I feel for the student writing this piece and I'm sad that they've developed some bitterness at their advisors and the entire field (which I read in the piece, even if it wasn't the intent.)
Everyone needs to understand something important: a PhD is first and foremost an apprenticeship. It is your opportunity to study under someone who has done a specific kind of research, and learn from that person. If that relationship isn't a good fit, the PhD itself won't be a good fit: it's like trying to learn neurosurgery from a cardiac surgeon. You cannot fix this with reading or online lectures, the apprenticeship is the whole point.
Occasionally I run into students who have these advisor mismatches and my instinct is to try to help them. However what I've learned is that good intentions (try to advise a student who is interested in a different area) don't actually translate to good outcomes. I am monomaniacal (only) about the research that interests me, and that doesn't translate into other areas I'm less familiar with. They will be frustrated with my lack of expertise in those other areas, and I will end up frustrated by my inability to properly advise them. In the worst case, that bad fit can turn to resentment against the entire scientific process (I see this process starting in the post above.)
If the author of the post wants to pursue a PhD, I would first urge them to stop for a while and not think about research: just do something else. When and if they've reached the point where they are bored to tears with whatever they're doing (I recommend taking a "real" job for a while) -- and can only think about the research they're missing out on -- then go figure out whose papers are actually exciting to them. Then go find out how to work with that person, whatever it takes. Sometimes there are ways to work with someone that don't require a formal PhD admission, and enough persistence can make the difference. I'm not saying this is easy. The point is: don't do it because it's easy, do it because you want to do it enough that it doesn't matter if it's hard.
Thanks for this perspective. I am one of these mismatched PhD students. When I entered 6 years ago, no professors in my department had time to advise me. The professor for whom I was a GTA took pity on me after two years of rejection, and now serves as my committee chair despite having little to no expertise in my field. I am coadvised through a different department, but again, my coadvisor has little overlap with my interests. I am nearing completion, but stumbling over the lack of support, technical leadership, and community of practice. I am unconvinced that my proposed dissertation is meritorious or valuable in any way, but the only advise my advisors can give is “persist and finish quickly” because I am more expert than both of them. Defending feels like a gamble. The bitterness that comes from poor-fit advising is real, even when both advisors are earnestly doing their best. I wish I had learned this lesson sooner and quit with a master’s when I had the chance.
I don't know how they do it in the US, but something I like about the British way of doing PhDs (at least University of York) is that they require you to write a 5-6 page proposal for your project. The proposal needs to be at least a little well-researched, with citations and needs to show a minimal level of competence in the subject that you want to study.
I think this is a good idea because it really forces you to consider if you actually enjoy the subject. You work alongside the professors to tailor the proposal, and you'll find out pretty quickly if you hate the subject or not, and if you decide you do hate the subject, at least you didn't waste multiple years (and potentially thousands of pounds) trying to pursue it.
This is a fresh perspective, and a DUH moment for me.
I know quite a few PhD(s) and researchers, and a few PhD programs dropout. My takeaway up until now was "PhD = politics", but now I see that I was looking at it all wrong, I was looking under the wrong lens of pick_a_school->get_an_advisor. The reverse is true, when the student is read, the master will appear; the place comes with the advisor (not the other way around).
> "Aiming to produce PDF files that would be accepted at conferences (which seems to be easy-going if you sprinkle some fancy quantum vocabulary over something and hand it in to a non-quantum conference). I felt less and less comfortable in a setting that apparently expected me to pick some low-hanging – let’s call it fruits – and call it a day. After all, science is all about the pursuit of knowledge, even though the incentives of research funding might not be entirely aligned with that"
This is broadly similar to my experience. The priority of most academics is not to produce deep, novel, and creative work. It is to churn out sausages in the shapes favoured by journals, at a factory production rate. That's what they have to do for their career. After a while, though, they start to be unable to tell the difference between the two.
From what I can tell, the cause of this is that "number of papers published per unit of time" is the only metric institutions seem to care about when it comes to evaluating researchers' work.
I disagree, generally it's important to get feedback often and early. Conferences and publications are an important part of the process. That is not to defend the salami strategies of some research labs, but science is moving to fast to wait for your deeply thought out 500 page opus dei, which likely has been obsoleted by some finding published at a conference 2 years ago that you didn't attend.
I have seen the false perception a few times that a PhD is mainly about sitting down and thinking deeply for a long time without talking to anyone and then getting an eureka moment and writing it all up. This is not how most modern science is done (maybe it's still possible if you're a genius in very few select areas of mathematics). So if this is what you think a PhD is about, you're likely not going to enjoy it.
> I felt less and less comfortable in a setting that apparently expected me to pick some low-hanging – let’s call it fruits – and call it a day.
Why should you be uncomfortable with that? A discipline with lots of low-hanging fruit sounds like a pretty good place to be.
However, I concur regarding the quantity-over-quality problem. Personally I favor quality over quantity, both as a reader and as a writer. It wastes less of the reader's time and improves the signal-to-noise ratio of the field.
This is true, but that doesn’t mean you have to do it. If you keep looking at your neighbor in order to determine your next step, you will be disappointed in every walk of life, not only in academia. If you don’t subscribe to the same ideas, do it differently, and get ready for some resistance. In academia you have to carve your path just like everywhere else. That said: I agree that academia is just a big circle jerk. :)
I would love PhDs to be thought of as something you dive into when you have something to pursue, perhaps many years later in life rather than a follow on immediately after study.
