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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?"
BS = (obvious)
PHD = Piled Higher and Deeper
Besides, I'm guessing that a lot of those PHD's independent projects have something to do or might eventually be integrated into google (PHDs researching information retrieval, web page ranking algorithms, you name it).
Quite a few. Any kind of scientific research, for example.
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.
On this page, they claim to have only 50 Pigeon Harvesting Dogs (PHDs). Now they're up to 700? Wow....
Good for Google, but let's hope they don't get carried away.
I remember when a local telecom company tried to up-size their education level. They insisted that *everyone* in the building have a university degree. No exceptions. This meant that janitors, cafeteria staff, etc. had to have university degrees to mop floors or serve burgers. As I recall, they changed this policy after about 6 months.
PHD = Permanent Head Damage
Once you get Ub3r Big and popular you need more JD's
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
This is what is known as "being over-qualified", and it's a killer. You wouldn't think that, after all that hard work in getting through school and finally getting a doctorate in a hard science or engineering, you'd have trouble finding work, but you do. Ever see a PhD working a helpdesk? Not a tech PhD, that's for sure.
Also, the amount of free time provided to PhDs at Google to do their own thing seems like it would be pretty standard - after all, they've hired the best and the brightest, how else do they expect to retain them? Isn't this standard at other companies, too?
Software piracy is victimless theft.
How many other companies put "Ph.D. a plus" in their want ads?"
How about: Every company which does any kind of research?
Seriously. In areas like biochem, getting a job (or at least, a good one) without a PhD is near-impossible.
That link required me to register. I noticed that if I typed the original URL into the browser, I was also required to register, but when I did a search on Google http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&ie=as cii&q=google&btnG=Search+News
the story for the NY Times was a regular link. So apparently they're using the HTTP-Referer now instead of partner=GOOGLE.
If you have a Ph. D and you're working at Google, you've got a great job. Ph. D jobs are worth the work for the degree, believe me. However, don't think you'll just be able to glide into getting that degree like you can with a BS... because professors will not just let you out! A Ph.D is designed to figure out which people actually can be creative and think of new stuff, and to keep out the "Ivan make basket" (you need communications skills) or "i learned it in 24 hours, and I think I'm a god now" (how many patents do you have? I thought so) folks.
stuff |
Bingo. Those were my thoughts when reading about that too. Most people nowadays don't just avoid PhDs or a CS education, they just want anyone competent.
They actually think they're cleverly saving costs by hiring the cheapest incompetent monkeys possible. After all, they just bought that magical "+3 cloak of productivity (+5 against bugs)" (i.e., some snake oil baroque framework or server software), so now they don't need anyone competent on those computers any more.
Plus, hey, everyone knows that programming computers is easy. Even the neighbour's geeky kid is doing it. Surely a drooling ex-burger-flipper off the street can do it just fine too.
(Funny how the same people who can't even program their VCR's clock, or keep spyware off their computer, nevertheless think that my job is something easy, eh?)
True story: I know of a team which actually hired people via reverse online auction. Whichever monkey wants the least money, gets the job. No skill needed. (Again, it's not a joke. Sadly.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
you seem to suggest that all google people do all day long is code. yeah, you're correct in naiveness. a lot of mathematics go into the type of stuff they do (the company founders were PhD dropouts, and the algorithm was something they were working on for thier theses).
even their cluster for their massive search index probably took some mathematical experimentation to determine a proper arrangement and setup.
I always thought Microsoft had more phd than Google. Wait, is it spelled fud or phd? See? Their phd has already phdded my fragile mind! Ah, phuk 'em.
I also reply below your current threshold.
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.
