"A PhD is safer. If you don’t do so well, you are going to get the title anyways.
A Startup is riskier. If you don’t do very well (90% of the time), you can end broke."
Plenty of people drop out without finishing their PhD and generally they are broke afterwards. I'd say a startup is safer as you are closer to industry in case you need to find a job.
I second this. I went to a very forgiving graduate school (at least two chances on each part of the process), and a lot of people still didn't make it past the first couple years.
I also disagree with the author's point that a Ph.D. is about changing the world. My seven years of hard work culminated in a thesis that had a negligible impact on the universe. Many of my friends justifiably felt the same way. I set out with the intention of making the world a better place, but reality had other ideas. It's hard to see how spending those seven years at a startup company could have been worse in that respect.
The author's view of PhD programs seems unrealistically positive. Maybe he means a CS PhD, but then the bit about changing the world makes even less sense.
Startups are for pragmatic (as opposed to idealistic) self-starters.
I think most PhD students identify with "I want to think deeply and learn a lot about one thing" much more than they identify with "I am a self-starter who loves to work in an unstructured environment."
Another counter-example. I found my PhD both more and less constraining than a startup, at the same time. For reference, I obtained a PhD, and I am now doing a startup.
There are things that a startup can never replace. Most notably, access to domain experts whose goal is obtaining knowledge. In startup land, you get massive amounts of anecdote, but little knowledge. Almost all of that anecdote is geared towards earning money to the exclusion of all else. In academia, you get essentially the opposite.
The reason I say that academia can be more constraining is that often you end up focussing on a single problem to the exclusion of all else. This can, but certainly does not always, harm your breadth of knowledge. In transition to a startup, the biggest difference to me was dispensing with "publish or perish."
I've reproduced and experimented with more existing work than I ever did during my PhD. That's mostly because reproducing existing work doesn't earn you anything in academia, despite being a cornerstone of science. You spend as much time, and only as much time, reading background work as is necessary to do something new. Without having to publish, I've been free to really expand my breadth and understand which methods work and which don't in my new domain.
All that said, what I'm doing in a startup is largely still applied research. This is a whole different beast than I see in most startups. Their goals appear to be chasing populism and money. The antithesis of academia.
> I think most PhD students identify with "I want to think deeply and learn a lot about one thing" much more than they identify with "I am a self-starter who loves to work in an unstructured environment."
Chiming in as a counter-example! Having an unstructured environment with few constraints is incredibly rewarding. If you pressed me, it might actually be my favorite part about being in academia.
(My experience with other PhD students agrees with your generalization, though.)
this entire post has wildly false premises, on both sides.
on one side:
the majority of engineers working at startups are hired and paid.
on the other side:
The vast majority of CS phds can't get an academic job unless they don't have any constraints on where they wish to live. The moment you have any location preferences and want an academic job, you have to be total super star, which is hard, and by definition few people will be.
Theres also the fact that the typical phd recipient will never earn back the lost income from the extra years of education over their master degree only clone.
being a startup founder or a phd student, both can suck, they're fundamentally different experiences, and when one or another works out well for someone, its an incredibly unique and personal situation that will not be replicable by anyone else.
I agree with that, except for the lost income, this recent study [1] showed that your lifetime earnings will quite likely be more if get a PhD (not accounting for tuition, not sure about it then). I think that the differences are so marginal in the end, that it should not be money that decides whether you want to go for a PhD or not ...
This post seems to miss the point that the two choices address completely different goals. Do you want to be a professor? Better get that doctorate. Want bags of money? Better work on your idea for the Next Big Thing. Both paths have upsides and downsides, but the important difference is that they're taking you toward different destinations.
Being a PhD student myself, I have to disagree with the last point: changing the world (actually, it was one of things that lured me were I am). While doing PhD you can be pretty certain that you won't become rich, it is also unlikely that you will change the world.
And comparing with science long-dead science luminaries is unfair - it used to be possible to make a (scientific) breakthrough working alone. But, say, for 50 years or so it is no longer true (the transition was smooth). When a field is fresh you can make a great in your garage; latter - not so.
Also, academia is a strictly top-down organization with all its consequences for creativity (in particular, having a great idea and skills at 17 yo will allow you to startup, put not - to assemble a research group). So if there is a great impact to the world by a PhD student, I can bet a lot, that it is because it was the PhD student's side project.
> you can have a greater impact by doing research. At least that's my opinion. I have tons of respect for entrepreneurs like Henry Ford or Larry Page but can you compare their contributions to the ones of Carl Friedrich Gauss or Alan Turing?
As a PhD student, I tend to think the opposite.
Entrepreneurs who are successful tend to change the world, or at least improve it. Even if you have a small business, you are helping fuel the economy.
It seems that most academics tend not to improve the world or fuel the economy.
Matt Might's illustrated guide to the PhD sort of shows this quite succinctly [1]. I don't think there are any memorable PhD theses that significantly changed anything, save for Shannon's. World-changing researchers do exist, but I think they are created after they obtain their PhD, rather than before; it's unreasonable in my eyes to expect anyone to make such significant contributions in the infancy of their research careers.