As a comparison imagine if VC funding only went to the highest scoring new grads and the business proposal was asked for after the invitation to take on VC funding. That's pretty much what's been happening with PhDs. You get the marks, you get invited to take on a PhD and then you look for projects. A totally inorganic process that leads to a gross misallocation of resources.
It’d be pretty cool if we had a real path for later-in-life research time. I’m not sure that’s very realistic, but I’d love it too. Big problems are that kids and jobs lock you into needing to make enough money.
I actually tried to join a PhD program after 5 years of industry experience, and they offered the top fellowship they had, which was not enough to cover only the health insurance for my family, not to mention rent or food. It simply wasn’t feasible, and so we would need a systemic change to education funding to enable late-in-life study opportunities for everyone.
I dislike the comparison to VC funding. VC funding is essentially gambling and already a gross misallocation of resources. VC funding already goes to something analogous to the highest scoring grads who speculate wildly that they have a viable business model, and the real business model only shows up long after the funds, even in the small ~5-10% of successful startups. The ~90% of failures is proof enough.
Also, research requires taking risks with resources. If we don’t take risks, we won’t make progress. Thinking of research in narrow immediate economic terms is short sighted. We often don’t understand the ROI of research until long after the initial investment, meaning there will never be a time that allocation of resources can be predicted or approximated in advance.
You got it. I don’t know how things worked in the old days before people started to think that becoming Einstein or Witten was a plausible career path, and academia oriented itself to deal with the demand. But. To imagine that culture-fit might allocate resources better than test-driven meritocracy! quantamagazine needs to start featuring more representative career paths like OP’s.
Congrats on making a decision sooner rather than later. I also dropped out of graduate school and remembered having some similar thoughts as you.
I remembered feeling a bit lonely, too. There's no one to talk to about your work since no one understands it. It's a bit obvious in hindsight. Research topics are at the fuzzy fringe of human knowledge. They exist just outside of others' research topics. Your job is to find something that makes the field even more complex. Or, even better, connect the dots that show it may not be so complex after all. In either case, no one knows what the hell you're doing. If they're in your little tiny field, they may have some vague idea about how it may relate to their own little universe of research. But most likely, when you come home and a loved one asks what you did today, you won't be able to have an answer and that can be frustrating. To compound the issue, everyone is familiar with what a PhD is, but few know how academia works. And there's some not-great aspects of it.
I've continued my research on my own time because it interests me. I no longer have looming deadlines and I don't have to check my bank account in the Wendy's drive-through line to see if my stipend will cover a chicken sandwich. I still value academia, though, and I know that my hobby-research will come nowhere close to matching the quality of research done with the resources provided by academic institutions.
> But most likely, when you come home and a loved one asks what you did today, you won't be able to have an answer
My PhD - and subsequent research - is in security. I will happily explain my research to anyone who will listen. In case I'm not sure, I just start explaining just in case.
How privacy in voting is important. How most scraping studies have a fundamental flaw. How to catch scientific fraud.
Current WiP is on reconstructing possible histories of NTFS files. Sounds boring? We're working to catch criminals that claim "never had that file".
Maybe it's the subject, maybe it's just me, but this research stuff is friggin awesome and I'll happily shout that to the world!
I will hand in my notice tomorrow, after circa 1 year as a PhD student. In fact, I'm switching fields: from a PhD in Mechanical Engineering (energy systems) to a software developer role in a non-engineering sector. Very little of my 7 years (MSc) and subsequent circa 1 year as a PhD will carry over.
Certainly an exciting step, although the program here was pretty excellent. Good supervision, full funding for the entire duration, topic of my choosing (I wrote parts of the grant).
The main reason I'm leaving is that Mech.Eng. PhDs just seem like such a conservative bunch. Most end up either in tiny, provincial ventures (think utilities companies, for my field) or as middle managers at huge companies (where I live, car manufacturers). They then are, for all intents and purposes, managers and not engineers anymore. The title is the ticket to a cushy life. Academia was never an option; the kind of work professors and researchers do seems horrendous! You're chasing grants and need to manage such a wide range of the most frustrating but also mundane issues.
Here's to hoping a software development career is more fruitful and fulfilling. A life-long IC position seems attractive. You get the benefits, but little of the fuss.
It seems like PhDs are sought after (if they are) for their frustration tolerances and project management capabilities. Maybe I didn't have enough of either. Then again, I'm absolutely convinced many more would quit prematurely if they had attractive alternatives. A lot of mechanical engineer PhDs don't, but thanks to the software world and my passion for it, I do.
However, you will still be dealing with some project management and other similar workplace-related tasks that contribute nothing to the overall work product.
I made a similar decision as a former engineer in the physical realm. I would say normal engineering is about 90% 'fluff' work related to corporate traditions. In tech, it is more like 75%.
The only workers who truly focus only on their work are blue-collar workers. If that is what drives you, there are plenty of interesting trade jobs and fabrication jobs where people just solve problems day-in day-out and don't have to worry about dressing up or being diplomatic.
You’re going to become a middle manager if you follow the normal software engineering track.
Maybe it’s getting work “done” is what’s most attractive to you. I can see how it must feel to see your work right in front of you when you are writing code, but you need to be very aware of what you want. I’d not be happy if I switched fields to avoid management just to end up being a middle manager in a couple of years.
I find that many of the PhD students who struggle are not prepared for the mostly self-driven nature of the pursuit, and have not had enough work experience to know how to choose a supervisor.
The statistics support this: a majority of the PhD dropouts are students straight from undergrad who performed well academically, but have never had work experience.