If you can finish original research and a dissertation, then most likely you can finish any project handed to you if you have acheived a PhD. Most likely! All of the "high-end degrees are unnecessary" whiners never had to teach, research, write, suffer an advisor, AND find time to sleep all for 12000USD a year and a tuition waver. My advisor makes every boss I have ever had look like Caspar Fucking Milquetoast. Science PhDs tend to be particularly motivated, but don't discount us social science types, just because we want our summers off and tenure someday. ;-)
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
> 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.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
It's not only a matter of internal PhDs at the company which help along their R&D efforts. Thousands of developers outside of Google are using the Google APIs to create new Google applications. Some notable hits are BananaSlug and GoogleAlert (the latter of which is indeed the product of a PhD, according to this article). The fact that Google is able to tempt so many to build on their platform is another sign of their popularity with the academic nerdy elite.
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!
At the same time, there's the group of people who can indeed code as well as, or even better than, you but never followed a formal education on it. Thefore they lack the precious PhD title.
:)
Just as a PhD is no guarantee that the person will grok what you're hiring them for - even if it's supposed to be right down their lane of education - the lack of a PhD doesn't guarantee that the person will not grok what you're hiring them for.
Of couse the odds are in favor of those with PhDs, not contesting that
You might want to get an extra PhD in "Punctuation and Capitalization in Modern Society".
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
You act like there is no middle ground between... "I write Javascripts to make cursors flash purty colors" and "I invent new programming languages with a soldering iron!".
The fact is that the majority of employment in the software development field falls between these two posts and does not generally require a degree (if some other conditions are met).
Having worked with both graduates and non-graduates (my category), I can say that there is very little distinction. I have worked with graduates that even if you explained something to them 10 times a day for 5 years they still wouldnt get it.
Infact I would even go as far to say that non-grads are generally slightly better, but generally the grads that bring the average down are those that came to CS for the money rather than talent, this is rarer in non-grads in the craft.
The bottom line seems to be that regardless of education, the most important attributes that make a good coder are a tendancy towards logic and analysis. This is a talent, not a university award.
I was applying for temp work and the first agency said I was over qualified and probably wouldn't enjoy the work they could give me. They said they'd look if they really wanted me to but then never got back to me with any jobs.
After that I went to some more temp agencies, but I dumbed down my resume. Instead of "software engineer" I was a "computer programmer". I put a 2.2 GPA (my school doesn't officially give out GPAs anyways...). Most of the skills in my skills list were removed and I replace them with my hobbies. All references to money, like how much money I saved a company, were removed.
Suddenly I had 2 offers for jobs at one agency and 1 offer at another agency. They were the same types of jobs that the first agency was giving out. It's surprising the number of companies willing to pay $14/hour for dumb ex-computer people.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Seems Google is proving that PhDs are worth the money. A stark contrast to the current conventional "wisdom"
What is innovation? - you can be coding monkey without a PHD - sure. If you like it then don't get a PHD. But where has the real innovation come from?
The transistor? Nuclear weapons? Drugs that save your ass? What other technology came out of Bell Labs?
The real innovation in our society is done for the most part by people with PHD's. Amazon.com, eBay - these are small innovations compared to the above. The groundwork was laid by the PHD's creating the underlying technology.
Boris
The article never even states how many Google employees have PH.D's anyway - only that it is probably more than 100 (out of 1900).
That is slightly over 5%. Sure, in many industries that would be very high but at a tech company - I am not so sure - and for a mature research organization that might be low (the drug industry or checmical companies).
However, the real advantage is that the *encourage* employees to perform independent research and that they hire people with that mindset. The PhD is a predictor of that mentality but the culture is what makes it work.
ARGH! I made a website for my mums boss last year. He was such an arsehole. He was convinced that computers were easy to use, programming is easy and all that crap. What topped it off, is despite computers being so easy, the only way he knew of opening outlook was to open internet explorer and click on the envelope at the top. i hate people.
Right, that's a pretty common mistake, and I see a lot of newbies make it. In fact, the actual relation is thus:
90% or more of start ups and product launches fail, mostly in the first year. That track record is not a
a good argument for using a 'traditional' business model. There is no doubt Google has beaten the odds, and they have done some things differently. I.e. the radical notion of becoming profitable *before* the IPO.
Google is a good case study. Everything they do should be reviewed for lessons in success.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
To be honest, when Google flew me to California for an interview, I was luke warm about the idea of working for Google because I love my life style living in the mountains of Northern Arizona.
