[HN Gopher] 'Hard' skills from our PhDs remain relevant beyond a...
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'Hard' skills from our PhDs remain relevant beyond academia
Author : nabla9
Score : 127 points
Date : 2021-12-28 16:04 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| karaterobot wrote:
| Coming out of academia, I would say the biggest thing I had to
| internalize was that nobody in the for-profit world cares about
| your interesting findings, unless those interesting findings
| result in more money. So, apart from just being able to write to
| a format, I don't think grant proposal skills are transferable,
| and in some sense they may hurt you if you forget that the case
| you're making is not about research, it's about generating
| profits.
|
| FWIW, I don't think this a bad thing in many cases. I left
| academia after I realized that our 4-year NSF project to build
| collaborative software was never intended to actually improve
| anyone's life, or even to ever be used outside of our very
| limited study. It didn't have to be good, or useful, or get
| adopted by any community in order to succeed. The motivations
| were completely different: it was to write more papers, and get
| the next grant, and fund the next set of grad students, so they
| could build something else that would never be used. Grant
| proposals all the way down.
|
| Yes, basic research is valuable, obviously, my point is just that
| it's an entirely different, and largely non-transferable
| worldview from the private sector.
| counters wrote:
| IMHO an important point here is that in much of the story as
| you've described it, there are incredibly valuable skills that
| just need to be re-dressed. As an academician who was lured to
| industry by an interesting startup and has worked the gamut of
| positions from IC to executive, I'm reasonably confident in
| telling folks that it's all about perspective. If things look
| upside down, then turn yourself to match! For example:
|
| > I don't think grant proposal skills are transferable,
|
| Well, they actually probably are. If you work as a domain
| expert on the business or technical side of an organization,
| you may need to directly engage with funding agencies, other
| companies, or some other agent where your ability to (a)
| understand the audience and what is required to persuade them
| to support your idea, and (b) quickly execute on the content
| required to generate the proposal. Extra points if you were one
| of those pre-tenure faculty who needed to submit a half-dozen
| grant proposals every quarter, because you've likely built some
| intuition as to where it's safe to cut corners in your writing
| and pitching. Sure, in most jobs you may not be writing NSF
| proposals every week, but the general skill of effective and
| succinct technical communication is beyond valuable across a
| wide swath of applications you'll find in industry.
|
| > The motivations were completely different: it was to write
| more papers, and get the next grant
|
| ... but that's, in a sense, the same thing as the start-up
| hustle, is it not? Build the MVP, get that one extra client -
| not because this next iteration of your product is going to
| change the world, but it's one more notch on your belt that
| will look good in the next funding round. Hell, maybe the
| majority of what you're building on any given iteration is
| throw-away work, but it's towards an explicit goal. I don't
| really see the start-up rat race as much different than the
| grant rat race (for better or for worse - I'm not making a
| judgment call here).
| karaterobot wrote:
| Thanks for the thoughtful response!
|
| > the general skill of effective and succinct technical
| communication is beyond valuable across a wide swath of
| applications you'll find in industry.
|
| I did not feel that academia rewarded succinct technical
| communication in any way, and the criteria for evaluating
| effectiveness were very different than in the private sector.
| The kind of cases you need to make to pitch to investors (or
| even product owners) are different than the kinds of cases
| you need to make to pitch to a grant committee.
|
| In both domains, there is a language you need to learn to
| communicate effectively, and I suppose that's partly what I
| was thinking of when I cryptically mentioned "writing to a
| template". But, the languages are not the same, and in fact
| you have to _unlearn_ some ingrained concepts when you move
| from academic to private sector -- or vice versa, I 'm sure.
| At least I did.
|
| > ... but that's, in a sense, the same thing as the start-up
| hustle, is it not? Build the MVP, get that one extra
| client...
|
| No, I don't think it's the same. They both have incentive
| structures, but the incentives are different. It's good for
| private businesses to be judged on whether they make more
| money than what was invested in them, but it would be pretty
| catastrophic to our culture if academic research projects
| were.
| timr wrote:
| This is easy to mock -- and others already are -- but there is
| some element of truth. I've always said that the PhD gave me two
| valuable things:
|
| 1) the demonstrated ability to complete a large, self-directed
| project from beginning to end, starting with ambiguous, poorly
| defined goals.
|
| 2) a herculean tolerance for bullshit.
|
| Both can be earned elsewhere, but the PhD was definitely a fast
| path. The first one is still quite rare, in my experience, and
| I'd call it a "hard skill".
| wott wrote:
| > the demonstrated ability to complete a large, self-directed
| project from beginning to end
|
| I am not sure this (both the self-direction criterion and the
| 'complete to the end' criterion) applies to a majority of PhDs
| .
| timr wrote:
| Yeah, I hesitate a little there. There are a lot of PhD
| programs and doctoral students. Most of them are bad. But
| that's true of everything.
|
| If we focus on the positive outcome for a good student, those
| are the two things I think distinguishes someone from a
| doctorate from someone without.
| lmeyerov wrote:
| Yep. Professors are not only able to get an answer, but able
| to define the problem. It varies by region and domain for
| when that is meant to be true, so you need to understand the
| system a bit better.
|
| Ex: US CS PhDs from the Top 30 are generally like this and a
| quick CV scan and conv can help verify they achieved that.
| Conversely, many EU CS PhD stage programs are shorter and for
| more prepackaged concepts, so the same level of experience
| does happen.. but later.
|
| Ex: US bio fields often are 'one big paper' for a PhD, so you
| can be assured of grit and uncertainty tolerance. But for the
| same reason, you don't know independence until the post doc.
| faangiq wrote:
| There are a lot of trash PhDs out there.
| analog31 wrote:
| Indeed, and this is an outgrowth of the fact that PhD education
| is relatively unstandardized. If you let people chart their own
| course, a few will figure out how to slide through without
| doing anything. Also, it's quite possible for someone to be
| capable of doing the research and producing the dissertation,
| but with such abysmal personal skills that they render
| themselves unemployable.
|
| On the other hand, HN is where I learned that employers think
| so highly of CS graduates that they find it necessary to give
| them an exam to find out if they actually learned to program.
| So I don't think it's unique to PhDs.
| searine wrote:
| Lots of snarky comments in this thread are missing the point: a
| lot of academics get tunnel vision.
|
| If you've spent 10 years studying ion transporters in mushrooms,
| it can feel like you are way over specialized and that getting a
| job outside of your narrow expertise in academia is impossible.
| It is not. A trained scientific mind is a valuable commodity in
| the job marketplace, regardless of your speciality.
| honkycat wrote:
| I have a buddy who is a lab tech at a university. He is under-
| paid and under appreciated.
|
| He has a masters in physics. Really smart guy!
|
| I keep telling him: The math background he has would be a huge
| asset in CS. He should change careers!
|
| He is very skeptical. He feels like he is too old to start( 35 ).
|
| At the end of the day, if he doesn't want to change that is his
| business, and I don't want to badger him. I just feel like he
| would be great as a ML/Data engineer.
| ajkjk wrote:
| He'd be fine at anything non-specialized in tech. Regular
| application programming is so much easier than physics that
| it's laughable.
| antishatter wrote:
| 1) seems like a fuckin "duh" 2) obvious conflict of interest,
| PhD's writing about how useful PhD's are?
| spamizbad wrote:
| My wife has a PhD and I've always been impressed with her
| skillset. Although she's not quite ready to join "the industry",
| there's truly a massive gulf between the quality of research,
| writing, organization and analysis she can produce compared to
| what I've encountered in the workforce.
| geebee wrote:
| I think this article makes sense and makes a strong case for
| valuing a PhD _if you have already completed one and don 't plan
| to enter academia_. You haven't wasted your time. But it doesn't
| make a strong case for choosing to pursue higher education beyond
| a proper, legit masters degree.
|
| I know MS degrees have been somewhat cheapened, as they are a
| quick and easy degree that qualifies for the much higher federal
| loan limits. A university can enroll lots of MS students,
| supervise them poorly, and profit. But there are still MS
| programs with a lot of integrity, where you can learn (provided
| you seek out the opportunity) to write a grant, publish, and do
| intense data analysis. In STEM, many masters programs also tend
| to offer RA and/or TAships, which means you can graduate with
| minimal debt, and you'll have the opportunity to present at mini-
| conferences or seminars.
|
| You won't be as good at this as you would if you pursued a PhD,
| but if you get a job and keep working on it, you will be better
| off in 4-5 years. That said - if you want to go the academic
| route, a PhD is so close to essential that I'm happy to give a
| half hand wave and call it essential.
| gwerbret wrote:
| Perhaps I'm definitionally-challenged, but none of the skills
| listed strike me as "hard" skills. I see a hard skill as being
| one for which a person receives domain-specific training, e.g. CS
| major at $SCHOOL learning to program in Rust. In contrast, the
| soft skills are those obtained in the process of achieving the
| hard skills, e.g. aforementioned CS major developing teamwork and
| time management skills while working on a group project.
