This does vary based on the field and kind of school. It's definitely accurate for being a professor at a top-tier research university in the sciences or engineering. A prof job at those kinds of places could accurately be titled "research manager": the main job requirements are managing and bringing in funding for a fairly large research lab of 5-10 grad students and possibly some research scientists and postdocs.
But you can shift the balance of the various components if you go to different kinds of schools. To take the opposite end of the spectrum, if you're the CS prof at a small liberal-arts college, your job will involve a lot more teaching and mentoring undergrads, and a lot less grant-writing and research-lab management. It's unfortunately not true that there's a happy medium to fit every kind of temperament, but there are some options at least.
This nicely sums up a bunch of reasons why I decided not to do a postdoc, and instead joined my first startup after finishing my PhD. I'm sure it works for some people, but I just couldn't see myself being happy with it.
Same for me. I had a few opportunities for good post-docs, but I just couldn't see the point. I didn't really want to be a professor, and if you don't want to be a prof, a post-doc is just a really low-rent job.
Do you think there's a point to getting a PhD at all? I've been debating dropping out of my PhD program (after one year), mostly for personal reasons, but partially because most grads from my (top N) program end up not being able to land a research or academic position after graduation. If I end up like 95% of the graduates from my program, will it have been a waste of time?
Is there any value in a PhD if you do your own startup, become a dev at a huge company like Google, or become a dev at a small company like Yelp? And if so, what does it get you over having five years of experience? I don't mean in monetary terms -- a PhD is obviously a net negative monetarily; what I'm looking for is the chance to make a living working on 'interesting' problems.
A PhD programme is ideally an opportunity to work on whatever you want, for years, in the company of smart people who are also interested in the same subject. You can use this time to try out different ideas and see if any of them take off. Having that shot is valuable in itself, even if you don't "succeed" with a research position afterwards.
Plus, sometimes new startup ideas, connections, or key skills come out of a PhD. The traditional approach is to found a startup directly from your research, but equally important is the role of PhD projects in helping you identify people who will get things done. If they flake out on helping write an academic paper, what will they do when you're working on a company?
Now sometimes a programme falls short of the ideal. You may end up teaching too much, you may end up working on projects you don't like because the funding is there, and so on. If that's happening, then that is a reason to quit. If you have an incredible opportunity that comes up and isn't compatible with continuing, that's a reason to quit. Just quitting because the grass is greener, though, does not seem like it will work.
A PhD programme is ideally an opportunity to work on whatever you want, for years, in the company of smart people who are also interested in the same subject. You can use this time to try out different ideas and see if any of them take off. Having that shot is valuable in itself, even if you don't "succeed" with a research position afterwards.
This was my attitude going into the program. I'll get to spend five years working on fun problems! Even if I don't land a research job at the end of it, at least I'll have had five years of fun. But when I look at how bitter the people who are graduating now are when they don't get research jobs, I'm not sure that I'll have the same attitude towards things when I finish.
Yes, sometimes new ideas, connections, and skills come out of a PhD. Don't those things come out of working in industry, too?
You may end up teaching too much, you may end up working on projects you don't like
Yes. This. I feel like I had more freedom at my old industry position than I do in my PhD program.
As you said, there is not much in the way of direct financial compensation for having a PhD in industry, but it can act as a foot in the door and it can (depending on the company) mean you get treated a bit differently once you are hired. Researchy type projects tend to get pushed to people who are good at open ended researchy things, and having a PhD is a good indicator of that.
For me the biggest value from my PhD came from the writing up. It is really, really, really hard to get from having "done all of the work" to writing a coherent, well defended thesis on it. You will get very good at spotting holes in arguments (particularly yours, but also other peoples). You will get a very real understanding of how much work is involved in getting from 95% to 100% finished. It's not directly valued in industry but I know that I benefit personally from my writing up experience.
What settings have you found where you could call yourself "doctor" without someone mistakenly believing you are an MD? The only ones I've found so far are in academia and at work, but in both cases it's not really that much of a boost. (At work everyone more or less has a PhD.)
Yeah, mainly the pub, but also any situation where you want someone to do something that seems risky:
"Trust me, I'm a doctor!"