:-)
However, after spending a day being interviewed by 6 extremely bright and creative people, I very much wanted the job (I did not get it, oh well). It is true that bright people want to work with other bright people. Anyway, it may sound strange, but I view the interview process as a very positive experience (also, after 30 years of working, it was the only job that I tried for that I did not get, so I was able to set most ego stuff aside). In addition to the interviews themselves, I got to have lunch with Peter Norvig and before I left the Google campus a nice person let me ride a Segway
It really is true that a few very good people are way better than many above average people.
One of the most fun times in my career was when I had a boss who has a PhD from MIT and hired many other PhDs and MSs from MIT - some of the best colleagues that I ever had.
Personally, I think that I am going to invest in Google stock, but I am likely to wait for a few months after the IPO (or make a low bid for the IPO).
-Mark
You are probably correct, from your point of view. A self taught coder, even a guy with a BS/CS or BA/MIS degree in his first year in a code writing position is likely to write a good tight sort routine or a nice tight SQL statement that is 12.7% faster than the bubble sort or select statement an older guy / guy with a few years of experience / guy with better 'credentials' might use - same way some AMD/ATI fanboy is going to put together a computer that uses liquid cooling to keep his overclocked record setting system running circles (18.9% faster!) around the off the shelf Dell system an older guy might be using.
/grin.
What you are describing right now is a very narrow scope of vision. It is perfectly ok, and even expected from a one year guy - don't get me wrong as I'm not bagging on you. But you are seeing instant gratification, lines of code per hour, faster embedded loops and search routines, and frames per second. What you are not seeing, if I had to guess, is long term maintainability, group cohesion, the ability to integrate different routines together or reuse the existing development effort going forward, the overall architecture of the bigger system, scalability, usability in a business environment, reduced downtime when problems do occur.
In the same way that the overclocking crew can make a single uberMachine run 12.6% faster than a machine off the shelf, a tightly focused coder can write small blocks of code that are quite a bit faster than something written by an old school coder. From a business perspective, however, neither is particularly attractive when considering a large scale rollout of a massive business initiative. You simply can't have users running computers that sound like jet engines to keep their overclocked CPUs cool, and you can't have coders winging it to shave CPU cycles at the expense of long term stability, usability, and interoperability. Sure, you can read your in-line assembly and make it work - but can the guy over in maintenance keep it working without screwing it up or needing to rewrite it from scratch because he doesn't understand what it does?
When (if) you stop to think through all of these things you will take longer to write your individual lines of code than the next generation of hot coders. For every five days on a project, a full day needs to be dedicated to understanding what the customer (internal or external) needs and envisioning how you will design it. A full day needs to be spent doing documentation (documenting the code, user dox, developer design and intent, interaction conventions, installation, maintenance routines, etc.) and delivering the product. A day designing the system architecure, and two days actually doing the work come between the envision and delivery. In theory you could sit down and do the actual 'work' in two days, but someone has to be responsible for the other stuff - not doing the other stuff is why projects fail.
A day will come that you decide that hand building your own machine and getting an extra 7 fps isn't worth the hassle and you will just order a Dell. There will also come a day that you spend time documenting how you understand the customer's expectations and go over that document with the customer before you start designing how the system will work, and you will do that design before you start to write the code. And there will come a day that you write an official separate document describing the code you just wrote. Look forward to that day, consider it your next Graduation Day, and celebrate that day. Because the day after that is the day the youngsters start hassling you because they code faster than you do
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
A phd doesn't imply anything. If it comes with good work, and good recs and from a top univ, then you might be considered smart and productive; if you haven't done anything with your 5/6 years, and your recs are bad, then you are an overpaid donkey. and every permutation in between.
just as technology follows a path from small company/innovative to commoditization, so does ed requirements in an industry; its not that anyone needs a phd, but many cutting edge technologies come out of universitys, and those people have phds.