|
| In this vein, none of the skills listed in this article (grant-
| writing, data analysis, information synthesis, data presentation)
| are domain-specific.
| tpoacher wrote:
| It is a rather soft definition of hard, yes.
| whatshisface wrote:
| It borders on saying, "it takes general intelligence to do
| this, and it takes general intelligence to have a job,
| therefore people who can do this often can do a job."
| mcguire wrote:
| "Specific training", as in learning to program in $LANG, is
| essentially worthless, and if that's all you got from a CS
| degree, I'd recommend asking for a refund. Teamwork and time
| management may well be skills that you learn while getting a CS
| degree, but they're not the focus and not going to be _taught_.
| humanistbot wrote:
| The hard/soft distinction is a bad metaphor that we should stop
| using, especially when talking about science. Both soft and
| hard have other meanings that come with so many implicit
| cultural assumptions. Domain-specific vs domain-independent is
| far more precise. And if you want to refer to
| social/communication skills, why not just say that?
| Jensson wrote:
| Hard means it is easy to measure as they have rigid shape and
| form. Soft means it is hard to measure as soft items doesn't
| have shape or other properties similar to hard items.
|
| So a hard skill could be "this person knows how to code basic
| programs that works". A soft skill could be "this person
| knows how to write code that others find easy to understand
| and modify". The first is much easier to test and measure,
| the second is really hard to test but is still valuable.
|
| Note that hard/soft has nothing to do with how difficult they
| are to acquire.
|
| Thus the hardest of skills are when the job requires
| licensing or similar. If you want to hire a doctor then you
| need someone who is licensed for it. This requirement is 100%
| rigid and it is very easy to test if they have a licence, the
| candidate absolutely needs it so there is no compromise to be
| done.
| graycat wrote:
| (1) Financial Math. Some of the comments here have to do with
| _mathematical finance_ , e.g., the Black-Scholes model.
|
| Mathematical finance done with theorems and proofs has some
| strong prerequisites of _measure theory_ with sigma algebras,
| Markov processes, Brownian motion, the Radon-Nikodym theorem,
| conditional expectation, stochastic integration, e.g., Ioannis
| Karatzas, Steven E. Shreve, _Brownian Motion and Stochastic
| Calculus_ , Robert M. Blumenthal and Ronald K. Getoor, _Markov
| Processes and Potential Theory_. Can also want parabolic partial
| differential equations and stochastic dynamic programming.
|
| In my experience, with a pure/applied math Ph.D. and as a prof in
| an MBA program, nearly no MBA students or profs have those
| prerequisites. And with my experience in finance, nearly no one
| in finance has those prerequisites, either.
|
| The people in MBA programs, as students or professors, may have
| gotten such a background from Cinlar, Shreve, or one of a few
| more.
|
| Bluntly, not many people, a tiny fraction even in pure math, and
| a good background in pure math is a prerequisite, actually study
| stochastic processes and stochastic optimal control with a
| measure theory prerequisite.
|
| Anyone X with anything like that math background might want to be
| careful or that background will scare nearly all potential
| employers, in finance or anything else, and result in X being
| ostracized and fired or not hired.
|
| (2) Math in MBA Programs. When I was a prof in an MBA program,
| all the math used was undergraduate level, e.g., with hardly even
| a calculus prerequisite.
|
| (3) Advanced STEM Educations for Non-Academic Jobs. It appears
| that an advanced education, e.g., in computer science, can help
| in getting a non-academic job, but the real _help_ is just
| passing a filter, having _proved_ oneself, and not aiding in
| doing the job.
|
| This situation should not be a surprise: Having exceptionally
| good qualifications will make a person X exceptional and rare,
| that is, one out of 100+. Then the other 99 can be afraid and
| resentful and gang up on X, sabotage X with gossip, keep X _out
| of the loop_ , etc.
|
| (4) Jobs and People with Exceptional Qualifications. It is common
| for someone X with exceptional qualifications to attempt to use
| those qualifications to get and do well in a job as an employee.
| That would mean that person X has a supervisor Y who created the
| job. But as we can anticipate, it is rare for a supervisor Y to
| have the exceptional qualifications or to create a job that needs
| such qualifications. Moreover Y could be uncomfortable, feel
| threatened by, a subordinate X having and using qualifications Y
| did not have. In simple terms, commonly Y hires X to apply
| routine _muscle_ to work conceived by Y. To borrow from a James
| Bond movie, X is not hired to think and, instead, is hired to do
| what they are told.
|
| (5) Potential of Exceptional Qualifications. For a person with
| exceptional qualifications that might be powerful and valuable
| for a career, don't look for a corresponding job created by
| someone else and, instead, create the corresponding job for
| yourself. E.g., do a startup.
|
| (6) Financial Success. If person X works as an employee, then the
| supervisor of X knows to the last penny just how much money X is
| making and usually will do their best to keep down the amount.
| However, if person X owns a business, then for X the customers
| replace the supervisor, and it's common for the customers not to
| know even roughly how much money X is making.
|
| So, net, for X with exceptional qualifications that seem powerful
| and valuable, start and run a successful business and make use of
| those qualifications. There X can be making a nice fortune, with
| no supervisor at all and with customers who neither know nor much
| care how much X is making.
|
| (7) Academic Research Jobs. In academic research, the prof is
| essentially begging a little money from sources with big money,
| working hard, and then begging journals to let them give away the
| results of the work for free. So, we might anticipate that such
| jobs won't pay very well. I concluded that broadly academic jobs
| were, for someone who wanted to support a family with financial
| security, financially irresponsible.
| analog31 wrote:
| I have a physics PhD from 30 years ago.
|
| I think it's just too hard to generalize. PhDs are still
| relatively few and far between, come from different disciplines,
| have different interests, strengths, weaknesses. We're not
| exactly children when we start a PhD program, so our trajectory
| is influenced by what we've already done. We come from 100
| countries.
|
| An odd thing about physics is that we don't have a lot of our own
| tools or techniques. We're opportunists and we borrow ideas from
| everywhere. My thesis involved nascent laser technology,
| mechanics, electronics, theory, programming, data analysis, and a
| bit of chemistry. Historically, physicists were often the
| pioneering users of those things before they became branches of
| engineering.
|
| Today, my work still tends to be multidisciplinary. I do a lot of
| programming, but I've never wanted a software development job per
| se. I'm willing to work on problems that are ill-defined, that
| don't fall into anybody's field, and that might not be solvable.
| Almost all of my work is heavily quantitative. I interact
| regularly with management, customers, academics, etc. The people
| at my workplace who are doing that kind of stuff are, by and
| large, PhDs. They are not necessarily the highest paid employees
| -- the coders probably have us beat.
|
| What I don't know (if I were to anticipate reasonable skepticism)
| is whether this is a special feature of PhDs, or if we move into
| this role by necessity due to the _lack_ of marketable hard
| skills. I don 't know if any of my skills, taken in isolation,
| would be enough to get me a job.
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| Physics PhD from about 7 years ago. My impressions are the same
| as yours.
| bmitc wrote:
| None of these arguments are contained to just PhDs and just
| further propagates that PhDs are somehow special.
| barefeg wrote:
| Most of these skills are not so useful as an individual
| contributor, but rather for someone in leadership/c-level. But
| taking those roles as a fresh graduate is very hard. Most
| established companies would much rather hire someone with actual
| experience in those roles
| q-big wrote:
| > Experience in grant-writing, data analysis and presentation
| will serve you well, say Samantha Baggott and Jonathan McGuire.
|
| These are in my opinion also soft skills from a PhD program (not
| 'hard' skills). The hard skills are the scientifically deep
| results that you learn and/or investigate as part of your
| research.
| quanto wrote:
| Premise: A person spends 5 - 6 years doing a focused task; and
| the resulting skills are transferable to other fields.
|
| This premise is not surprising. As others pointed out, you can be
| doing anything and learn something that is valuable and
| transferable.
|
| The real question is whether a PhD program is the most time- and
| energy-efficient way of learning those transferable skills. If
| you were doing your own startup for 5 - 6 years, would you have
| learned less transferable skills? How about 3-year tenures at 2
| of FAANG? What is the opportunity cost of a PhD?
| ModernMech wrote:
| It's really best to think about a PhD as an apprenticeship to
| run a research lab. If you go into it with that expectation,
| you're not bound to be disappointed. Any other perceptions may
| leave you a bit disillusioned.
|
| The true value of a PhD is that you get to spend about 8 years
| or so learning under the close tutelage of a distinguished
| individual in some field. And really, that's how you should
| pick your program -- more than the school or the program or the
| research topic, you have to pick a researcher you want to work
| with; your brain is going to end up working a lot like theirs
| by the time you defend your dissertation.