Finishing a PhD is as much about selecting a good PI as it is love of the science. Anecdotally I've seen many great students struggle because of lack of support from their PI, and many "worse" students do extremely well because they chose a terrific PI who builds a support system around their students so they almost cannot fail.
I second this. I found it extremely difficult to finish my PhD 12 years ago. It wasn't because the subject was difficult or complicated but because I came directly from a Bachelor's degree into a UK MPhil/PhD programme. I remember at the beginning being sited in front of my desk asking myself: What do I do now? And every time I had a meeting with my supervisors and I asks them whether what I was doing was right/wrong, their answer was "that is great, you are doing great".
Nevertheless, I had great supervisors: After about a year of work, we decided that my work was more oriented towards what my secondary supervisor was doing, so my main supervisor took a step back and let us do our work; he still watched closely although more about "form" rather than substance. In retrospective it was an amazing experience.
Now, with regards to the (now deleted) article. I blame the supervisors but from another point of view: They should have used their network to contact people that knew about Quantum Computing. They all (including the PhD student) already had the most difficult thing: The grant. They just needed to use it.
If I were the PhD candidate, I would have looked for who were the main Quantum Computing researchers, and ask my supervisors to contact me with them. If they didn't want to, then I would contact them directly and start having an "informal" mentorship with them. Professors salivate at the prospect of having a "free" PhD student working on some of their projects, so I'm sure he would have been welcomed by some of them.
I feel that the main problem with the student was his inexperience, and his supervisor's inability to support him.
+1 one of most common mistakes for PhD students is picking a project based on research interests rather than the adviser. I believe it is relatively uncommon to speak with former students of an adviser, but this is something that everyone entering a PhD should do.
Finding a good mentor -- someone whose values you agree with and who sets you up for career success -- is far more important than working on any particular topic of interest. The world is full of interesting research topics, and very few PhDs work in the precise area of their PhD research for their entire career.
Do PhD students have much choice which supervisor they can choose? Supervisors do not come in all sizes, most of the time you have to deal with whoever is out there, whether you like them or not.
I have worked within academics, not as a researcher though, and from my experience academia is not about pursuing the knowledge and sciences. That's an intrinsic motivation some researchers still might have. Academia is rather pursuing prestige, which comes from successful researchers who are guaranteed to attract grant money for projects. And this is computer science alone. Most post-docs just don't care, they are doing everything as if it's their hobby, not work. Those who care do not last long in their field. Also, students are the hardest working bunch in academia, and are paid the least. Sure, when a student is failing, it's their own fault. No one has ever fired a PI, because their student failed, why or how doesn't really matter, right?
> I felt less and less comfortable in a setting that apparently expected me to pick some low-hanging – let’s call it fruits – and call it a day.
I think the author's reasons for quitting are valid. But I would also say that "low-hanging fruit" is exactly what many PhDs are going for by design. Science can move forward in giant leaps (like Newton, Einstein). But mostly, science progresses by the accumulation of thousands of narrowly focused projects. Perhaps the author's work could have eventually been used by another to make progress. The scope of what any single person can accomplish against the accumulated body of all scientific knowledge is often quite small.
I haven't finished the whole article, but I can resonate with this specific statement:
> "However, just a couple of months into my project, I figured out, I wouldn’t find anyone to discuss my research with..."
While studying physics and math, many, and I mean *many* of my friends had a difficult time trying to understand both, sometimes they would get bored and just try to get the "just right" grade to pass. I had that one friend that you like to discuss things and exchange ideas and concepts from this world, but this friend would halt his course and move on with other things and/or job.
After some time, I would get bored because none of my fellows had the patience to understand or try to grasp the basics of what makes, at least for me, these fields so interesting, like "bootstrap concepts" (Newton's laws, Thermodynamics, Trigonometry, etc...).
I don't blame them. The basic education in my country (Brazil) is somewhat crippled, not all of it mind you, but in my experience, it was depressing.
And of course, no one is obliged to have fun with this, I'm not complaining about this, I'm sad because there's almost no one I can talk to about this, and not that "I was better" than them, by no means, it's just that had an acute interest in these topics; this is one of the reasons I quit my degree in Computer Science, half a year through.
Nowadays I look for someone to interact with, about something new that I learned or that now I understand better. Right now, I'm looking for a friend that wants to study chemistry, physics or mathematics for fun, but with a deep interest.
There is also the matter of what stage of your journey you are in.
People pass through many different interests on their journey and often become bored with areas they have already passed through. For you and me, we could help a child with their algebra homework but it would not be something we would be passionate about. The child, on the other hand, might find algebra fascinating and want to talk more about it.
It is very rare for two people who are in the exact same spot in life to collide. It happens rarely in university, even where those people are concentrated heavily.
The same story is true with personal hobbies and interests.
What I see here is mostly fear to failure. Fear about "not keeping the high standard level that should define myself". Fear about being perceived as a mediocre scientist saying incorrect things.
This is wrong. Let me tell you a thing. Nobody will cares. Not-one-single people will care about your mind image.
1-Feeling depressed or having doubts in some point of the process of writing your thesis is more common than you think
2-Run, reset and try in a different field will not be easier, it will be more difficult. It always is.
3-Closures provide a lot of peace of mind. Finish your thesis and then move your mind to greener pastures. A not perfect thesis about a poor known theme, is better than none.
So, just keep working and do your best effort. Most people never receive a Nobel in any case and what people could think about you, is not so relevant as you think. In the end, you will be the expert in quantum computing, not them.
Remember also that any error slipped in your these can be fixed later. Science is not written in stone. We fall and we learn. Scientists are expected to commit honest mistakes.