Google is fortunate - they have a monopoly posistion (at least de facto for now) and that allows them to hire top talent; as soon as the cash flow drys up, the phds go; look at the formerly world class att res labs.
There are a small number of companys that consistently do good science, such as ibm and corning and 3m; i suspect they hire phds because innovation is a character trait of people who are not interested in money, and those people often wind up getting phds, because it is a fun way to get to play with toys and do cool stuff.
Alas, my experience with Ph.Ds in the workforce has been less than satisfactory. I can recall one gorilla with a Ph.D at a former employer who could not seem to get anything done. Poor slob; his first manager, the poster child for the definition for PHB herself, could not seem to find a way to dismiss him. Instead, she transferred him, with no warnings or cautions to the receiving organization. He ended up working on a project I was on. It was dismal! ... It took close to a year for the company to "get it" and release him.
Yet, my last boss at my last job before I retired had a Ph.D. A most brilliant fellow. Able, capable, competent, easy to work with. I suppose that in retrospect, I stayed even longer than I might otherwise have because he, and his boss too, were so easy to work with.
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.
On a side note, The University of Northern British Columbia, UNBC, has recently halved their tuition for Master degrees and removed tuition completely for their PhD programs. Granted, it'll still be a couple of years before they offer a PhD in CompSci, but one can't complain about being free.. I guess they're doing this because they want to become a more research oriented university - and it sucks to live in northern BC... trust me, I know.. (On the bright side, there are some great profs and a really low student/prof ratio. And the cost of living - I'm paying $300/month cnd, everything included.)
I think another poster hit the nail on the head when he said that PhDs are overqualified in a teeny, tiny area of study that only they actually care about. However, the "Doctor" title brings out the Ego in many of them, disabling their critical thinking skills (i.e. - "This project is a total waste of time and will never come to anything"). In essence, they're the reason many failed projects go horribly overbudget before they finally die.
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...
But home manny MCSEs do they have?
This
I do computer support for an engineering department on campus. Means I deal with supporting PhDs (and masters students and undergrads). For many of the PhDs, this isn't an unfair generalization. They are so focused on their one little area of expertise, that they seem to loose all basic knowledge. This is an engineering department here, so people should have a little technical skill. None the less I've solved printer problems that stumped a room full of masters and PhD students by turning the printer on (really, twice). They ought to have the basic electrical knowledge and problem solving skills to figure this out. The DID at one time to pass the undergrad courses.
Now that's not to say there aren't some really smart PhDs out there. We have them here too and they are fun to work with. But there are plenty that aren't.
Working here has really shown me that having a PhD doesn't mean your smart, just means that you could play the game long enough and well enough.
By the time one becomes a PhD, they should know what is a significant, doable problem in their field. Masters students or beginning PhD students oftern choose the wrong-size problem. It may be something triviable and already doen by someone else. Or something that may take decades and gigabucks. A right-size problem can be done in about two years. Sometimes an advisor lets the student learn the hard way by letting the student work on a wrong-size problem. The coursework and skillset difference between a masters and PhD is often not that great.
Sure you might have nearly 100% turnover, but on what time scale? Someone who is a PhD is probably gone first chance they get, maybe even a month or two if they can find a better job that quick. Somone entering in to the tech industry you can probably get a few years out of. Hiring someone for a couple of months is just not worth it. The search procedure is time consuming (and therefore expensive) and it DOES take time to train someone to work efficently, even if they are highly (or over) qualified. If they skip after a couple months, after you finally have them trained, it's a looser for you.
Also lots of education does not equal highly competent, espically in customer service type jobs (which helpdesk is). Most of the professors here would be TOTALLY unsuited for the help desk and doa much worse job than our students that ear $8/hour. Even the professors best suited would only be on par with a deceant student. Yes they could be trained, but that takes time and if they skip as soon as that's done, it's a loss. Training takes staff time (and therefore money) in additon to meaning less efficecy from the person being trained.
who owns the fruits of their research. Most employment contracts in high-tech companies are pretty anal about that. No matter when and how you develop the code, even if your own spare time and using solely your own hardware and software, the company 0wnz0rz the code. And there are also provisions about conflict of interest...