|
| Because what they are going to do is teach you everything they
| know. It's incredible, you will feel like a novice at the
| beginning, but there comes a point a few years in when you
| realize that actually, you know about as much about this topic
| now as someone considered an expert in the field. In fact, you
| are writing their papers that they are publishing. And
| actually, you disagree with some aspects here and there. Then
| suddenly, you start having ideas of your own, ideas that you
| know no one else has thought of before. So you write them down,
| and that is how a researcher is born.
|
| At this point the idea is that you are kicked from the nest and
| you will set up a research startup at some other university.
| This is much like running any other startup but the product is
| research papers and the revenue is federal grant money.
|
| So to the questions at hand:
|
| 1. Are there skills you learn during a PhD that you can learn
| elsewhere?
|
| Of course. And maybe sooner. A great deal of time is spent on
| the dissertation. You may have acquired the necessary skills
| only a few years in. Many people in CS acquire these skills
| outside of a PhD program (and wrongly assume they have
| therefore obviated the degree entirely).
|
| 2. What are the opportunity costs of getting a PhD?
|
| Well, quite a lot of money although not as much as you think
| (due to stipends and tuition remission). But there is a lot of
| financial upside afterwards depending on the field. But I think
| if you look at peer groups in their early 30s, PhDs would be on
| average much poorer but some ramping up to much higher
| earnings.
|
| 3. What are the opportunity costs of not doing a PhD?
|
| You will be locked out of some opportunities for good. Or at
| least, a PhD is an easy way of unlocking some opportunities.
| For example being an expert witness. It's easier to immigrate
| to some countries if you have a PhD. It's easier to get visas.
| There are certain grants you can only qualify for if you have a
| PhD.
|
| Also people treat you like you know everything about
| everything. This is a blessing and a curse, because if you're
| like me you are wrong a lot. Then people will make remarks like
| "you have a PhD? How do you not know this?" The flip side is
| your relatives will love to brag about it and it will make your
| aunts very proud to tell their peers.
|
| And finally, there is really no other way to get that
| apprenticeship experience. If you really want to get into a
| topic, spend the better part of a decade obsessed with it, with
| no other responsibilities or distractions, then I know of no
| other place to do that than a PhD. Some startups could be close
| but really would need a lot of funding and be okay with little
| to show for 7 years. I don't know many investors that would be
| cool with that but maybe there are.
| foldr wrote:
| The parent post has some great info, but it's worth noting
| that it's very specific to lab sciences. PhDs in lots of
| other fields are quite unlike this.
| mellavora wrote:
| The weirdest thing for me was that after my Ph.D., people
| started coming up to me on the street and asking directions.
| The scary thing was I usually knew the answer. Even when I
| was in a new city.
| temporalparts wrote:
| 'Hard' skills from working as a McDonald's cashier remain
| relevant beyond restaurant business.
|
| 1. Understanding customer relationships
|
| 2. Creativity on the job: figuring out how to deal with edge
| cases for positive outcomes that were not in the corporate
| training manuals.
|
| 3. Understanding highly optimized and dynamic ordering systems, a
| workflow systems engineering marvel for delivering hot food fast.
|
| 4. Create financial wealth above and beyond most PhD students.
| tomrod wrote:
| As someone who spent time in both worlds, true except (4).
| Personal knowledge capital investment has higher expected
| returns.
| yummypaint wrote:
| Same here. There is something about practicing customer
| service in a human-facing job that conditions ones mind for
| immediate agressive problem solving.
| rovr138 wrote:
| Specially if you add a timer and need to solve things
| quickly before you're the problem.
| dekhn wrote:
| The one thing I learned as a mcdonald's cashier was how to
| compute change from a $20 in my head, quickly.
|
| There was nothing about the workflow system of my mcdonalds
| that delivered hot food fast. There was a ton of inefficiency
| in it. I made a number of recommendations to my manager who
| told me I needed to attend Hamburger University lectures of why
| what McDonalds did was so great.
| inputvolch wrote:
| Those were the only `hard` skills they could come up with? This
| reads like someone who is trying really hard to validate their
| life decision to spend many, many years in higher education.
|
| I mean:
|
| > we still say (and write) things such as 'heuristics',
| 'confirmation bias' or 'family-wise error rate'
|
| If you came out of a PhD and think these are challenging concepts
| to pick up, or that they somehow make you more valuable than your
| average technical employee, well, I don't know what to tell you.
|
| I generally avoid hiring PhDs onto my teams unless the problem
| I'm faced with is PRECISELY what they researched. 9 times out of
| 10 a highly motivated generalist is far more valuable than a PhD.
| barefeg wrote:
| Do you have examples of how hiring PhDs can go wrong? I have a
| similar feeling that generalists are usually better unless the
| problem is exactly what they studied. But I don't have number
| nor stories to back this claim
| rovr138 wrote:
| I'll only comment on this,
|
| > Do you have examples of how hiring PhDs can go wrong?
|
| Not so much wrong, but there's a curve IMO. This is biased
| and based on my limited experience.
|
| Writing code or working on production systems sometimes they
| have trouble working the code bases. They can code, but don't
| necessarily have developed yet the skills to dig into code. I
| think everyone has this issue starting. There's also a big
| difference in code from academia to industry.
|
| Same with problems. We need a solution and a usable one. It
| doesn't have to be THE theoretical best thing always. It has
| to work. For example, you can't just not consider constants
| in complexities in production. Those constants take time.
|
| An example can be Netflix's challenge, https://www.techdirt.c
| om/articles/20120409/03412518422/why-n...
|
| ----
|
| I don't necessarily agree with the generalists part. I think
| we all specialize over time and have some of the same issues
| changing language or even frameworks. We just don't have or
| know the best way of doing things within it yet.
| wallscratch wrote:
| As a current PhD student in computational neuroscience, I think
| most of the academics I interact with tend to drastically
| overestimate the value of their "data science" skills to real
| jobs, and underestimate the value of software skills beyond
| prototyping.
| epgui wrote:
| My impression is that most companies don't know how to
| appreciate and take advantage of these data science skills, so
| it's not so much that the skills aren't as valuable as
| academics think, it's more that they're not utilized in an
| effective manner in real jobs.
| N1H1L wrote:
| I spent my Ph.D. coding in MATLAB, as my Ph.D. was experimental
| and MATLAB was mainly used for data analysis and plotting. On
| the other hand, I had a full conda package with complete
| documentation up and running by the end of my postdoc. Though
| this was a side project, the time spent on this was incredibly
| valuable. I did not have to prove to anyone I was proficient in
| Python; my GitHub was enough. Additionally, the vast majority
| of researchers' extent of Python expertise was limited to
| disjointed Jupyter notebooks - while I had a running package
| with extensive documentation.
|
| I got 3 job offers just based on my package itself - while very
| few non-academic jobs were interested in my publications. The
| fact that I had a few first-authors in reputed journals was
| enough; nobody was interested in their contents.
| analog31 wrote:
| At my workplace we assume if you're a good Matlab programmer,
| you can teach yourself Python in a jiffy. What's a bit tricky
| is that every resume mentions Matlab and Python. Having a
| public repo is a useful way to show what you can do.
| N1H1L wrote:
| This is the key. Everyone claims Python/MATLAB proficiency,
| yet there is honestly a vast competency spectrum. A
| polished public repo, in my experience, will really help
| you stand out.
| mlac wrote:
| Industry is still moving from excel / spreadsheet modeling to
| tableau and python and alteryx in the workplace. Knowing python
| today is knowing excel 20 years ago.
|
| Most companies aren't ready to do real data science, and the
| transition is as much an organizational problem as it is a
| technical one.
| nabla9 wrote:
| What makes difference is the autonomy in the job. Are you hired
| to work as a cog, or do you have power to influence what you
| do? In the latter case, data science skills multiply the amount
| of impact your work has (assuming you have ideas).
|
| It's the difference between, _" I explored these 5 scenarios
| last night, none of them is pans out"_ vs. _" This idea seems
| interesting. We need three weeks, and small team to explore
| this idea that might have potential."_
| artemisyna wrote:
| The thing articles like this miss is the problem is not _will
| there be_ some set of skills gained on a given path, but _what
| skills are gained (and at what opportunity cost) versus
| alternatives_.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Honestly it sounds a bit desperate. I'm not dissing the idea of
| getting a PhD, I think it's a big achievement. But this sort of
| argument is the kind of thing I heard when I finishing my
| undergrad, and it wasn't convincing then either.
|
| Grant Applications:
|
| Very specific academic "skill" which is intimately tied to the
| bureaucracy of the university system of your particular country
| or region. It also has a lot to do with things that aren't even
| in the application: who you know and what they think of you.
