I loved grad school. Loved loved loved it. I wouldn't give up the worst day I had in grad school for almost anything. And I love having the skills it taught me. I am a much better engineer and researcher than I could possibly have been had I taken almost any other route. I was given freedom in grad school that just would not have been present in most industry jobs. I was given a hardware project - a submersible robot - that I was completely in charge of on day 1. I had to teach myself machining, how to do electrical and electonicd works, how to do embedded programming, how to tune a PID loop. How to work with other students. How to give a persuasive presentation. How to come uo with my own ideas, how to convince other people that they were worth pursuing, how to quickly become an expert in a topic.
That being said, I am not under any illusions about the financial loss I experienced. I spent ten years making a pauper's wage, when if I had chosen to go into industry I would have been a software engineer... in the Valley... in 1993.
I also was in a remarkable lab in grad school. It made top-ten lists of “coolest college lab”. And that wasn't hype. The caliber of student and of professor was off the charts. And they were not only smart, the vast majority of them were good people. A lot of places aren't like that. And as the srticle correctly said: a toxic graduate school environment is worse than most toxic work environments. In any practical sense, students don't have HR protections. If you can't get your advisor to write you a recommendation, getting into a different program is nearly impossible. You can be worked 100 hours a week. You can be blackballed for getting sick, for taking vacations, for taking maternity or paternity leave (even if it is - and it almost certainly will be - unpaid).
The key is to find an advisor who is doing good work and who is sane and moral. If you can find that you're golden. If you can't you may be completely screwed.
As a current PhD student in CS -- seconded. I'm fortunate to have a great advisor, and my research career so far has been largely fun and productive as a result. I have also seen equally (or more) talented and hard-working students have worse experiences because of worse advisors. It's just hard to become a good researcher without good mentorship.
As far as practical advice for finding good advisors, track records of previous students can be a helpful first filter once you've made a list of people who wrote papers you like. Probably the most helpful thing is talking to current students at the admitted students day and listening to them. Bad advisors usually have at least one notable case, and there will probably be at least one person who'll take you aside and tell you about it. Listen to them carefully. Even great advisors can have at least one unsuccessful and bitter student through no fault of their own...but they usually don't show up to the admitted student events unless there's a real cause for animus.
I second (by now probably seventh or eight) most of your post: I loved most of my time in my Math PhD program.
> A toxic graduate school environment is worse than most toxic work environments
I agree with this 100%. I would even extend this to overall academia pre-tenure (and maybe tenure as well). Moving to a different employer is usually easy and non-traumatic; in PhD program you are stuck -- leaving will mean abandoning your half-written thesis and starting from scratch, etc. Thus it is critical to avoid bad programs, either with a toxic environment or those that treat grad students as long term slaves.
> A lot of places aren't (expand) ... with vast majority of smart and good people. ... You can be worked 100 hours a week. You can be blackballed for getting sick, for taking vacations, for taking maternity or paternity leave
With this I disagree. I had friends in many schools and while there were a few exceptions by and large the environment was very good: supportive and enabling without kid gloves. I was on the theory side, which surely made things easier (no expensive hardware or purchases to pay for), but I basically wasted third year of 5 of my PhD on aimless wandering: I could get no traction on any problem, would try something and drop it at the first challenge, etc. And I heard no complaints from my adviser -- he was checking in, asking if I want feedback or suggestions on problems to look at, but otherwise let me be. No 100 hour weeks, etc. I knew he was not thrilled, but he let that disease (or growth) run its course.
I much later spoke to other folks doing theoretical PhDs and found that this is not that uncommon: transition from doing great in classes (learning along an externally designed sequence) to planning and doing your own research may not go smoothly.
I had a similar experience during my physics PhD. Going in to the degree I thought I'd just learn physics more deeply. What I ended up learning is how to learn itself, not because of any course I took but because I spent years surrounded by incredibly smart people who asked the right (often difficult) questions about my work. Eventually I learned to ask myself the right questions about my work.
I spent my undergrad learning the theory, and then spent my PhD applying it to real problems, working with actual geniuses, being paid a reasonable salary to do it, and getting to discuss it with external colleagues in nice places. The experience will stay with me forever.
This might be the most accurate description of grad school I've ever read. It's almost too poignant. It's this balance between freedom and toxicity that makes graduate school such a polarizing experience.
Recovering from a difficult graduate school experience, like the one you perfectly described, is insanely difficult. Financially, emotionally, and temporally.
I only have a bachelors of science, but I went to a top 10 school in my degree field (material science).
The caliber of student and professor was off the charts like you said. Everyone was infinitely smarter than I was. They had some of the nicest equipment available. I worked in a 3 research labs for 3 years in college, under 3 different professors.
My first grad mentor, I took everything for granted. Didn't really realize how great he was and how much of an effort he put foward.
My second mentor ... didn't give a shit about me at all. Actually, this lab was the most interesting too, which made it worse. He saw me just as someone who clearly was wasting his time everyday.
My third mentor, I started to appreciate the value in a good teacher. Not the greatest but made efforts in making the concepts much easier to understand. I cared way more about my final honors dissertation in this lab than previous research I did. I wouldn't even call the other 2 labs research, I just read papers all day and did lab tech work.
In the end I realized research is not for me. Its not fun, and painstakingly slow to see results. Still learned a lot.
I echo everything said above. Mine was in theoretical chemistry/biophysics. I was also married through most of grad school, which was a big reason I chose not to do a postdoc (the norm in my area) and joined a startup instead. I was lucky that I was able to do that.
