The Illustrated Guide to a PhD

1/12/2025 at 2:35:09 PM

Original author of the guide here. Wonderful to see these little illustrations still making the rounds. I first published them in 2010!

To those in the comments who mentioned you are just starting your own PhD: Good luck to you! And, I hope you, like I once did, find a problem that you can fall in love with for a few years.

To those just finished: Congratulations! Don’t forget to keep pushing!

To those many years out: You have to keep pushing too, but there can be tremendous value in starting all over again by pushing in a different direction. You have no idea what you may find between the tips of two fields.

by mattmight

1/12/2025 at 3:57:22 PM

Reading the original post led me to this article on your site: https://matt.might.net/articles/my-sons-killer/#full

This is just to say I found it incredibly compelling and moving; I hope mentioning it doesn't make you feel bad.

by gcanyon

1/12/2025 at 4:08:56 PM

Nothing to feel bad about. Thank you for sharing that too.

My son’s life changed my own in profound ways, and even though he died four years ago, he is still changing my life in profound ways. I am always grateful for the reminder and to reconnect with the purpose that his life gave to mine.

That post also reminds me that while he was alive, I did the best I could for him under my abilities, and that’s all any parent can do in the end.

If you want to know more about his life, I wrote on it here: https://bertrand.might.net/

by mattmight

1/12/2025 at 3:23:29 PM

Any advice for PhD dropouts? I spent years and years pushing against that boundary in an obscure corner of my field and it never moved. What little funding I had dried up and I left grad school with a half finished dissertation, no PhD, and giant pile of broken dreams.

I'm sure over the years you've known students who have started a PhD and not finished. What (if anything) have you said to them? Do you feel their efforts had any value?

by gtmitchell

1/12/2025 at 3:51:16 PM

I'm a PhD dropout myself. Serious question: what kind of advice are you looking for exactly? This is not intended as an insult, but it sounds like what you're looking for is not advice but rather consolation, which is natural and understandable given the circumstances.

by lapcat

1/12/2025 at 7:42:00 PM

I'll give you advice. Success in pursuing a PhD isn’t just about the discipline or the degree—it’s about finding the right environment to support you. If earning your PhD is still a dream, focus on identifying a program that aligns with your needs and strengths. Look for a school with the right resources, a program that’s well-structured, and, most importantly, a supportive advisor who believes in your potential. Combined with your dedication and passion, these factors can make all the difference in achieving your goal. Don’t lose heart—sometimes, the right opportunity can change everything.

Disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about. I've never participated in a graduate program.

by m348e912

1/12/2025 at 6:35:48 PM

>>> but there can be tremendous value in starting all over again by pushing in a different direction.

This rings true for me at this time. Done about 10 years now, never went into academia but direct into industry. Things seem a bit stale, maybe its time to pick and research something new. I've been hesitating on the "going back to school" thing. But quantum does show promise, for curiosity and potential rather than immediate impact.

by orochimaaru

1/12/2025 at 2:53:48 PM

Your blog really helped me during the early years of my PhD. Thank you!!!

by azhenley

1/12/2025 at 3:10:43 PM

So happy it helped! Thank you for the kind words!

by mattmight

1/12/2025 at 4:59:13 PM

Matt thanks for the encouraging words... enjoyed your compiler class and sad that you didn't end up in my PhD committee... done 3 years now but stuck lol.

by drdude

1/13/2025 at 2:25:28 AM

When I was interviewed for starting my PhD and asked what I knew about a PhD I referenced this example by name.

Thanks for the articles!

I’ve read through them and they are timeless.

Also the finding cures pivot from CS was inspiring how I could start one problem space and pivot. Definitely a top computer scientist story.

by diablozzq

1/12/2025 at 2:43:40 PM

Thank you, Matt! Loved your guide when I started my own PhD in ye olden days, and I've shown it to a lot of people since then.

by skalarproduktr

1/12/2025 at 3:11:17 PM

Happy to hear that! Thank you for sharing it with others. :)

by mattmight

1/12/2025 at 8:43:23 AM

Yes, I can attest that nowadays, in some fields, research has become a 'game', where:

- people torture data until it yields unreproducible results;

- people choose venues that maximise their chances of getting published (and pay for publication sometimes, I'm looking at you, APC);

- little concern given to excellence, rigour, and impact;

- the chase for a 'diploma' from a renowned institute without putting the effort;

I could go on and on, but I'll stop now.

Perhaps something changes, I am waiting for this to happen for some time now (10y and counting).

It's a bad system but that's what we have (at the moment).

by fl4tul4

1/12/2025 at 11:31:07 AM

I’ve seen this with a PhD student publishing several rapid fire papers in MDPI journals. They are repeating well understood physics work done 50 years ago using off the shelf commercial simulation software. They don’t cite any papers older than a decade and claim without irony that the work is “significant” while none of their papers are cited. They will go to events where no one is an expert in the field and win prizes for showing lots of pretty pictures but nothing that isn’t already well understood.

When I, an expert in the field, tell them they need to produce something novel at their research panels I’m told I’m wrong. When I list all the work they are ripping off I’m told it’s somehow different without explanation. When I question the obvious sloppiness in their work (the simulation data showing major artefacts) they blow up at me screaming and shouting.

I’ve never experienced arrogance like this before. It’s shocking. Their supervisors tell me that they are close to firing them but then also celebrate all the publications they are getting.

The mind boggles.

by knolan

1/12/2025 at 11:43:47 AM

> When I, an expert in the field, tell them they need to produce something novel at their research panels I’m told I’m wrong. When I list all the work they are ripping off I’m told it’s somehow different without explanation. When I question the obvious sloppiness in their work (the simulation data showing major artefacts) they blow up at me screaming and shouting.

At risk of relying totally on assumptions, that wouldn't be a surprising reaction for someone facing first serious criticism after an entire life of probably being unconditionally lauded for their smarts (or the projection of it). When parents push children towards something relentlessly without providing any constructive feedback on account of living their dreams through their children and/or the fear of discouraging the child, any criticism can feel like someone is trying to destroy your life goals.

> Their supervisors tell me that they are close to firing them but then also celebrate all the publications they are getting.

Probably trying to protect themselves from being in the crosshairs of one of many things that can blow your career apart.

by noisy_boy

1/12/2025 at 12:28:48 PM

This individual is pretty unique in this regard. I’ve never seen anything like it. Most students will acknowledge that I know the literature and will accept guidance. This person seems to think they know everything but their work is the equivalent of a tutorial case in the commercial software.

by knolan

1/12/2025 at 5:27:58 PM

I've seen it often as I have had to read peoples thesis when interviewing for job roles.

Some from reputable universities. I have no idea how they defended them.

by EagnaIonat

1/12/2025 at 2:16:31 PM

I've experienced this in the corporate world too, when someone is seeking a promotion. Entitlement is becoming a bane

by throwoutway

1/12/2025 at 3:08:07 PM

Yes indeed. I’ve seen similar there too.

by knolan

1/12/2025 at 4:00:55 PM

Ok to be fair the original is probably a badly scanned tech report from GE from the 70’s with minimal implementation details. Whoever has tried to implement an obscure physics paper from that age knows how tough it can be.

I think there is value revisiting some of this work with our modern toolsets and publishing the code in some public repository.

But of course with a clear citation chain, and no pompous lies that a new discovery was made.

by whatever1

1/12/2025 at 6:01:12 PM

It’s a really basic engineering problem that was studied extensively in many studies and we teach it at undergraduate.

When I made the point that there is no scientific novelty here they insisted that their PhD was a ‘generic’ one and that means they can continue to run basic simulations according the to the recipe.

by knolan

1/12/2025 at 11:36:05 AM

This isn't new, and academia has been rewarding behavior that wouldn't survive elsewhere for a long time.

Maybe it's time we unshackled ourselves from these 'prestigious institutions'?

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 12:32:09 PM

Your anti intellectual bias is showing. There are problems in all domains. I’ve seen plenty of arrogant fools in industry too.

They’re using an industry tool to do well trodden industry problems that were solved by academics decades ago.

I’m not tolerating his behaviour and I’ve made my views clear to my colleagues. He’s going to burn every bridge possible with this behaviour.

by knolan

1/12/2025 at 4:09:59 PM

Criticism of university organizations is “anti intellectual bias”?

Do you think criticism of religious organizations is “against god”?

by liontwist

1/12/2025 at 1:00:49 PM

I'm all in favor of intellectuals, it's academic bureaucracies I'm not fond of.

I think Socrates was a hoot, and he taught in a cave or something like that.

Priests teaching rural peasants to read in their monasteries, and collegial colleges for the public benefit are definitely meritorious.

But,I mean, there is enormous corruption going on.

How did Ren Youzai get into MIT? He was a body guard. Just because you've married into a billionaire's family MIT says "hey, send anyone you want in"?

And I'm sure MIT isn't alone in mysteriously average students who not only get in but graduate when linked to massively rich and powerful families. A recent US president comes to mind. Is that anti-intellectual?

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 1:24:51 PM

You’re arguing about highly specific cases while the vast majority of institutions get on with the job of educating large numbers of students and doing what research they can.

by knolan

1/12/2025 at 1:50:01 PM

The highly specific cases are glaring examples that the unbiased meritocracy they pretend to be is, possibly, not so.

And the "large numbers of students" covers up the possible cronyism and/or corruption of the institution.

I provide an example of a totally unqualified individual being allowed into a prestigious institution solely on the basis of his marriage family. Your response is that they mostly do a good job for most people?

I've suggested that the research they do is not obviously beneficial to anyone except perhaps the person doing the research, possibly simply to advance their own careers (in or out of academia). Others have suggested the same.

You haven't disagreed.

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 3:27:26 PM

Ugh you’re a tiresome culture war poster. I’ve no Interest in you or your hobby horse.

by knolan

1/13/2025 at 1:53:21 AM

It sounds like you can't defend your position and resort to (I think?) name-calling, although I have no idea what a "culture war poster" is - I used to have a poster of Farrah Faucet in a red bathing suit, is that the same thing?

And I have no hobby horses, just a high horse, and you better hold your horses or else you'll be just be whipping a dead horse.

Your unwillingness to defend and advance your position is duly noted. Have a nice day.

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 2:19:31 PM

> I think Socrates was a hoot, and he taught in a cave or something like that.

I'm not sure whether you're joking or serious, but in any case, Socrates didn't teach in a cave, and you're probably referring to Plato's allegory of the cave.

The interlocuters and followers of Socrates were mostly the wealthy elite of Athens.

by lapcat

1/12/2025 at 2:47:33 PM

@lapcat yeah, he argued in the markets or where ever.

I think I was mixing him up with Aristotle, e.g. https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-famous-people/caves-...

who had some cave school or something.

but there was some jokingness, yah. But I'm not anti-intellectual, which wasn't a joke.

I wasn't making any point about his students or wealth. Education then, as now, is the plaything of the wealthy and wealthy nations.

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 4:41:00 PM

In what way is education a plaything for the wealthy now?

by barbazoo

1/13/2025 at 1:48:18 AM

What makes you think it's ever stopped? Did I miss the proletarian revolution comrade?

by Over2Chars

1/13/2025 at 5:58:52 PM

Education is as accessible as it's ever been. We're probably just talking about different things.

by barbazoo

1/15/2025 at 12:29:05 AM

Accessible? Meaning it's available for purchase if you have the money? Or actually affordable?

(first quack) "For example, in 2022–23, the average total cost of attendance for first-time, full-time undergraduate students living on campus at 4-year degree-granting institutions was higher at private nonprofit institutions ($58,600) than at private for-profit institutions ($33,600) and public institutions ($27,100).4"

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76

Or, if the requirement of a college degree for high school level work suggests, an expensive barrier for employment?

(random quack on the topic I could find) https://www.vox.com/policy/23628627/degree-inflation-college...

You can say luxury sports cars are "accessible" if you want to finance a $150,000 car. And effectively that's what many (most? all?) college degrees are: luxury sports cars.