> However, just a couple of months into my project, I figured out, I wouldn’t find anyone to discuss my research with: My supervisors have a rather superficial understanding of Quantum Computing, and I feel like their idea to start a project in that domain was to a not inconsiderable extent motivated by the prospect of granted research funds, not primarily by their desire to achieve a deeper understanding of quantum stuff.
Sounds very familiar. I saw this a lot in grad school. My first advisor was also fed up with the nature in academia and left tenure path to work in private industry, leaving me to fend for money in this vein.
So then my graduate research topic came into this line. I stopped that after I realized that not only was it fishing far off the path of my social support, it was also weapons research disguised via a friendly sounding problem.
I switched programs, to an advisor who seemed to want me to work in something he actually does. Then I had zero relationship with him and became basically a highly underpaid developer to crank out the numbers that corroborated his research at 100+ hour weeks. In the marginal time I was tying to figure out if I could somehow make the small corner I thought might make a thesis fit into his unspoken program. I got the hint that my PhD was predicated on making his research stand up, and having a part in it is what my PhD would represent, not any actual original work.
I became a little more cynical but continued, now paying much more attention on the side to other's experience. I found this was nearly universal from 'top schools', and then with the overflow of candidates to academic jobs they take this style to the next tier of schools where they get tenure by making a lemming line of candidates do the same.
At this point it was the breaking point. I had a great internship the previous summer. I had a "come work for us now or maybe never" ultimatum. I took the plunge.
ABD Twice. And that I consider a great accomplishment that I am quite proud of.
In Physics it's not unusual to start a PhD in a sub-discipline that you've got little experience in (I realize the author works more on the information theory side of things). When I started my PhD in experimental quantum computing I had experience with superconductivity and low-temperature physics but none with qubit design or high-frequency RF system design. It's the point of a PhD to learn about these things and get qualified to do your own research afterwards (e.g. as a PostDoc).
It can happen both ways. My PhD ended up being a computer vision project and while I could program better than most new grad students I didn't have any significant experience with image processing, visual geometry or CV (or ML for that matter). I did know that going in, but at the time I was more interested in working on instrumentation (which I got to do as well). As a PostDoc I flipped the other way, after a couple of years in industry I joined a group where I brought some specific expertise to the group that they didn't have. Good strategy for getting work in my experience.
This is fairly normal: you get some funding to do a project and you have to hire someone with experience, though in this case the PIs were experts in the domain of application. That's reasonably common for cross-discipline projects, but in this case you really have to trust that your hires know what they're doing and you need to be able to assess their work without deep knowledge of the techniques used.
PhDs can be absurdly specific and many are complex enough that you can't really study them until grad school. Many universities don't teach quantum computing, but as a physicist it's probably assumed you have enough of a background to understand the material.
Maybe a research group wants to investigate a connection to another discipline.
Maybe the research group comes across a talented student and sees the potential for a research grant (how this works depends on the country).
Maybe the student has the means to self-fund and so the university happily collects a pay-cheque.
I fell into the first category - I did my PhD in a quantum information group despite my background being in mathematical logic. I was accepted because I knew a lot about different formal logic systems, and they wanted to study connections between those and the formalism they were using for quantum information.
PHDs are more about idealism for most than practical outcomes.
Would be cool if colleges were required to estimate number of job openings relevant to each PHD program vs current cohort sizes. Or some central body could
Good for him. Because of this: "My supervisors have a rather superficial understanding of Quantum Computing, and I feel like their idea to start a project in that domain was to a not inconsiderable extent motivated by the prospect of granted research funds, not primarily by their desire to achieve a deeper understanding of quantum stuff."
It's always about grant money. Especially with anything that starts with Quantum <insert buzzword here>
The article has been replaced with this disclaimer:
> Because this article received somewhat more attention than I expected/feel comfortable with, I’ll take it down for a moment. Sorry. I’ll leave the disclaimer:
> Disclaimer: This article has been primarily written to clear up my mind, and to potentially receive constructive, uplifting or critical comments from others. I feel like it helps me cope with a frustrating and difficult situation. I do not intend to attack anyone.
It looks like the article was submitted to HN by the author. Then, taken aback by promotion to the front page and certain passages that could be construed negatively, the author took the article down.
A lot of people dream about being well-known, or at least getting on the front page of HN. What they may not realize is the microscope that places you under and what it can do to you.
Sometimes I ask myself if a degree is really a legitimate proof of competence, skill or knowledge. Of course higher education matters, but I wish it would not exclude so many people. Higher education is usually the place where social classes start to branch.
Academia has often been a tool used to maintain social inequality, and that's the words you often hear from people who are insiders. A lot of people want to be in academics for passion of their field, or for prestige, or for the status. But in reality, it's another place meant to maintain elitism.
The weirdest thing is that jobs want you to have a degree, yet you often hear that degrees don't matter. So you quickly realize that education matters, but that degrees should not exist. Students should just want to learn and degrees should not be some sort of carrot on a stick.
My experience with post docs in a science lab was that science was surprisingly tribal, and not in a completely bad way. Certain programs and labs trusted people and papers from other labs they knew. They tended to accept PhD students who were recommended by particular professors. And this clustering seemed to exist along some theoretical or subject matter divides. The benefit is that there is some consistency and some short hand or "lab lore" in common.
This article seems to be about a PhD candidate at a program that didn't really have people experienced in the field. If you want to get a science PhD, look at the papers by the tenured people in that program and see where they went to school. Look at who cites their papers. The schools that read their papers may be the ones that you can apply to later.