| Whatever org you join later will have some other way for funding
| to come down, and there are so many varieties of org that you'll
| just have to learn on that job.
|
| Analyzing Data:
|
| That's definitely useful, but there's general and specific. There
| are lots of people who can't do it, and by doing a PhD you
| definitely show people that you are capable. But, and it's a huge
| but, you will be spending a heck of a lot of time poring over the
| evidence on some very specific area of science, with its own
| conventions and paradigms. When you go and do something else,
| that won't be relevant. People will of course see that you are
| generally intelligent, and that's great, but you'll have to learn
| whole new fields at your next gig. Your issue then is that it's
| possible to show general intelligence and ability to learn deep
| material without doing the whole PhD. In fact plenty of people
| will look at a Bachelor's and conclude the person is smart enough
| to learn how derivatives work, or how the advertising business
| works, and so on.
|
| Presentations:
|
| There's simply no less efficient way to learn presentation skills
| than to do a hard science PhD. It doesn't make any sense, a PhD
| takes a lot of work and how much of it is actually doing
| presentation specifically? Yes, I know they do presentations as
| part of it. But the kind of presentation skill you want is what
| your typical smooth talker is good at: confidently being able to
| talk about something that everyone can relate to. Think Obama or
| one of those Apple-guy-on-stage things. Are you going to learn
| that on your PhD? From what I hear, science fields are very very
| specific and although you are presenting, there's a fair bit of
| focus on the substance, plus you are presenting to people who are
| also insiders. If you want to just be less nervous and uhm-and-aw
| less, there are better ways to practice.
|
| There are of course good reasons to get a PhD, such as a desire
| to learn that specific field. But the cost/benefit of doing it in
| order to learn generally applicable skills seems off to me.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| I generally agree with your thesis that the case here is
| desperate. However,
|
| _> a PhD takes a lot of work and how much of it is actually
| doing presentation specifically? Yes, I know they do
| presentations as part of it. But the kind of presentation skill
| you want is what your typical smooth talker is good at_
|
| Step zero of "smooth talk" style rhetoric is to start with the
| audience and work backwards to the speech.
|
| Doing/understanding something complex and difficult, and then
| digesting it down to something that a diverse (if specialized)
| audience can understand, is quite different from what "typical
| smooth talkers" do. In fact, it's literally reversed. Your
| message -- the unvarnished complicated truth -- is fixed.
|
| Giving an eloquent speech to a friendly general audience on an
| easy topic is a good skill, particularly in
| sales/fundraising/etc. But it's quite different from the
| communication skills one learns during a phd.
|
| There are many jobs in which the phd-style communication skills
| are more important than sales-style communication skills.
| Generally positions where there's a team of folks working on a
| "hard" and rigid truth that doesn't care about you. E.g.,
| leading/helping/consulting with a team of technologists to
| understand and solve a hard problem with a physical device or
| piece of software. "Uhms" and "ahs" don't matter, eye contact
| is optional, but cleanly communicating about complex ideas with
| other experts is necessary.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| > Grant Applications: Very specific academic "skill" which is
| intimately tied to the bureaucracy of the university system of
| your particular country or region. It also has a lot to do with
| things that aren't even in the application: who you know and
| what they think of you.
|
| Honest question: how many grant applications have you written,
| and to which funding agencies? Your experience does not
| resemble mine at all.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Absolutely none, just looking over the shoulders of friends.
| Happy to hear what you think.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| My friend in physics who has written multiple federal grant
| applications supporting multiple people tells a similar story
| to GP.
| rbartelme wrote:
| "Grant Applications:
|
| Very specific academic "skill" which is intimately tied to the
| bureaucracy of the university system of your particular country
| or region. It also has a lot to do with things that aren't even
| in the application: who you know and what ? they think of you.
| Whatever org you join later will have some other way for
| funding to come down, and there are so many varieties of org
| that you'll just have to learn on that job."
|
| I think the country/region part you mention is most relevant
| here, but I disagree with the overall assessment of grant
| writing being irrelevant. If you work in a start-up or the R&D
| division of a company, there's still grant money to be had.
| This lets companies pursue high risk projects while not
| jeopardizing overall revenue.
| lordnacho wrote:
| > start-up or the R&D division
|
| Well certainly a large R&D division is similar to a
| university, but if you go that way, of course it makes sense
| to have a PhD. The question is whether the skill is
| applicable to things that aren't basically the same thing.
|
| For start-ups, getting funding does not look like a
| university grant application, surely? At least I've heard
| many many versions of what people did, and none of them
| sounded much like what my PhD friends did.
| mlac wrote:
| Public speaking, writing, networking, reading primary sources,
| and independence are all useful.
|
| I've met really good PhDs, and awful ones. Awful ones wanted
| respect because they had the PhD. Really good ones realized how
| much they didn't know and acknowledged that.
|
| A PhDs can be a requirement to get very highly specific jobs (ml
| at google or robotics at Argo AI) but it's rubbed me the wrong
| way when PhDs are a bonus for stepping into leadership, which
| sometimes seems to occur in government / research labs tied to
| academia.
|
| I think PhDs often experience a dysfunctional work environment in
| their formative years during the PhD and then try to translate
| that to the work place, implementing almost a caste system with
| an over-emphasis on education and power concentrated at the top.
|
| Also I've seen some PhDs discount MBAs or other degrees that
| aren't hard science because it's not what they chose to study
| (physics or pure CS or Chemistry). I guess the point is that
| someone can get a PhD and be missing some basic core
| competencies.
| jbluepolarbear wrote:
| The only people that have ever had problem with me (no degree)
| training them were PhDs. Most have had a superiority complex of
| their education over mine. I'm like "sorry they feel that way,
| but I built most of the software you're gonna use". Some PhDs
| have been super humble and they tend to be the smarter people
| I've met.
| black_13 wrote:
| crispyambulance wrote:
| I think folks are getting hung up on what is or is not a "hard
| skill".
|
| It doesn't matter.
|
| Lots of people leave academia with/without a PHD and go to work
| in places where their degree and the skills/knowledge gained by
| that pursuit aren't specifically required. How relevant your
| degree actually is (how much it "helps" you) depends on where you
| end up and how much you're willing to adapt.
|
| Whatever the case, with some things you're going to be just as
| novice as a 22 year old entry level candidate (in my case,
| probably even worse).
|
| I recall leaving my phd program and months later in "a job"
| encountering my first "project manager". I literally didn't know
| that this job title even existed. I blurted out to some co-
| workers "Who is this person and why did they ask everyone to
| estimate on the spot when they would be done with their piece of
| the project, and anyway, how could we even estimate something so
| uncertain?" Everyone just laughed!
|
| ...and so began my years long reality-check where I discovered
| exactly how green the grass was on the "other side" working in
| corporate jobs.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"'Hard' skills from our PhDs remain relevant beyond academia"
|
| And the sky is blue.
| runeblaze wrote:
| One "useful" skill PhDs seem to learn is how to manage a busy non
| 9-5 schedule while earning grad-school wages. This is a non-
| trivial and probably useful skill to have for many people, but if
| I were to earn an PhD and quit academia I sure hope that I would
| have a 9-5 job with high pay...
| edw519 wrote:
| _'Hard' skills from our PhDs remain relevant beyond academia
|
| Experience in grant-writing, data analysis and presentation will
| serve you well, say Samantha Baggott and Jonathan McGuire._
|
| You can say that about anything. My version (which I firmly
| believe):
|
| 'Hard' skills from McDonald's remain relevant beyond foodservice
|
| Experience in showing up on time, being trained and prepared,
| caring about customers, and getting done what must be done will
| serve you well, says edw519
|
| Edit: Oops, I just noticed a similar (and much more insightful)
| McDonald's reference in this thread from temporalparts. :-)
| omarhaneef wrote:
| This comes up a lot: everyone has some "skills" that transfer
| from one domain to another. Read an interview with a titan of
| industry and they will invariably bring up the willingness to get
| up early and work hard that s/he "learned" from the paper route.
| The CEO of the studio "learned" to network from being in the
| mailroom and so on. In theory, almost any job can give you some
| transferable skills. A PhD may give you many more than most.
|
| I know if you have PhD you (probably) worked really, really,
| really hard, were able to focus on a single problem for years,
| can communicate, analyze and so forth. I have enormous respect
| for PhDs, and believe they can deliver enormous value. But they
| are not the same kind of hire as an MBA.
|
| What is the difference between a PhD and an MBA? I think to me it
| captures the single most important attribute that you cannot pick
| up directly: what people care about.
|
| The thing about an MBA is, they really enjoy this "business
| stuff." They like thinking about markets, the customer, costs,
| finance, how to cross-sell, how to avoid dilution and the like.
| Its not just that the skills are different (though they are), it
| is that the interests are different.