And dealing with unhelpful customer service:
"We're sorry Mr Smith but we can't do that..."
"Actually that's DOCTOR Smith"
It won't help you get what you want, but the amusement factor will make you feel better.
A friend of mine has Dr on all of his credit cards. He claims to have received free upgrades on rental cars from time to time as a result. Not sure if I believe that.
Yes, that's right, the writing up is key. In addition to spotting holes in arguments, it's good for showing you that you can finish a large sustained project.
I'd recommend staying with it. If you're young (i.e. straight out of undergrad), it'll seem like the ~5 years you have left is a long time.
As somebody who spent some time working and then came back, though, it's just a short hop. The Ph.D. will only open doors for you in the future, and the six-year commitment is not an easy thing to do the older you get, with greater lifestyle expectations, family situation, and the general crotechety-ness that comes with time.
I'm not that young. I spent a couple years picking up an MS and five years working before starting the PhD. Five years still seems like a long time to me. It's nearly 10% of my remaining life expectancy!
A PhD is required to do research in academia and most industry labs. Otherwise, it's a net loss. However, it's free and fun for a while (if you don't work for an asshole).
I'm not sure what this means—no-one can stop you from doing research anywhere, regardless of your qualifications. Do you mean that most academic research jobs require a Ph.D.?
(I left the bit about industry out of my quote because I don't have the faintest idea. Maybe it's true.)
Probably what he means is that most "research scientist" or "research engineer" jobs out there require a PhD. Though there are a fair number at larger labs that only ask for a masters. But:
>I'm not sure what this means--no-one can stop you from doing research anywhere, regardless of your qualifications.
This may be true in CS, but in most physical or biological fields is not fully true. The permits you need for handling certain materials are more difficult to obtain without a PhD, and it's hard to get funded without it as well.
> This may be true in CS, but in most physical or biological fields is not fully true.
Good point. I'm a mathematician, and the resources that we absolutely must have are even fewer than those of most CSers; I didn't consider life in other disciplines.
Well I've heard that Apple won't even bother considering you if you don't have at least a minimum of a master's degree in something related if you're applying for the Spotlight team.
If you're studying something hard and you get good at it someone will want to hire you. You will have essentially paid for a good chunk of their R&D for them.
Since others may not know, you and Bill completed your PhD's in Mathematics and Biology/Chemistry, respectively. You both had experience programming and are now early employees of a software startup. Would you say you were partially drawn to the software world to change things up? Are there counter-examples on Hacker News of graduate students in Computer Science looking forward to doing a post-doc (i.e., the reverse situation)?
This depends on your situation. I'm doing a post doc right now, while looking for something else. But I was 24 when I got my PhD, and through the post doc position got the chance to go and live in Japan, China, Germany and Switzerland. I set my own hours, work on whatever I want within reason and get a lot of shiny toys to play with.
I probably don't want to become a lecturer because I see it as a service job - you're dealing with members of the public. But doing a post doc has paid as much as I'd get in industry, but with a lot more freedom.
If I could find an interesting startup I'd probably leave though.
Which also raises the question whether there should be a similarly venerable(and compensated) position reserved for researchers who don't teach?
Being a staff scientist at a national lab is about as close as you can get to this in the US. Compared to being a professor you'll get similar money (sometimes more), less prestige, more time for research and slightly more annoying bureaucracy. There's upsides and downsides of each.
Which also raises the question whether there should be a similarly venerable(and compensated) position reserved for researchers who don't teach?
an academic research lab sponsored by a big company (note that this is not the same as a corporate R&D division) ... in the 1970's, this was epitomized by Xerox PARC and AT&T Bell Labs. today, Microsoft Research is currently the leader in this category.
A handful of universities have Research Professor positions. At Carnegie Mellon, it's basically the same as a normal Professor (tenured, similar prestige, etc.), except that you don't normally teach, and in return, you're expected to fund a portion of your own salary out of the grants you bring in. (If you don't bring in grants some year, you can fall back on teaching to earn your keep, so research profs do occasionally teach.)