IMO good advising is critical. You must have someone you believe in and work with. Screening a prospective research group or advisor AHEAD OF TIME is the due diligence of the academic world. Don't work with someone you don't think will support you when you are stuck and advertise your accomplishments when you make them.
I totally agree with the comments who say "performance" is an essential part of research. Somebody (your advisor, then later you) needs to be telling people how important your work is, where it can lead, what it will be good for, etc.
If you're not at this stage yet, my advice is cast a wide net and interview several prospective advisors about their work, etc. A bad fit will waste years of your life.
I don't understand what's so controversial about this post that the author had to take it down. Seems like a level-headed criticism of modern-day academia to me. Sturgeon's rule applies to everything, including academia.
Blue Sky research is like that: you're venturing into new areas.
I remember the advertisement posted by Shackleton:
_"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success."_
That's how I feel about this. Chances of success are not as high as one would like, however, case affirmative, honour and recognition. A lot!
For what it's worth, I burned out sometime in the late 90s just after video cards came out around 1997, because I could see how they would drive video game design towards a narrow branch of DSP/rasterization and building derivative games with cookie cutter libraries. At the time, I was more interested in getting away from all of that and exploring stuff like ray tracing and artificial life. My interest in video games never fully returned in the same way. And if I'm being truthful, I've been burned out ever since, approaching 25 years now.
But after two lost decades, I've noticed a shift lately. I think that people are getting fed up with centralized control of the supply chain and are maybe looking towards things like FPGAs as a way to get to a level above the current imperative programming paradigm, rather than working at the level below it in the glorified DMA transfer and shader paradigm we have now (vertex buffers).
For something as esoteric as quantum computing, I think it would help the world a great deal if someone would go back to first principles and explain it how it is. Not with complex notation, but with counting principles from probability and statistics. I had a great teacher in college who taught it just exactly that way, by imagining small groups of apples and bananas and how we could count them and detect larger patterns to get to stuff like Bayes' theorem.
So for example, we can imagine cubits as coin flips that we haven't looked at yet. If there are relationships between multiple unseen coins, then we can map out that potential solution space like a big tree. Then look at the tree with random sampling of the superposition to infer where the answer probably lies. Which is a lot faster than iterating through all all of the permutations with a computer. But I suspect that convergence will end up taking roughly the same amount of time as brute force, due to noise or some fundamental aspect of the universe we don't understand yet. But I'm probably wrong about that, because I haven't gotten clarity on how any of this stuff actually works, because nobody bothers to write it this way from first principles.
Even if the author isn't going to be doing quantum mechanics in academia, it would help the world a great deal to share what they've learned so far!
What you’re looking for exists with stuff like Gleason’s theorem and noncontextuality, but it’s not what you would train up in if you wanted to be “productive”.
[+] [-] matthewdgreen|3 years ago|reply
Everyone needs to understand something important: a PhD is first and foremost an apprenticeship. It is your opportunity to study under someone who has done a specific kind of research, and learn from that person. If that relationship isn't a good fit, the PhD itself won't be a good fit: it's like trying to learn neurosurgery from a cardiac surgeon. You cannot fix this with reading or online lectures, the apprenticeship is the whole point.
Occasionally I run into students who have these advisor mismatches and my instinct is to try to help them. However what I've learned is that good intentions (try to advise a student who is interested in a different area) don't actually translate to good outcomes. I am monomaniacal (only) about the research that interests me, and that doesn't translate into other areas I'm less familiar with. They will be frustrated with my lack of expertise in those other areas, and I will end up frustrated by my inability to properly advise them. In the worst case, that bad fit can turn to resentment against the entire scientific process (I see this process starting in the post above.)
If the author of the post wants to pursue a PhD, I would first urge them to stop for a while and not think about research: just do something else. When and if they've reached the point where they are bored to tears with whatever they're doing (I recommend taking a "real" job for a while) -- and can only think about the research they're missing out on -- then go figure out whose papers are actually exciting to them. Then go find out how to work with that person, whatever it takes. Sometimes there are ways to work with someone that don't require a formal PhD admission, and enough persistence can make the difference. I'm not saying this is easy. The point is: don't do it because it's easy, do it because you want to do it enough that it doesn't matter if it's hard.
[+] [-] dizzant|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tombert|3 years ago|reply
I think this is a good idea because it really forces you to consider if you actually enjoy the subject. You work alongside the professors to tailor the proposal, and you'll find out pretty quickly if you hate the subject or not, and if you decide you do hate the subject, at least you didn't waste multiple years (and potentially thousands of pounds) trying to pursue it.
[+] [-] SMAAART|3 years ago|reply
I know quite a few PhD(s) and researchers, and a few PhD programs dropout. My takeaway up until now was "PhD = politics", but now I see that I was looking at it all wrong, I was looking under the wrong lens of pick_a_school->get_an_advisor. The reverse is true, when the student is read, the master will appear; the place comes with the advisor (not the other way around).
[+] [-] Emma_Goldman|3 years ago|reply
This is broadly similar to my experience. The priority of most academics is not to produce deep, novel, and creative work. It is to churn out sausages in the shapes favoured by journals, at a factory production rate. That's what they have to do for their career. After a while, though, they start to be unable to tell the difference between the two.
[+] [-] dixego|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cycomanic|3 years ago|reply
I have seen the false perception a few times that a PhD is mainly about sitting down and thinking deeply for a long time without talking to anyone and then getting an eureka moment and writing it all up. This is not how most modern science is done (maybe it's still possible if you're a genius in very few select areas of mathematics). So if this is what you think a PhD is about, you're likely not going to enjoy it.