|
| Source: comp sci PhD student who switched to an MBA.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > I know if you have PhD you (probably) worked really, really,
| really hard, were able to focus on a single problem for years,
|
| Focus, yes.
|
| Hard work - not a requirement. Depends entirely on your
| professor's requirements to get the PhD. Most of what I saw in
| my time in engineering/physics: Just consistently do the work
| and stick to it without getting too many distractions. Hard
| work merely made you get the PhD quicker.
|
| Of course, if your advisor is fussy, this strategy won't work.
|
| The one other observation is that when you look at the output
| and career trajectory, there isn't much correlation with the
| value of the PhD and how hard the advisor makes you work. Most
| of the value of the hard work slave driving professors make you
| do goes to your professor, not you,
| Moodles wrote:
| Right. But are there are "hard" skills from an MBA that
| transfer? Not to offend, but MBAs just seem like networking and
| drinking degrees to me, for people that love business. I've
| seen MBAs syllabuses: I've literally seen very basic things
| like "profit = revenue - cost" on slides. It seems like with
| MBAs it's almost entirely soft skills, no?
| mlac wrote:
| Good MBA programs have courses in linear programming and
| optimization, complex financial modeling, and supply chain
| that are quantitative in nature.
|
| There are also technology components that review basic IT
| setups for a business.
|
| They teach you how to think about markets, and how to review
| financial statements and understand a business' profit and
| operations, and offer opportunity to get capital. The org
| behavior courses teach about how to actually get an
| organization to achieve its desired outcome. And that can be
| way more powerful than a solo person working alone in a lab.
|
| An ideal MBA with experience post-school would be able to
| look at an idea, figure out if it's a viable product with a
| good market fit, have the contacts to get financing, the
| connections to get it produced at the right quality with the
| lowest possible cost, hedge against forex risks, work with
| lawyers to negotiate the associated contracts (or know enough
| to not get screwed), record and accurately report the profits
| to governments and stakeholders, and get the right people
| onboarded (these are the soft skills) to get the work done.
| mlac wrote:
| I wrote the above, but I think the problematic ones are the
| "text book MBAs" (I just coined that) who go to mediocre,
| money-grabbing programs and think they are good to go
| because they read text books and have the degree. There are
| too many of these in the marketplace.
|
| The other skill a good MBA imparts is solid written and
| oral communication.
|
| I don't have an MBA, but considered it and chose another MS
| program, cherry picking MBA courses I felt were relevant.
|
| But to discount an MBA as two more years of undergrad
| partying is missing out on a lot of skills they can bring.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| mcguire wrote:
| " _I wrote the above, but I think the problematic ones
| are the "text book MBAs" (I just coined that) who go to
| mediocre, money-grabbing programs and think they are good
| to go because they read text books and have the degree.
| There are too many of these in the marketplace._ "
|
| This is essentially true for all college degrees at this
| point.
| hooande wrote:
| an MBA involves a lot of case studies. that's breaking down
| what happened with a given business over a period of time in
| some detail. at least back in my day, MBA programs had a lot
| of reading and writing them
|
| look up some examples of MBA case studies some time. they can
| be very interesting and informative
| omarhaneef wrote:
| I have heard some version of this argument frequently over
| the years: there is this "hard" skill in engineering or
| physics or computer science that has real lasting value, and
| there there are these other disciplines that don't really
| have much of value.
|
| Now, let's unpack what people mean by "hard" skills. Do you
| mean they are difficult to learn? Do you mean they are useful
| in today and tomorrow's economy? What exactly does the hard
| in hard skill mean.
|
| I think you can see how the deconstruction of the argument
| works here. If by hard you mean difficult to learn, then I
| can list a bunch of hard skills that are not directly useful.
| If someone can rattle of all the major proofs in quantum
| mechanics on a blackboard, they may be a genius, have worked
| hard, and can do amazing things with their brain but that
| effort may not directly make them more employable.
|
| If by hard skills you mean things that are useful to the
| economy, then that changes. I could have spent 4 years
| learning WAMP and then when I come out the economy has moved
| on to some other framework.
|
| Maybe by hard skills you mean some skills that make it easy
| to pick up the other computer skills. So I may have learned a
| particular computer language, but along the way I know
| conditionals, loops, computational expense and so on. Are
| these harder to learn than presentation skills? Are they more
| useful than financial statements?
|
| The example here of a slide that says "profit = revenue -
| cost" is hardly fair. That's like saying I once saw a piece
| of code on github that was very poor. Picking individual
| examples of something you don't find challenging is easy in
| any field.
|
| Explain what you mean by hard skills, and then we can talk
| about whether a particular discipline has them or not.
| q-big wrote:
| > Now, let's unpack what people mean by "hard" skills. Do
| you mean they are difficult to learn? Do you mean they are
| useful in today and tomorrow's economy? What exactly does
| the hard in hard skill mean.
|
| Hard skills are what is the scientific core of your degree
| course or PhD program.
|
| So knowledge about theoretical physics of you study physics
| or do your PhD in it. Knowledge of mathematics and ability
| to do hard proofs for mathematics.
|
| For computer science, the situation is more subtle: Here
| the hard skill is knowledge of computer science, being able
| to understand papers about this topic (degree course) or
| doing research (PhD program). In this sense, I would
| consider programming knowledge as a (central!) soft skill
| of a CS program.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Hard skill is algorithmic, logical rigid, precise
| computations and physical manipulations.
|
| Soft skill is social-emotional, communication and artistic
| creativity.
| mbot5324 wrote:
| Just as a layperson often underestimates the true depth of a
| PhD's expertise in their field of study, many people often
| underestimate the skill of someone who has spent a similarly
| long time meditating on the "soft skills" that actually glue
| a good idea into a successful business.
| Moodles wrote:
| I'm not arguing for hard skills over soft skills. I'm
| asking if MBAs actually provide transferrable hard skills.
| mbot5324 wrote:
| You could write an encyclopedic book of counter intuitive
| organizational dynamics. While I don't know that this is
| the case with all of them, perhaps MBAs could be
| understood as internalizing the combination of such an
| encyclopedia with a few others besides and gaining
| insight into how they interplay with supply line
| logistics.
|
| The insight mostly comes from experiences; the knowledge
| of what to reference to find where to find where to find
| what to find could be (boringly) boiled down to rote
| memorization and distributed through your standard
| classroom practices.
| bmeski wrote:
| They don't. All MBAs I've met in my career have been
| replaced easily.
| mlac wrote:
| You haven't met good ones, and that's likely why they
| were replaced.
| [deleted]
| pasiaj wrote:
| That's not an argument against MBA's having hard skills.
| It's an argument for a finely standardized product.
|
| MBAs are a commodity, but they do or at least can have
| hard skills. I've wasted plenty of time and money on
| subpar market entry and expansion that could have been
| saved had I worked with people with some theoretical
| background on those.
| wittycardio wrote:
| Soft skills are very valuable but you tend to learn those
| with experience not classes, MBAs are just as unlikely as
| PhDs to have them
| ArnoVW wrote:
| What I'd expect in an MBA : accounting, finance, marketing,
| basics in legal, management, business strategy, etc.
|
| Sure. It's not higher maths. But they are real skills that
| are 1) hard 2) are not 'natural'.
|
| Yes. It's _also_ a good way to meet other people like you.
| But then the same thing goes for any 'skill'. How many
| businesses weren't founded by comp Sci students from the same
| uni?
| analog31 wrote:
| I have friends who earned MBA's, typically through
| "executive" programs attached to major universities. Their
| training was being paid for, and they were looking for the
| more prestigious programs.
|
| These programs did not accept students straight out of
| college, and so the people going into them already tend to
| have some business experience, and have already sorted
| themselves according to their math ability. They're already
| known to be diligent, organized, and satisfactorily literate.
|
| The ones who went in with strong math skills found the
| quantitative courses to be a breeze. Everybody learned
| accounting and finance principles, which are useful for being
| conversant in that language. They took a course in business
| communications, and came out with a fairly standardized
| approach to writing memoranda and reports. I think they
| learned how to write and critique a business plan. There were
| one or more courses on business law, including HR.
|
| I call these "hard" skills because they are technical in
| nature. I believe that these are all good skills for entry
| into middle management.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| High level MBAs are for networking. But the degree is in
| Business Administration which is a bunch of broad spectrum
| lightly technical work in accounting, logistics, etc, which
| lots of businesses or entrepreneurs need and not everyone can
| self teach like individualist programmers do.
| dxbydt wrote:
| > are there are "hard" skills from an MBA that transfer?
|
| You are asking a genuine question that has a lot of backing
| research. Before I became a Quant, I was a student at the
| University of Chicago, getting the Masters in Financial Math.
| So the professor who taught the Options course at MSFM told
| us one day - Now I have to teach this same material to the
| MBA class, but at a 10,000 feet level.
