[sackofmugs]

What's frustrating about these academia threads, is that Ph.D. experiences are so diverse and different, depending on the discipline, subfield, university, advisor. Yet so many commenters oversimplify their one experience or what they think it's like from knowing a couple of grad students.

I know Ph.D. students who made almost six figures by doing highly paid research internships. Some advisors only care about demos, while others care about startups, and yet others care about how the work is presented to funding agencies. I know Ph.D. students who did most of their Ph.D. in a completely different city than their degree-granting institution. I know Ph.D. students who were highly pressured to publish, and Ph.D. students who had no pressure to publish. I know Ph.D. students who basically had no advisor, and Ph.D. students with 3 world-expert advisors. Some Ph.D. students are funded by the university, others are funded by large collaborative grants, or by their own fellowships, and yet others are funded by small industry grants their advisor got.

It's like if threads about being a software developer had comments like "at tech companies, you only get rewarded for closing tickets."