[+] [-] musicale|3 years ago|reply
Why should you be uncomfortable with that? A discipline with lots of low-hanging fruit sounds like a pretty good place to be.
However, I concur regarding the quantity-over-quality problem. Personally I favor quality over quantity, both as a reader and as a writer. It wastes less of the reader's time and improves the signal-to-noise ratio of the field.
[+] [-] low_tech_love|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnotherGoodName|3 years ago|reply
As a comparison imagine if VC funding only went to the highest scoring new grads and the business proposal was asked for after the invitation to take on VC funding. That's pretty much what's been happening with PhDs. You get the marks, you get invited to take on a PhD and then you look for projects. A totally inorganic process that leads to a gross misallocation of resources.
[+] [-] dahart|3 years ago|reply
I actually tried to join a PhD program after 5 years of industry experience, and they offered the top fellowship they had, which was not enough to cover only the health insurance for my family, not to mention rent or food. It simply wasn’t feasible, and so we would need a systemic change to education funding to enable late-in-life study opportunities for everyone.
I dislike the comparison to VC funding. VC funding is essentially gambling and already a gross misallocation of resources. VC funding already goes to something analogous to the highest scoring grads who speculate wildly that they have a viable business model, and the real business model only shows up long after the funds, even in the small ~5-10% of successful startups. The ~90% of failures is proof enough.
Also, research requires taking risks with resources. If we don’t take risks, we won’t make progress. Thinking of research in narrow immediate economic terms is short sighted. We often don’t understand the ROI of research until long after the initial investment, meaning there will never be a time that allocation of resources can be predicted or approximated in advance.
[+] [-] chrisseaton|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] balsam|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] selimthegrim|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcovalt|3 years ago|reply
I remembered feeling a bit lonely, too. There's no one to talk to about your work since no one understands it. It's a bit obvious in hindsight. Research topics are at the fuzzy fringe of human knowledge. They exist just outside of others' research topics. Your job is to find something that makes the field even more complex. Or, even better, connect the dots that show it may not be so complex after all. In either case, no one knows what the hell you're doing. If they're in your little tiny field, they may have some vague idea about how it may relate to their own little universe of research. But most likely, when you come home and a loved one asks what you did today, you won't be able to have an answer and that can be frustrating. To compound the issue, everyone is familiar with what a PhD is, but few know how academia works. And there's some not-great aspects of it.
I've continued my research on my own time because it interests me. I no longer have looming deadlines and I don't have to check my bank account in the Wendy's drive-through line to see if my stipend will cover a chicken sandwich. I still value academia, though, and I know that my hobby-research will come nowhere close to matching the quality of research done with the resources provided by academic institutions.
[+] [-] Beldin|3 years ago|reply
My PhD - and subsequent research - is in security. I will happily explain my research to anyone who will listen. In case I'm not sure, I just start explaining just in case.
How privacy in voting is important. How most scraping studies have a fundamental flaw. How to catch scientific fraud.
Current WiP is on reconstructing possible histories of NTFS files. Sounds boring? We're working to catch criminals that claim "never had that file".
Maybe it's the subject, maybe it's just me, but this research stuff is friggin awesome and I'll happily shout that to the world!
[+] [-] diarrhea|3 years ago|reply
Certainly an exciting step, although the program here was pretty excellent. Good supervision, full funding for the entire duration, topic of my choosing (I wrote parts of the grant).
The main reason I'm leaving is that Mech.Eng. PhDs just seem like such a conservative bunch. Most end up either in tiny, provincial ventures (think utilities companies, for my field) or as middle managers at huge companies (where I live, car manufacturers). They then are, for all intents and purposes, managers and not engineers anymore. The title is the ticket to a cushy life. Academia was never an option; the kind of work professors and researchers do seems horrendous! You're chasing grants and need to manage such a wide range of the most frustrating but also mundane issues.
Here's to hoping a software development career is more fruitful and fulfilling. A life-long IC position seems attractive. You get the benefits, but little of the fuss.
It seems like PhDs are sought after (if they are) for their frustration tolerances and project management capabilities. Maybe I didn't have enough of either. Then again, I'm absolutely convinced many more would quit prematurely if they had attractive alternatives. A lot of mechanical engineer PhDs don't, but thanks to the software world and my passion for it, I do.
[+] [-] chinchilla2020|3 years ago|reply
However, you will still be dealing with some project management and other similar workplace-related tasks that contribute nothing to the overall work product.
I made a similar decision as a former engineer in the physical realm. I would say normal engineering is about 90% 'fluff' work related to corporate traditions. In tech, it is more like 75%.
The only workers who truly focus only on their work are blue-collar workers. If that is what drives you, there are plenty of interesting trade jobs and fabrication jobs where people just solve problems day-in day-out and don't have to worry about dressing up or being diplomatic.
[+] [-] peteradio|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xisthesqrtof9|3 years ago|reply
Maybe it’s getting work “done” is what’s most attractive to you. I can see how it must feel to see your work right in front of you when you are writing code, but you need to be very aware of what you want. I’d not be happy if I switched fields to avoid management just to end up being a middle manager in a couple of years.
Then what?
[+] [-] giraffe_lady|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] david_l_lin|3 years ago|reply
The statistics support this: a majority of the PhD dropouts are students straight from undergrad who performed well academically, but have never had work experience.
