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Ph.Ds in IT - Good or Bad for a Career?
LordNimon asks: "I'm thinking about getting my Ph.D. (I currently have a Master's) in computer engineering. I've heard all sorts of stories about Ph.Ds being less likely to find a job than their less-educated counterparts, but not a lot of credible evidence. So, I was hoping to hear from Slashdot readers on their experience. Do you think getting a Ph.D. in CompSci or CompEng will improve or worsen my career outlook in the industry? Has anyone witnessed someone being turned down for a job because he had too much education? If you're a hiring manager, what is your opinion on someone who has a Ph.D. and is otherwise already qualified for the position?"
"Carl and I have our Master's, but Homer just showed up when the plant opened."
My experience with having a PhD differed depending on which side of the
Atlantic I was on. When I was in the UK (where I got the qualification) I
definitely met resistance from some companies who asked me bluntly why I had
bothered to get a PhD if I wasn't going to do research, and seemed suspicious
that I might be too "academic" for their jobs. Only one company, ICI, was
positive about my doctorate stating that I would start at a higher pay grade
because of it.
In the US I've found that the PhD was a plus, people respect that you did
the work to get it and generally are interested by the topic I choose (security).
I have not had a negative reaction here.
In my current position where I hire people the more education the better, as
long as the person has the skills required for the job. So I have had to choose
between a person with a PhD who had just learnt C++ and a person with a Master's
who's spent 2 years coding in C++ then the Master's wins. What's going to be
important with your PhD is to demostrate that you have practical experience along
with the studies (could be through a summer job, for example).
John.
So, yes, having a PHD means that you will request a higher salary (which is ENTIRELY normal), therefore reducing the number of opportunities you can have. But is it a bad thing ? I do not think so. Maybe you'll end up looking for a job a bit longer, but you'll most likely get a high-pay job, with many benefits, and a job you will like, or in which you'll have some type of control/supervision.
Is a job the only reason why you want a Phd?
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
I not only saw this happen...I contributed to it.
We had an opening for an entry-level or mid-level developer position. Had a fellow apply with 2 masters and a Phd. I couldn't really see that the job would be challenging/interesting enough.
Most employers are not interested in being a way-station on someones career. I figure if I really need a job, tayloring the resume to suit the position is essential.
And since the number of people with PhDs is relatively small to begin with compared to the other groups, the perception that they don't get indistry jobs as often is easy to understand.
I'd say you should go for it and get the degree. I don't see why it would decrease your chances of getting a job in industry, and in the case of a tech downturn (again,) you could probably still turn to a job in academia.
Having just interviewed more people than I wish to remember I would say that a PhD doesn't hurt you when looking for a job. The problem is that if you have only gone to school for many years and have no real software development work under your belt, that will hurt you if your looking for a development job.
Of course if you want a research position then a PhD is the only way to go. You probably need to end up asking yourself what you want to do and figure out the best way to get there. Getting your PhD is right for some paths, going to work is right for others.
My PhD was based around networked information systems like the Web and Gopher, back in 1992-1996. My PhD improved my technical skill set a little, with extra programming experience, and early awareness of protocols such as HTTP, and standards such as HTML. But the real advantages came from the other part of earning a PhD - the ability to present your ideas to others, whether that's on paper, or stood at the front of a room. The ability to organise my thoughts, to analyse problems and come up with solutions, to think outside of the already known base of information and come up with new ideas, to manage my own time, these were all the skills that I picked up between graduating with my first degree, and being given my PhD.
As a manager looking to hire someone, I would expect someone with a PhD to have the skills mentioned above. But you can also pick up those skills "on the job", or just have them as innate abilities, so as ever it would come down to how you present yourself at the interview. Having a PhD would certainly not count against you.
Maybe I'm lucky, but I've never come across the "overqualified" argument myself, and I'm very happy that I had 4 or 5 years dedicated to researching something that I found extremely interesting, in a superb learning environment. I think the skills of analysis and logical thinking are very handy in the IT and programming enviroments.