I can't agree with this enough. And, in industry, in a truly toxic culture, Human Resources ironically supports and defends the very toxicity that it's designed to protect employees from. "Oh, you went to HR, huh? So you think you're better than us?" Or "Let's have a one-on-one sit-down with your boss, and air our grievances," Or, "hey, there's this great new job opening up in our <2+ hr away> branch." Even promotions in a toxic culture can end up taking the course of, "oh, you want to be promoted, and you're in a technical role? That's nice and all, but we really value line management employees." My point is, things can be equally bad in industry.
This is quite an unfortunate article. Author goes on to list several folks who don’t have PhD but have “made it” and asserts that many people can do fascinating and cutting-edge work without PhDs. There are always outliers in stuff like this but ask yourself: How many people you know who don’t have PhD and have freedom to explore at work full time what truely interests them? Author has rather twisted view of the selection bias.
People should do PhD if they are genuinely interested in doing scientific research. If you are doing PhD under pressure or in hope of getting better paying jobs you will be dissopointed. It is an arduous process and taking up your precious years but it gives you opportunity to have freedom to explore and work on your interests for rest of your life. You won’t be coming to office everyday doing assigned task on your backlog and reporting your status in scrum meeting. Instead you will be reading about new creative work that was literally published yesterday, mulling over that in lunch with colleagues and apply your original ideas to actually get published under your name. The downside could be lower pay and/or no stock bonuses for many outside of hot areas like AI. But in general, you have much better chance of doing cutting edge work that you are truely passionate about if you have PhD in that area.
I was once told by a professor who I respected very much how he gives advice to prospective PhDs. When someone asks "should I get my PhD?" the answer is always "no". Because the only people who will enjoy grad school are the ones who will do it anyways.
I have found this to be good advice for people who are thinking of starting companies too.
Yes, this is a good advice.
I never asked anyone whether I should do a PhD. I always knew that I want to do it. And I'm doing it right now, and I really enjoy it. (Speech recognition, Translation, Deep Learning; RWTH Aachen University, Germany.)
(PhD here) An ex-colleague in grad school caught me once on a bad day and I told her she shouldn't do a PhD, stick to a Master's. To this day she credits me with convincing her to graduate at the Master's level - and she is grateful and thanks me for it. None-the-less, I have always felt guilty because my PhD experience was great and that sort of responsibility on someone else's life is kinda heavy.
However, I can't help but think that this mentality does scare away certain personality types that would otherwise make for great researchers. I fall into the category of people who ignored advice and did it anyway, but I try to be welcoming to other types too.
My answer is always "no" as well - for many of the reasons outlined in this essay. But really, most of the students who have asked me this question just want someone to say "yes" and don't end up listening to my reasons for "no" anyway.
First principles of doing a PhD and taking up an industrial jobs are quite different, which this article sidesteps. I am talking from the perspective of someone who did a PhD, postdoc and migrated to be a founder/CEO.
A PhD system trains you to think about unsolved problems in an given domain deeply with a larger time runway. The end goal is not a tangible product that reaches millions of people, but rather a set of ideas that can take a crack at the unsolved problems in your field in a novel way. A good work should inspire others in the field, and eventually a larger audience to pick them up and expand and build on top of it. To give a small example, a majority of the fundamentals of machine learning was charted out by many, many PhD works over the last 40 years. Implementing a linear classifier is 2 lines of code in 2018, but many Bothans died to bring us this information :-) .
The goals of industry are more immediate. Expect for a privileged few research labs in industry, your work is expected to be monetized, and rightly so. The goal is for you, if you run the business, else your management team to first figure out a problem of high relevance and monetary value. Build products/solutions for that problem, that can be used by someone who is less versed/ambivalent of your technical solutions. Efficacy of solving that particular problem often defines the merit of your contribution.
The fundamental of choosing the PhD or industry should be taking stock of what kind of contribution you want to make as an individual. If it is a few set of ideas to science, which on a later date might become something fundamental in our understanding of the world, then PhD is a good path. If it is a set of contributions towards a product/solution that eases the pain of many users then go into the industry first.
This is total anecdata, but out of my closest college friends, five of them went to get a PhD, while I went to industry. When they graduated, I was already making more than of all of them, with five years of industry experience. And I made more them them for the next thirteen years too. I never hit any magical ceiling where a PhD was necessary.
In other words, don't do a PhD if you're in it for the money.
It may open a few more interview doors for you, but honestly, at least in my experience, I wasn't even aware of which of my coworkers had PhDs. When I eventually found out, they were all just slightly older than me working at the same pay grade.
This is a rather narrow perspective focused on (and giving examples from) one subfield (deep learning) at one point of time (year 2018). Have factors like (i) commoditization of software + hardware, (ii) the limited mathematics required, (iii) many open problems, and (iv) a lot of industry funding made a PhD unnecessary for doing research in deep learning in year 2018?: Yes. But does this mean that a PhD (with several advanced courses and a few years of struggle solving hard research problems) won't be useful for doing Computer Science research for the next 30 years? The answer is probably "No". If you want a long-term, intellectually satisfying research career, whether in academia or industry, a PhD is extremely useful.