Finishing a PhD is as much about selecting a good PI as it is love of the science. Anecdotally I've seen many great students struggle because of lack of support from their PI, and many "worse" students do extremely well because they chose a terrific PI who builds a support system around their students so they almost cannot fail.
[+] [-] xtracto|3 years ago|reply
Nevertheless, I had great supervisors: After about a year of work, we decided that my work was more oriented towards what my secondary supervisor was doing, so my main supervisor took a step back and let us do our work; he still watched closely although more about "form" rather than substance. In retrospective it was an amazing experience.
Now, with regards to the (now deleted) article. I blame the supervisors but from another point of view: They should have used their network to contact people that knew about Quantum Computing. They all (including the PhD student) already had the most difficult thing: The grant. They just needed to use it.
If I were the PhD candidate, I would have looked for who were the main Quantum Computing researchers, and ask my supervisors to contact me with them. If they didn't want to, then I would contact them directly and start having an "informal" mentorship with them. Professors salivate at the prospect of having a "free" PhD student working on some of their projects, so I'm sure he would have been welcomed by some of them.
I feel that the main problem with the student was his inexperience, and his supervisor's inability to support him.
[+] [-] shoyer|3 years ago|reply
Finding a good mentor -- someone whose values you agree with and who sets you up for career success -- is far more important than working on any particular topic of interest. The world is full of interesting research topics, and very few PhDs work in the precise area of their PhD research for their entire career.
[+] [-] yolo69420|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dschuetz|3 years ago|reply
I have worked within academics, not as a researcher though, and from my experience academia is not about pursuing the knowledge and sciences. That's an intrinsic motivation some researchers still might have. Academia is rather pursuing prestige, which comes from successful researchers who are guaranteed to attract grant money for projects. And this is computer science alone. Most post-docs just don't care, they are doing everything as if it's their hobby, not work. Those who care do not last long in their field. Also, students are the hardest working bunch in academia, and are paid the least. Sure, when a student is failing, it's their own fault. No one has ever fired a PI, because their student failed, why or how doesn't really matter, right?
[+] [-] picture|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lelandfe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austinl|3 years ago|reply
I think the author's reasons for quitting are valid. But I would also say that "low-hanging fruit" is exactly what many PhDs are going for by design. Science can move forward in giant leaps (like Newton, Einstein). But mostly, science progresses by the accumulation of thousands of narrowly focused projects. Perhaps the author's work could have eventually been used by another to make progress. The scope of what any single person can accomplish against the accumulated body of all scientific knowledge is often quite small.
[+] [-] rickstanley|3 years ago|reply
> "However, just a couple of months into my project, I figured out, I wouldn’t find anyone to discuss my research with..."
While studying physics and math, many, and I mean *many* of my friends had a difficult time trying to understand both, sometimes they would get bored and just try to get the "just right" grade to pass. I had that one friend that you like to discuss things and exchange ideas and concepts from this world, but this friend would halt his course and move on with other things and/or job.
After some time, I would get bored because none of my fellows had the patience to understand or try to grasp the basics of what makes, at least for me, these fields so interesting, like "bootstrap concepts" (Newton's laws, Thermodynamics, Trigonometry, etc...).
I don't blame them. The basic education in my country (Brazil) is somewhat crippled, not all of it mind you, but in my experience, it was depressing.
And of course, no one is obliged to have fun with this, I'm not complaining about this, I'm sad because there's almost no one I can talk to about this, and not that "I was better" than them, by no means, it's just that had an acute interest in these topics; this is one of the reasons I quit my degree in Computer Science, half a year through.
Nowadays I look for someone to interact with, about something new that I learned or that now I understand better. Right now, I'm looking for a friend that wants to study chemistry, physics or mathematics for fun, but with a deep interest.
[+] [-] chinchilla2020|3 years ago|reply
People pass through many different interests on their journey and often become bored with areas they have already passed through. For you and me, we could help a child with their algebra homework but it would not be something we would be passionate about. The child, on the other hand, might find algebra fascinating and want to talk more about it.
It is very rare for two people who are in the exact same spot in life to collide. It happens rarely in university, even where those people are concentrated heavily.
The same story is true with personal hobbies and interests.
[+] [-] pvaldes|3 years ago|reply
This is wrong. Let me tell you a thing. Nobody will cares. Not-one-single people will care about your mind image.
1-Feeling depressed or having doubts in some point of the process of writing your thesis is more common than you think
2-Run, reset and try in a different field will not be easier, it will be more difficult. It always is.
3-Closures provide a lot of peace of mind. Finish your thesis and then move your mind to greener pastures. A not perfect thesis about a poor known theme, is better than none.
So, just keep working and do your best effort. Most people never receive a Nobel in any case and what people could think about you, is not so relevant as you think. In the end, you will be the expert in quantum computing, not them.
Remember also that any error slipped in your these can be fixed later. Science is not written in stone. We fall and we learn. Scientists are expected to commit honest mistakes.
[+] [-] boxfire|3 years ago|reply
Sounds very familiar. I saw this a lot in grad school. My first advisor was also fed up with the nature in academia and left tenure path to work in private industry, leaving me to fend for money in this vein.
So then my graduate research topic came into this line. I stopped that after I realized that not only was it fishing far off the path of my social support, it was also weapons research disguised via a friendly sounding problem.
I switched programs, to an advisor who seemed to want me to work in something he actually does. Then I had zero relationship with him and became basically a highly underpaid developer to crank out the numbers that corroborated his research at 100+ hour weeks. In the marginal time I was tying to figure out if I could somehow make the small corner I thought might make a thesis fit into his unspoken program. I got the hint that my PhD was predicated on making his research stand up, and having a part in it is what my PhD would represent, not any actual original work.
