely interested.

The southeast has three major tech hubs: the Dulles corridor in NoVA, the Triangle in NC, and Atlanta. They also have quite a few good schools with big graduate programs that feed into the market (VT/UMD, Duke/UNC/NCSU, GT/Emory). The software work in these places is often some integral component of a meat-space product, and that meat-space product is often in a complex problem domain in which the specialization of a PhD is valuable. For example, if you're developing software for a UAV, it's valuable to have someone with domain experience in control theory. The specialized domains in D.C. are often defense related, in the Triangle it's often bio-related although quite diverse, and in Atlanta it's often logistics-related.

Certainly, Silicon Valley has tons of these sorts of jobs too. Google is full of PhDs. But the ratio of specialized domain products to consumer products seems to be higher in the southeast. And as a result, my perception is that the market's valuation of PhDs is higher. It's quite common to see companies in that market where not having a PhD is considered a severe liability.

Don't forget Houston and the oil and gas industry. The geophysical and service companies are also full of advanced degrees.

The problem is that for many areas of software it is not possible to be effective without at least a couple years of fairly deep experience. That is the learning curve regardless of how smart someone is and it is difficult to justify hiring someone that will not be qualified to fill the job they were nominally hired for for two years. It is not a matter of training per se, it is the amount of time required to develop competency.

For many areas of software development, such as database engine internals, the pool of people that are qualified or trainable within some reasonable number of months is quite small. Therefore, for those areas of software development the shortage is real for all practical purposes. A PhD in computer science does not automagically confer the ability to become a software subject matter expert within a few months.

The problem is that for many areas of software it is not possible to be effective without at least a couple years of fairly deep experience.

This point is key given that industry turnover is such that the first company to hire you has to expect that they are simply training you for the next.

On the other hand, a for such a specialized area a relevant PhD seems almost a necessity. Either that, or an equivalently long time in industry specializing in that area.

I doubt that this is the norm though. I get the impression that most of these hiring managers who don't value experience are hiring for pretty uninteresting work and simply want inexpensive labour. The op didn't state what area of work he's in, but if a junior is the ideal candidate, it's very likely not very interesting or difficult work.

edit: after a bit of digging, it turns out that the OP works on trading systems in Canada. The ironic thing is that 125k is quite a bit above a junior position in most of Canada. So it's not clear what is going on here. When hiring PhDs, he's competing with the US companies and might be a bit shy of what they pay. On the other hand, if he's paying a junior 125k, he's paying well above the local average.

> Wouldn't you rather hire someone who's demonstrated an ability to learn something new and succeed at it?

Personally, I don't think recruiters get this point.

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