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 9:55:06 AM

> - people choose venues that maximises their chances of getting published (and pay for publication sometimes, I'm looking at you, APC); > > - little concern given to excellence, rigour, and impact;

It's because the kpis of assessment are built like this. Goodhard's law. I know lots of good researchers who get frustrated with the system and end up giving up and faltering to those 2 points. If within a uni 2 research groups are putting out research at different rate at different quality, the one with higher quality, lower frequency, and higher standard and ambition gets heavily penalized. Seen it in action.

by 3abiton

1/12/2025 at 6:19:04 PM

Yep. I also know researchers who refuse to play this game, but their career plateau'd and they have to work with little fundings.

by eloisant

1/12/2025 at 12:19:12 PM

Yes, in the STEM fields, for published papers, it's easy just to count them; much harder to read them; to evaluate them, some people just count awards, etc. So, the hard work that makes the good material in the paper may never be noticed.

There is, "You get what you pay for." So, want papers, you will get papers, and you can count them. It goes, did Haydn write 101 symphonies or 1 symphony 101 times?

Early on, had a good career going in computing but where occasionally some math made a lot of difference. So, to help that career got a Ph.D. in applied math. Never had any intention of being a professor but for a while did to try to help my seriously, fatally, stressed out wife (Valedictorian, PBK, Woodrow Wilson, NSF, Summa Cum Laude, Ph.D.) -- took a professor job near her family home and farm.

In my little Ph.D department, saw the Chair and four professors get fired and one more leave, fired or not. The career I had before grad school was a lot better than the one those professors had.

Had to conclude that, tenure or not, being a professor is, on average, a poor way to even reasonable financial security. Generally there is low pay, e.g., too little to buy a house, keep cars running, support a wife and family. There's a LOT of dirty politics, infighting, higher-ups who don't want you to be successful.

Bluntly, a research university takes in money that a lot of people care about and puts out papers that only a few people care about: Net, there is no very strong reason to pay professors enough for even reasonable financial security. Key sources of the money are short term grants from the usual suspects, NSF, DOE, DARPA, NIH ("too many for them all to be turned off at once" -- JB Conant?), but that is essentially just contract work and not steady employment, with little promise that when a Professor's baby is ready for college there will be money enough for them to go. It's a house built on paper that can be blown away by any thunder storm.

Now, for a career, e.g., financial security, to leave something for the kids in the family tree, regard business, e.g., now involving the Internet, as the best approach, and there regard computing and math as important tools but only tools. Research? Did some, and it is a key to the business. Academic research? Did some, published, on my own dime, still waiting for the checks.

History, how'd we get here? Used to be that some guy built a valuable business and had several sons. One of the sons inherited the business, and the rest went to the military as an officer, academics as a professor, or to politics. Then WWII showed that the STEM fields can be crucial for national security, and some related funding started, e.g., summer math programs for selected high school students, research grants.

"If you are so smart, why aren't you rich?"

Ah, "The business of America is business."

by graycat

1/13/2025 at 7:25:18 AM

> that is essentially just contract work and not steady employment,

That's not true, the university pays you salary. Depending on details you may be able to increase your salary using grants, but you won't lose your salary if you don't. And when you hit tenure it is very hard to fire you

by EvgeniyZh

1/13/2025 at 1:46:46 PM

Tenure or not, the university doesn't have to have the salary keep up with inflation. Really, bottom line, a prof has to continue to please their department colleagues, chair, and dean.

by graycat

1/13/2025 at 8:24:24 PM

Even in US public universities have salary scales that are indexed. Moving to a different place while keeping tenure is possible too. Anyway I don't see how it's different from any other job, including the fact that having good relationships with colleagues is not a bad idea anyway.

by EvgeniyZh

1/12/2025 at 12:31:59 PM

> Perhaps something changes, I am waiting for this to happen for some time now (10y and counting).

What will change is that PhD will become an inherited title. If your parents were/are PhDs, you will ceremoniously be granted the title when coming of age. That title can then be rented out to people or organizations (such as companies) who are required to have a PhD by government regulation for the activity that they are in. You can of course also mortgage this title to a bank or other company that will take care of the process.

by carlosjobim

1/12/2025 at 4:38:48 PM

Chiming in with my own experience. I was with a new PI that was a charlatan; I am grateful for the experience because I now know how to recognize these sorts of people and avoid them.

"There is no journal of negative results." he would say at our weekly meetings. In order to secure his future, he set ablaze the dreams of 5 PhDs in my lab (all of which took their masters and went into industry; One developed severe OCD). Data was massaged, lies were told to his bosses.

Guess what? He's still a professor there, his lab still publishes dubious, unreproducible research. No recourse was to be had at the university (all of the PhDs went to the head of the department and were told to f*ck off).

Academia is on a death spiral at many schools, and I worry that it's up to the industry to carry the torch of research in the future.

by y-curious

1/12/2025 at 12:18:29 PM

Any evidence that this approach works? Are people who do this able to move from the PhD to a solid position afterward that they could not have had without the PhD?

by enum

1/12/2025 at 9:36:51 AM

Yes it's horrifying indeed. It wouldn't be a stretch to say that there are many that fall into this rat race and treat it as another type of MSc credential.

by antegamisou

1/12/2025 at 11:23:20 AM

I'm starting a PhD — essentially from tomorrow. It's a shame to see so much discouragement here, but at this point I'm no longer surprised. I also don't care because if left to my own devices I would do research anyway.

In the kindest possible way: screw all of you!

by xanderlewis

1/12/2025 at 1:09:53 PM

> if left to my own devices I would do research anyway.

Then you're going to have a great time during your PhD, good luck and have fun!

> screw all of you!

"Disregard!" https://stepsandleaps.wordpress.com/2017/10/17/feynmans-brea...

by samantha-wiki

1/12/2025 at 11:45:47 AM

Most of these people have never been in a PhD program, so take their words with a grain of salt.

If you have a good advisor, your passionate about your project, and you got some good funding, you'll have a wonderful time of exploring interesting ideas and becoming a competent researcher. Good luck!

by megaloblasto

1/12/2025 at 4:14:08 PM

All that’s true, and that is completely different than what’s advertised in this article.

by liontwist

1/12/2025 at 12:24:08 PM

So far, I seem to have all three. Let's see how it goes! Thanks.

by xanderlewis

1/12/2025 at 2:42:12 PM

I did my PhD (mapping and studying the physics of caves in the ice on an antarctic volcano) purely for fun, and it was awesome.

I hope you have a similarly rewarding experience. You will encounter unfair systems and unscrupulous people, and it will be frustrating. The data will be confusing as hell. My only advice is stay true to yourself. Maybe look into some of the new trends that could fix academia -- pre-registration, open access with public comment periods, reproducible code, etc. For inspiration, I cheer for crusaders like Data Colada who are trying to save the academic system.

by foobarbecue

1/12/2025 at 4:11:10 PM

That is the way. Not long ago, most of Science was done by rich people as a hobby. We need to get back to that system.

by richrichie

1/12/2025 at 6:26:12 PM

Can't wait to read Elon Musk's Ph.D. on pointy rockets!

by eloisant

1/12/2025 at 7:49:22 PM

Mendel did not have a PhD.

by richrichie

1/12/2025 at 1:46:10 PM

Disregard them. A lot of people fixate on the 1 in a billion celebrity exceptions like Musk, Thiel, Gates, Dyson, et al and go “look look you don’t need a PhD!”

Yes, a highly motivated college dropout with a computer, a strong financial safety net, and the right social connections can be in the right place at the right time to seize big opportunities. Most people are not in that position. Many high-impact technologies need more than what just a computer can do.

The main thing is to be self aware enough to know the path you’re on, what paths are available to you, and how to make the most of the connections and resources you have available to you. The second you start to get pigeonholed, wrap things up and move on.

by fastneutron

1/12/2025 at 1:50:20 PM

> The second you start to get pigeonholed...

That seems like good advice.

by xanderlewis

1/12/2025 at 2:17:41 PM

Yes! Be very aware of your time and opportunity costs. It can be an amazing journey, struggles and all, but make sure to not get stuck long-hauling on something you’re not passionate about.

by etrautmann

1/12/2025 at 11:55:03 AM

I don't think there's any reason to be discouraged. There's a lot of bias against PhDs for various reasons (good and bad).

I have a PhD, got an academic position and then worked in various companies (startups, big tech company). These paths aren't exclusive.

I'm glad I did the PhD.

- it gave me time to work on a variety of interesting topics. In my company, I always feel rushed and don't have time to learn as much as I'd like to.

- I had more than one career. Working only in industry after graduation would have been pretty sad I think. Not that it's bad but it's great to see something different

- I developed some skills (for instance talking in front of audience, write scientific papers) and got to meet a lot of interesting people, and worked in different countries.

I also learned that research wasn't for me but it was worth doing the PhD anyway. If I had to do it again, I would pick my topic more carefully, and go straight to industry rather than pursuing an academic position (which I actually didn't like). Also money wise, even though I'm not materialistic, the pay was too low. Certainly enough to live, but not enough to secure my future and retirement.

by yodsanklai

1/12/2025 at 11:52:36 AM

I also started my PhD last week and honestly from my talks with the people there thus far I'm much more optimistic than the general HN view of PhDs. You still have to be realistic however. Best of luck!

by j_maffe

1/12/2025 at 12:20:03 PM

Great! The view of almost anything hard is gloomy online, probably because the conversation is dominated by those who either wish they'd tried and now have a chip on their shoulder or who made the wrong choice for them and are self-therapising by writing about it. Those who thrived in a PhD programme likely don't have a reason to bang on about their experience in quite so many words.

> You still have to be realistic

I'm expecting it to be very challenging. But that's the point — isn't it?

Good luck to you too.

by xanderlewis

1/12/2025 at 1:35:54 PM

Please consider that not everyone has the luxury of having (had) a PhD advisor who really cares. There's a wide spectrum, ranging from micromanagers, to people you see once during your PhD, to advisors that are genuinely great (intellectually and as a person) and caring.

I wish you the best of luck for your PhD, a caring and supportive advisor, and great results!

by skalarproduktr

1/12/2025 at 12:14:19 PM

This is the best possible answer to Internet-based negativity! I wish you luck in your PhD :)

by CaptainFever

1/12/2025 at 3:34:45 PM

"PhD Envy" is a real part of office politics outside of academia. Remember that the naysayers are just jockeying for their own status. On the one hand, you can ignore it. On the other, learning to manage it is a good starting point to navigating the social and political side of any career.

Also, this is HN, which revolves around an occupation -- computer programming -- that is unique in terms of having high demand while remaining flexible about how and where people learn their skills. Not all fields are that way.

I got a PhD in physics, in 1993, and have worked in industry since then. There are a couple of "negatives" that I still think are wroth pointing out:

1. PhD programs have very high attrition, and you bear most of the risk on your own shoulders. It's worth going in with eyes open, and knowing the risks. Getting out with your PhD may require some compromises along the way. I won't necessarily call them ethical compromises, but perhaps compromises to the (typically) idealistic views that many students start out with.

2. The little nub of specialized knowledge shown in TFA is your research, not your brain. You can do specialized research without becoming a specialized person if you want. This is a personal choice (academic freedom and all that). My dad, who also had a PhD and a good industry career, always told me to avoid hyper-specialization.

Don't forget to learn how to code, just in case. ;-)

by analog31

1/12/2025 at 4:13:18 PM

> PhD programs have very high attrition, and you bear most of the risk on your own shoulders.

How many people do you know who “failed to meet the standard”? Zero. If you do the time and work for your professors you will get the reward. There is no risk.

> PhD Envy" is a real part of office politics

The most vocal critics are not bachelor degree holders, but those who did it and had a bad experience.

by liontwist

1/12/2025 at 6:26:31 PM

>>> If you do the time and work for your professors you will get the reward. There is no risk.

1. Your experiment fails to produce a result after a few years of effort (my project, we don't know to this day what went wrong, and I was lucky to find a new project).

2. Loss of funding or institutional support. (A large program at my state's university pulled its support for a process that required regulatory approval, and an entire group of faculty and students all had to leave.)

