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Google's Ph.D. Advantage
Frisky070802 writes "The New York Times reports on Google's success and desire in hiring Ph.D.'s (free registration required). It says that Google's willingness to let every employee spend 20% of his or her time on an independent project is a compelling motivator and that they estimate that Google has as many Ph.D.'s working for it as Microsoft, which is 30 times larger. How many other companies put "Ph.D. a plus" in their want ads?"
Google is proof that using a smarter aproach is often the best way to solve a problem. If Google tried to use the naive clustering model their expenses would have massivly higher and their scalability and fault tolerance would have been much lower. It seems that Google realizes that the best way to hire and retain the people that will continue to come up with the smarter aproaches is to offer them things that not many other employers are, time to do what intellectually stimulates them for instance.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Although having an advanced degree is great, some of the best tech sector innovators come without advanced degrees. -- Also most employees spend more than 20% of their work time on personal goals anyway.
A bunch of Tech Stuff
...goes a long way towards keeping your company productive. I agree totally. Having an army of PHD's doesn't guarantee anything unless they enjoy what they are doing and able to use all their skills effectively. It also helps if they able to branch off into things that they enjoy as hobbies for a time as well. The more flexibility an employee has in doing their job (within reason) the more successful they will be in completing the job. Just watch all the other companies following Google after this becomes a big success.
Yeah...but Google doesn't need programmers. They need brains. Sure it is easy to write code and do it well without a degree in Computer Science. But to create an algorithm that effeciently searches millions if not billions of pages and returns the most relavent thing throughout the ENTIRE Internet is a little daunting and takes someone who has had some advanced training.
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
> advanced degress != coding ability/work output
If your measure is number of lines of code per day, then perhaps not.
If your measure is new algorithms and technologies that no-one has ever thought of before then I'd say the advanced degrees are a little more pertinent.
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The question is: is it really relevant for most jobs? I doubt it.
Anyone can hire PhDs. Even the government. But there may be a corporate culture that doesn't take risks, that cares too much about short-term profit, that is affected by political considerations. In Google, the nerds seem to run the show. They have the business people, and great branding. But the technical side of things is the priority.
Mod parent up!
There is a BIG difference between coding and what you would want a PHD in CS for. Shure there are lots of people that can code most applications. It does not take a PHD two write a CMS, accounting system, point of sale, or even a spreadsheet. We just hired a programmer with a BS in CS. He did not know what a hash was! I bet he could not code a quick sort to save his life much less decide which sort to use for a given task. Now if you want to set up a server farm that can handle billions of searchs a day then you might want to invest in a PHD or two. A person that has a PHD might not be any better than a really talented person with out one but you can bet that a person with a PHD is not dumb, or lazy, and knows how to learn.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
"3M for example....you're allowed to work on whatever you want for 15% of your time.
At 3M, you used to be allowed to work on whatever you want for 15% of your time. Thanks to the new CEO/regime from GE, the 15% "Innovation Time" is quietly going the way of the dodo. The focus on stock price over all else (such as real, tangible, actual profits) will be the death of many a formerly powerful and truly innovative company, I expect.
He now works as a computer programmer.
This may seem a little weird, but if you think about it, a PhD [hopefully] shows that you're willing to apply yourself to something and do hard work. People with PhDs should be the most intelligent of the bunch, as they managed to get the thing.
So Dad's PhD is a prestige degree - from Oxford, no less. It shows that he has skills beyond merely chemistry.
im in ur
I like to see how google has adapted bits of the opensource development model to fit their needs. Just let people do it because they want to do it, don't force them. See, even the deleopment model is is free (as in freedom). =P
If this isn't karma whoring, I don't know what is. They aren't using the "opensource development model", they are giving their employees what they want. You're pandering to the slashdot crowd and spinning it the right way to get your comment up to +5.
I swear, these "Dude, that cool thing is totally like open source! Isn't open source great?" comments are really getting old, and they're generally just a bunch of bullshit made up to please the mods.
A PhD isn't about learning facts. It's about learning HOW to do research. It doesn't matter that one's topic is the The Hydration of Tri-Calcium Silicate". The important thing is that when told to find out something new about "The Hydration of Tri-Calcium Silicate", you can do so. The same person can also be told to find out something new about search engine algorithms, and hopefully do a good job of it.
If you're good at what you do, there'll be good jobs for you no matter what path in life you choose. If you're a lazy slackabout, then you're screwed no matter what. There's no "right" or "wrong" answer about whether a PhD is a good choice -- it's about whether it's a good choice for YOU. This is the real reason why people tell you to do something you love -- chances are, you'll be enthusiastic about it and do it well, and success will follow naturally.