|
| One of the students asked him to elaborate. So he says - If
| you have a scale of 1 to 100, with 100 being the hardest,
| then a UChicago Finance PhD is like 100. A UChicago MSFM is
| about 50. A UChicago MBA is like 10. A regular (non-UChicago)
| MBA is a 1.
|
| More concretely, someone like me, the 50, can put up the
| Black Scholes on the blackboard from memory. I can derive it,
| solve it, code it up in C++ and price your options on a real
| equity & tell you whether you should buy/sell the damn thing.
| But that's as far as I was taught.
|
| The Finance PhD i.e. the 100, can derive and solve not just
| the BS but a whole family of models - the Heston, Derman,
| SABR, BDT, HJM, HW etc etc - there's like a dozen of these
| PDEs & it gets seriously complicated very soon. So supposedly
| this Finance PhD can do all of that & more.
|
| The UChicago MBA, which is the 10, knows Black Scholes, knows
| what the Greeks are & can eyeball the value of the Greek &
| tell you whether the option is overpriced or not, but can't
| derive/solve/code up the PDE.
|
| The non-UChicago MBA has heard of something called the Black
| Scholes but that's about it.
|
| Ofcourse that's his opinion & you should take it with a grain
| of salt. That said, during my time in the investment banking
| industry, I have worked with a boatload of MBAs, some
| quants(MSFMs) & a few PhDs - his opinions bore true.
| Moodles wrote:
| My experience too (in a completely different field to
| finance).
| in3d wrote:
| This sounds like something a biased physics professor who
| values his own field more than others could also say about
| teaching quantum computing to financial math students. You
| don't need more than an overview and it's hard. What
| percentage of MBAs will need to analytically solve PDEs?
| dirtybird04 wrote:
| Yes, it's entirely soft skills. But they work very hard at
| using their soft skills to solve trivial business problems.
|
| Every worked a marketing or revops job? It's mind-numbingly
| trivial, the likes of you and I wouldn't last a day. But
| these MBAs do it all without blinking, and do it
| passionately. And I, for one, appreciate them for that.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| I don't think these articles are written for CS PhDs, who are
| an exceptional class of PhDs.
|
| First, CS PhDs can _ALWAYS_ get tenure-track academic jobs.
| Maybe not at a top R1, but getting a university teaching job in
| CS is not some sort of prize. Quite the opposite. Most non-phd-
| granting institutions with sub-billion endowments struggle to
| hire CS faculty (they pay sub-100K, sometimes as low as 65K...
| if you go that route in CS, your undergrads are making 3x your
| income at their first gig). So there 's no "oh no plan B" fear.
| You don't need to be reassured your PhD wasn't a waste after
| failing to get any sort of academic post, because if you lower
| your expectations enough you _will_ get an academic post. This
| is NOT true in nearly any other field.
|
| 2. CS PhDs, with a few exceptional subfields, are in high
| demand. It's pretty reasonable to expect 300K out of a top CS
| PhD program; the total comp number for top-tier MBAs is about
| half of that. CS PhDs who choose industry don't need to be
| reassured that their PhD has value. It's reflected in their
| compensation.
| N1H1L wrote:
| Even in non-CS STEM fields, there are a ton of industry jobs.
| Many of the students in my doctoral cohort went for industry
| jobs, and almost all of them are making good money (over 120k
| annually) and are generally happy in their careers. The
| problem from what I hear from them is the tendency to be
| slotted into super-technician roles where you are in charge
| of a single piece of specialized equipment. People tend to
| stagnate in such jobs (even though the compensation is often
| really generous), and such people often find themselves
| struggling after a decade.
|
| However, I think it's not the Ph.D. that is not the problem -
| instead, it's the postdoc. While a Ph.D. is a terminal degree
| associated with prestige and career advancement, the outcome
| of postdoctoral training is far more diffuse. It ostensibly
| prepares you for academia yet often fails to teach essential
| academic skills like writing grants as the sole PI. The
| funnel is also really narrow, and many postdocs transition to
| industry after a few years - often in a very similar role and
| salary that they would have got straight out of their
| doctoral training anyway.
| valarauko wrote:
| As a postdoc, I really feel this comment. However, a lot of
| people I know do postdocs since its essentially become a
| requirement for many industry jobs, and getting a job right
| after PhD is becoming harder & harder. I know people who
| got industry jobs (pharma) at the salary band you mentioned
| after 6 years of postdoctoral experience.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| What's the stigma against postdoc in the US? I don't get
| it?
|
| In the UK a postdoc is the first job after your PhD. You
| obviously aren't going to get a professorship for a
| couple of decades, and will be too junior for a
| lectureship as well, so you have to do something in
| between. What do you do if not a postdoc?
| N1H1L wrote:
| The thing is, a postdoc is a classic case of credential
| inflation. You don't _really_ need a postdoc, especially
| if an industry job is your goal. The purpose of an
| academic postdoc is to strictly increase the items in
| your CV to make you more marketable for academic
| employment. Industries are hiring senior postdocs
| strictly because more postdocs are applying for such
| jobs. And this is a side effect of poor mentorship in
| academia in general, with freshly minted PhDs drifting
| into postdocs just because.
|
| Very few graduate students think seriously about their
| destination during their doctoral program and are happy
| to be in the lab all day meeting goals their advisor sets
| out for them. And advisors are also happy to let this be
| the state of affairs since you are getting highly
| trained, motivated workers for pennies. This passivity
| starts dissipating only during a postdoc and not always.
| Poor mentorship can be excused in industry, but this is
| inexcusable when academics are paid to be mentors; it's
| literally in a professor's job description. NSF/DOE/NIH
| grants all have significant mentorship sections - and
| they are there for a reason.
| nextos wrote:
| Exactly. But this is very variable across fields. In CS
| or Math, it is feasible to get a tenure-track position or
| the equivalent in industry without a postdoc.
|
| In Biology for instance, inflation is so insane that most
| tenure-track positions _demand_ you have significant
| postdoctoral experience. Same applies to many industry
| jobs.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| In my experience, if it's research that gets you up in
| the morning then a postdoc is the sweet-spot - you're
| experienced enough to make good progress but not too
| senior that you're sat in meetings all day. It's just a
| shame the salary is so bad you're almost forced to move
| on.
| N1H1L wrote:
| > It's just a shame the salary is so bad you're almost
| forced to move on.
|
| UC Berkeley, for example, pays its postdocs $60k to $65k
| per year. It's challenging to live in the Bay Area for
| that money. Also, remember many postdocs have kids or are
| planning to have one. Child care is at least $2000 a
| month in the Bay Area. Asking bright, motivated
| individuals to delay their life decisions in pursuit of
| ill-defined scientific ideals is something I have a tough
| time defending.
| HansHamster wrote:
| Another issue (at least here) is that most positions are
| limited to 3-4 years and permanent positions in academia
| are quite rare and hard to get.
| N1H1L wrote:
| This is why I am so pissed off at academic hypocrisy
| currently. Labs were shut down for months. For what? To
| protect whom? The senior faculty who did their Ph.D. in
| the early eighties and refuses to transition to emeritus
| status?
|
| Junior researchers were absolutely shortchanged in the
| pandemic shutdown, and nobody is bothered about it. For
| all the talk about keeping people safe, why were younger
| scientists denied access to experimental facilities, and
| yet almost no funding agencies extended grant contracts?
| Almost zero institutions extended their timed postdoc
| contracts too. And to add insult to the injury, most
| academic institutions had hiring freezes in 2020,
| effectively kiboshing careers of young scientists caught
| in this trap.
|
| Honestly, I am disgusted with university faculty right
| now - all fancy talk, no action.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Higher ed is an industry in crisis. Get out and be happy
| that you realized this before it was too late to leave
| that hell hole of a sector. The grass is greener. I
| promise.
| valarauko wrote:
| An example of the hypocrisy: a prominent university in
| the Boston area that announced that they will suspend on
| campus childcare from January. Labs are still open, and
| the population of lab workers most likely to have
| benefited from on campus childcare were postdocs. Now
| they have to find at home childcare at their own expense.
| Postdocs also tend to be overwhelmingly foreign nationals
| who want to avoid rocking the boat.
| jorpal wrote:
| The problem is we train way more PhDs than there are
| tenure track positions available. Most PhDs won't be
| lucky enough to get one of those academic positions, and
| a postdoc is just delaying the inevitable transition to
| an industrial job. Postdocs are for all-star students
| with a good academic pedigree and publishing track record
| who have a good shot at tenure. People who were less then
| that (such as myself) are often better served starting
| their career outside academia.
|
| From a pragmatic perspective that is how the calculus
| worked for me. It's probably where the stigma arises from
| as well. Although I wish it weren't like that, I never
| thought the purpose of a college/university education
| should be so limited to 'job training' (that's what trade
| schools are for). That's the American perspective,
| anyways.