3. Your advisor quits, changes jobs, gets fired, goes to prison, dies. (Many cases).

4. Your advisor holds your thesis hostage until you publish a certain number of articles (a friend of mine, she sued and won).

5. Mental health issues (high incidence of clinical depression).

6. Personal animosity between members of your committee (another friend).

How these risks instantiate themselves is that you have to start from scratch, often with a completely new research project, and finding one isn't guaranteed by your department. You are almost completely at the mercy of one person -- your advisor. There is virtually no oversight.

by analog31

1/12/2025 at 7:46:40 PM

I agree, those are all real, especially the advisor and committee.

Most of these are factors in any employment, and I would argue things like chance of losing funding at your job is worse than academic funding threats.

by liontwist

1/13/2025 at 2:56:27 AM

Perhaps a higher likelihood but also a lower cost to the individual. You presumably work for a competitive salary. When you lose funding you presumably jump employers for a comparable position.

In comparison, most PhD students work for a very low salary on the expectation of a payoff after something like 3 to 6 years. Framed that way, being forced to either start over or depart is incredibly costly.

by fc417fc802

1/12/2025 at 6:24:59 PM

I wouldn't say it's about "failing to meet the standard". Sure, there is no exit exam you can fail, but there are still people dropping out of a PhD.

It could be because you realize you don't really like research - that involves reading and writing a lot of papers, going to conferences not just tinkering. It could be because you had the wrong professor who failed to lead you and left you by yourself. It could be because you gave up at a low point, where most PhD student go through. It could be because after 4 or 5 years your professor keep saying "you're not ready yet" (I've seen that in humanities).

So it's not really a problem of "not being good enough", but it definitely happens.

by eloisant

1/12/2025 at 7:48:02 PM

Definitely true. Attrition is real, but "risk" is probably the wrong term. It's one of the lowest risk options available for young people.

by liontwist

1/12/2025 at 4:08:23 PM

PhD now is an expensive way to signal that you can persevere longer than the average human.

Unfortunately, that is not always a positive as many real life situations require you to make decisions under extreme paucity of information and reverse or change course at short notice. For such professions and roles it is a liability.

by richrichie

1/12/2025 at 4:31:55 PM

I can see why you might think that; in some cases I'd agree. But there are parts of science — indeed of human knowledge in general — that are very difficult to break into if you don't have the opportunity a PhD affords. These disciplines also require perseverance longer than the average human. Without this system, we're not going to make fundamental progress.

I'm pretty sure that without the research done by people with PhDs and people who don't give up at the first hurdle, we wouldn't be able to be sitting at our keyboards now having this conversation. Of course, it's not for everyone. Maybe it's not for most. But I don't think you should write all of it off as 'signalling'. Some research simply cannot be done without several years of focus, outside of industry or 'the real world'.

by xanderlewis

1/12/2025 at 1:35:03 PM

I've worked with PhDs all my life in various industries and it has always been a fun and enjoyable partnership. Have fun.

by JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B

1/12/2025 at 11:52:48 AM

I just left academia (after one three-year postdoc). Good riddance. For myself at least. I do think one can thrive in it, if you are a good salesman, don’t mind sucking up to those with money with lies and exaggerations, and don’t mind isolation

by bowsamic

1/12/2025 at 12:15:21 PM

What kind of area were you in?

It's hard to believe this 'sucking up to those with money' thing applies everywhere, though it's easier to imagine it applies in certain domains.

by xanderlewis

1/12/2025 at 1:52:23 PM

I did a PhD and about a decade in postdoc/early-career researcher posts before moving into tech. That was in Computational Mathematics, it was clear that the most successful people in the field were the ones who had found areas where they could publish "Technique X applied to field Y" type papers, so for each new X they could get 10 publications (by way of 10 different PhD students). These people generally could steer the core funding in the discipline their way.

Everyone else basically had to reformulate their research to pretend it was applicable to the government's funding subject de jure. This led to some quite large stretches in definition to achieve "<Main area of research>, and some applications in <funding stream>". This very much felt like it was sucking up to money.

I got out of the academia in the end because it felt like the more senior I got the more time I spent applying for funding and managing the spending and the less time I spent doing research/development. (Also given I was in a UK public sector institute, the pay was shit due to 40 years of below inflation pay rises crippling the institution).

by owlbite

1/12/2025 at 4:52:58 PM

Yeah that’s the thing. Not only do you have to beg for money but actually you make fake papers to do so. My supervisor taught me this early on, every single tiny discovery or synthesis can be made into a paper even if it really doesn’t warrant it

I left because the only path forward here in Germany is to become a professor, aka a life full of admin and sales

by bowsamic

1/12/2025 at 4:17:16 PM

Why would a field be immune to political patterns found in every organization?

by liontwist

1/12/2025 at 11:23:18 PM

'Immune' might be too strong — we are all humans after all. But it's certainly plausible that the magnitude of the effect varies between disciplines.

As the commenter above observes, physics is (supposed to be) falsifiable, so it should be clear when you have a result and when you don't. In the some of the more 'wooly' disciplines, this is not the case. You can write BS and as long as you're able to argue sufficiently eloquently that your particular strain of BS is valid, you win — in some cases, you needn't even supply data or perform experiments. It is in those fields that I assume the forces of politics/fashion/social pressure are strongest.

by xanderlewis

1/13/2025 at 12:01:09 AM

I agree about the content of the material. But the process of promoting work, securing funding, and getting positions isn’t different.

There is a technical floor to participate, but to potential funders all the physics project proposals from Physics professors sound equally probable. They are going to choose projects based on internal initiatives (fad), name recognition, track record, etc.

by liontwist

1/13/2025 at 2:35:37 AM

Even if that is true, though, I don’t see how it’s that different to any other human activity. In business you have to persuade investors and customers too. Constantly. More so than in academia.

I feel like people are needlessly bitter about all of this stuff. Life isn’t fair; no one ever said it was. And why does anyone expect that you’d be able to get research funding without having to form relationships and make some effort to sway influential people in your direction? Yes, it’s not ‘pure research’, but it’s still part of life. I don’t see how it could be any other way… unless we get AGI as promised and then we’re free to sit on our backsides all day and become philosophers with infinite funding.

by xanderlewis

1/13/2025 at 4:21:59 AM

I agree. It’s a part of all organizations. The point I was disagreeing with is that academia is exempt.

by liontwist

1/13/2025 at 11:28:38 AM

It is a part of all organisations, but usually spread across multiple people.

As I mentioned, my wife is a mechanical engineer. "All" she needs to do is do her work, and her manager will be happy. Going out and selling to customers and convincing them they want your product is not her job.

In academia, you can do the work, you can know it's excellent and groundbreaking, as I did for my own work, but unless you go out and sell it, no one cares. You can't just do science, you also have to do sales.

And, to pre-empt a response, yes, it is true that you still have to "sell" the idea that you've done the work properly to your boss in the industry, but it's totally different to in academia, where you will very often be in the situation where no one even knows that you've done any work at all, let alone is expecting something from you. Academia is just a very different working dynamic. Much more independent, much less collaborative, much more responsibility, much less praise

by bowsamic

1/13/2025 at 3:04:05 PM

I’m in complete agreement. Sales and politics are even more an integral part of academia and which science becomes relevant is a direct outcome of those social processes.

by liontwist

1/12/2025 at 12:23:20 PM

Quantum physics

by bowsamic

1/12/2025 at 12:29:35 PM

Could you be more specific about the pressure you felt to 'suck up' and 'lie'? I read this kind of thing often, but it's usually left quite vague. What exactly are people lying about?

Physics (since it's supposed to be rigorous) seems like a less likely area than some to be driven by politics and trends, but I suppose I can imagine that competing research programmes and ideas benefit from a certain amount of marketing and smooth-talking of people with funding rather than relying purely on empirical evidence for their claims.

by xanderlewis

1/12/2025 at 12:44:42 PM

Physics absolutely is dominated by politics and trends. I was constantly expected to over exaggerate the impacts of my work and its possible applications, on both science in general and wider technology. For example, we used to always say that it had some impact in quantum computing even if it was a total lie, because that makes it way easier to get funding

Physics may be in some sense more falsifiable, but it is absolutely subject to politics and social norms, both in how it lies about itself for money, and literally in which theories are chosen (since we can rarely empirically distinguish between them)

by bowsamic

1/12/2025 at 1:48:56 PM

Right. That's a shame, but it seems like that's just life. The idea that it helps to constantly emphasise (or, as you say, exaggerate) the importance of your work if you want to have a career is certainly not restricted to academia. It seems to apply to most industry engineering jobs too — from what I've heard. I guess in that context funding isn't the issue, but being promoted (and, conversely, not being sacked) certainly is.

by xanderlewis

1/12/2025 at 4:49:55 PM

Well in most engineering there is a market and going out into the market and selling is not the job of the engineers

Academia is rare for having the engineer also be the salesman

My wife is the lead mechanical engineer at a small company and she definitely doesn’t have to go around convincing customers they need her products

by bowsamic

1/12/2025 at 12:17:22 PM

Care to share any details? What country are you studying in, and what's the subject area?

by austinjp

1/12/2025 at 12:22:59 PM

UK; more specifically Scotland. And mathematics; more specifically (algebraic) topology and (differential) geometry.

by xanderlewis

1/12/2025 at 12:49:51 PM

The nice thing about mathematics is that there probably won't be any failed or non-reproducible experiments in the lab. That doesn't mean that a math PhD is going to be easy, but you should be aware that a lot of people will have a different idea of what you are doing if you don't tell them that your PhD is in math.

Best of luck for your PhD! You might want to check out this ted talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/uri_alon_why_science_demands_a_lea...

by vaylian

1/12/2025 at 1:45:29 PM

Thanks! I hope so. Experiments (to the extent that there are experiments in mathematics, which arguably there very much are) often fail, but once they succeed they're usually fairly bulletproof, and reproducibility is barely even a concept.

by xanderlewis

1/12/2025 at 9:56:16 PM

From what I've read, graduate study on your side of the pond is a lot better than in the US. I really can't say why. The people I know who got their PhDs in Scotland were, for one thing, really sharp. That helps. For another, it seems there's more of an expectation of a difficult but manageable workload and risk level. Maybe more focus on research and less on politics. Of course, a better safety net, meaning less pressure to drop out if something happens like your spouse or child needs medical care.

Every country is different.

by analog31

1/12/2025 at 11:25:22 PM

Yes — I've heard so, and that informed by decision to stay here.

by xanderlewis

1/12/2025 at 5:06:03 PM

If time and money weren't concerns, I would love to do mathematics research!

I hope you achieve good things, and have fun while at it!

by atlintots

1/12/2025 at 11:13:33 PM

Wouldn't we all? I'm very grateful to live in a world (and time) where such opportunities exist.

by xanderlewis

1/12/2025 at 4:16:24 PM

I hope you have decent source of secondary income or your family is reasonably well off.

A math PhD might take 6-7 years to complete and I hope that, at the end of it all, you won’t have to come to London to look for C++ or Ocaml jobs at hedge funds or banks.

by richrichie

1/12/2025 at 4:27:57 PM

I'm in the UK. It takes nominally three years here; usually three and a half. I also have full funding.

...this is the discouraging negativity I'm talking about. I do, respectfully, wonder what your agenda is.

by xanderlewis

1/12/2025 at 7:45:30 PM

Because i have worked with many math phds who lost their youth to something that they could not make a living on (research positions at universities are few and the competition is intense) and were writing C++ implementations of derivatives pricing models for a (comfortable) living.