Some of these profs will offer special classes that might otherwise not really get offered or have enough students to warrant forcing someone to teach.
I loved these classes because the profs were usually really passionate about the subject and that showed in their efforts. There was less droning on and emphasis on arcane, irrelevant minutiae and more "basic principles... now we build stuff and talk about the fun problems there". Those classes were so enjoyable that they almost made me pursue a PhD even though I am not right for that -- at least for now.
I can certainly see the entrepreneurial aspect of being a professor -- managing a lab, hiring and firing people, and sourcing funding, and I don't disagree that professors are there to inspire the next generation. However, there is still a part of me that feels professors have that "safety net". Tenured professors are paid a monthly salary by the university, and often times at / above industry (that's true at least in Canada anyways). With a steady income, they have no risk, and the risk factor is a big part of being an entrepreneur.
I was an entrepreneur (failed twice), and I'm now a professor.
Being a pre-tenure professor is way more terrifying than being an entrepreneur was.
And, depending on the field, between 25% and 75% of your salary as a professor will come from being able to procure external funding.
If you can't convince the funding agencies to pay you, then tenure buys you an office, a teaching load and health care.
It's been terrifying for me because my hit rate is about the same as Matt's. I've had very little luck getting funding for my research.
And, at the last funding panel I served on, the funding rate was down to 5%. My own fund-seeking overhead is now at 60% of my time, and I'm still not getting any.
Either we have too many scientists, or not enough science funding. I don't think the current system is sustainable.
It tends to produce a treadmill, though--- since science funding is available, science profs are expected to get it. In some areas with less funding, it's perfectly normal for professors to have their students TA most of the time; but in most science departments, the prof's expected to pay a substantial proportion of their students from grant money, and it'll look bad if a prof is always "dumping students on the department" by funding them through TAships.
And if you're expected to pay your students, it takes a lot of money! One student, including tuition, stipend, and departmental overhead, costs around $50k, so if your lab is 5 students, you have to bring in $250k a year just to support your grad students. And if you start dipping below about $150k, so are supporting fewer than half your students, people will start grumbling, and it'll look bad for your tenure case. (You can't avoid it by having fewer students, either, because having only 2 students will also look bad for your tenure case.)
As others have said, you pay a LOT to get that tenured position. You also risk a lot. Imagine being 32 and just starting a tenure track position. All your friends in industry are already earning nearly 100k and have been earning decent salaries all the while you were in graduate school and post-docs for the past eight years. They already have houses, cars, and other items giving them some form of security. You are maybe in debt, and have very little if not.
Now you get to work for five years to earn your tenure. You work nights, maybe weekends. Your salary is better, but not that much better than your friends got out of university. At the end of the five years, you may be denied tenure. Are you going to give it another shot after that? Another five years?
Also, "and often times at / above industry (that's true at least in Canada anyways)", I do not see this to be true. Especially not for people of similar technical skill who work hard and long hours.
The biggest reason people do not pursue a tenure track position is a distinct lack of a safety net. The above only deals with the monetary aspect of it as well. The social cost is equally high: you never know where you will end up settling down.
On salary, keep in mind that getting tenure is a "tournament" game, just like getting a VP (or CXO) position. You have to work hard, and prove that you are better than all your peers (who are also pretty damn smart, and are also working hard).
The rewards are there (until someone decides that a restructure will get rid of all the deadwood - people who won the tournament then quite rationally began resting on their laurels) but it's not an easy game to play.
> With a steady income, they have no risk, and the risk factor is a big part of being an entrepreneur.
For first-time entrepreneurs I agree, but there are a lot of "serial entrepreneurs" who sold a company for multi-millions, and are now founding new companies. Millions in the bank definitely seems like a big safety net that insulates you from most real-world risk...
I really liked how he compared being a young professor to being in a startup. I don't know how accurate that analogy really is but it's certainly fun to think about. At my undergrad they had a whole program designed to commercialize faculty research by funding school centric startups. I still find the whole thing fascinating.
When you join an elite school as an academic you become a bureaucrat in a bureaucracy. Want to spend the institution's money? Make an important decision? Get people to help you? Get ready to grovel, and sacrifice much of what you believe is worth fighting for.