There is only one good reason to do a Ph.D, and that is because you really really want to invest 10,000 hours of your life into researching a topic that you love deeply for itself. I have a Ph.D in vertebrate palaeontology, which I got because I loved the work; I know a lot of other palaeo Ph.Ds who did the same. But in my experience, everyone who attempts a Ph.D for any other reason -- for prestige, to improve job prospects, whatever -- either craps out of the course (best case) or endures a miserable five years (or often much longer).
Bottom line: do a Ph.D if and only if you want to do the work. Don't do one in order to get the qualification. Focus on the journey, not the destination.
Something that I've found deeply troubling with the PhD education and training and how it interfaces in industry, having worked with a very large number of PhDs over the years, is the seeming inability for PhD-level staff to simply edit their work and ship things on time.
I know this is a large generalization, but I could comfortably say this is a predominant trait among maybe 70-80% of the folks I've worked with. On the surface it seems like there's something in the training for PhD staff that seems to kill the ability to self-regulate that's a very good thing when pursuing the unknown, but an excruciating pattern to deal with in industry where budgets and shipping times are primary importance.
Seeing this in action, and knowing I have no interest in working in academia, has been the primary reason I haven't pursued one myself. I don't want to be "broken" by training.
I get to pursue all of the R&D I can handle already working in an R&D lab -- with the usual publication, patent, ship to customers that it all entails. So I'm not starving for interesting things to pursue.
Don't do a PhD for the money (although it is more than adequate in STEM fields).
Do a PhD for the jobs that it unlocks (professor or researcher, mostly) or the type of freedom that it provides (it was 6 years of mostly unstructured time that I got to explore things that interested me while being paid). If all else fails, you can still go join a big tech company and make more than enough money to live a good life.
I'm a professor now and love it! Couldn't have happened without a PhD first.
I'm envious of that. I went through a master's program and I sorely miss that unstructured time to research and genuinely explore a topic. All of the learning I do these days is by force of business. I'm OK with that but it would be cool to get back to learning sometimes.
Could you talk about what life is like as a professor? I looked at your research interests and they lean heavily on the applicable-to-industry side - is that by purpose?
BTW - I think it's so cool that a professor is posting on HN. I think back to my professors and I couldn't imagine anyone of them being nearly as hip.
A PhD is a license to do deep research. Deep research careers are very rare, but for the right kind of person, they're great. However, deep research by definition means it probably won't work, and there's just a lot more money in doing things that will probably work vs things that probably won't. So it helps to be extremely talented at deep research if you want to pursue the PhD.
Also, most engineering PhD's are bogus because most engineering "research" is actually not deep research - it's building prototypes that aren't quite useful but not quite that novel or interesting either. If you're in a PhD program and you're not doing something really interesting and fundamental, you're definitely in a tough spot.
The phrase "most engineering PhD's are bogus" is astoundingly ignorant of the excellent work that goes on in the systems community (assuming by "engineering" you're referring to application-oriented CS research?). "Building prototypes that aren't quite useful but not quite that novel" is bad systems research, not all systems research.
Microsoft encourages its research people to help product teams ship things based on their research. I had two interactions with PhD types on two different products.
The first was a researcher who talked to us a few times (just a few hours of meetings) then returned a few months later with a pile of MatLab code and a "problem solved!" attitude -- his simulations showed that things were working great. We looked at the code and while it taught us some things, it was obviously not shippable. None of his stuff wound up in the product, though it did point us down some interesting paths (some good, some bad).
Another researcher got a desk smack in the middle of the product team and spent 18 months sitting with us full-time, porting and dramatically improving his algorithms. I'd say that he learned just as much from us as we learned from him. His first few months were rocky, but he eventually became a productive and supportive member of the team. I hope that MSR treated him well upon his return.
Personally I think that research is great, but it's fantastic if you can occasionally ship your work to real customers.
> Also, most engineering PhD's are bogus because most engineering "research" is actually not deep research.
Hello! Engineering researcher here. I toy with things that are both wildly theoretical (information bounds for algorithms, inference in stochastic dynamical systems, etc.) to things that are fantastically and directly useful (design of photonic structures for LIDAR, (much) better AR/VR lenses, etc.).
While you're possibly right that I might be "building prototypes that aren't quite useful but not quite that novel," I disagree that they're "[not] interesting." In fact, I'd be absolutely surprised if in a few years, much of the applied "engineering" work our lab does (in contrast to the theoretical work) is not in constant use for on-chip photonics and fabrication of optical structures.
What do you consider to be deep research? I agree that engineering research is not actually deep, but once you eliminate that almost all of the current (applied, and maybe theoretical too) Machine Learning work for instance is also dismissed.
> 1) Do FAANG companies hire non-PhDs for machine learning positions? Most seem to require a MS or PhD
That depends on what you mean by "machine learning positions" and what your bar for normalcy is. For research roles - these generally have distinct titles like "Research Scientist" or "Quantitative Researcher" - it is extremely difficult to get an interview without a PhD, let alone an offer. It happens, but rarely, because there are many capable people with PhDs and other relevant experience applying for the same roles.
If instead you relax the bar to also include software engineers who work with research scientists on model implementation and optimization then yes, people with "only" an MSc are routinely hired for these positions. These engineers are still credited on papers published as a result of their collaboration, and they still need to have a firm understanding of how the models work. The difference is that they don't tend to have leadership roles and don't develop novel theory - they are responsible for supporting the core research team and helping the research output become production ready software.
Both of these types of roles require strong coding skills, but the "hard" research roles require significantly stronger mastery of linear algebra and probability theory. As an example, compare the roles for Research Scientist[1] and Research Engineer[2] at Facebook. You'll find a similar bifurcation at other industry labs like Google, Microsoft and IBM.