I am about to finish my Phd in CS and during these long years, I came to realise that part of the Phd process is (maybe) to figure out what is this all about... be able to answer questions of the form "Does it help me to find a job?", "Should it be useful?" etc.
:-)
My take on this is as follows... It's not about finding a job... it's not about adding another bullet in a CV to impress someone... it doesn't have to be useful or practical.. it doesn't have to cure cancer (although some people do this for a phd)...
I think a phd is a long thought exercise. You prove to yourself (and to a bunch of other people) that in a finite amount of time, you can understand an area, the issues involved, and you can come up with something innovate, something new... a new problem or an new solution to an old problem...
how to get a job after all that, is an orthogonal issue... maybe deserving another phd...
I have a MS in EE. I was offered a scholarship to do a PhD. However during my MS thesis work I worked closely with PhD candidates and suffered perhaps a fraction of what they did. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy what I do, but I eat corporate shit for $$$ alone, so I declined. My observations are as follows:
1) PhD is a lot of work for yourself, and 1000x more work doing your professors busy work (papers etc.)
2) PhD slave labor wages are less than those of any given malaysian factory child if you count the total number of hours worked and divide that into your scholarship/stipend/grant/etc.
3) If you are not a US citizen/permanent resident and are on a scholarship to get a PhD in the US, you are fucked. Bring the vasoline and bend over.
4) If your goal is simply to get a degree to get more money, stop at your masters.
5) If your PhD is not in a subject actively investigated by the corporate world be willing to accept an academic position after getting your degree, or find another subject. It's heartbreaking to see people get their degree and realize they are either stuck in academia or worse, take a job in industry doing work outside their expertise making the same they would have as a masters (i.e. degree worthless).
6) If at all possible GET A COMPANY TO FUND YOUR PHD! This is harder now than it used to be, but it is THE way to go. I can't recommend it enough, if I personally thought there was money in a PhD this is what I'd do myself. If your professor administrates whatever finances your degree, and you are above broccoli intelligence, he WILL try to hold you as long as he can (5-7 years in most schools). If your company is paying the bill they are quite good at getting you in and out ASAP. Avg stay of corporate funded PhD students in my experience was 3 years. Do this!
7) Stupid people can get PhD's far easier than smart people. Simply put, professors want stupid people out of their hair, if they can't wash em out, they graduate em. Just like elementary school.
If you believe that the sole reason for getting a degree is to gain knowledge, then no. If you believe that a university education is about learning to learn, then yes.
A BS (BSc, BA in the UK) demonstrates (in theory) an ability to follow a prescribed course of study at the pace set by the lecturers but with the self-discipline required to go to the library rather than goof off. You should make a good worker bee who doesn't need to be continuously supervised.
A MS (MSc, MPhys, MChem ...) demonstrates an ability to function independantly within broad parameters to achieve a general objective set by your supervisor. You should be capable of working at a remote site without seeing your direct boss for six months (and you should be capable of picking up the phone when you need help - rather than just sitting and stewing until someone demands to know what you have been doing for months).
A PhD demonstrates that you can determine your own goals, demand information and contributions from a wide range of individuals (even people who are senior to you in an organisation), set your own schedule, work towards a project goal that is years in the future and say with a tough project longer than some people stay at one company in Si Valley (at least during the "new job every six months" boom :) Furthermore, you have demonstrated that you don't need someone to have done it before - you have proved you can create something original!
Of course, these are all grotesque generalisations, and I know several PhDs I wouldn't trust to drink a glass of water without close supervision and paramedics standing by. Equally, there are other paths that demonstrate the same skill set. Furthermore, it can be hard to maintain one's non-conformist, independant spirit when one is producing a PhD thesis that must, by definition, conform to your examiner's views.
I've found that there are two types of CS:
Type 1 is the type you're thinking of. None of them generally need anything beyond a BS, and their coursework was mainly focused in 'software engineering' disciplines.
Type 2 is the type that develops new algorithms and does research. They need the postgrad work, and their coursework focuses on algorithms, math, and suchlike.
I really think that we need to split these degrees apart; the first should become 'software engineering' or something similar, to help convey the difference between the application-oriented (engineering) and the theory-oriented (science).
(disclaimer: I am a EE who does algorithms; I work with type 2 when I'm doing algorithm design and type 1 when we need implementation, and appreciate both)
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