| justin66 wrote:
| > your undergrads are making 3x your income at their first
| gig
|
| Why are you making stuff up?
|
| These sorts of careless lies, which are all too common, can
| be hard on young people in college, or considering college,
| or otherwise. They're either trying to value their potential
| education or wondering why the fuck they aren't getting the
| job offers they should be getting because so many are telling
| them their degree is the gateway to instant riches, and
| you're not helping.
|
| > the total comp number for top-tier MBAs is about half of
| that.
|
| Wrong in a very different way here. You should stop.
| mcguire wrote:
| If you listen to USNews, Stanford is the top business
| school and tied with three others for top CS school.
|
| Average base salary plus expected performance bonus and
| signing bonus for Stanford MBA's: $270,394. Base starting
| salary $159,544, signing bonus $32,551.
| (https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/files-
| fpp/2...)
|
| Average salary of a Stanford MS in CS: $153,400
| (https://www.collegefactual.com/graduate-schools/stanford-
| uni...) Signing bonuses from 2016-2017 averaged $26,952.
| (https://wxkcg.com/content/234918) Plus stock.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> Average salary of a Stanford MS in CS_
|
| We're talking about PhDs.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> > Why are you making stuff up?_
|
| I'm not.
|
| Serious question: how many students and faculty currently
| at low-tier institutions have you talked with in the last
| two weeks? Two months? Two years? Do you sit on any boards
| or advisory panels at these types of institutions? Do you
| actively recruit from these types of institutions? I do.
| All of those things.
|
| I know what I'm talking about. Stop being mean to me.
|
| LACs pay junior faculty $65K and those faculty routinely
| place students in positions with >$150K total comp. These
| are facts, even at low tier colleges.
|
| Every student? No. Some students every year? Absolutely. If
| you teach CS well and make $65K, almost all your students
| will make more than you do at their first position and many
| will make 2x-3x. More than enough that you'll start asking
| "why the hell am I here?"
|
| _> These sorts of careless lies..._
|
| This rant sounds extremely personal. Not going to touch
| this.
|
| _> > the total comp number for top-tier MBAs is about half
| of that._
|
| _> Wrong in a very different way here. You should stop._
|
| Total comp out of a _top_ CS PhD programs lately is around
| 200K-300K range with some outliers.
|
| Total comp out of a _top_ MBA program lately is around
| 100K-200K range with some outliers.
|
| Average outcomes vary considerably. That's why my original
| post is properly conditioned on "top".
| ModernMech wrote:
| > LACs pay junior faculty $65K and those faculty
| routinely place students in positions with >$150K total
| comp. These are facts, even at low tier colleges.
|
| You're leaving out a key fact, which is salary for
| academics is reported for 9-months, not 12.
|
| Anyway, these stats are tracked for CS. We don't have to
| speculate or pull numbers out of the air. Here's the
| latest survey: https://cra.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/05/2020-CRA-Taulbee-...
|
| A 9 month salary of $65k would put you at the bottom 10%
| of teaching faculty in the nation. The 50th percentile is
| more like $82k, which is $109k annualized. If you start
| at $65k, I think by the time you actually graduate any
| students you should be making a lot more than that. And
| if you're not, there's got to be some other reason why
| you're not making a more representative salary.
|
| But yes, in general academics can make less than the
| students they graduate. Many academics are okay with that
| because:
|
| 1. It's really hard to put a value on not having a boss
| in the traditional sense.
|
| 2. It's also hard to put a value on getting 3 months off
| in the summer and 1 month off in the winter every year.
|
| Then again, I guess it's not hard to put a value on that:
| it's whatever they forego in extra salary working in
| industry. In that sense while the students earn more,
| they don't 10 paid weeks off + 11 weeks unpaid vacation
| in the summer.
| justin66 wrote:
| > If you teach CS well and make $65K, almost all your
| students will make more than you do at their first
| position and many will make 2x-3x
|
| "Many" is a weasel word that adds a different flavor to
| your original assertion that "your undergrads are making
| 3x your income at their first gig." What you're saying is
| still crazy hyperbole. I simply cannot imagine what your
| source of data is here. A randomly chosen google hit
| shows that the average starting salary for a new CS
| undergrad is around $68k, which seems about right.
|
| It is still, if we're being honest, probably a bit
| humbling for a junior professor to be making the same as
| a new graduate. But you had to lean into the "2x-3x"
| hyperbole...
|
| >> These sorts of careless lies...
|
| > This rant sounds extremely personal. Not going to touch
| this.
|
| Oh, _touch it._ Young people trying to gauge the
| profession, higher education, and its ' costs are going
| to read your comments. They are entering what is often a
| lucrative profession but they are not going to be making
| three times as much as their teachers. Why make stuff up?
| It's not helping anybody.
|
| > Total comp out of a top CS PhD programs lately is
| around 200K-300K range with some outliers.
|
| > Total comp out of a top MBA program lately is around
| 100K-200K range with some outliers.
|
| This would be a lot more compelling if you provided
| citations. The salary numbers someone else provided for
| the Stanford MBA program, numbers which you were
| dismissive of, included range, median, and mode, and
| those numbers were higher. But the numbers I (and I
| suspect, anyone involved in the profession) are likely to
| be most skeptical about are the numbers you're talking
| about for CS PhD new grads. Those people will often
| gravitate towards postdoc and teaching positions, while
| the Masters students will often gravitate towards FAANG
| jobs.
|
| To be honest I would be _delighted_ to learn that newly
| graduated CS PhDs from top programs are making, on
| average, as much as those entering industry with a
| Masters, since it would probably signal a lot more money
| being put towards research. I 'm pretty sure the numbers
| you're talking about would have them making twice as much
| as the new Masters grads, which, again, great! I would be
| delighted to learn it's true.
|
| [0] https://www.naceweb.org/job-
| market/compensation/computer-sci...
| p1esk wrote:
| _CS PhDs can ALWAYS get tenure-track academic jobs. Maybe not
| at a top R1, but getting a university teaching job in CS is
| not some sort of prize._
|
| You got to be kidding. Competition for CS tenure track
| positions is insane. At my school, which is ranked around 50
| in the nation, you would have to be pretty outstanding to get
| it (most candidates were from top-5 schools, in hottest
| fields, with many strong publications). I've heard such
| numbers as 100 candidates for a single spot.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| They need CS lecturers all the way down to the worst
| college in the country. Hundreds and hundreds of
| departments. Everyone applies to the top, but they filter
| down, and if you look at who's teaching at the lowest they
| clearly aren't superstars and it wouldn't take much to
| compete with them.
| _delirium wrote:
| To give a different anecdote: at my school which is ranked
| closer to 100, we got 40 applicants, of which about 15 meet
| basic qualifications we're looking for (have a PhD, in the
| right field, have any kind of publication record, have ever
| taught a class). And I think we are doing pretty well
| compared to some places, since we're in a major coastal
| city and have a relatively light teaching load for a non-R1
| place (2/2). A lot of places have been outright failing
| their CS faculty searches in the past few years, and I
| think more than usual will fail this year.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> 40 applicants... about 15 meet basic qualifications we
| 're looking for... 2/2 load... major coastal city_
|
| Wow. Things are even worse than I thought. Your
| institution sounds like the rare type of place that
| shouldn't have a problem hiring. Good luck with your
| search.
|
| _> have a PhD, in the right field, have any kind of
| publication record, have ever taught a class_
|
| Most places with a teaching load higher than 3/2 dropped
| all three of those requirements from their job ads years
| ago.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> At my school, which is ranked around 50 in the nation_
|
| Top 50 on US News & World Report or CS Rankings means
| you're at a very good R1 institution. At #50, your
| institution is ranked _ABOVE_ places like Vanderbilt, Notre
| Dame, RIT, Syracuse, Clemson, ...
|
| You do realize that the USA has nearly 4,000 colleges,
| right?
|
| If you scroll all the way down to the bottom of the CS
| rankings in US News, you reach Walden University at #186.
| Which means the colleges that US news even bothers to rank
| in CS constitute less than 1% of the total number of
| colleges in the US. And you're at a place that's in the top
| third of the <1%!!!
|
| When I say academic CS jobs are easy to get, I'm referring
| to jobs at the >3,500 US higher ed institutions that _aren
| 't even included in US New's CS rankings_.
|
| Again, in fields like Mathematics or Biology even TT jobs
| at unranked/low ranked places are non-trivial to secure.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| That's funny because I'm at Tulane and they can't seem to
| hire or retain worth shit.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| If I had to guess, OP is at an institution in the
| northeast/west/Chicago. Academic CS recruiting in the
| south and in mid-tier cities is typically more difficult
| (some of that might be preference, but the big thing is
| two body problems. I love New Orleans but can't imagine
| solving an academic two body problem there is
| particularly easy).
| killjoywashere wrote:
| > two body problem
|
| You mean a spouse also on an academic track?