Be honest: chances are the startup will fail. (And probably for reasons you have little control over, so don't think you can just avoid the mistakes.)
So at the end of 5 years, what have you got? With the Ph.D you've got something recognizable and real academic cred. With the startup it'd be a bit of a mixed bag. If you knew the startup would fail, would you still choose it over the Ph.D?
There seems to be an attack on academic credentials of late, MBAs, PhD etc, even to the point that people are being told to drop out of school.
Yes there is a possibility to make it rich without all of the above, but there is an extremely high chance of failing. A lot of people who are making such claims about education are making them from a dishonest position.
Why not both? The university I attended, UT Dallas, has a program called the Venture Development Center. Professors can pitch a start-up idea, and if they get accepted, the university donates office space and computers/software/etc. The professors Ph.D students get to work on the startup as an employee while also working toward their Ph.D.
PhD's and Startups are similar enough experiences that they can be constrasted. Every PhD is unique - REALLY unique and only a few people in the world understand. Startups these days seem to be as individual.
I agree that PhD's and startups have similar elements of risk. In both spaces, it's possible to stick to safe ideas or ideas that don't meet approval of your colleagues.
Startups teach you to be responsible for your own ideas, in a way the PhD system does not.
Not every PhD student has a scholarship. The ones who don't get a fellowship, tend not to accept. The ones that do get money still don't really understand where that money comes from.
A PhD does not take at least 5 years, I did mine in just under 3 and am now 2 years in to a startup I founded which will take at least 5 years.
The final point is also very very wrong. PhD's don't change the world, they push the boundary of what we know a tiny tiny bit forward. And it's widely known that a start up is not the most effective way to earn lots of money, investment banking or working your way up the corporate ladder is. The main difference is that a start up is probably more fun and fulfilling.
How does one change the world with a PhD? One's contribution is very little among all the other hundreds of researchers that are trying to work out that one problem and most of the time, your PhD doesn't have an impact at all.
That's one way to look at it. From the perspective of a researcher, if you're true to your work, you're really at the vanguard asking hard questions and probing the limits of your own mind and its fallacious thinking .. no matter how small your domain of interest is.
I came across a joke once that resonated since it felt like truth being spoken in the clothes of humour -- "When you finish a bachelor's degree, you think you know something about something. When you finish your Masters, you realize you don't know anything about anything and are in awe of other minds around you. When you finish your PhD, you realize that nobody really knows anything about anything, including you."
The offshoot of that last realization is true humility that shows as a deep appreciation for the steady progress being made at the boundary of knowledge, and the wisdom in finding the right question to ask.
To put it another way, both endeavours have tremendous impact on the person. If "finding out about stuff" is your thing, getting a PhD would be worth it. If "doing stuff" is your thing, a startup would be worth it.
PS: This one just submitted his thesis and is considering starting a company.
I think most of the researchers that are trying to work out that one problem have a PhD degree. As you said (in which I disagree), maybe a single PhD can't change the world, but their collective effort and knowledge can.
[+] [-] john_w_t_b|13 years ago|reply
"A PhD is safer. If you don’t do so well, you are going to get the title anyways. A Startup is riskier. If you don’t do very well (90% of the time), you can end broke."
Plenty of people drop out without finishing their PhD and generally they are broke afterwards. I'd say a startup is safer as you are closer to industry in case you need to find a job.
[+] [-] danielford|13 years ago|reply
I also disagree with the author's point that a Ph.D. is about changing the world. My seven years of hard work culminated in a thesis that had a negligible impact on the universe. Many of my friends justifiably felt the same way. I set out with the intention of making the world a better place, but reality had other ideas. It's hard to see how spending those seven years at a startup company could have been worse in that respect.
[+] [-] fnayr|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wellboy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] auctiontheory|13 years ago|reply
Startups are for pragmatic (as opposed to idealistic) self-starters.
I think most PhD students identify with "I want to think deeply and learn a lot about one thing" much more than they identify with "I am a self-starter who loves to work in an unstructured environment."
[+] [-] tensor|13 years ago|reply
There are things that a startup can never replace. Most notably, access to domain experts whose goal is obtaining knowledge. In startup land, you get massive amounts of anecdote, but little knowledge. Almost all of that anecdote is geared towards earning money to the exclusion of all else. In academia, you get essentially the opposite.
The reason I say that academia can be more constraining is that often you end up focussing on a single problem to the exclusion of all else. This can, but certainly does not always, harm your breadth of knowledge. In transition to a startup, the biggest difference to me was dispensing with "publish or perish."
I've reproduced and experimented with more existing work than I ever did during my PhD. That's mostly because reproducing existing work doesn't earn you anything in academia, despite being a cornerstone of science. You spend as much time, and only as much time, reading background work as is necessary to do something new. Without having to publish, I've been free to really expand my breadth and understand which methods work and which don't in my new domain.
All that said, what I'm doing in a startup is largely still applied research. This is a whole different beast than I see in most startups. Their goals appear to be chasing populism and money. The antithesis of academia.