If you have the opportunity to do either and you're optimizing your career for wealth maximization or research impact, it's better to obtain a role as a research scientist. That being said most PhDs do not end up at Google Brain or FAIR, so it's not a cut and dry decision. You can't just choose to trade n years of your life and an easier-to-obtain role on the periphery of research for the ability to do theoretical research at the best tech companies in the world later on.
I work at NVidia as a GPU architect doing ML applied research. I'm not a hiring manager, but I have interviewed a bunch of people.
1) Having a PhD will make it easier to get an interview, but it is not necessary. Relevant experience counts just as much. I only have an MSc.
2) That will vary a ton from one team to another and from one position to another. The interviewers are not going to change their questions depending on your education.
3) The same requirement as for PhDs. It will depend on the role, but in general I expect people value hands-on experience more than theory.
Except for some particular hiring managers with strong opinions, a PhD is not going to be a hard requirement for nearly any job. However, a PhD in a relevant area is going to be useful, just like any other relevant experience you may have.
I often get asked about what my views on doing a PhD are (I am more-or-less finished with one now), and one of the ways I frame it is the following:
You know how you've take a course before where the professor was just surprisingly awful at teaching? These professors are often some of the most knowledgeable people in a subfield of the subject you are taking, yet their teaching ability is severely lacking and you have to scramble to learn the material some other way (or just never learn it).
During a PhD, there is a decent chance that your adviser is similarly a bad manager. Unfortunately, having a bad manager for 5-7 years of your life can be a fairly awful experience. You will work with someone who you, on the one hand, look up to, but on the other hand, who seems to not care at all about your mental health, your possible career desires outside of academia, your work/life balance, or the exact reason why this week was a rough week for research in your (human) life.
I have a lot of other thoughts on the matter, but I thought I'd try to keep this post more concise =).
not care at all about your mental health, your possible career desires outside of academia, your work/life balance, or the exact reason why this week was a rough week for research in your (human) life.
I wouldn't call that being a bad manager, but rather being an asshole.
As a professor, I often think that one of my biggest weaknesses is indeed management skills. After all, we suddenly find ourselves having to manage people without any training in the matter, and when our true call is typically science, not management.
To be fair by the time you have finished a PhD you should be capable of learning / doing research by yourself. I don't have a PhD but learning by yourself is a vital skill for any competent software engineer.
I grossly underestimated how much I could learn by working in industry. I believed the falsehood that the best way to always keep learning is to stay in academia, and I didn’t have a good grasp on the opportunity costs of doing a PhD. My undergraduate experience had been magical, and I had always both excelled at and enjoyed being in school. The idea of getting paid to be in school sounded like a sweet deal!
Wholeheartedly agree. Aspiring PhDs discount what industry can teach them. The problem is compounded by undergrads who have zero industry experience when they graduate.
If you spend time working in a lab with grad students, listen to them. Heed their points about the field and their boss.
Research is research, and maybe you'll have some idea of what the technical details of the field are. But the only way you know what your life will be like is to pay attention. It's not bad, but you're trading something real to have "Dr." on your magazine subscriptions.
My biggest concern is more people getting PhDs, and the process becoming the New Bachelor degree, particularly in STEM.
I've dealt with a lot of people in industry, and so far, only those in research labs at the FAANG are of the quality that you would expect in academia.
In the majority of industry "science" appears to be a dirty word and "evidence" means "oh my buddy did this so it must work". The bar is depressingly low.
Mind the survivorship bias when reading all the comments from grad students and PhD's here. Drop outs are much less likely to open this comment section or post a comment.
It is even worse in Europe where you are often required to have Master's degree before you can even start a PhD.
People in my country usually start PhD. at 25 and take at least 6 years to finish, because the universities use them as cheap workforce and aren't incentivised to allow students graduate quickly.
My husband is a German who did a Mech E PhD, and indeed was 31 when he finished, despite going through the pipeline completely on schedule. Back then, German students finished high school (Gymnasium) at 19, then did a Diplom (think combination bachelors/masters) which took 5 years.
In his particular institute, the better you were, the LONGER it often took because the professors found stuff they wanted you to help with unless you were really good at boundaries. My husband took 7 years; a very kind, very bright friend of his needed 8.5.
> People in my country usually start PhD. at 25 and take at least 6 years to finish,
uh ? which country are you in ? In france like you said you have to do a master before BUT a phd is only 3 years. I'm 26 and I finished my phd - had my defense earlier this year when I was still 25.
If your FAANG research team employs just as many PhDs as non-PhDs, and we accept that there are a couple of orders of magnitude more non-PhDs in software engineering than CS PhDs looking for work in industry, then I don't rate my chances of getting recognized within the company for my robust knowledge of theory of computation and abstract algebra later down the road if I take that grad job I was offered by a tech giant. Also, it's not all that likely that a job as an engineer is going to keep me my theory knowledge or research skills fresh.
The article makes a few resonant points, but overall I think the "you can get into research if you jump straight into industry" pitch it tries to make is very weak. As someone who very much wants to do research (mostly hard-to-monetize research about comparing exotic models of computation to one another, but I'll listen to a pitch for applied research too), I'd very much like to see someone lay out a highly plausible roadmap for getting into a research position without a PhD. I don't think this article is that.