I am not trying to discourage you, just a different perspective.

by richrichie

1/12/2025 at 11:17:50 PM

Well, luckily I'm not doing this in the hope of increasing my earning potential. It's an entirely separate pursuit. I have no doubt that what you're saying is true, but I don't think I'm bothered by it since it's not my goal.

by xanderlewis

1/12/2025 at 3:22:18 PM

There is literally an ocean of difference between mathematics and ML (which seems to be what a lot of comments are talking about).

by leviliebvin

1/12/2025 at 4:39:33 PM

Yes. Which is why I'm trying to push back a bit and say 'hang on... none of this is intrinsic to the PhD system'. Of course it's true that some PhDs — hell, some disciplines — are built to an embarrassing degree on BS and academic schmoozery, but there's no need to tar everyone with the same brush. It seems as though some commenters have difficulty conceiving of intellectual pursuits that don't involve 'data' and 'graphs'.

I'm only very junior, though, so I don't have total confidence that I'm right. But I'm pretty certain I am.

by xanderlewis

1/12/2025 at 11:39:09 AM

@xanderlewis I don't think anyone's comments are meant for you specifically, nor to discourage you or anyone particularly.

If anything, take it all with a "grain of salt" and reflect on whether or not anyone you meet might resemble these comments. Hopefully, not your future self.

Good luck in your career.

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 4:26:37 PM

Good luck with your PhD. Stay focused and enjoy this time, you will have a freedom to explore and study that’s almost unparalleled in post-grad life!

by j_bum

1/12/2025 at 2:36:23 PM

Good for you!

by mattmight

1/12/2025 at 12:58:27 PM

Good luck

by monadINtop

1/12/2025 at 6:47:11 AM

It’s a nice idea that you’re going to help the boundary of human knowledge expand but I don’t think infinite progress is the right model.

All the evidence shows that fields are completely ignorant of each other and reinvent the basic solutions. This coincides with the theory that cohorts of experts develop expertise which is not transferrable.

Watch as ML rediscovers harmonic analysis while awarding plenty of Phds to those involved.

Rediscovery is a great thing. You bring new meaning and context. I’s just not “expanding circle of knowledge”

More likely is you will dig further down the track of the fads your advisor is into. The trend will be forgotten in a few decades, with a small change of unforeseen utility later. And its contribution will be to your personal life.

The model proposed is also lacking in ambition because historically PhDs were significant.

by liontwist

1/12/2025 at 9:44:09 AM

For example

https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.10739

by mnky9800n

1/12/2025 at 9:23:04 AM

I'm considering getting a masters or PhD (in PL) under a professor I work with now for my undergrad thesis. It has been my observation that the standard path of getting a standard corporate job tends to nullify all impact you could have (with a few rare exceptions). And after that I could get a job, become a professor, turn my research into a startup etc. The pros are

1) I know my professor and he's a solid guy

2) Pays decently well, money isn't too much of a concern

3) I get paid to do research, university provides generous grants if turned into a startup

Cons

1) Hear a lot of bad things about the academic rat race, pressure to public even at masters/PhD level

2) I could probably hack out some paper into journals but whether I could have any real impact "on demand" (versus say spontaneously coming up with something) is a big question mark, especially within the deadlines given in the program

Any thoughts on this? Especially heuristics, methods or ways to increase impact?

by InkCanon

1/12/2025 at 10:38:16 AM

Understand that a PhD is an apprenticeship to become a researcher. You are not expected to do career defining work as a PhD student, and indeed that is unlikely.

Your relationship with your advisor is very important. It seems like you already have that sorted out.

Most successful PhDs (in CS) involve tackling a relatlively small and easy project, usually suggested by your advisor, early on, and then expanding and iterating on this. Once you make some progress on a topic you'll easily find more directions to take it.

Working with other people is one of the easiest ways to increase your productivity. All the great groups I saw had a lot of collaboration. Don't fall into the "lone scholar locked in the library" stereotype.

Avoid bad people. Avoid getting stuck in your own head. Realize a PhD is a project like many others. It doesn't define you. You start it, you work consistently on it, you finish it.

Doing a research Masters is usually a waste of time. Doing a taught Masters is a lot of fun, but something quite different to a PhD.

by noelwelsh

1/12/2025 at 11:28:35 AM

Thanks for the reply!

>A PhD is an apprenticeship to become a researcher That's a good way to look at it. I suspect one of the biggest possible benefits of a PhD is that you're put in an environment structured to and pressuring you to develop something new, which is the opposite of most other human work.

>Start a relatively small and easy project and collaborate Sound advice, it's the general approach I've taken for my undergrad thesis.

>A research masters is a waste of time, a coursework masters isn't Really? It looks the opposite to me. A research masters let's you collaborate with different people and work on new things. A coursework masters is taking advanced classes.

by InkCanon

1/12/2025 at 12:42:02 PM

At least in the UK, a PhD takes one year more than a MRes and it lets you become a university lecturer. It also should be funded, whilst you might have to pay your own way for an MRes. Hence I don't see the point of doing an MRes when you can stay an extra year and have more opportunities afterwards. MRes are usually a consolation prize for people who drop out of their PhD, IME.

by noelwelsh

1/12/2025 at 6:33:31 PM

In my side of the world I think it's more similar to the USA where a masters is two years and a PhD is four. And it's fifty fifty whether a PhD has a masters or comes straight from undergrad. I'm leaning towards masters because I don't particularly care about the prestige and I don't want to over commit. I don't think the title is important to the impact I have

by InkCanon

1/12/2025 at 10:59:45 AM

As a professor many years after the PhD my advice is to do the PhD only if you are genuinely excited / cannot stop yourself from doing research. Only then it will outweigh the negatives of difficulties of getting the jobs, somewhat low pay etc. At least from my point of view I always tried to work on what was interesting to me and what I was good at/or it was interesting to learn vs optimising what is more high profile/sexy. I don't think it is a universal advice but at least I always enjoyed what I did

by sega_sai

1/12/2025 at 1:32:30 PM

I can only second this after having advised a few students from bachelor to PhD level. The ones who do well are (usually) the ones who are genuinely excited. Not only about the thing they're doing, but in general. It really helps getting over the lows.

Furthermore, do not underestimate the importance of sheer luck. Exaggerating a bit, deep learning was just another subfield of ML, until GPU-powered DL really took off and made the researches behind the most fundamental ideas superstars. This is not a given, and it might take years or decades until it's really clear whether you're making an impact or not.

I wish you the best of luck, InkCanon, and stay excited!

by skalarproduktr

1/13/2025 at 3:57:25 AM

Thanks!

by InkCanon

1/12/2025 at 12:45:43 PM

What do you mean by cannot stop doing research? I certainly haven't discovered anything new, but I love learning new things, reading about ideas, coming up with them.

by InkCanon

1/12/2025 at 2:53:24 PM

I meant that you tend to spend free time on that as opposed to treating it like 9 to 5 job. and again it is important that if you do that, it is because you just want to see what comes out of your experiment/learn a new thing etc rather than because you have to publish or is forced by your advisor.

by sega_sai

1/12/2025 at 6:38:26 PM

I see. I think I definitely lean towards that.

by InkCanon

1/12/2025 at 12:49:03 PM

You'll do great. This will eventually turn into new discoveries if you keep at it.

by enum

1/12/2025 at 6:37:48 PM

That is the hope!

by InkCanon

1/12/2025 at 1:14:48 PM

Why not just study a bunch of different things to Master's level then? Learning something genuinely new seems like it has a much lower return to effort.

by lordnacho

1/12/2025 at 6:37:33 PM

Good question. IMO

1) There's a kind of "hard" learning you're learning a fixed, structured way from a textbook.

2) There's a kind of "soft" learning which is transmission of knowledge, which happens a lot more face to face when you're working together.

3) Then there's a kind of research learning, where you're doing something new, usually with collaborators.

The second and third are really best done in certain environments like research or good companies

by InkCanon

1/12/2025 at 10:30:22 AM

>getting a standard corporate job tends to nullify all impact you could have

It's very strange to me that you think other people would pay you millions or tens of millions of dollars over an average 30- or 40-year career, without you generating at least that amount of value back to the external world as a whole, and probably generating some huge multiple more, and yet all that counts as "no impact" to you. Especially when your comparison point isn't oncology or something, but doing research in PL theory of all things.

But I thank you for giving me the opportunity to get a little riled up on a lazy Sunday morning, it's one of my favorite hobbies. My recommendation to you for "increasing [overall] impact" is to read https://80000hours.org/ and follow their advice, and for "increasing impact [in this niche I really care about]" is simply to be more bounded with your claims.

by hiAndrewQuinn

1/12/2025 at 11:50:41 AM

>people would pay millions over a career without you generating at least that value back

Some of it is empirical observation. I've seen many friends at big/elite tech firms get paid to do very little. Many claims online to that effect, although I weigh it lesser. And I think it's completely plausible. I think because of the exponential advancement of technology, huge accrual of capital and inability of human incentive structures to keep up, value does not universally equal money. IMO many examples. Many people are tech firms do things that are very loosely related to revenue generation - so you can almost double your headcount during COVID, fire tons of them and still function the same (a substantial amount of hiring and firing was tech companies FOMOing about each othe). Meta's VR division has burned through $50 billion, but it's people got paid incredible salaries. One in three Nvidia employees are now worth over 20 million. Many of them were working decent jobs making GPUs for video games and suddenly because of AI, their net worth went up 100x. Oncology is another possible example. By far the wealthy people today are all in computers, instead of curing cancer.

I'm not saying these people are bad or anything like that. The other part of the equation, wealth as a signal, has become incredibly noisy. In some areas it is still a strong signal, typically smaller companies and startups where providing value is a lot more closely related to what you make. And conversely, I don't agree with money generated being a signal of impact in itself.

by InkCanon

1/12/2025 at 2:59:37 PM

>I've seen many friends at big/elite tech firms get paid to do very little.

What matters is the outcome, not the amount of effort one puts in. If you're working at e.g. Google for $200,000 a year, your changes can affect millions to billions of people. At that scale even a small improvement like making Google Sheets load 1% faster can equate to millions of dollars of additional revenue downstream -- and likely tens of millions of dollars of actual value, since the largest tech companies actually capture only a low percentage of the value they create for their consumers.

You've just justified that $200k several times over for what might amount to two or three day's worth of effort for you, that's true. That's not a bug - that's a feature of working in a successful, scalable business. If you're inclined to do more than this "bare minimum" which you observe so many doing, just imagine how much value you could create for others if you actually worked close to your capacity in such a place.

>[B]ecause of the exponential advancement of technology, huge accrual of capital and inability of human incentive structures to keep up, value does not universally equal money.

I don't understand the thread of logic here. Claiming that human incentive structures are "unable to keep up" with value creation suggests to me that money is, if anything, a heavily lagging indicator of the real value one is generating, which is in line with the point above. But I don't think that is the point you are trying to make.

>Meta's VR division has burned through $50 billion, but it's people got paid incredible salaries.

Most company actions are bets that the company's leadership think are net positive. Sometimes those bets don't pan out the way we expect them to - that's normal. Your own research might take longer than you expect it to, but that in itself isn't a reason to look back and say you made a bad bet.

As for the people, yes, you generally have to pay a lot to get top talent, and even that doesn't assure you of success. That's probably 2-4 years, out of a 30- or 40-year career, where their contributions may have been net negative to the bottom line. Maybe. If we include caveats like "Meta VR never becomes profitable in the future, either" and "none of the innovations from Meta VR turn out to be profit-generating via a different, unexpected mechanism". This probably equalizes out over the course of a career for the vast majority of these engineers. Not exactly a ship sinker.

>One in three Nvidia employees are now worth over 20 million. Many of them were working decent jobs making GPUs for video games and suddenly because of AI, their net worth went up 100x.

AI is hugely, hugely useful for all kinds of people. I use it every day both professionally and personally. Almost everyone I know does the same. If you truly derive no value at all from it, you are decidedly in the minority.

Is the claim here that they shouldn't have made money off of helping to manufacture the hardware that enables this invention which so many have found so enormously useful? Or maybe it's that since they never intended for their hardware to be useful for such a thing, their involvement should be worth less. That sounds way more like trying to invent a human incentive structure that can't keep up with the exponential advancement of technology than what we actually have. The current incentive structure, however, is wonderfully open to serendipity like this.

>The other part of the equation, wealth as a signal, has become incredibly noisy.

