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Comment by basdevries | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for your answer :)

I think you've misunderstood a couple of things. Or more spefically: I haven't been clear enough on a couple of things.

I know I can think on a PhD level, because I - was smarter in some eareas than my teacher in cs (who had a PhD in cs) - I've worked with people who mastered cs and during that time I felt like I was thinking on the same level as they were. - I could try to do an IQ test but most (smart)people notice whitin a matter of minutes if the person in front of them is equally smart.

The thing you're missing tho, is the following: I'm Mike Ross before he meets Harvey; I can pass the LSAT of cs but can't be a competitive programmer yet.

If i <em>was</em>, I would apply as an engineer at Google and learn these things in my 20% time.

The Harvey I'm looking for must be able to teach me ao things how to be a good one, and at the same time challange me to bring on new clients etc etc.

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> I - was smarter in some eareas than my teacher in cs (who had a PhD in cs)

Eligibility for PhDs isn't calculated by pairwise comparison.

It's judged by original research. Which requires a lot of study, a lot of study, just to take you to the outer boundaries of the sub-sub-sub-sub-field your PhD happens to be in.

One subject I was taught in a quasi-postgraduate setting (in Australia we have a kind of mini-PhD called "Honours") was evolutionary systems. In one subfield of that topic, the original paper appeared about 30 years ago. A year later there were a few dozen papers. Within five years there were tens of thousands of papers. Conferences. Study groups in computer science departments around the world.

To get a PhD in that field, you need to exhaustively search the literature -- surveying and reading potentially hundreds or even thousands of papers and projects -- just to figure out what has yet to be researched. Just to get to the starting line. That takes several years.

PhDs are hard work.

TIL you don't get a PhD for being able to write PHP, Python, js(by choice) and HTML/CSS.

People with PHDs are necessarily smarter than other people. Of course, getting a PHD takes some level of intelligence and many people with PHDs are extremely smart, but like many things in life getting a PHD is largely about dedication and hard work. Additionally, people with PHDs are generally trained to be extremely knowledgeable in a very specific sub-set of a particular field. This is why companies like Google hire people with PHDs. They have specialized knowledge which it would take others years to learn.

My advice, go to college for a CS degree. Many companies won't hire someone who doesn't have a degree even if they have "real-world experience". In addition a CS degree will give you a good, solid foundation on which to build your skills. Some of the things you learn in a CS degree aren't well documented elsewhere and are difficult to learn otherwise. If you really are as smart as you think you are then you can take a very heavy course-load to complete your degree faster.

You watch too much TV.

You may argue that, but it is undoubtly a good methaphor to describe my question. Won't you agree?

It might be. But I've never heard of it. Is it from a show?

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