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The Illustrated Guide to a PhD

40 points| antioedipus | 5 years ago |matt.might.net

13 comments

order

commandlinefan|5 years ago

When you finish a bachelor's degree, you know everything.

When you finish a Master's degree, you realize you know nothing.

When you finish a PhD, you realize nobody else knows anything, either.

Bellamy|5 years ago

Brilliant pictures and an explanation. That's exactly what PhD is about!

amznthrowaway5|5 years ago

Meaningless spam, advertises as a guide to PhD and gives a few meme images. Academia is very political, I saw senior folk looking down on writing actual code while glorifying corruption and the publishing of fraudulent or meaningless papers. These are closer to the realities you have to deal with getting a "PhD", even in computer science.

SimplyUnknown|5 years ago

Everything is political. It's a waste of time to pretend they aren't. However, in academia these effect are amplified due to perverse incentives (publication count over doing meaningful research) and power dynamics (senior advisor pushing his/her agenda over what is The Right Thing).

But it is important to remember what you are doing. In a PhD you should be pushing the boundary of knowledge. As a programmer in a company, you should be solving problems to generate value for your customer and your company.

If you aren't doing these things, you are in the wrong place.