You've just given two examples where one company's wealth fell up to $50b because they made a bet on something that (for now) nobody wants, and another company's wealth went so high that a plurality of their employees are now millionaires because they made something everyone wants. That doesn't sound like a low signal-to-noise ratio to me.

by hiAndrewQuinn

1/12/2025 at 4:59:13 PM

>What matters is the outcome, not the effort

>At certain companies the scale could be enormous

The latter is true and I think the most legitimate reason for working at big companies. I should specify in the first they also accomplish little and affect very little. Things like internal tools that went nowhere, running basic ETL scripts, things like updating financial trade systems to comply with some new regulation. And this at a pretty slow pace.

My meaning about Nvidia and Meta VR is how people who didn't create value got enormously wealthy anyway. In Nvidia's case, traditional GPU teams (which I suspect received most of the benefit because they've vested the longest and made up most of Nvidia's pre AI boom) got hugely rewarded by data center GPUs, which they played little role in. Conversely Meta's VR team still got paid really well (their stock is even up because of AI hype, despite VR losses) despite their failure. So you have these systems where even if you fail or don't play any role in success, you're still paid enormously well. This is because companies capture the value, then distribute in their very imperfect ways.

You're right that the valid reason for this is that tech companies act as risk absorbing entities by paying people to take high risk bets. But the necessary condition for these are

1) Hiring really good people (not just intelligent, but really motivated, curious, visionary etc)

2) A culture which promotes that

The on the ground reality of 1) is that it's a huge mess. The system has turned into a giant game. There are entire paid courses advertised to get a job in MAANG. The average entrant to MAANG spends six to eight months somersaulting through leetcode questions, making LinkedIn/Twitter/YouTube clones, doing interview prep, etc etc. Many causes for this, including the bureaucratization of tech companies, massive supply of fresh grads, global economic disparities, etc. It's no longer the days when nerds, hackers and other thinkers drifted together.

2) Because of FOMO, AI hype and frankly general lack of vision from many tech CEOs, it's just a mess. Anything AI is thrown piles of money at (hence the slew of ridiculous AI products). Everything else is under heavy pressure to AI-ify. I've heard from people inside Google has really ended that kind of research culture that produced all the great inventions. There are still great people and teams but increasingly isolated.

by InkCanon

1/12/2025 at 10:49:48 AM

> Hear a lot of bad things about the academic rat race, pressure to public even at masters/PhD level

Strongly depends on the advisor and your goals. If you want to stay in academia, some amount of publications is required. Your advisor, especially if he pays your salary, may also push you to publish. If both are not an issue, I guess you can even finish without publications.

> I could probably hack out some paper into journals but whether I could have any real impact "on demand" (versus say spontaneously coming up with something) is a big question mark, especially within the deadlines given in the program

Nobody comes up with good ideas on demand. As you progress in your academic career the rate of ideas (theoretically) grows. That's why you need the advisor: he can come up with ideas at rate sufficient for his students

by EvgeniyZh

1/12/2025 at 12:13:44 PM

>advisor might push to publish

That's fair. I'm just cautiously eyeing the likelihood of coming up with something publishable that's not a going through the motions kind of thing.

by InkCanon

1/12/2025 at 10:34:35 AM

> The main reason being getting a standard corporate job tends to nullify all impact you could have (with a few rare exceptions).

"Impact" is an ambiguous term, so it's quite vague what you mean. I assume "positive impact on the world and knowledge".

While this mantra is indeed motivational, it can set you up for disappointment, both in corporate as well as research/PhD settings, at the moment you realize how many hurdles there can be (toxic colleagues, bureaucracy, ignorance, etc.).

Also, for this interpretation of "impact", a corporate job can be very impactful as well.

by Eduard

1/12/2025 at 12:18:42 PM

>impact is ambiguous

This is the core of the issue (most replies usually involve some slightly different definitions). I take many definitions of impact, including societal use, contributing to knowledge, etc. But it's much clearer there are many things people do that are low impact, especially in places with a lot of bureaucracy, politics etc.

A corporate job can, but it seems to me as a result of various incentives corporate jobs tend to be compartmentalized, low impact and repetitive. We're also at a down cycle where tech, the historical haven for impact in a job, is scaling back a ton of things to focus on stock prices. If you know of any corporate jobs that do have impact by some definition of it, I'd love to hear it. In my experience these have been mostly startups.

by InkCanon

1/12/2025 at 10:23:53 AM

Ask yourself this, has there been any useful Programming Language that has come out of PL research/ Academia in the last 20 years? The only example I can think of is Julia, and it only seems to be used by other academics.

If you’re looking to be impactful, you are much better off joining a job and working in your free time, than doing a PhD. A PhD is a program to compete for academic prestige. Grad students want to publish papers that get them noticed at conferences, invited to talks at prestigious universities etc, those are the incentives, always has been in academia. The brightest minds join academia because they care more about prestige than money (as they should, anyone can earn money, few can win a Nobel prize). In a healthy academic system, prestige is linked to real world societal impact. That is still somewhat true in fields like Machine Learning, in some fields it seems to be completely dis-aligned from any real world impact whatsoever (which seems to be PL research). Our academic system unfortunately is a rotten carcass.

You could still, advisor willing, do research that interests you and not care at all whether you get noticed by conferences/ journals, your peers etc. But that takes a certain level of anti-social behavior that very few humans possess and so I say join a job. Plenty of companies are still building programming languages, like Google, Apple etc which are being used by engineers worldwide and if you finagle your way into a job at those teams, you will have a meaningful, impactful job, which is also well paying as a side bonus.

by sashank_1509

1/12/2025 at 10:40:32 AM

> has there been any useful Programming Language that has come out of PL research/ Academia in the last 20 years?

The goal of PL research is not, usually, to produce languages that see commercial adoption but to produce ideas that industry adopts. You cannot say a language like Rust is not influenced by PL research.

by noelwelsh

1/12/2025 at 11:02:54 AM

No, I can very strongly claim that I doubt any of the modern languages like Rust, Go etc have been influenced by the trainwreck, that is programming language research.

PL research today is actually the study of something called “type theory,” whose relation to the act of building programming languages is the same relation a math PhD has to a carpenter. You will be a great mathematician if you do PL research but I would prefer if you do it in the maths department and not con us into believing it has something to do with programming languages. This is apparently what undergrads are taught in a compilers course: https://x.com/deedydas/status/1846366712616403366 I rest my case. (imagine the grad course syllabus)

On the fringes, you might find research groups who are doing interesting useful stuff in programming languages, but that is an exception to the rule. Which is probably why, you never hear any of the new language developers ever cite programming language research.

by sashank_1509

1/12/2025 at 11:37:47 AM

There is much more to PL research than "type theory". Look for instance at POPL 2024 program [1].

Also Rust has been influenced by type theory. Rust first compiler was written in OCaml and the influence of OCaml/Haskell (and many other languages [2]) is pretty clear.

Goal of PL research isn't to design programming languages but academic research has a lot of influence on programming languages.

[1] https://popl24.sigplan.org/program/program-POPL-2024/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34704772)

Edit: regarding https://x.com/deedydas/status/1846366712616403366?mx=2 these are just the formal specs of a type checker. Nothing magic or very complicated there, it's just a notation. Anyone who can understand and implement a type checker should be able to understand this notation as well.

by yodsanklai

1/12/2025 at 12:52:18 PM

The creator of Rust in his own words:

“ Introducing: Rust Rust is a language that mostly cribs from past languages. Nothing new. Unapologetic interest in the static, structured, concurrent, large-systems language niche, Not for scripting, prototyping, or casual hacking, Not for research or exploring a new type system, Concentrates on known ways of achieving: More safety, More concurrency, Less mess, Nothing new? Hardly anything. Maybe a keyword or two, Many older languages better than newer ones: e.g., Mesa (1977), BETA (1975), CLU (1974) … We keep forgetting already-learned lessons., Rust picks from 80s/early 90s languages: Nil (1981), Hermes (1990), Erlang (1987), Sather (1990), Newsqueak (1988), Alef (1995), Limbo (1996), Napier (1985, 1988).”

If modern PL research is trying to take credit for the latest hot programming language (which I doubt they are, it’s only internet commentators who have nothing to do with PL research who argue with me. Actual PL researchers don’t care about Rust), they should be embarrassed.

Thank you for linking latest PL research, it has been a while since I’ve gone through it, glad to see nothing has changed. Ask yourself, how many of those talks in day 1, have accompanying code? is it even 25%?

For giggles I decided to peruse through “Normal bisimulations by Value”. A 54 page dense paper with theorems, equations and lemmas. Lol, what are we even doing here? You can also notice that they don’t bother justifying their research in the intro or the abstract, claiming relevance to any actual programming language. They themselves realize it’s just math, and PL researchers has become a euphemism for math. Frankly, even one such paper being accepted to a PL conference tells me something is going awry in the field, but if a majority of papers are like this, then the field is a wasteland, that only serves to grind young talented minds into spending their lives chasing academic prestige with no value to society.

by sashank_1509

1/12/2025 at 1:20:47 PM

> Ask yourself, how many of those talks in day 1, have accompanying code? is it even 25%?

57 out of 93 papers (61%) published at POPL 24 have an artifact available. Note that this may also be automated proofs etc, it's not necessarily "running code".

But I also think focusing on POPL as a representation of the PL community isn't entirely fair. POPL is the primary conference focused on type systems within the PL community. It's a niche within a niche. Conferences like OOPSLA, ECOOP, or ICFP are much broader and much less likely to be so focused on mathematical proofs.

[1] https://dl.acm.org/toc/pacmpl/2024/8/POPL

by JW_00000

1/12/2025 at 1:51:50 PM

I asked Claude to go through all paper names and estimate how many have code vs how many are proofs:

“Based on my analysis, I estimate: - ~35-40 papers (roughly 35%) likely have significant accompanying code - ~55-60 papers (roughly 65%) are primarily theoretical/mathematical proofs “

I suspect even the remaining 35% doesn’t have much to do with programming languages, and I don’t think these stats change much for other conferences.

by sashank_1509

1/12/2025 at 3:55:54 PM

> I don’t think these stats change much for other conferences.

I'd severely doubt that: there is a large difference in focus on theory vs practice between conferences. POPL really is one of the more theoretical conferences. At a conference like ECOOP, you're unlikely to see many proofs (I'd guess at most 20% of papers, based on personal experience).

by JW_00000

1/12/2025 at 8:24:25 PM

I did the same thing for ECOOP 2024: https://2024.ecoop.org/track/ecoop-2024-papers#program

Claude estimates 10 papers related programming languages and its features and 27 related to theory, verification etc.

by sashank_1509

1/12/2025 at 4:06:37 PM

One sub-field of PL research is the ability to formally specify programs, and thus understand their meaning and prove their correctness. A great project that is based on lots of theoretical foundations and practical implications is compcert [1]. They wrote a C compiler and proved that it translates C code to equivalent assembly code. You couldn't even state the problem without all the maths, let alone prove it. I'd argue that having correct compilers is worth the effort.

I assume "Normal bisimulations by Value" talks about equivalence relations between concurrent programs. If you want to prove correctness properties of concurrent programs or cryptographic protocols, this is one of the tools. It's not because there's no code and only maths that it's not relevant.

> Actual PL researchers don’t care about Rust

Not true, I just watched this video a few days ago about Rust semantics [2]. How would you prove that a Rust program making use of unsafe construct is actually safe? what does safe even mean? how to describe rigorously the behavior of the rust type checker? AFIAU there's not even an informal spec, let alone a formal one. How are you supposed to write correct program or compiler if the language isn't specified?

> Rust is a language that mostly cribs from past languages. Nothing new.

Doesn't mean that Rust isn't influenced by academic languages and ideas. Anybody who knows Haskell or OCaml see the direct influence.

Research isn't industry. A lot of what is produced may have no direct applications but may in the future. This is the point, it's research. Also it's not because you don't see the connections between research and application that they don't exist. Lots of people working on these industrial tools have an academic background and bring their knowledge into the equation.