- 2003-08-18 19:46:10 Ph.D.: Good or bad for career? (askslashdot,ed) (accepted)
I never said anything about IT in my post, because I don't consider a computer engineering or computer science to be part of IT.On a side note, apparently persistence helps when submitting stories:
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
1. More likely to leave for reasons beyond our control (even if we do our best to make work happy, they may decide to go off and do research or go teach)
2. Less likely to work well in the compromise-heavy environment required in commercial development (prefer an elegant solution; sometimes to the point of a huge productivity loss for everybody else, when all that was needed was a select-sort or some other quick get-it-done-because-it's-late solution)
I've worked with a lot of PhD's despite the two caveats above, and have generally observed that if you can get the right PhD in the right position, you can play to their strengths. This usually means hiring them for an architecture position where they can interact with professional organizations; do long-range planning; write neat prototypes; all that kind of stuff that heads-down developers rarely get to do (and which the PhD might be better at anyways).
However, putting a PhD in a development position has been uniformly disastrous at all three companies (huge, medium, and startup) I've worked at. Even at the senior developer level, there's too much compromising and too much "wiring code" to make most PhD's happy; and their tendency to pursue elegance at the expense of expedience no matter what the situation can slow everybody else down too.
It's conceivable, sure, but you're a lot more likely to get turned down for a job for a lack of education than too much education.
I'm not sure that's true. Certainly, my own experience of interviewing candidates is I'd rather hire a candidate with less education and more experience than one with more education and less experience. That comes from hiring people and seeing how they perform in the "real world". A PhD comes across as being too "theoretical", interested in abstracts and research, and not in day-to-day programming which might be just grinding out database code or fine-tuning GUIs. A Master's will stand you in good stead for "high level" job like a System Architect. But PhDs are too highly qualified for an entry-level coder (and are reluctant to take a "junior" position anyway), and not experienced enough for a senior position, so they're stuck in limbo.
Only do a PhD if you have a genuine interest in the research you want to do - for example, if you're deeply interested in AI anyway, a PhD will be a rewarding experience. But it is a big mistake to do a PhD purely as a way into the job market.
I have experience with this at our company. It's probably an isolated experience. It more applies to hiring PhDs that have lots of experience teaching that go into the real world.
Our company hired a professor from UNC. This is a professor that took over one of Fred Brooks' classes.
At first we left him to be a zealot for software engineering. We have a great process in place, so he was more the zealot for the entire company. Then the politics came down and forced him to work on a deliverable.
The product took about twice as long as expected. All that software engineering theory just didn't apply in the real world. Build environments, makefiles, message files, and all that stuff you use in the real world were foreign concepts. Unit testing was another issue - most builds that came down the pipe had a simple bug that prevented testers from using the build. It could be argued that much of his code was not readable as well. Lots of one letter variable names, and wrapper around functions that didn't need them. I mean, he did the equivalent of wrapping strlen with a function named StringLength. This was to improve readability.
He's already stated he wanted to join the bandwagon for teaching and instructing in the company, proclaiming the merits of process and all that stuff. He wants to tell people how to avoid the mistakes he's made. Bottom line: he's instructed for so long, he thinks this little experience further qualifies him.
In short, I can't say I recommend hiring a lifetime professor at a major college as a programmer. There's too much unlearning that needs to take place, and too little awareness of how software engineering process works in the real world.
Most of the posts you're seeing here are along the lines of "well, all the PhDs I know..." or "when I see a guy with a PhD...". And they're bull crap. I *have* a PhD. In computer science. Specializing in AI. And I also hack code rather well, thank you very much. So here's my two cents.
The whole premise of the question being put before us is broken. Will a PhD improve your career. I mean, really. NO ONE FINISHES A PHD WHO STARTED ONE SOLELY TO IMPROVE HIS CAREER. It might improve it. But that's not why you get one. If you're considering a PhD because of its job opportunities, then I have one thing to say to you: get a job!
You get a PhD because you want one down deep. Because you like being a scientist and a researcher. Because it's a goal you've had all your life. That sort of thing. If you don't care about a PhD, then holy cow, DO NOT GET ONE. What are you thinking?
It's going to be a painful half-decade too, consisting mostly of salaries around the $18K mark, or a whole-decade's worth of night classes and stress if you go the part-time route. People who try for PhDs because it will improve their employment position are the first people to drop out of the PhD program.
Yeah and from my experience, 1 year of experience and 5 years of BS doesnt take you very far :P
I wasn't gonna contribute, but since you're the one who asked the question and the original didn't limit it to IT, here goes:
...
(My PhD is in Mechanical Engineering)
Having done a PhD myself, the first question I would ask you is "Do you want a career in research?"
