The N=1 Guide to Grad School: Advice for Aspiring PhDs

http://marcua.net/writing/gradschool-guide

by eob • 13 years ago

124 39 13 years ago

batgaijin2• 13 years ago

It's what he's doing now that doesn't mesh with me... doesn't working at Locu feel like a huge step down in terms of how interesting the problems are?

I've always been worried about being spoiled with ideal situations and infinite time to read and catch up in CS.

fixxer3• 13 years ago

"infinite time to read"

Depending on what you do (and where you do it), the private sector can actually be quite liberating. I find academia stifling.

batgaijin2• 13 years ago

Could you elaborate? I mean I agree about academia being stifling, but I have trouble imagining it easy to find a research/reading sort of job in CS today.

_delirium2• 13 years ago

I've run into people with great private-sector positions, but they seem to almost all be ex-academics who first established themselves in academia, and then jumped to something high-level and researchy, like a position at Microsoft Research, or a senior position at Google with considerable freedom [1].

For a junior person, academia does have a lot of downsides, not least because of the massive move towards rationalization, metrics-counting, and a focus on how much grant money you bring in. But the junior people I know in the private sector have even less freedom regarding what they spend their day doing, and much less freedom when it comes to formal working conditions, such as choosing to work from home or a coffee shop a few days a week.

Is there a way to find positions with research freedom in the private sector without first becoming established in academia?

[1] Matt Welsh is a good example of someone who did the senior-academic-to-industry transition. He went into academia, got tenure, got promoted up the ranks through to Full Professor at Harvard, and then left for a senior position at Google with considerable freedom: http://matt-welsh.blogspot.com/

pserwylo3• 13 years ago

I've wrestled with this in the past. As a CS PhD student, I will be working full time as a web developer when I graduate.

For me it came down to either (sweeping generalisations):

1) Continuing research on interesting problems, or perhaps working for interesting companies like the Bearau of Meteorology or the CSIRO (the Australian governments industry research organisation). The problems would be intriguing, and you would feel very satisfied with what you have done most days at work. However when you get home, I imagine you would be pretty mentally exhausted, and may not find much time or energy to work on your own projects.

2) Working for a web dev company, where the problems are (not always, but often) relatively straight forward, and don't take too much mental energy to solve. Sure, building business apps is not the most satisfying job for everybody, but the people are great, the company is great, you get looked after well, etc. The best bit is that when you get home, there is probably more mental energy to work on your own side projects that interest you.

I like contributing to Open Source projects, and I also find that after a difficult day at work or uni, I don't have the energy to punch out an hour of coding when I get home. So for me, I'm currently leaning towards option 2.

aheilbut• 13 years ago

There are more than those 2 options.

sbisker• 13 years ago

I work at Locu over here - I was going to tell Adam his writeup made the front page so he could respond (I don't think he was expecting this), but I think he's asleep on the East Coast, so I'll post this before this falls off the front page. Hacker News is not the target audience of our merchant-facing product, but it is certainly the target audience of our technology, such as our local business API at dev.locu.com :)

Adam is our Director of Data over at Locu. Our operation is powered by a very unique data structuring system, crucial to which is a heavy crowd computing component. Adam's research was in crowd-powered databases at MIT, and Locu seems to follow from his research nicely. (I briefly worked in his advisor's lab when doing my masters at MIT as well.) As best as I can tell, he is not bored yet. If he is, he is hiding it well.

Here's a blog article he's written for us about our crowd computing process: http://blog.locu.com/post/25389032496/the-locu-workflow-a-cr...

And here's a more general article about our technology: http://blog.locu.com/post/36602971835/7-reasons-to-nominate-...

I'll see if I can't get him on this thread if it's still alive tomorrow morning.

thelittlelisper2• 13 years ago

The major problem with Academia (actually the Academia subset where I'm unfortunately stuck in) is entirely different.

Here it is very rare that people above grad students and perhaps postdocs do any research at all. They're just managers, except in rare occasions or in the very best places. Naturally, it is extremely difficult that anything good science-wise comes out of this.

The structure is frighteningly similar to a corporation, except that corporations usually end up dying if they're inefficient, whereas research institutions only need to produce papers to get funding—and that's an easy game to play.

I can hardly think of Professors in say a Math dept. managing their students. Yes, they're advisors, but they also conduct their own research.

acadien• 13 years ago

You can often tell how much research a prof does by the size of their group. If they have 2 grad students and no post docs, they're probably active in a lot of research. If they have 45 grad students and 15 post docs, they're probably sitting on committees, writing grants proposals or are travelling to conference for 99% of their time. That's not necessarily a bad thing either, there is plenty of good work done by profs in a management role.

pcrh• 13 years ago

Not the same subject area, but this is why places such as Janellia Farms [1] restrict the size of their research groups. A PI with more than 6 people under her is considered a manager rather than a researcher.