> If modern PL research is trying to take credit for the latest hot programming language (which I doubt they are, it’s only internet commentators who have nothing to do with PL research who argue with me. Actual PL researchers don’t care about Rust), they should be embarrassed.

You're the one explaining that Rust didn't benefit from academic research which is obviously not the case.

[1] https://compcert.org [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y1dLDnS4uE

by yodsanklai

1/12/2025 at 12:29:47 PM

Have you ever talked to the people who design those languages? Because they will disagree with you about as strongly. And, of course, they are in a position to be correct.

by saagarjha

1/12/2025 at 1:08:00 PM

1. TypeScript (and Dart, which influenced it) would not exist without the research on gradual and optional typing. Many other of the type system features in TypeScript – like type inferencing, intersection and union types, and type-level programming (e.g. conditional types) – find their origin in PL research, and were uncommon in mainstream but common in academic programming languages before TypeScript appeared.

2. Similarly, mypy was created by Jukka Lehtosalo as part of his PhD [1] and part of a wave of research in applying gradual typing to dynamically typed programming languages.

3. Rust's ownership types and borrowing are based on PL research, such as linear logic / linear types. Same for traits. Early Rust even had typestates.

4. Several of the core developers of Rust, Go, TypeScript, C#, Dart, Scala, have a PhD in PL or a background in research.

5. Generics are another feature that was heavily researched in academia (admittedly a longer time ago) before becoming part of mainstream programming languages.

So I completely disagree with you: most modern languages have been heavily influenced by programming language research. In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to find a modern PL that hasn't been in some way influenced by PL research.

(One thing I agree with in your comment, is that current PL research focuses too heavily on type systems and should look more at other interesting PL features. My recommendation to InkCanon would therefore be to look broader than type systems. The problem with research on type systems is that, because it looks math-y, it feels more like "science" and hence "cures impostor syndrome". But cool stuff can be real science too!)

[1] https://mypy-lang.org/about.html

by JW_00000

1/12/2025 at 11:16:51 AM

Ask yourself this, has there been any useful Programming Language that has come out of PL research/ Academia in the last 20 years?

Scala

by bdangubic

1/12/2025 at 12:07:40 PM

There are several assumptions here tangled together here

1) Use is sufficient, but not necessary for impact. Theory of relativity, a lot of QM, etc has had only uses in real world edge cases, but have enormous value. The value function for impact, so to speak, includes more than just use.

2) There is the structure of academia and it's incentives, the average behavior of people in it, and it's outcomes. I don't necessarily have to bow to it's incentives, nor behave like the average person in there. Academia is also sufficiently large and fractal that you can find people less interested in the incentives and more in some thing they obsesses about.

PL has had some interesting, although sometimes unheard of, real world uses. CUDA for example. A significant chunk of PL now focuses on ML. Awhile back a company called Monoidics got acquired my Facebook for work on static bug finding with formal methods. Rust has been pretty influenced by PL concepts. New languages like WASM are formally verified from the ground up, and there are exciting opportunities for that.

I have considered slinging my resume to more research oriented companies, but hearsay from people is that the golden age is over. Under FOMO and stock market pressure, these companies are eradicating the kind of freewheeling research they used to and dumping money into ML and ML hardware. Not to mention it's a bit of a dice roll and a circus to get a job at such companies nowadays as a fresh graduate.

by InkCanon

1/12/2025 at 1:19:04 PM

The only group under low pressure, free to do anything they want in Academia are tenured profs who have established themselves well or grad students who don’t care at all about remaining in Academia (and presumably have NSF fellowship or similar so that they don’t need to listen to their advisor either). Everyone else needs to grind, profs without tenure are arguably under the highest pressure, PhDs who want to stay in academia have high pressure etc. If your prof is tenured but not established and is struggling for grant money, even he is under high pressure to publish and win grants, something I learnt the hard way. The grant acceptance rate is what, like 20% these days.

My 2 cents, you will be more likely to encounter creative coders who are passionate about a field in the right industry team than Academia. Unfortunately getting into the right industry team is also a grind, and you likely won’t get there right out of undergrad, but within 10 years, if you put effort and grind, you can get there. I think it’s better odds and more fun than going to academia, but your mileage may vary.

by sashank_1509

1/12/2025 at 11:04:28 AM

> A PhD is a program to compete for academic prestige

That's true for some people but others have different motivations, such as learning useful skills so they can gain the ability to work on interesting problems in a given field.

Doing a PhD in PL can also help you get the kind of jobs you mentioned, and achieve more once you're there. For me, the most valuable I thing I got out of the process was extensive exposure to the literature, which has been useful in a range of contexts.

by peterkelly

1/12/2025 at 11:05:54 AM

> And after that I could get a job, become a professor, turn my research into a startup etc.

chances of getting professor-ship, tenure, or even a post-doc is close to nil, due to extreme competition and limited seats. academia is the most slowly moving enterprise, some folks in their 80s still around, when young grads kicked out.

getting a job after PhD may also be very hard. you would be very over-qualified, likely huge ego, and very narrow skillset in your domain, that is likely lagging behind industry. managerial (or even just "work at corporate") skills will be lacking. unemployment of PhDs is wildly high, even higher than if you did not do PhD.

turning research into startup may be much harder than you would expect. milking government funding for years (and surviving jungle of academic politics to get its cut) is very different from market outside of it (i.e. venture capital, startups, tech, etc.), at the time you would want to make startup you would have to learn all from scratch, or even un-learn, as many would be detrimental.

then there is toxic academic culture (funding, publishing, power dynamics). and in recent years academia become pit of wild woke left agenda, even more oil on fire.

tbh, if you want to do something special, academia as we have it today is not the best place.

if you still want to do it, guess best strategy is to "do it quick and get out". some smart people I know doing exactly that. doing accelerated PhD asap and getting the hell out of academia. (but then, it depends all on your professor power dynamics. in some places they would not let you graduate unless they wish so.)

by nikolayasdf123

1/12/2025 at 12:36:48 PM

>getting a job in academia is really hard

In my side of the world its a little bit better, the CS department has plans to double headcount in the next few years. They've got whole new faculty apartment buildings set up and everything, and the funding situation is quite generous (I'm told). Although I have also read in the USA the bar for even stipend paying masters/PhDs has gotten incredibly high.

>Milking government funding for years

There are special programs for startup oriented funds, so it's more like VC pitching to academics with equity free grants (although naturally there's the whole university research IP issue). But I'm quite willing to put up with it to do something meaningful (at a decent number of jobs you put up with it just to keep your job). I do keep an ear on startup-y things, I don't think I'll have it any easier than an undergrad but I think I won't be too disadvantaged.

>Do it and get out

I don't place too much emphasis on the PhD per se but the real value of it.

>If you want to do something special academia is not the place

Ten years ago tech would've been a good place. But now especially for a new graduate its a bloodbath, not to mention there's been huge layoffs. Academia seems like the better option nowadays.

by InkCanon

1/12/2025 at 11:13:39 AM

> changes of getting professor-ship, tenure, or even a post-doc is close to nil

What an extreme exaggeration. Yes academia is competitive, yes tenure is hard to get (obviously). But the chance is not "close to nil" for that at all, and it's certainly not "close to nil" for a postdoc lol.

> getting a job after PhD may also be very hard. you would be very over-qualified, likely huge ego, and very narrow skillset in your domain, that is likely lagging behind industry. managerial (or even just "work at corporate") skills will be lacking. unemployment of PhDs is wildly high, even higher than if you did not do PhD.

This is just not true x) There are no numbers where PhDs have worse unemployment than grads.

Conversely, it does open a lot of doors for industry jobs (think ML, quant finance, to name a few)

by andrepd

1/12/2025 at 5:55:44 PM

Getting a postdoc position is usually easier than getting into a PhD program in the same university, especially in top universities. And the chances of getting a tenure-track faculty position or similar are probably something like 1/3.

The biggest obstacles to getting an academic job are personal. The jobs are wherever they are, and your (or your partner's) preferences cannot change that. If you are willing to relocate, your chances of getting a good academic job are much higher than if you restrict your search to a single city / region / country / continent.

by jltsiren

1/12/2025 at 11:22:08 AM

Most discussions I see online about whether or not someone should do a PhD tend to assume:

- The student becomes hyper focused and pigeonholed into some esoteric and unemployable domain, destined to run on the postdoctoral treadmill for decades.

- The PI is a control freak who only cares about publications, and considers students who leave for industry jobs after graduation to be failures.

These stereotypes can have an element of truth, but there are more enlightened PhD programs and PIs that understand the value of cross-cutting and commercializable research than you’d expect from the discourse. Not everyone is stuck working on a pinprick of knowledge, and if you choose your program and PI wisely, you can go much further and do many more things than you would never have access to with just an undergraduate background.

by fastneutron

1/12/2025 at 11:40:48 AM

One big issue is that industry jobs in some areas increasingly expect academic excellence in the shape of "publishing in top 3 conferences" for example.

by hikingsimulator

1/12/2025 at 11:45:55 AM

An obviously totally arbitrary barrier. Why not 4 or even 5?

Someone who only published in 2 top conferences is obviously not worth anyone's time. But 3, now we're talking.

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 12:34:46 PM

Because that's the number conferences that are generally considered to be better than the rest. Just like the "top 4" computer science schools in the US are unambiguously Stanford, UC Berkeley, MIT, and Carnegie Mellon. You can ask, why not 5? Because then you start getting into questions about whether you want to include UCLA or UIUC or Caltech and it's significantly more complicated.

by saagarjha

1/12/2025 at 12:43:12 PM

And... it's totally arbitrary.

Top people come from non-top schools, and lots of non-top people from from "top" schools. And some top people come from no school at all.

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 12:48:47 PM

Of course, but there are still four schools which are clearly the "top" ones. The same is true for academic conferences, or big tech, or intelligence agencies.

by saagarjha

1/12/2025 at 2:21:29 PM

Top is just marketing. In Big Tech it's market cap or something, but it's not proof of anything and may be just marketing. Google is a search advertising monopoly pretending to be a "tech" company (per Thiel), but is a "top" company to work for. Ok.

And intelligence agencies are government mandated, not marketing made. Or at least I haven't heard any marketing from the NSA saying how selective they are in admissions (as if that means anything).

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 12:26:57 PM

Most quantitative recruitment criteria are arbitrary to some degree. Unless you rigorously examine every single applicant, you need some heuristics for initial filtering.

by halgir

1/12/2025 at 12:48:04 PM

So you need some arbitrary filtering to give you breathing room for your objective heuristics?

For some reason that seems slightly non-optimal.

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 6:41:29 PM

I never understood point 1. Your PhD thesis will almost definitely be on a very specific topic, you don't have the time or knowledge to cover multiple distinct fields.

by InkCanon

1/12/2025 at 11:43:30 AM

I'm not saying you're wrong but...

Elon Musk skipped his PhD program and did many more things than spending time in school would have allowed him to do. Of course, most people aren't Elon (probably a good thing).

Other than preparing you for a career in academia or some highly regulated environment where education is erected as a barrier to entry, it's hard for me to think of "many more things" that are open to a phd holder than to someone who is not.

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 2:02:09 PM

Celebrity exceptions are exactly that; exceptions. Those people knew an opportunity when they had one, and were able to generalize their early successes into other domains by leveraging the financial, social, and intellectual capital they accumulated. People who fit this description aren’t the ones reading this thread.

In some fields all you need is a computer and an idea to be impactful, but in plenty of other fields you’d be hard pressed to make any credible, let alone meaningful impact without significant intellectual preparation and tacit knowledge. These things only come through experience, and for many people, the PhD program is that experience.

by fastneutron

1/12/2025 at 2:37:12 PM

I agree that the exception is rare, but it suggests that the non-exception isn't exclusively necessary. It might suggest that the dominant paradigm of diplomas is quite non-optimal or at least optional.

Carlos Ghosn started out as a factory manager (although well educated), and in his Stanford interview the presenter noted that Stanford produced no factory managers, although it produces lots of would be global CEOs.