I'm sorry, but I wasn't just referring to the grant money. I mean the money that colleges get from tuition, donations, etc. Where is all that money going to? What is costing so much now?
For all the talk about costs of colleges going up, I have never seen a single explanation of where the money is going. And if it ain't going into research, then it's gotta be going somewhere.
if everyone thought the way that you did, then we'd still be programming by submitting our punch cards to some gigantic centralized machine. think about how much basic academic research occurred before the invention of something like the iPhone became possible
There are plenty of necessary things in life that aren't exciting to do. There's nothing wrong with pointing it out unless you're trying to get more people to unwittingly do those things without fully understanding their choice.
EDIT: I'm not trying to say that pure science is universally unexciting. Few things are. But generally, more people seem to be interested in consumer products than pure science research.
I think a lot of researchers (myself included) really do prefer doing what we're doing, though. It's not like I'm doing research instead of making iPhone games because I have no choice; if I wanted to jump and make iPhone games instead, plenty of companies have open positions. I just find what I'm currently doing a lot more interesting.
(That said, I wouldn't want this prof's job, because managing a large group of people, whether in industry or a research lab, is not my idea of fun.)
Seriously? You'd rather implement Tetris in Obj-C than make a fundamental, provable improvement to an important algorithm? We have very different ideas of fun.
If by "fundamental, provable improvement to an important algorithm", you mean something like discovering Floyd-Warshall, then yes. I'd rather be programming Tetris in Obj-C. Floyd-Warshall, while cool, wouldn't be recognized by 99.9999% of the people out there, while iPhone Tetris would be used by millions. More to the point, if you hack up iPhone Tetris, you have a game that you can play, while if you invent Floyd-Warshall, you have a graph algorithm that you can...er, it's bound to be useful sometime. Plus it takes maybe a day or two to hack up Tetris, while it takes several years to do basic CS research.
This is why I'm not an academic.
I can respect basic CS research without wanting to do it myself. I use the fruits of it all the time. But when faced with a problem, I'd rather hack up something that's good enough to get something on the screen than spend the time necessary to cross all the Ts and dot the Is for a publishable paper. To me, the code and what you can do with it speaks for itself.
I would guess that Floyd-Warshall has affected far more people than Tetris has, despite the fact that most people do not recognize it. Personally, I would rather have a positive impact on the world than simply be recognized. Hundreds of years in the future, Floyd-Warshall will still be used.
Will Tetris be used? Maybe. But it is a game. It is not solving real problems. Famous people today being recognized far in the futre? Even less likely.
With all respect, people should be doing things they're drawn to. When you're about to retire, if you didn't enjoy the ride, you probably chose wrong, even if you were Floyd or Warshall.
"I know not what I appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell, whilest the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."
Those downvotes seem harsh. I agree with you. While amazing, groundbreaking research is possible in academic computer science - the general lifecycle of research is some irrelevant poorly made prototype that ignores any number of real world concerns and leads to a couple of uninspired papers that noone reads.
The point of making game is actually in having an effect on people, mostly the point of writing papers is padding out an academic resume.
At the end of my time in academia I had become, as one friend put it "hyper cynical". However, this actually made me much better at playing the publications game - pretty much every collaboration with colleagues involved some negotiation over where in the list of authors my name would go.
I left, co-founded a company, moved onto other things and have never regretted leaving academia - I much prefer building things people do use to writing papers about things that people will probably ignore (that being the fate of most academic research).
The only bit about academic life that I wouldn't mind having is the nice juicy final salary pension scheme!
Yeah I think the other comments in this thread are extremely optimistic about the nature of academic research. The incentives just don't line up to do great work, its not that its absolutely impossible though. I miss teaching, though I was only never an academic as such, just did a PhD.
But you can shift the balance of the various components if you go to different kinds of schools. To take the opposite end of the spectrum, if you're the CS prof at a small liberal-arts college, your job will involve a lot more teaching and mentoring undergrads, and a lot less grant-writing and research-lab management. It's unfortunately not true that there's a happy medium to fit every kind of temperament, but there are some options at least.