[1] http://www.hhmi.org/janelia/

arctangent• 13 years ago

This was interesting to read. But I would have liked to have learned a bit more about the "politics" involved in an academic career.

pseut• 13 years ago

My experience (not in CS) is that grad students don't really have to worry about politics.

twelve40• 13 years ago

Can't speak for the entire academic career, but in my CS grad school, for students and post-docs politics did not exist. Maybe it kicks in later when going after tenure or trying to win a proposal over 500 other submissions.

stevenbedrick2• 13 years ago

A properly-run academic department insulates its students as completely as possible from politics. If, as a student, you're having to concern yourself with departmental politics, it's a sign that your advisor isn't doing their job.

stevenbedrick2• 13 years ago

That said, while your advisor's job is in part to protect you from whatever politics are going on in your department, it is important that you not be completely politically naïve when you finish.

So your advisor probably shouldn't try to keep you totally in the dark if there are political shenanigans going on in your department or university... but they should do what it takes to ensure that those shenanigans are "not your problem." In other words, said shenanigans should be educational (possibly even entertaining), but not distracting, stressful, or have any other impact on your primary purpose in life: getting your dissertation out the door.

mad44• 13 years ago

Here is a guide to grad school from the advisor perspective: http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2013/04/my-advice-to-my-stu...

jurassic3• 13 years ago

My N=1 advice for aspiring PhDs is: you probably shouldn't go. Outside of CS, the prospects are shitty for all but the rockstars; might as well save yourself 5-10 years of slave wages by not getting the degree.

enjo• 13 years ago

Not just CS, there are a handful of disciplines doing well. For instance, there is a huge shortage of Accounting academics these days. They're basically writing their own ticket.

visarga• 13 years ago

"Hi, I am a PdD in Accounting!" Hmmm ... Sounds a little unexpected.

jdotjdot3• 13 years ago

Can you talk more about this? I hear more and more PhDs aren't worth it, which is really sad. What's a guy who wants to continue studying to do?

jurassic3• 13 years ago

A big step for me was realizing that I don't need a university to keep learning and discovering. There's never been a better time to be an independent learner. If there's something you want to learn, then learn it. If you've got something to say, then say it online. And if you're interesting, people will listen and engage with you.

A PhD is training to be a professor, so don't do one unless that is your goal and you know how long the odds are and what the job of a professor really is. Plenty of people realize how hard it is to get a tenured faculty job, but I don't hear many people talking about how crappy the job of being a professor is for someone who primarily wants to do research. I routinely got emails as early as 6AM and as late as 1:30AM from the same faculty members while I was a PhD student; it seemed like my rockstar professors, well past middle age, were still working 80+ hour weeks to do their administrative duties, and teaching, and grant writing, and student mentorship, and still have any time left for their own research.

therobot24• 13 years ago

there's lots of online resources to keep learning (coursera, udacity, mit open courseware, etc), but the real benefit of the phd is the structured environment and the experience of a mentor to help guide you. Getting a phd just cause you want to learn more is like joining the army because you want to get into shape.

If you are really self motivated and passionate you will enjoy your phd experience, though at that point you probably don't need a phd to begin with...

Despite these cons, going through a phd is amazing (in my experience). You're surrounded by lots of smart people studying the same thing (or close to it), which is significantly different than just relying on those who reply to your forum posts. When i go into the office and talk shop with students/other professors/my advisor i get to talk details (math, different approaches, similar work, etc) as opposed to having to setup the problem over and over again, simplifying the idea and methods... Ideas move fast, and with a good advisor and research group it's easy to stop caring about who is on what publication and be excited about contributing to a solution

Edit: there are a lot of people who take the stance that doing a phd is working slave labor for a professor over the course of 4-5 years of your prime - in a sense they're right, but then again, if money is all you care about then by all means don't do a phd...you won't enjoy the experience...there are lots of other ways to make money if that's what makes you happy

wybo• 13 years ago

I don't agree, a PhD can be great fun and interesting. Perhaps it depends on where you do your PhD, and in what field (the UK-system, at least in many fields, affords you more freedom, as you only work on your own research... (assuming you have funding)).

And yes the hours may be long, but they are your hours, working on your self-defined project; and they are only as long as you want them to be (contrary to the private sector where 10+ hour days often are the norm, and leaving when you feel you've been productive for the day, even if it is past 6pm, leads to questions).

And don't forget the social life; shared dinners, clubs, balls, meeting interesting people on campus, not being too tired in the evening to hang out with friends. Great conversations into the night...

Also if you want to go for a walk in a college garden in the afternoon, or go to an interesting lecture at 11AM, you can. No questions asked. You can plan around your most productive hours. And reading, and developing your skills, is considered work here. While in the private sector you often need to do that after your 10-hour work-day...

So yes a PhD is not bad. Postdocs, and the tenure-race that ensues may be. But the PhD certainly is not bad...

The N=1 Guide to Grad School: Advice for Aspiring PhDs

Related Stories