Perhaps it should produce more factory managers.

Musk has shown an ability to make an impact in multiple fields for which he seems quite under qualified for, for which he did not have "significant intellectual preparation and tacit knowledge". He read alot.

I think there are more non-celebrity exceptions that are simply not well known.

And there are lots of people in PhD programs who, despite their education, do not make credible or meaningful impacts, quite possibly not at all due to their competence or training quality, but due to wholly accidental or uncontrollable factors: industry shifts, business culture, changes in government research funding, or their entire paradigm being based on faulty assumptions that were simply not known and discovered later, or superseded by some innovation, etc.

Academics are rarely comfortable discussing the shortcomings of academia.

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 3:27:33 PM

No, the non-exception is not absolutely necessary, and there are plenty of people on my staff who fit the description. There are also plenty more who Dunning-Krueger their way into thinking they do, but break down when challenged to do anything novel. Understand your options and choose your program carefully. > Musk has shown an ability to make an impact in multiple fields for which he seems quite under qualified for, for which he did not have "significant intellectual preparation and tacit knowledge". He read alot. He also had a giant pile of money from his PayPal windfall to hire the right people with the tacit knowledge to act on his ideas. The difference between a crank and eccentric businessman is the size of the budget they can wield when nobody else will. > Academics are rarely comfortable discussing the shortcomings of academia. Correct, which is why I’m not in academia.

by fastneutron

1/12/2025 at 8:32:03 AM

You don't need a PhD to push the boundaries. You need a PhD to make others believe you pushed the boundaries!

by ySteeK

1/12/2025 at 8:37:48 AM

You got it backwards. You need to push the boundaries to get a PhD.

by mr_mitm

1/12/2025 at 11:42:56 AM

Push the boundaries but not actually move them.

by amelius

1/12/2025 at 11:46:28 AM

LOL. Hey!

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 10:44:56 AM

Maybe at the worlds best universities. For sure not at an average one.

by brulard

1/12/2025 at 11:09:33 AM

you should read some PhD dissertations outside of top schools /s :)

by bdangubic

1/12/2025 at 9:25:52 AM

Yes, because so many contemporary breakthroughs have come from some guy in his garage.

by dyauspitr

1/12/2025 at 1:38:01 PM

The illustrated guide (which I had known during my PhD) focuses on progress—however, niche progress. Yet, PhD students' life experiences are usually not centered around progress but frustration, disillusionment, and depression. If you want to compare it with anything else, it may be like creating pieces of novel art with great effort, with one's identity tied to it. Yet, even in the case of success, it is unlikely to be appreciated by contemporary people.

So, I prefer a narrative guide to PhD - "The Lord of the Rings: an allegory of the PhD?" by Dave Pritchard, http://danny.oz.au/danny/humour/phd_lotr.html

by stared

1/12/2025 at 7:29:54 AM

PhDs' unfortunately have lost much of their value.

- There aren't enough post-doc and tenure positions for the glut of PhDs.

- Plagiarism scandals have reduced the public's perception of a PhD to become almost something unprestigous.

by oezi

1/12/2025 at 8:26:42 AM

Thankfully not everyone feels this way, and humanity continues to benefit from the work that PhD holders do.

by someothherguyy

1/12/2025 at 9:27:23 AM

That certainly would be nice, but the risk to the individual that they are just exploited on a meagre salary for 3-6 years to only benefit their advisor has become so large that I don't recommend doing a PhD to anyone (or at least think very hard and very diligently investigate the prospective advisor and the faculty). Even if this means we as a society are losing out on scientific discoveries.

by oezi

1/12/2025 at 10:52:00 AM

Exploitation doesn't often end at certification. Academic world is very harsh for post-doc too. And permanent positions are rarer than degree holders.

by Ekaros

1/12/2025 at 8:56:47 AM

As AI becomes better the quality of plagiarism should improve.

So there's that.

by CaffeineLD50

1/12/2025 at 9:27:26 AM

Yes exactly. If you’re not a plumber are you even really contributing to human progress.

by dyauspitr

1/12/2025 at 8:47:40 AM

I just pray that everyone denigrating PhDs is making even greater contributions to humanity.

by dataflow

1/12/2025 at 10:31:00 AM

No one’s denigrating those who choose to do a PhD, most of them I am sure are bright, ambitious and thoughtful individuals. Unfortunately the Academic Meat grinder system, successfully grinds them into working 80hr weeks on meaningless projects, meaningless papers that just serve to create jobs for other academics. They could be doing so much more with the faculty they possess, alas they would be more useful as a barista. (I am not picking on humanities PhD system, which is a bigger cesspool than normal, all my criticism is aimed at STEM PhD system. My actual advice would be do a PhD if you judge the lab you are joining as doing great work, lab is everything, don’t join a PhD if it’s not a lab that you’ve vetted or if you didn’t get into that lab.)

by sashank_1509

1/12/2025 at 4:19:27 PM

> making even greater contributions to humanity.

than writing papers nobody will ever read? yes I am.

A PhD can be a great contribution to your life, and the opportunities it can bring you and your family.

The phony marketing that appeals to young people is that you are advancing the progressive human narrative.

by liontwist

1/12/2025 at 8:59:33 AM

[flagged]

by CaffeineLD50

1/12/2025 at 9:04:09 AM

Posting rude comments is worse than nothing, though.

by saagarjha

1/12/2025 at 11:55:54 AM

Why is getting a piece of paper after sitting in dozens of classes, and writing a essay considered automatically "beneficial to humanity"?

Just pulling a random site (first hit on a search) https://www.findaphd.com/phds/browsebysubject.aspx

It appears you can get a phd in dance, event management, or dozens of fields that aren't curing cancer, or AI.

I'm reminded of the Olympic break dancer who did the "kangaroo" move. She has a PHD:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachael_Gunn

thesis: "Her PhD thesis, titled Deterritorializing Gender in Sydney's Breakdancing Scene: A B-girl's Experience of B-boying" (from Wikipedia)

Now I'm sure it was worthwhile, but I'm struggling to see it as a presumptive positive move to humanity for her work.

And there's lots just like it.

I'd even go so far as to assume that it's the extreme minority of phds that actually make a difference "for humanity" and not simply a good career move for the degree holder.

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 12:50:52 PM

Beneficial to humanity does not mean "increasing the GDP". Humans are not machines; there are things that are valuable that is not technology. Just from the title of the thesis I would not judge its value. Analyzing culture and writing about your own ideas can be a good thing.

More important to me is whether it was written because someone really cared about the topic, or wrote 100s of pages of nothing to have a title.

But I also want to comment on your idea that researching AI is superior to researching dancing because it is more beneficial for humanity. I am myself in AI adjacent research, but I still disagree. Dancing is a deeply human thing, and we should care about it. And I believe that many people (especially outside of this bubble) will think that many parts of currently hyped AI research has very questionable "benefit for humanity", such as AI image generators.

by hulium

1/12/2025 at 1:09:56 PM

I'm 100% with you on the nebulous value of AI, however given the "theme" of HN I think the bias is here towards such an assumption.

I am not dismissing the value of dance or culture or social science or even event management (or farming or any of the dozens and dozens of things people can get Ph.D's in).

And I note that in my post above.

I am seriously not being sarcastic by saying it's worthwhile. Probably to her. Maybe her department. Maybe even to break dancing (well, maybe not break dancing).

But the presumption that someone getting a Ph.D has somehow "uplifted us all" as a default seems highly improbable to me.

It no doubt uplifts a number of the degree holders, if statistics bear out.

But that's like saying "If Elon Musk becomes rich, we all become rich" and I don't think that's true. Not even in some "trickle down" economics kinda way.

If Elon gets a Ph.D we have all to assume some intrinsic benefit to humanity?

Uhm, I don't think so.

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 12:40:59 PM

I'm unsure whether I should reply because I get the feeling that you think "beneficial to humanity" looks like someone working at OpenAI and not doing research on, say, anthropology.

by saagarjha

1/12/2025 at 1:23:13 PM

You tell me if for any definition of "beneficial to humanity" that all or most Ph.Ds would fit that definition presumptively/intrinsically.

I chose arbitrary fields that I suspected most readers of HN wouldn't be in, be familiar with, or necessarily esteem just to make the case more obvious. For example, a Ph.D in dance.

There are lots and lots of PhDs in all kinds of things. You can get a Phd in videogames, food hygiene, librarianship, gender studies, ancient greek, theology.

I am sure they are (mostly) worthwhile, and I'm not knocking any of them.

I don't see how they would, by default, be seen to benefit humanity. Some small number might. A very small number. Possibly an extremely small number.

According to one random website there are over 70,000 new PhDs every year.

That's a lot of assumed benefit to humanity. Or.. is it?

by Over2Chars

1/12/2025 at 5:27:07 PM

I consider the pursuit of knowledge to be beneficial to humanity. To that end most PhDs are doing something good.

by saagarjha

1/13/2025 at 1:23:16 AM

Lots of PhDs advance trivial knowledge if "advance" is even the right word.

I provide this example of a dance PhD thesis topic:

"Deterritorializing Gender in Sydney's Breakdancing Scene: A B-girl's Experience of B-boying" by Rachel Gunn of "kangaroo" breakdance olympic fame.

Anyone can read a book and write an essay. Even AI can write reasonable essays these days. Is AI advancing the pursuit of knowledge?

by Over2Chars

1/13/2025 at 10:04:58 AM

It's not "an essay" it's a thesis done by someone who is an expert in the field. AI has been advancing but is, generally, not yet considered to be an expert in much.

by saagarjha

1/15/2025 at 1:25:48 AM

The idea that a PhD is an expert in the field is, I think, a generous assumption.

And you are missing my point about the wide range of fields to which these novice experts are coming from.

Rachael Gunn is an expert in the field of (break)dance, if I extend your position, and her essay is an expert testimony broadening the field of knowledge?

I think it's entirely possible for PhD (or Masters or anyone) to extend debunked theories, to extend or invent nonsensical positions yet to be debunked, to do research of no value, or merely for value to the student and their advisor as a way to increase citations, career advancement, and so on.

I would argue that this is a more reasonable default assumption. In fact, I think the university system favors this likelihood. Students aren't, to my knowledge, asked to examine the worlds problems and take a stab at them.

They are lead into very specific tracks, possibly by their advisor, possibly by the department, possibly by funding or current trends in the field, to do work around a particular area which may go nowhere close to helping all of humanity.

And a "thesis" is just a a really long essay. It has no special quality or instrinsic value, in my humble opinion.

by Over2Chars

1/15/2025 at 4:27:38 AM

There is no perfection in life. But I will still put forward that the explicit goal of a PhD is exactly what you feel is hard to believe: it is to become an expert in some field and produce novel and impactful research. It’s not just “writing an essay”: there is a thesis, sure, but also an expectation of several other peer-reviewed papers and a defense. This is actually very critical and often forgotten in Hacker News, which largely does not understand why peer review is important. The whole point is that all then other experts in the field; the ones who have already gotten their credentials and are respected for their contributions, all come together and repeatedly verify that the contributions are worthy.

Does fraud happen? Of course. Do people submit more papers on hot topics because they think they are more likely to be approved? Of course. Are some people plagiarizing or misrepresenting the impact of their work? Of course. But the point is to reduce this, and the specific goal organizationally is to reduce these because they harm the reputation and purity of the idea.

I feel like your concern is similar to someone going “firefighting is not actually intrinsically beneficial for humanity”. When someone tells me they’re a firefighter I generally think that they’re doing something valuable. You can argue, well some of them use it as an excuse to get inside a house so they can loot it. Or others are private firefighters for oil companies, and not the “good” community firefighters that save houses. Maybe some of them are doing it for the money and not because they actually particularly care for saving people. But I would counter that the concept is sound and that obvious abuse is, in theory, supposed to be punished.

by saagarjha

1/12/2025 at 9:28:20 AM

This comment is the equivalent of people doing their own research on vaccines.

by dyauspitr

1/12/2025 at 3:04:29 PM

My fairly generic PhD advice, as somebody who did one, graduated a bit early, and is happy about the process and where it's taken me:

* Choose your advisor with care. This is not very easy as an applicant looking at professors' websites, but if you are admitted, any good school will probably have an in-person or virtual admitted students day where you can talk to current students out of faculty earshot. Take advantage of these times to ask about your potential advisor. A truly bad advisor will probably produce at least one person who will warn you about them. If you can't do this in person, try to get a quick phone/video chat -- something off-record where they can be honest. I was always happy to do these for my advisor, because I liked him and wanted him to get more good students. Conversely, I know people who were warned off specific advisors during these events, for good reasons. A bit of subjectivity: a good advisor at a decent school is usually better than a bad advisor at a good school.