[+] [-] burntsushi|13 years ago|reply
Chiming in as a counter-example! Having an unstructured environment with few constraints is incredibly rewarding. If you pressed me, it might actually be my favorite part about being in academia.
(My experience with other PhD students agrees with your generalization, though.)
[+] [-] carterschonwald|13 years ago|reply
on one side: the majority of engineers working at startups are hired and paid.
on the other side:
The vast majority of CS phds can't get an academic job unless they don't have any constraints on where they wish to live. The moment you have any location preferences and want an academic job, you have to be total super star, which is hard, and by definition few people will be. Theres also the fact that the typical phd recipient will never earn back the lost income from the extra years of education over their master degree only clone.
being a startup founder or a phd student, both can suck, they're fundamentally different experiences, and when one or another works out well for someone, its an incredibly unique and personal situation that will not be replicable by anyone else.
[+] [-] zura|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mahrz|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/collegepay...
[+] [-] jurassic|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stared|13 years ago|reply
And comparing with science long-dead science luminaries is unfair - it used to be possible to make a (scientific) breakthrough working alone. But, say, for 50 years or so it is no longer true (the transition was smooth). When a field is fresh you can make a great in your garage; latter - not so.
Also, academia is a strictly top-down organization with all its consequences for creativity (in particular, having a great idea and skills at 17 yo will allow you to startup, put not - to assemble a research group). So if there is a great impact to the world by a PhD student, I can bet a lot, that it is because it was the PhD student's side project.
[+] [-] Fomite|13 years ago|reply
And this is where I stopped taking the author seriously - they've got a seriously rose colored view of the job market.
[+] [-] javert|13 years ago|reply
As a PhD student, I tend to think the opposite.
Entrepreneurs who are successful tend to change the world, or at least improve it. Even if you have a small business, you are helping fuel the economy.
It seems that most academics tend not to improve the world or fuel the economy.
[+] [-] testbro|13 years ago|reply
[1] : http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/
[+] [-] maaku|13 years ago|reply
So at the end of 5 years, what have you got? With the Ph.D you've got something recognizable and real academic cred. With the startup it'd be a bit of a mixed bag. If you knew the startup would fail, would you still choose it over the Ph.D?
[+] [-] pmb|13 years ago|reply
It's not that safe.
[+] [-] beezlebob|13 years ago|reply
Yes there is a possibility to make it rich without all of the above, but there is an extremely high chance of failing. A lot of people who are making such claims about education are making them from a dishonest position.
[+] [-] marmaduke|13 years ago|reply
Europeans do it in 3 or 4.
> In a PhD you have a scholarship and a tutor that tells you what to do.
Salary is usually contingent on applications, work, etc.
After the first half, the PhD should be directing the project, not the tutor.
> A PhD is safer. If you don’t do so well, you are going to get the title anyways.
A PhD is only a PhD if you make it to the endgame. You can fail quickly or slowly in an infinite cornucopia of ways.
> In a PhD you learn a lot about an specific subject.
If you have two brain cells to rub together, you learn just as much about yourself, people's motivations, etc. as you do about the domain.
> If what you want to do is to change the world, go with the PhD.
A PhD is at best learning to do research, not much else, and at worst, a poorly paid programmer or lab tech. Changing the world is thing altogether.
[+] [-] leftnode|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrcactu5|13 years ago|reply
I agree that PhD's and startups have similar elements of risk. In both spaces, it's possible to stick to safe ideas or ideas that don't meet approval of your colleagues.
Startups teach you to be responsible for your own ideas, in a way the PhD system does not.
Not every PhD student has a scholarship. The ones who don't get a fellowship, tend not to accept. The ones that do get money still don't really understand where that money comes from.
[+] [-] return0|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simonbarker87|13 years ago|reply
The final point is also very very wrong. PhD's don't change the world, they push the boundary of what we know a tiny tiny bit forward. And it's widely known that a start up is not the most effective way to earn lots of money, investment banking or working your way up the corporate ladder is. The main difference is that a start up is probably more fun and fulfilling.
[+] [-] kd0amg|13 years ago|reply
I think the post is meant to be about an American PhD program, not a European one. 3-year PhDs in the US are pretty rare.
[+] [-] greenyoda|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] wellboy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aufreak3|13 years ago|reply
I came across a joke once that resonated since it felt like truth being spoken in the clothes of humour -- "When you finish a bachelor's degree, you think you know something about something. When you finish your Masters, you realize you don't know anything about anything and are in awe of other minds around you. When you finish your PhD, you realize that nobody really knows anything about anything, including you."
The offshoot of that last realization is true humility that shows as a deep appreciation for the steady progress being made at the boundary of knowledge, and the wisdom in finding the right question to ask.
To put it another way, both endeavours have tremendous impact on the person. If "finding out about stuff" is your thing, getting a PhD would be worth it. If "doing stuff" is your thing, a startup would be worth it.
PS: This one just submitted his thesis and is considering starting a company.
[+] [-] MojoJolo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yamalight|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yamalight|13 years ago|reply
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