I was a PhD student in the UK, it was always something I wanted to do and even had a publication during my undergraduate degree. I ultimately didn't complete my PhD for two reasons. Firstly my supervisors were scarcely available and neither focussed on my PhD subject, it was a bit of a side interest for them both. As I look back at it now I should have possibly seen the warning signs earlier. Secondly various delays on the project (including 6 months for a piece of hardware to be repaired under warranty by the manufacturer) meant that I had to find a job before I was able to complete the PhD. I did gather enough data to complete my PhD in my spare time, but once in full time work it was very hard to stay motivated to complete it in the evenings.
So having an incomplete PhD, would I do it again? Probably. I would be a bit more cautious about the topic and ensure my supervisor(s) were focussed on the area before beginning. With hindsight I would be more aware of the risks associated with external sources (hardware) that could delay the project for whatever reason. What I did learn though was the ability to manage my own time and collate information from various data sources in order to back up my side of a discussion. The ability to manage my own time I think is something that separates me now from my peers who did not do a PhD, but I do find when applying for jobs that I lack the necessary years of commercial experiences for roles where the hiring manager does not understand the nature of working on a PhD. So whilst it was definitely a great learning experience, I think it has set back my career slightly.
Do I regret doing a PhD? Absolutely not. Sure it was stressful and frustrating dealing with problems out of your control. But I learnt alot about myself and how to manage my own time, as well as how to stay motivated when presented with problems that are outside of your control.
Am I the only one that finds it questionable to write this kind of "career advice", when the author clearly has a conflict of interest?
The author is running a business whose main purpose is to sell educational content marketed towards people that want to learn Machine Learning (and claiming you don't need a PhD to do it).
I only have a good impression of fast.ai, but perhaps the author is not in the best position to give career advice on this topic? The author didn't even do a PhD in ML/CS, but in mathematics which arguably less applied/practical.
I am considering doing a Phd in a completely unrelated area when I turn 50 (45 now).
Is there anyone in this thread done a phd that late? Obviously my motivation is different now to study - to really learn the subject. I am financially self sufficient and will continue to be, and hence making a living out of my phd is not a consideration.
Edit: I would like to be able to study in a university setup (not distance education). Main reason is to soak in all the related conversations / workshops and also I like being in a young environment.
A little disappointed with the one-sided point of view here - the author states
"...I deeply admire everyone I’ve listed, and I am not arguing that a PhD is never useful or never works out well" but never really gives examples of skills that PhDs do provide.
And there are absolutely career paths where a PhD is not required, but since many of the practitioners have one, can often be selected for (data science, biotech, biostats, lots of engineering research etc.) So without a PhD you might have a harder time rising as far as you would like in one of these positions (again being realistic that it's not all about talent, it can often be politics/perceived competence, which a PhD can augment).
It's just important to be honest about both pros and cons when writing advice articles like this.
[+] [-] GlenTheMachine|7 years ago|reply
I loved grad school. Loved loved loved it. I wouldn't give up the worst day I had in grad school for almost anything. And I love having the skills it taught me. I am a much better engineer and researcher than I could possibly have been had I taken almost any other route. I was given freedom in grad school that just would not have been present in most industry jobs. I was given a hardware project - a submersible robot - that I was completely in charge of on day 1. I had to teach myself machining, how to do electrical and electonicd works, how to do embedded programming, how to tune a PID loop. How to work with other students. How to give a persuasive presentation. How to come uo with my own ideas, how to convince other people that they were worth pursuing, how to quickly become an expert in a topic.
That being said, I am not under any illusions about the financial loss I experienced. I spent ten years making a pauper's wage, when if I had chosen to go into industry I would have been a software engineer... in the Valley... in 1993.
I also was in a remarkable lab in grad school. It made top-ten lists of “coolest college lab”. And that wasn't hype. The caliber of student and of professor was off the charts. And they were not only smart, the vast majority of them were good people. A lot of places aren't like that. And as the srticle correctly said: a toxic graduate school environment is worse than most toxic work environments. In any practical sense, students don't have HR protections. If you can't get your advisor to write you a recommendation, getting into a different program is nearly impossible. You can be worked 100 hours a week. You can be blackballed for getting sick, for taking vacations, for taking maternity or paternity leave (even if it is - and it almost certainly will be - unpaid).
The key is to find an advisor who is doing good work and who is sane and moral. If you can find that you're golden. If you can't you may be completely screwed.
[+] [-] papeda|7 years ago|reply
As far as practical advice for finding good advisors, track records of previous students can be a helpful first filter once you've made a list of people who wrote papers you like. Probably the most helpful thing is talking to current students at the admitted students day and listening to them. Bad advisors usually have at least one notable case, and there will probably be at least one person who'll take you aside and tell you about it. Listen to them carefully. Even great advisors can have at least one unsuccessful and bitter student through no fault of their own...but they usually don't show up to the admitted student events unless there's a real cause for animus.
[+] [-] ptero|7 years ago|reply
> A toxic graduate school environment is worse than most toxic work environments
I agree with this 100%. I would even extend this to overall academia pre-tenure (and maybe tenure as well). Moving to a different employer is usually easy and non-traumatic; in PhD program you are stuck -- leaving will mean abandoning your half-written thesis and starting from scratch, etc. Thus it is critical to avoid bad programs, either with a toxic environment or those that treat grad students as long term slaves.