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Yes. (Not just academic. Any specialized professional
| track outside of Medicine/Law.)
| ModernMech wrote:
| For anyone wondering: the two body problem is a
| phenomenon that happens when two academics marry. They
| both want an academic job together, at the same
| institution preferably, but there's usually only enough
| room for 1. What many couples do to solve this is accept
| postdocs at different universities (because there's a two
| body problem for post docs too, so you can't usually find
| 2 postdoc positions at the same institution), and then
| wait around until they can find two assistant
| professorship openings at the same institution.
|
| Sometimes if the candidate is really good, one department
| will ask another to make room for another faculty there.
| But that can be a political nightmare. Or if both
| researchers are in the same field e.g. CS, then the
| department might have to hire both even if they really
| only would take the one.
|
| It's quite a problem for hiring.
| ineedasername wrote:
| If CS PhD's are an exceptional class then I think it's only
| by virtue of supply & demand. There are a larger # of
| opportunities in industry, and they often pay better.
|
| As for students earning 3x your income, it seems like you're
| taking the lowest paid professors and comparing to the
| highest paid grads. The truth is, if you're at a school where
| the CS program only pays faculty $65k then you're probably
| not walking into a $200k+ job on graduation except as an
| extreme outlier. Those students aren't going to a school with
| the name recognition required to easily open doors for entry-
| level $200k positions.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> it 's only by virtue of supply & demand_
|
| Absolutely. I never meant to imply otherwise. Worth
| mentioning that this will be true for a while though.
|
| _> The truth is, if you 're at a school where the CS
| program only pays faculty $65k_
|
| I have first-hand knowledge about 3 such institutions, all
| of which place at least one student in a position that pays
| >$150K every year. Perhaps shy of 3x but higher than 2x for
| sure. Averages tend to be around 90K (pulled down by people
| who choose to go to grad school).
|
| _> Those students aren 't going to a school with the name
| recognition required to easily open doors for entry-level
| $200k positions._
|
| But they do receive fantastic educations, because they are
| at teaching-oriented institutions and get hand-held through
| their pre-career years (internship placement, interviewing
| skills, etc. are all coached 1:1).
|
| The basic issue is that administrators at lower-tier
| institutions haven't yet flipped the switch where "CS =
| Finance/Accounting". They continue to hope and dream that
| their mathematics faculty can pick up the slack, as if it's
| still the 80s/early 90s and CS hasn't blossomed into its
| own highly specialized field.
| echelon wrote:
| > The truth is, if you're at a school where the CS program
| only pays faculty $65k then you're probably not walking
| into a $200k+ job on graduation except as an extreme
| outlier.
|
| Only because they're not located in the "$200k+ starting"
| job market. If they move to SF then they're immediately
| worth that much.
|
| Thankfully the jobs are diffusing across America now.
| simplestats wrote:
| Many liberal arts schools pay everyone like they are
| liberal arts professors. So they have impossible time
| hiring people in valuable professional fields like CS and
| statistics. They still can get solid students though.
| Disproportionately locals and by offering scholarships.
| Also prior hot areas like "data science" and security
| indeed led to a lot of insane starting salary stories
| ($300k+) for merely-above-average students from meh schools
| with exactly the right skills. Even the median starting
| salaries in hot areas have been surprisingly high for a
| while.
|
| > If CS PhD's are an exceptional class then I think it's
| only by virtue of supply & demand. There are a larger # of
| opportunities in industry, and they often pay better.
|
| Well of course. What else would it be? Doesn't it always
| work out in life that the jobs you can get are the ones
| where they need you more than you need them?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Many liberal arts schools pay everyone like they are
| liberal arts professors.
|
| Presumably, you mean something like "arts and humanities"
| the second time you say "liberal arts", since the liberal
| arts include the natural sciences (both life and
| physical), social sciences, mathematics (including, among
| other things, computer science), arts, and humanities.
| throwawaygh wrote:
| Nah, I think "liberal arts" fits the bill. Including
| natural sciences. In contrast to the professional
| colleges: Law/Business/Medicine/Engineering (which CS
| should be at-parity with).
|
| Of course LACs don't have law schools or med schools or
| (usually) engineering colleges, so the difficulty of
| properly compensating CS is understandable with respect
| to those fields.
|
| However, LACs do tend to have Finance/Accounting, and
| often pay folks in those departments better, but for
| whatever reason don't treat their CS faculty like their
| Finance faculty. My own pet theory for this market
| mismatch is that finance/business types tend to dominate
| those college's boards. LAC boards have a lot of older
| folks who still think of CS as code monkeying.
| simplestats wrote:
| You can be a "liberal arts" professor yet get paid like a
| professor in a professional department.
|
| Many schools have CS under engineering which pays a lot
| more.
| [deleted]
| loceng wrote:
| And likewise an MBA is different than an entrepreneur who
| trailblazes their own path, learning as they go vs. following a
| more indoctrinating path.
| algo_trader wrote:
| Do you feel like the "search space" of MBA problems is somewhat
| finite?
|
| Like, if you read 5 books and 20 blogs on VCs you are unlikely
| to be mystified by anything that happens to you as you
| seed/VC/pivot/exit whatever. There are only so many
| possibilities.
|
| (MBA stuff is still hard, and sensitive to
| luck/timing/networking/cultural factors..)
| p1esk wrote:
| _if you have PhD you (probably) worked really, really, really
| hard, were able to focus on a single problem for years, can
| communicate, analyze and so forth_
|
| Correction: if you have multiple publications in top
| conferences as the first author. Most phds don't have that.
| Part of my job is to hire ML researchers. 90% of phds who apply
| are quite pathetic as far as their publication record.
| ThomPete wrote:
| Any PhD worth their salt would know that a much more likely
| reason why their hard skills were valuable had nothing to do with
| PhDs and everything to do with them as a person being able to
| complete a PhD.
|
| This is no different than anyone who spends all their time
| producing a great album, or building a company or programming a
| game and I could go on.
|
| The PhD if you want to talk about it in generalized terms has no
| unique properties that can't be accomplished through other means.
| rbartelme wrote:
| > Any PhD worth their salt would know that a much more likely
| reason why their hard skills were valuable had nothing to do
| with PhDs and everything to do with them as a person being able
| to complete a PhD.
|
| I often equate my Ph.D. with the ability to teach myself how to
| do things. Ex. going from a wet/dry lab biologist with zero
| experience in C-style languages, to learning Arduino's flavor
| of Cpp and the PID control library to run process controls for
| your wet lab biology experiment.
| Moodles wrote:
| Having obtained a PhD myself, I would say its definitely helped
| in my career, though that is largely because my industry work is
| related to my PhD; people tend to assume I'm an expert in this
| super complicated thing and they just need someone around who
| understands it as some kind of insurance or person to turn to in
| a crisis, even though with the PhD itself I was working in a
| niche within a niche within a niche which won't really help the
| company. Obviously during the PhD I got a working knowledge of
| the whole field, but I often feel as if a lot of what the company
| uses me for is pretty obvious and googleable. Very, very rarely
| do I actually use my PhD expertise. I definitely think if you
| work as a software engineer in tech a PhD would have too large an
| opportunity cost vs just working for it to be worth it,
| especially in the US where PhDs typically last ~5 years.
|
| Aside from that, I think I was lucky to have a supervisor who
| taught me how to make good presentations. I definitely think my
| presentations are a lot better than most peoples in industry and
| that's benefitted my career too. Though, I've also seen very many
| terrible presentations in academia so I'm probably just lucky
| there. I'm not sure its the case PhDs typically give better
| presentations. My LaTeX CV looks incredible though :) (though I
| highly doubt that will ever affect whether or not I get a
| particular job).
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| I feel going from a CS PhD to working as a standard software
| engineer is probably a waste of the person's time, while also
| resulting in lower pay.
|
| It's not like other fields where your area of research might be
| very different from what you get employed for; in CS, your area
| of research probably has a startup that could use your domain
| skills. Eg: a CS Security PhD can find gainful employment on
| the security teams of any of the big software giants doing work
| that's not too dissimilar from their research.
| frayesto wrote:
| I will say that at multiple job interviews people have
| commented and been impressed with my LaTeX CV.
|
| So it's a plus!
| rcpt wrote:
| Most important skill from my PhD is the realization that always
| being wrong and nothing working for months at a time is actually
| par for the course instead of something to stress over.
| jll29 wrote:
| When I hire a Ph.D., I hire someone that has undergone
| something that I know from own experience requires a lot of
| curiosity, perseverance, drive, self-motivation, self-
| management, and an ability to communicate well in writing and
| orally, to convince adversarial audiences, systematic thinking,
| analytical problem solving skills - each one of them priceless
| skills.
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