It would be interesting to know how google manages all this mess.
There are two reasons to IPO--to generate capital to expand or to cash out. Certainly I can't image Google needs the former, and while I don't begrudge anyone the right to cash out on their creation, I hope they realize that by definition, they're giving up ownership. Maybe they're strong enough leaders, and will start off with enough shares to be ok--I certainly hope so becaue the list of technology visionaries who were ousted from their own company is already too long.
I guess I am cynical today.
Vote Quimby.
Fascinating threads, both on- and off-topic. /. comments into a broad picture. Not just "a Ph.D. is worthless/you can't do anything without a Ph.D." but a whole array of different points.
As is often the case, the diversity of perspectives makes
Not much to add, probably, but my $0.02 anyway, focusing on my own perspective which happens to be exactly as worthy (neither more nor less) as anyone else's.
I'm a Ph.D. candidate in a non-tech field. You can't realistically be hired for academic jobs in my field without a Ph.D. and it's rather hard to be hired even with a Post-Doc. Of course, a lot of people I know work with "only" a B.S./B.A. or M.S./M.A. but none of them has the type of job I'm aspiring to, which happens to be academic.
There's a lingering feeling that college degrees are like honorific titles that "institutions of higher learning" thrust upon bright people. Of course, this feeling seems stronger with people who associate education with employment than with people who are driven by their passion for knowledge. For a variety of reasons, I happen to belong to the latter category: I'm an academic because I'm passionate about select academic subjects. Though I'm really looking forward to other phases in my academic career, I thoroughly enjoy the life I chose. Thing is, I'm not the only one like that. Sure, some grads constantly complain about not being free to do what they please but academia's incredibly satisfying for those who do it for the "right reasons." Yes, I'm helplessly naive in thinking I'll get a tenure-track position relatively soon, but since high school I've been prepared (by advisors, peers, etc.) to fight my way through.
In other words, contrary to popular belief, you don't begin your career after you get your degree. Your degree is an acknowledgement of a certain of things you have done at an educational institution and your career began with your choices.
Interestingly, I've been looking for menial/mindless work before I take up a teaching fellowship. It seems that my résumé showed me to be overqualified to flip burgers or force people to buy security systems but I eventually found work in a nearby café. It might surprise some, but I'm quite happy about this. The reason is, it's not necessarily about the money. It's about doing what you like and liking what you do.
Most of the time, doing so goes with inspiration, perspiration, fun, friendship, and most likely some beer.
Alexandre http://enkerli.wordpress.com/
...i'm looking for a job that says "college drop-out a plus" that doesn't involve cleaning solvents.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
The first question they threw at me is a statistics/probability theory one. It's like how many bits you need to randomly assign a number to each person. My math was rather rusty then and failed that. The other ones are developing some algorithms under a very tight space/time constraint or both. I did better on those but still couldn't get an on-site interview.
jpenguin AT the google email service
I don't know what PhDs you or Soros know, but most of the ones I've been lucky enough to work with have theirs exactly because they have presence of mind, adaptability, and the experience of taking an idea and forging something new about it.
Also, configuring a W2k proxy server is roughly equivalent to plumbing, and has nothing to do with CS.
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Here come the ignorant assholes who will knock on getting a Ph.D. because they can't get one. Sure, I'll accept that a Ph.D. isn't terribly practical for many jobs. Our department is hiring programmers right now, and I would probably veto a Ph.D. applying for our junior software engineer position. But I am sick of hearing everyone with lesser education cover for their insecurity and lack of accomplishment by knocking higher educational goals.