> A lot of places aren't (expand) ... with vast majority of smart and good people. ... You can be worked 100 hours a week. You can be blackballed for getting sick, for taking vacations, for taking maternity or paternity leave
With this I disagree. I had friends in many schools and while there were a few exceptions by and large the environment was very good: supportive and enabling without kid gloves. I was on the theory side, which surely made things easier (no expensive hardware or purchases to pay for), but I basically wasted third year of 5 of my PhD on aimless wandering: I could get no traction on any problem, would try something and drop it at the first challenge, etc. And I heard no complaints from my adviser -- he was checking in, asking if I want feedback or suggestions on problems to look at, but otherwise let me be. No 100 hour weeks, etc. I knew he was not thrilled, but he let that disease (or growth) run its course.
I much later spoke to other folks doing theoretical PhDs and found that this is not that uncommon: transition from doing great in classes (learning along an externally designed sequence) to planning and doing your own research may not go smoothly.
[+] [-] sleavey|7 years ago|reply
I spent my undergrad learning the theory, and then spent my PhD applying it to real problems, working with actual geniuses, being paid a reasonable salary to do it, and getting to discuss it with external colleagues in nice places. The experience will stay with me forever.
[+] [-] earthscienceman|7 years ago|reply
Recovering from a difficult graduate school experience, like the one you perfectly described, is insanely difficult. Financially, emotionally, and temporally.
[+] [-] swaggyBoatswain|7 years ago|reply
The caliber of student and professor was off the charts like you said. Everyone was infinitely smarter than I was. They had some of the nicest equipment available. I worked in a 3 research labs for 3 years in college, under 3 different professors.
My first grad mentor, I took everything for granted. Didn't really realize how great he was and how much of an effort he put foward.
My second mentor ... didn't give a shit about me at all. Actually, this lab was the most interesting too, which made it worse. He saw me just as someone who clearly was wasting his time everyday.
My third mentor, I started to appreciate the value in a good teacher. Not the greatest but made efforts in making the concepts much easier to understand. I cared way more about my final honors dissertation in this lab than previous research I did. I wouldn't even call the other 2 labs research, I just read papers all day and did lab tech work.
In the end I realized research is not for me. Its not fun, and painstakingly slow to see results. Still learned a lot.
[+] [-] bbgm|7 years ago|reply
If I had to do it all over again, I would.
[+] [-] russfink|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sytelus|7 years ago|reply
People should do PhD if they are genuinely interested in doing scientific research. If you are doing PhD under pressure or in hope of getting better paying jobs you will be dissopointed. It is an arduous process and taking up your precious years but it gives you opportunity to have freedom to explore and work on your interests for rest of your life. You won’t be coming to office everyday doing assigned task on your backlog and reporting your status in scrum meeting. Instead you will be reading about new creative work that was literally published yesterday, mulling over that in lunch with colleagues and apply your original ideas to actually get published under your name. The downside could be lower pay and/or no stock bonuses for many outside of hot areas like AI. But in general, you have much better chance of doing cutting edge work that you are truely passionate about if you have PhD in that area.
[+] [-] peterlk|7 years ago|reply
I have found this to be good advice for people who are thinking of starting companies too.
[+] [-] albertzeyer|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] biotechjones|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SamTheDev|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azhenley|7 years ago|reply
However, I can't help but think that this mentality does scare away certain personality types that would otherwise make for great researchers. I fall into the category of people who ignored advice and did it anyway, but I try to be welcoming to other types too.
[+] [-] pbnjay|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] konschubert|7 years ago|reply
It depends of course in hwo the "no" is worded.
[+] [-] ibuildthings|7 years ago|reply
A PhD system trains you to think about unsolved problems in an given domain deeply with a larger time runway. The end goal is not a tangible product that reaches millions of people, but rather a set of ideas that can take a crack at the unsolved problems in your field in a novel way. A good work should inspire others in the field, and eventually a larger audience to pick them up and expand and build on top of it. To give a small example, a majority of the fundamentals of machine learning was charted out by many, many PhD works over the last 40 years. Implementing a linear classifier is 2 lines of code in 2018, but many Bothans died to bring us this information :-) .
The goals of industry are more immediate. Expect for a privileged few research labs in industry, your work is expected to be monetized, and rightly so. The goal is for you, if you run the business, else your management team to first figure out a problem of high relevance and monetary value. Build products/solutions for that problem, that can be used by someone who is less versed/ambivalent of your technical solutions. Efficacy of solving that particular problem often defines the merit of your contribution.
The fundamental of choosing the PhD or industry should be taking stock of what kind of contribution you want to make as an individual. If it is a few set of ideas to science, which on a later date might become something fundamental in our understanding of the world, then PhD is a good path. If it is a set of contributions towards a product/solution that eases the pain of many users then go into the industry first.
[+] [-] jedberg|7 years ago|reply
In other words, don't do a PhD if you're in it for the money.
It may open a few more interview doors for you, but honestly, at least in my experience, I wasn't even aware of which of my coworkers had PhDs. When I eventually found out, they were all just slightly older than me working at the same pay grade.
[+] [-] variational123|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MikeTaylor|7 years ago|reply
Bottom line: do a Ph.D if and only if you want to do the work. Don't do one in order to get the qualification. Focus on the journey, not the destination.
[+] [-] bane|7 years ago|reply
I know this is a large generalization, but I could comfortably say this is a predominant trait among maybe 70-80% of the folks I've worked with. On the surface it seems like there's something in the training for PhD staff that seems to kill the ability to self-regulate that's a very good thing when pursuing the unknown, but an excruciating pattern to deal with in industry where budgets and shipping times are primary importance.