* The financial niceness of doing a PhD in field X seems to correlate pretty well with the current job market value of a masters in field X, at least partially for reasons of leverage -- if you can leave and transition into a cushier job, advisors have to provide a bit more value. Computer science scores highly on this metric.

* There is a ton of negativity about PhDs in places like HN. This isn't unjustified: doing a PhD with a bad advisor can be a very bad experience. At the same time, I think "person who had a bad PhD experience" is also "person who writes comments on the internet" with higher probability than "person who had a good PhD experience".

by croissants

1/12/2025 at 3:37:07 PM

That's a way of looking at it. Another way is looking at it inwardly, as a journey of self. Personally, a PhD for me was being punched in the face every morning (i.e., experiment failed) for years, yet getting up to try again.

It's the archetypal hero's journey where you dive into the deepest darkness, discover yourself, and emerge triumphant.

At the end, you get a hat.

by resiros

1/12/2025 at 9:14:33 AM

If you don't pick your lab/PI wisely you might end up stroking you PI's ego without accomplishing anything of value. Or you might end doing four years of work that ends up obsolete before you even graduate.

by giacomoforte

1/12/2025 at 10:03:19 AM

For most (nowadays), the journey is about becoming a competent researcher.

by kowlo

1/12/2025 at 1:39:54 PM

Matt has also written a great follow-up, "How to get tenure", see https://matt.might.net/articles/tenure/

Highly relevant for the aspiring researcher, and it describes really well the nonlinearities of (academic) life.

by skalarproduktr

1/12/2025 at 8:24:53 AM

A phd ist not a phd. A phd in medicine is like a Bachelor thesis. While a phd in engineering can become a 10 year nightmare

by ulrischa

1/12/2025 at 8:49:56 AM

That's not right. A PhD is a PhD.

An MD (Medical Doctorate) is like a master's degree. It's not like a bachelor's because many MD programs start out with or require a BSc, biology is a popular choice but a lot of STEM majors are possible.

But MD+PhD programs exist and those are definitely PhDs.

You are right that an MD is not a PhD, though. Notice how they don't call it a PhD.

by chaosite

1/12/2025 at 9:07:19 AM

> It’s not like a bachelor’s because many MD programs start out with or require a BSc

In many countries, the degree you must obtain to qualify as an MD is indeed a bachelor’s degree, the “Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery” (often abbreviated MB ChB or MBBS).

by reshlo

1/12/2025 at 9:47:24 AM

It's still a 5-6 year degree, as opposed to a 3-4 year bachelor's.

I agree it's not a research degree though... But some master programs don't include writing a research thesis either.

by chaosite

1/12/2025 at 9:46:40 AM

MDs are also obsessed with calling each other “doctor”. It always comes across as imposed authority from people who are essentially body mechanics.

by mnky9800n

1/12/2025 at 10:18:16 AM

Doctor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhkwh8u30mo

by blitzar

1/12/2025 at 10:50:56 AM

No, a MD is a professional doctorate with novelty and research requirements, it's between a DA and a PhD in terms of difficulty.

by anticensor

1/12/2025 at 11:15:50 AM

Sorry, I'm having trouble parsing your point.

"Professional degree" is juxtaposed with "research degree". So if you say it's a professional degree, you're basically agreeing it's not a research degree...

In my country at least MDs are not required to be researchers and the degree has no novelty requirements. They're required to be competent medical professionals.

There are countries where the base medical degree is the MBBS and MD is a graduate research doctorate. That's not what I'm talking about here.

I'm not talking about "difficulty", by the way. Just the differences between the degrees.

by chaosite

1/12/2025 at 6:09:32 PM

My wife rather derisively calls this the "penis pimple model of science". It's a great article and a great set figures, but folks sometimes push it a bit too much, especially in grad school.

It has a lot of truth to it and it's been making the rounds for well over a decade. Unfortunately, sometimes it can set folks up to feel bad about themselves if what they do doesn't line up well with whatever is in vogue as the boundary of knowledge that's currently being pushed.

There's a _ton_ of value in more pragmatic parts of fields that focus on applications or combining relatively well-know parts of different sub-fields. Those parts of science often don't feel like you're pushing some "boundary". It's more layering on top of, filling in holes, and building up than building "out". Sometimes what you do is to use multiple things that lots of folks already knew, but the people who knew X and the people who knew Y didn't talk to each other, so no one thought about how to combine them. It can also be hard to get papers published because reviewers will consider one part obvious/well-known and the other part irrelevant because they come from one sub-field and not both.

It will often feel like you don't belong because your work doesn't look like these figures. Applied and interdisciplinary fields "feel" different. However, this type of integrative work can be among the most valuable parts of modern research.

Don't feel like what you do has to fit into the "penis pimple model" of science. There's also nothing wrong with pushing some known boundary of a field, either! Both are valid.

by jofer

1/12/2025 at 6:18:06 PM

But this isn't a model is science, it's a model of what different kinds of academic credentials mean.

Sure there's plenty of ways to contribute to society without publishing academic research, but that's not what a PhD is.

by tbrownaw

1/12/2025 at 6:26:37 PM

Not all PhDs push boundaries of knowledge in quite that way. Often what you do was already known, but no one really figured out how to correctly apply it. Alternatively, it's often combining different things that were already well known, but no one had combined.

It's novel work that makes a PhD. Novel work is distinct from pushing the boundary of knowledge. Often what you do doesn't change what "humanity knows" in any way.

Both my wife and I have PhDs. Neither of us did things that look like the figures there. It's not a good mental model for what all PhDs mean, though it is a good model for some.

I combined fields and reinterpreted a ton of things that had already been done to draw very different fundamental conclusions about what was going on in a particular location. I put out alternative hypotheses for observations that had already been collected. It's not new knowledge at all and I didn't add to what we "know". I just added an additional hypothesis to the set of multiple working hypotheses that will hopefully be tested decades from now.

My wife worked on how to actually apply well-known methods in other fields to our field. Her work was half engineering, half field experiments. Lots of folks had been working with fiber optic strain gauges for decades. However, no one was using them to measure in-situ strain in rock masses yet (which has since become common). The application was broadly "known", but actually doing it and demonstrating that is novel.

by jofer

1/12/2025 at 12:12:48 PM

Is it possible to be a professor without a PhD? I would like to teach at a college level but the PhD path seems so risky to me to take a pay cut for years and you might not get the degree, and not a get a job.

by worldmerge

1/13/2025 at 1:39:41 AM

I have a non-phd friend who did this. About a year ago he was caught up in the layoff wave and decided teaching would be a good way to earn money, stay productive, and pad his resume while interviewing. A great idea in theory, but his experience was less than ideal. Here were the highlights from his short tenure:

- The university sets a schedule and you are assigned to classes that are otherwise short staffed - there's little consideration for your interests. Basically you get bottom of the barrel courses and inconvenient hours.

- The students can barely program and do not care. I know it's a cliche, but it can't be understated. These "masters" students could not handle the equivalent of leetcode easy problems. Get ready for a lot of late submissions, half-assed homework, and begging for extra credit. Oh, and the final is open-book and you're not allowed to fail anyone.

- The student body is largely H1B visa holders. Anyone that's been paying attention to the H1B story knows that part of the visa scheme is funneling students into masters programs to improve their chances in the lottery. Nothing against visa holders, but this is obviously a cash cow for universities.

- Academic personalities and elitism. You are an outsider and will be looked down on. In my friends case, the Dean started getting very bossy and started dumping responsibilities on him that he really had no business being apart of. Ex. Being a judge for someone's thesis defense. My friend got a lot of satisfaction out of submitting his resignation after just 2 semesters.

I personally have a fondness towards teaching as well and tend to romanticize it, but my friends story really turned me off to any interest in that line of work. Of course this is just my friends anecdata, YMMV.

by disambiguation

1/12/2025 at 12:21:25 PM

In the U.S., in most fields, it is virtually impossible.

by enum

1/12/2025 at 3:08:42 PM

The only exception would be community colleges, which still require at least a masters.

At my university, my favorite professor’s title was “senior lecturer” because he only had a bachelors. This was despite being a Times bestselling author. (He taught literature and writing.)

by ioblomov

1/12/2025 at 2:51:02 PM

In the US at least, it is entirely possible to teach at a university without a PhD. Community colleges are full of instructors with masters's degrees, and tons of classes offered by major universities are taught by graduate students or adjunct faculty without doctorates.

Your job title probably won't be 'professor', but you'll be doing basically the same work as one.

by gtmitchell

1/12/2025 at 3:56:27 PM

Graduate students teach classes at their own universities as part of their departmental funding. This is only a temporary situation and exists only while they're enrolled. It's not a career path.

As a former graduate student myself, I'm actually not aware of any non-PhDs who are adjuct faculty or community college instructors. I'm not claiming that they don't exist anywhere, but given the number of PhDs and the number of available academic jobs, the competition is fierce, and non-PhD candidates are likely to lose out to PhD candidates.

by lapcat

1/12/2025 at 6:53:09 PM

Fwiw my dad had a masters in biology and a PhD in botany, but was an instructor for biology in the local community college (“Mount San Jacinto Community College”). I guess technically he had a PhD, but not in the way most people would think

by pinkmuffinere

1/12/2025 at 4:37:20 PM

Just make a youtube channel and start lecturing or substack. Obviously not the same thing, but the barriers to entry to content creation have been eroded, and if if you have the chops not having a doctorate won't be an impediment.

by paulpauper

1/12/2025 at 5:51:15 PM

Nice! but... are these graph steps roughly at scale e.g. area of initial blue circle compared to all of human knowledge circle? or the small PhD pimple compared to the blue circle?

If not then can someone (original author or someone else) try to review the steps with roughly realistic average scales assuming surface represent knowledge volume and color complexity spectrum from advanced (indigo) to advanced (red)?

Any candidate to make another pimple on the outer circle?

by scaradim

1/12/2025 at 9:11:55 AM

Not in here Australia.

At many of our leading institutions in the hard sciences, rehashed work, data stolen from other teams, photoshopped images and a bit of plagiarism is enough to get you by.

Once you get to the social "sciences", it is much worse.

Karma cannot be denied and the result is that work outcomes with a PhD are derisible, since employers have worked out that something does not compute about the quality of freshly minted PhDs.

by KnuthIsGod

1/12/2025 at 4:39:13 PM

People complain about the US education system and higher-ed being bad or dumbed=-down. I'm like, compared to what? Much of the rest of the worst is worse in this regard. Cheating and plagiarism rampant. I've seen math papers in arxiv where the stuff is rehashed. Almost never US institutions.

by paulpauper

1/12/2025 at 11:27:09 AM

It's more or less that except the scale - the inner circles are far too big and the "ray" of the particular branch too wide. What actually happens is a small dot in the middle with very tiny branches going in various directions, some just a bit wider and longer than others.

by hdjjhhvvhga

1/13/2025 at 7:02:17 AM

I read this article before starting my PhD. A few months ago, I successfully defended my thesis and completed my PhD. Even though it was just a small contribution, I’m proud to have pushed the boundaries of human knowledge.

by kkoyung

1/12/2025 at 1:46:34 PM

I'm a bit confused about why the Master's degree is set before "reading papers". I had to do a whole lot of reading (and be at least involved in the writing of) papers in the research of my Master's.

by 0xTJ

1/12/2025 at 6:49:15 AM