I work as a "Senior Software Engineer", doing serious C++ programming including use of Win32 API, Winsock, OpenSSL, MySQL, etc in a multi-threaded multi-server multi-system programming environment which powers telecommunication systems which require very robust programs capable of maintaining the best uptimes possible. There are many developers who do work that makes my job look simple, but considering I only have an AA in CompSci, I think I am doing fairly well. I work on the same level as individuals who have BSCS in CompSci and some who have 20 years experience in development. However, I don't have a lack of appreication for their superior education and experience. I am working towards my own BSCS, Master's, and maybe even Ph.D. someday. Not to try to bring in a major paycheck (I already do very well), and not to try to be better than those who only have a BSCS, but because Computer Science is my field. It is my study, my hobby, and I have dedicated my life to it. Since I consider myself a (budding) Computer Scientist, it is simply my responsibility and my desire to continue to advance in the field and learn everything I can about all of the many aspects of Computer Science.
People with vocational certificates (MCSE, CCNA, etc), are often fine employees to do the work they've been trained to do. I find Bachelor's degrees in Computer Science from trade schools like Coleman College to be offensive mockeries of a real BSCS, which I have worked for years to gain, while they took a few classes in outdated languages like COBOL and FoxPro. (We have one such person working in our customer service department.) But people who actually attend a university, any real university, and learn the science of computers, are a league above those who would criticize what they cannot attain.
Just because you couldn't make it in college doesn't mean college has no value. Just because you didn't stick it out long enough to learn something, doesn't mean colleges don't teach CompSci principles which no self-taught person will understand and appreciate. The only reasons to not advance your education further are your own reasons, so to attempt to apply them to everyone and make blanket statements about higher educational levels than your own seems more like a desperate attempt to cover your insecurity that there might be people out there who know more than you do, even if your non-tech manager and your family members think you're the God of Computers.
I've had 2 experiences with PHDs...
1. He was hired in a Director position he did not merit. ("oooh! Ahhh! a PHD! He so smart. He make us money!"). Pissed everybody off. Had a 24/7 "I'm the shit" smirk on his face, but little people skills. Had some worthy goals but really, didn't understand the industry he was hired into.
2. Needed a lead developer to port over a PC game and lead 3 other programmers under him. Hired a PHD. He demanded and got a high salary. He looked great on paper. He aced the company's tests. He talked the talk. Unfortunately, after 2-3 months he had jack all to show for. His social skills were nil. He didn't understand the technology involved. He wasted our time. He got fired.
A PHD means jack all if you're not productive.
I think part of the problem is people assume a PHD = genius. It doesn't.
I worked as one of two junior programmers at a startup (now dead), which at its height had approximately 10 or 11 people on the software side of things), and 5-6 of those were PhDs (and 6 or so hardware guys, I think half also had PhDs). Most all of these guys had very impressive resumes/CVs, and were being paid enormous salaries... though some were light on working in industry
Anyway, we were a small startup and I had heavy interaction with basically all members of both the software/hardware teams working on basically parallel processing. To make a long story short, having a PhD didn't lead to a correlation between being good at implementation OR design, or really anything. Out of 5-6, only one was truly good at actually programming/implementing, but I figured their strength was in their ability to help out designing some of the horrendously big and complicated stuff, and the algorithms underlying. However after over 2 years of work at this company, many code reviews, design meetings, etc, it was pretty clear having a PhD in EE/Comp Sci didn't particularly mean you had a handle on algorithms or design, either. I still vividly remember a presentation over a design prototype one of the PhDs had developed on his own (approximately 1-2 months of solo work) that was absolutely ripped to shreds at the most fundamental levels during a code review meeting. It was actually embarrasing to be in the room.
Anyway, my experience there pretty much killed whatever mystique or respect I previously had behind having a PhD. To me it seems to mean you 1) Did a research project, which may or may not have been relevant to anything at one point 2) Had 5+ years to do it 3) May or may not have learned a lot about the subject. I don't mean to belittle it, but I think in general theres a *lot* more fluff surrounding a PhD than meat.
If you've got a NY Times link that requires registration, you can skip it by copying and pasting the original NY Times URL directly into regular Google Search.
If the article is relatively new, it will probably tell you "Sorry, no information is available for the URL" but will then offer you a link to the address you just typed in. The HTTP-Referer will then be google.com and you can read it without registration.
A few extra keystrokes, but gets around the registration process every time.