Seeing this in action, and knowing I have no interest in working in academia, has been the primary reason I haven't pursued one myself. I don't want to be "broken" by training.
I get to pursue all of the R&D I can handle already working in an R&D lab -- with the usual publication, patent, ship to customers that it all entails. So I'm not starving for interesting things to pursue.
[+] [-] azhenley|7 years ago|reply
Do a PhD for the jobs that it unlocks (professor or researcher, mostly) or the type of freedom that it provides (it was 6 years of mostly unstructured time that I got to explore things that interested me while being paid). If all else fails, you can still go join a big tech company and make more than enough money to live a good life.
I'm a professor now and love it! Couldn't have happened without a PhD first.
[+] [-] dopeboy|7 years ago|reply
Could you talk about what life is like as a professor? I looked at your research interests and they lean heavily on the applicable-to-industry side - is that by purpose?
BTW - I think it's so cool that a professor is posting on HN. I think back to my professors and I couldn't imagine anyone of them being nearly as hip.
[+] [-] nicodjimenez|7 years ago|reply
Also, most engineering PhD's are bogus because most engineering "research" is actually not deep research - it's building prototypes that aren't quite useful but not quite that novel or interesting either. If you're in a PhD program and you're not doing something really interesting and fundamental, you're definitely in a tough spot.
[+] [-] wcrichton|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kabdib|7 years ago|reply
The first was a researcher who talked to us a few times (just a few hours of meetings) then returned a few months later with a pile of MatLab code and a "problem solved!" attitude -- his simulations showed that things were working great. We looked at the code and while it taught us some things, it was obviously not shippable. None of his stuff wound up in the product, though it did point us down some interesting paths (some good, some bad).
Another researcher got a desk smack in the middle of the product team and spent 18 months sitting with us full-time, porting and dramatically improving his algorithms. I'd say that he learned just as much from us as we learned from him. His first few months were rocky, but he eventually became a productive and supportive member of the team. I hope that MSR treated him well upon his return.
Personally I think that research is great, but it's fantastic if you can occasionally ship your work to real customers.
[+] [-] LolWolf|7 years ago|reply
Hello! Engineering researcher here. I toy with things that are both wildly theoretical (information bounds for algorithms, inference in stochastic dynamical systems, etc.) to things that are fantastically and directly useful (design of photonic structures for LIDAR, (much) better AR/VR lenses, etc.).
While you're possibly right that I might be "building prototypes that aren't quite useful but not quite that novel," I disagree that they're "[not] interesting." In fact, I'd be absolutely surprised if in a few years, much of the applied "engineering" work our lab does (in contrast to the theoretical work) is not in constant use for on-chip photonics and fabrication of optical structures.
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tha12|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] account2|7 years ago|reply
1) Do FAANG companies hire non-PhDs for machine learning positions? Most seem to require a MS or PhD
2) What are the interview questions like at FAANG companies for machine learning positions? Is the interview different if you don't have a PhD?
3) For non-PhDs applying, what are the math requirements for the job?
4) For people that have a PhD working in ML at a FAANG, do you feel like you use your PhD level skills day-to-day?
[+] [-] throwawaymath|7 years ago|reply
That depends on what you mean by "machine learning positions" and what your bar for normalcy is. For research roles - these generally have distinct titles like "Research Scientist" or "Quantitative Researcher" - it is extremely difficult to get an interview without a PhD, let alone an offer. It happens, but rarely, because there are many capable people with PhDs and other relevant experience applying for the same roles.
If instead you relax the bar to also include software engineers who work with research scientists on model implementation and optimization then yes, people with "only" an MSc are routinely hired for these positions. These engineers are still credited on papers published as a result of their collaboration, and they still need to have a firm understanding of how the models work. The difference is that they don't tend to have leadership roles and don't develop novel theory - they are responsible for supporting the core research team and helping the research output become production ready software.
Both of these types of roles require strong coding skills, but the "hard" research roles require significantly stronger mastery of linear algebra and probability theory. As an example, compare the roles for Research Scientist[1] and Research Engineer[2] at Facebook. You'll find a similar bifurcation at other industry labs like Google, Microsoft and IBM.
If you have the opportunity to do either and you're optimizing your career for wealth maximization or research impact, it's better to obtain a role as a research scientist. That being said most PhDs do not end up at Google Brain or FAIR, so it's not a cut and dry decision. You can't just choose to trade n years of your life and an easier-to-obtain role on the periphery of research for the ability to do theoretical research at the best tech companies in the world later on.
________________________________
1. https://www.facebook.com/careers/jobs/a0I1H00000Mp2ZCUAZ/
2. https://www.facebook.com/careers/jobs/a0I1H00000LJm3MUAT/
[+] [-] david-gpu|7 years ago|reply
1) Having a PhD will make it easier to get an interview, but it is not necessary. Relevant experience counts just as much. I only have an MSc.
2) That will vary a ton from one team to another and from one position to another. The interviewers are not going to change their questions depending on your education.
3) The same requirement as for PhDs. It will depend on the role, but in general I expect people value hands-on experience more than theory.
Except for some particular hiring managers with strong opinions, a PhD is not going to be a hard requirement for nearly any job. However, a PhD in a relevant area is going to be useful, just like any other relevant experience you may have.