If your answer is definitely no, then don't even think about a PhD - you will be far better off getting the 3-5 years experience in the work force.
If you do want to go into research, particularly academic/university, but also increasingly government, then you really have to do a PhD (and be prepared to enviously eye off the paycheck of all your mates who work in private industry). As for private (corporate) research, my perception and what others have told me, is that the US (and Japan) seem to be far more willing to accept the PhD as a higher qualification. Europe/UK is not so bad, but there can be some tendency for the attitude of "why did you waste your time doing a PhD when you could have gone and gotten 3-5 years experience instead". It varies by industry, and I have noticed it a little more in those industries (like mech/civil/ee engineering) where a "certified practising" qualification or professional membership tends to be experience based. I should add that this is certainly not the majority of employers and is less likely at large multinationals than smaller consultancies. Australia on the other hand (where I got my PhD) is terrible for that attitude, which is why most PhDs eventually end up overseas doing research in another country, ironically enough. Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now
The fact that you are asking the question probably means you are somewhere in between the two extremes. In hindsight - and I know this will sound very elitist although it's not meant to - I don't think anyone who has not done a PhD can really understand just what is involved and what comes out of it. Depending on your motivation and how much spoon feeding you get/ask for you can gain an awul lot of valuable skillsets that will benefit you in industry - reading, presenting, communication (no, that doesn't include slashdot!), time management, planning, experimental design, writing, not to mention software packages (I benefited enormously from this) etc. You will also be highly specialised, which could actually work against you in terms of jobs because the jobs simply don't exist. You will lose 3-5 years of experience (most employers will not count your PhD as experience) and probably a large dose of sanity at the same time. When (if) you finish, you will have something you will be immensely proud of while being totally unable to explain to anyone exactly why this is. I honestly don't believe that the academic/intellectual side of a PhD is all that difficult (if you're applying for one, you're probably capable of the actual work itself) - the hard part is sticking at it for 3-5 years and all the roller coaster psychological/motivational ride that goes along with it.
My honest opinion is that unless you are seeking to work in research, you will benefit more (as in "the employer is more interested in") from the 3-5 years experience on your CV/resume than from having a PhD. The exception is if you are applying for work very related to area of your PhD.
Hope that helps!
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
I got my CS Phd in 1996 and haven't found a job that uses my research skills until just a few weeks ago. Read that again. I've waited seven years. BTW, I graduated from some of the top engineering schools in the country (Stanford and CU at Boulder).
Short story version of my post: employers don't typically need research skills, so they won't pay for them, and those that do are very hard to find.
Don't expect the jobs to come after you graduate unless you're already well-connected in the research community. Is your mom or dad a PhD? Then maybe you'll have a chance to stay out of the slow lane I found myself in.
Here's some free advice on whether to get a PhD after I spent 6 years getting mine.
Don't expect industry to find your research experience valuable unless they're hiring you as a researcher. You'll probably get paid the same as a MS candidate if you're a normal developer.
Even smart people don't make it through a Ph.D. program because either they don't have good chemistry with their advisor, or they can't sustain interest in their thesis topic. You've probably never had to study one thing for more than a year. Imagine studying it for 4-8 years.
If you don't hit it off with your advisor, you're probably sunk, so spend a lot of time networking and getting to know your potential advisor before starting.
Be fired up about a topic before you apply! It's not like BS or MS where you show up, read a lot, remember a lot, and get through. If you're not passionate about your subject, then after two years, getting through your thesis will feel like pulling your own teeth out.
In case you're interested, here's what happened when I left school. I didn't have connections or serious prospects for research jobs. As it turned out, my first job out of school was writing numerical C++ libraries for an internationally recognized software company. I got paid $50K/yr for creating two libraries that made the company some serious bank. After two years of working there, I was making $54K/yr. I only got offered a 20% raise when I threatened to leave, which I did anyway.
Then I taught at a university for two years but hated the fact that most students were only interested in the diploma, not the actual subject matter. So I had to deal with lots of cheating and poor performance. Remember, this was 1998 when someone with a 2.0 GPA could get hired as a network admin. I lasted two years there. My pay finished at $44K/yr as a full-time, tenure track professor.
I've slowly jumped around to government contracting and private consulting, which have paid better, but I probably would have gotten paid the same with an MS degree.
Now, I've finally found a job as a researcher in an industry setting. I waited seven years to find it. It will pay around $85K/yr with benefits.