I became a little more cynical but continued, now paying much more attention on the side to other's experience. I found this was nearly universal from 'top schools', and then with the overflow of candidates to academic jobs they take this style to the next tier of schools where they get tenure by making a lemming line of candidates do the same.
At this point it was the breaking point. I had a great internship the previous summer. I had a "come work for us now or maybe never" ultimatum. I took the plunge.
ABD Twice. And that I consider a great accomplishment that I am quite proud of.
[+] [-] walleeee|3 years ago|reply
many such cases
[+] [-] chrisseaton|3 years ago|reply
How does this happen?
[+] [-] ThePhysicist|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshvm|3 years ago|reply
This is fairly normal: you get some funding to do a project and you have to hire someone with experience, though in this case the PIs were experts in the domain of application. That's reasonably common for cross-discipline projects, but in this case you really have to trust that your hires know what they're doing and you need to be able to assess their work without deep knowledge of the techniques used.
PhDs can be absurdly specific and many are complex enough that you can't really study them until grad school. Many universities don't teach quantum computing, but as a physicist it's probably assumed you have enough of a background to understand the material.
[+] [-] bees_buzz|3 years ago|reply
Maybe a research group wants to investigate a connection to another discipline.
Maybe the research group comes across a talented student and sees the potential for a research grant (how this works depends on the country).
Maybe the student has the means to self-fund and so the university happily collects a pay-cheque.
I fell into the first category - I did my PhD in a quantum information group despite my background being in mathematical logic. I was accepted because I knew a lot about different formal logic systems, and they wanted to study connections between those and the formalism they were using for quantum information.
[+] [-] adam_arthur|3 years ago|reply
Would be cool if colleges were required to estimate number of job openings relevant to each PHD program vs current cohort sizes. Or some central body could
[+] [-] red_trumpet|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dschuetz|3 years ago|reply
It's always about grant money. Especially with anything that starts with Quantum <insert buzzword here>
[+] [-] Barrera|3 years ago|reply
> Because this article received somewhat more attention than I expected/feel comfortable with, I’ll take it down for a moment. Sorry. I’ll leave the disclaimer:
> Disclaimer: This article has been primarily written to clear up my mind, and to potentially receive constructive, uplifting or critical comments from others. I feel like it helps me cope with a frustrating and difficult situation. I do not intend to attack anyone.
It looks like the article was submitted to HN by the author. Then, taken aback by promotion to the front page and certain passages that could be construed negatively, the author took the article down.
A lot of people dream about being well-known, or at least getting on the front page of HN. What they may not realize is the microscope that places you under and what it can do to you.
[+] [-] jokoon|3 years ago|reply
Academia has often been a tool used to maintain social inequality, and that's the words you often hear from people who are insiders. A lot of people want to be in academics for passion of their field, or for prestige, or for the status. But in reality, it's another place meant to maintain elitism.
The weirdest thing is that jobs want you to have a degree, yet you often hear that degrees don't matter. So you quickly realize that education matters, but that degrees should not exist. Students should just want to learn and degrees should not be some sort of carrot on a stick.
[+] [-] georgeecollins|3 years ago|reply
This article seems to be about a PhD candidate at a program that didn't really have people experienced in the field. If you want to get a science PhD, look at the papers by the tenured people in that program and see where they went to school. Look at who cites their papers. The schools that read their papers may be the ones that you can apply to later.
[+] [-] fn-mote|3 years ago|reply
I totally agree with the comments who say "performance" is an essential part of research. Somebody (your advisor, then later you) needs to be telling people how important your work is, where it can lead, what it will be good for, etc.
If you're not at this stage yet, my advice is cast a wide net and interview several prospective advisors about their work, etc. A bad fit will waste years of your life.
[+] [-] b215826|3 years ago|reply
I don't understand what's so controversial about this post that the author had to take it down. Seems like a level-headed criticism of modern-day academia to me. Sturgeon's rule applies to everything, including academia.
[+] [-] raister|3 years ago|reply
That's how I feel about this. Chances of success are not as high as one would like, however, case affirmative, honour and recognition. A lot!
[+] [-] zackmorris|3 years ago|reply
But after two lost decades, I've noticed a shift lately. I think that people are getting fed up with centralized control of the supply chain and are maybe looking towards things like FPGAs as a way to get to a level above the current imperative programming paradigm, rather than working at the level below it in the glorified DMA transfer and shader paradigm we have now (vertex buffers).
For something as esoteric as quantum computing, I think it would help the world a great deal if someone would go back to first principles and explain it how it is. Not with complex notation, but with counting principles from probability and statistics. I had a great teacher in college who taught it just exactly that way, by imagining small groups of apples and bananas and how we could count them and detect larger patterns to get to stuff like Bayes' theorem.
So for example, we can imagine cubits as coin flips that we haven't looked at yet. If there are relationships between multiple unseen coins, then we can map out that potential solution space like a big tree. Then look at the tree with random sampling of the superposition to infer where the answer probably lies. Which is a lot faster than iterating through all all of the permutations with a computer. But I suspect that convergence will end up taking roughly the same amount of time as brute force, due to noise or some fundamental aspect of the universe we don't understand yet. But I'm probably wrong about that, because I haven't gotten clarity on how any of this stuff actually works, because nobody bothers to write it this way from first principles.
Even if the author isn't going to be doing quantum mechanics in academia, it would help the world a great deal to share what they've learned so far!
[+] [-] selimthegrim|3 years ago|reply