[+] [-] sdrothrock|7 years ago|reply
> 4) For people that have a PhD working in ML at a FAANG, do you feel like you use your PhD level skills day-to-day?
5) For people who work with a mix of PhDs and non-PhDs in the same field, do you notice a difference in output quality?
[+] [-] asafira|7 years ago|reply
You know how you've take a course before where the professor was just surprisingly awful at teaching? These professors are often some of the most knowledgeable people in a subfield of the subject you are taking, yet their teaching ability is severely lacking and you have to scramble to learn the material some other way (or just never learn it).
During a PhD, there is a decent chance that your adviser is similarly a bad manager. Unfortunately, having a bad manager for 5-7 years of your life can be a fairly awful experience. You will work with someone who you, on the one hand, look up to, but on the other hand, who seems to not care at all about your mental health, your possible career desires outside of academia, your work/life balance, or the exact reason why this week was a rough week for research in your (human) life.
I have a lot of other thoughts on the matter, but I thought I'd try to keep this post more concise =).
[+] [-] Al-Khwarizmi|7 years ago|reply
I wouldn't call that being a bad manager, but rather being an asshole.
As a professor, I often think that one of my biggest weaknesses is indeed management skills. After all, we suddenly find ourselves having to manage people without any training in the matter, and when our true call is typically science, not management.
But at least I'm not an asshole.
[+] [-] collyw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apo|7 years ago|reply
Wholeheartedly agree. Aspiring PhDs discount what industry can teach them. The problem is compounded by undergrads who have zero industry experience when they graduate.
[+] [-] trentlott|7 years ago|reply
If you spend time working in a lab with grad students, listen to them. Heed their points about the field and their boss.
Research is research, and maybe you'll have some idea of what the technical details of the field are. But the only way you know what your life will be like is to pay attention. It's not bad, but you're trading something real to have "Dr." on your magazine subscriptions.
My biggest concern is more people getting PhDs, and the process becoming the New Bachelor degree, particularly in STEM.
[+] [-] stochastic_monk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tensor|7 years ago|reply
In the majority of industry "science" appears to be a dirty word and "evidence" means "oh my buddy did this so it must work". The bar is depressingly low.
[+] [-] thebooktocome|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fulafel|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Scea91|7 years ago|reply
People in my country usually start PhD. at 25 and take at least 6 years to finish, because the universities use them as cheap workforce and aren't incentivised to allow students graduate quickly.
[+] [-] MandieD|7 years ago|reply
In his particular institute, the better you were, the LONGER it often took because the professors found stuff they wanted you to help with unless you were really good at boundaries. My husband took 7 years; a very kind, very bright friend of his needed 8.5.
[+] [-] jcelerier|7 years ago|reply
uh ? which country are you in ? In france like you said you have to do a master before BUT a phd is only 3 years. I'm 26 and I finished my phd - had my defense earlier this year when I was still 25.
[+] [-] fnrslvr|7 years ago|reply
The article makes a few resonant points, but overall I think the "you can get into research if you jump straight into industry" pitch it tries to make is very weak. As someone who very much wants to do research (mostly hard-to-monetize research about comparing exotic models of computation to one another, but I'll listen to a pitch for applied research too), I'd very much like to see someone lay out a highly plausible roadmap for getting into a research position without a PhD. I don't think this article is that.
[+] [-] sparso|7 years ago|reply
So having an incomplete PhD, would I do it again? Probably. I would be a bit more cautious about the topic and ensure my supervisor(s) were focussed on the area before beginning. With hindsight I would be more aware of the risks associated with external sources (hardware) that could delay the project for whatever reason. What I did learn though was the ability to manage my own time and collate information from various data sources in order to back up my side of a discussion. The ability to manage my own time I think is something that separates me now from my peers who did not do a PhD, but I do find when applying for jobs that I lack the necessary years of commercial experiences for roles where the hiring manager does not understand the nature of working on a PhD. So whilst it was definitely a great learning experience, I think it has set back my career slightly.
Do I regret doing a PhD? Absolutely not. Sure it was stressful and frustrating dealing with problems out of your control. But I learnt alot about myself and how to manage my own time, as well as how to stay motivated when presented with problems that are outside of your control.
[+] [-] throwawayaug28|7 years ago|reply
The author is running a business whose main purpose is to sell educational content marketed towards people that want to learn Machine Learning (and claiming you don't need a PhD to do it).
I only have a good impression of fast.ai, but perhaps the author is not in the best position to give career advice on this topic? The author didn't even do a PhD in ML/CS, but in mathematics which arguably less applied/practical.
[+] [-] somberi|7 years ago|reply
Is there anyone in this thread done a phd that late? Obviously my motivation is different now to study - to really learn the subject. I am financially self sufficient and will continue to be, and hence making a living out of my phd is not a consideration.
Edit: I would like to be able to study in a university setup (not distance education). Main reason is to soak in all the related conversations / workshops and also I like being in a young environment.
[+] [-] dannykwells|7 years ago|reply
"...I deeply admire everyone I’ve listed, and I am not arguing that a PhD is never useful or never works out well" but never really gives examples of skills that PhDs do provide.
And there are absolutely career paths where a PhD is not required, but since many of the practitioners have one, can often be selected for (data science, biotech, biostats, lots of engineering research etc.) So without a PhD you might have a harder time rising as far as you would like in one of these positions (again being realistic that it's not all about talent, it can often be politics/perceived competence, which a PhD can augment).
It's just important to be honest about both pros and cons when writing advice articles like this.