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PhD's in the Industry?
Taylor Flagg asks: "I'm about to finish up with my bachelor's in Computer Science, and am looking into graduate school options. My advisor is persuading me to go right into the PhD program but I know I don't want to be stuck lecturing for the rest of my life. Are companies in the industry hiring PhDs, and if so, what are their roles and is anything different expected of them (aside from making more cash)?"
I've heard it as MS = "More Shit" but yeah, it's an oldie.
;)
After four years of real schooling, you'd think most graduates would know whether they want 2-4 more years of the same...
I have only one piece of concrete advice, and that is to make up your mind NOW. Don't decide to pick up school again 15 years down the road -- that is a waste of time, resources, and effort. Education is for the young.
Other than that, my only advice is the standard "follow your heart" pitch. Don't continue school unless you seriously enjoy it, or have an equally serious desire for extra cash
The unofficial
http://www.google.com/jobs
A good rule of thumb is that you should only do a PhD if you think you'll enjoy the PhD process for its own sake: working for several years on a really hard problem that nobody else has ever been able to solve. A PhD typically takes 4 to 9 years. (4-5 years is typical in the humanities, where grad students are a financial liability to their departments. 5-7 is more typical for people in the sciences whose research goes well, and 7-9 for people in the sciences who find out that their first project simply didn't work.) You can't possibly justify 4-9 years of extremely hard work on the basis of the (non-academic) job it'll get you, or the increased earning potential. If all you wanted was a fancy job with a high salary, you'd be much better off putting the 4-9 years of extremely intense effort into a job.
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I disagree with the "do it now" statement. Do it when you feel like you *need* to do it, and at no other time.
By the sounds of the original poster's question, I would definitely encourage him/her to NOT go into grad school. If you're not sure that you want to go, then you -don't- want to go, period. Grad school is a huge commitment and a lot of work. If you know deep in your heart that it's where you belong and it's what you have to be doing, you can survive and even enjoy it and feel good about it. Otherwise, it's a major drag and you hate every minute of it.
I'm a grad student right now, and I'm *loving* every (atrociously difficult, mind-bending) minute of it. It's the hardest thing I've ever done, but it's worth it. A couple of my friends are here for the career benefit they perceive, not because they truly want to do it. They are miserable, depressed, and they can't wait to just get out of here.
Do not go now just because you think you will never have the chance again and you don't want to miss it. Wait. If there comes a time in your life when you feel driven to go to grad school, THEN do it and forget all the naysayers. If it never comes, then don't look back.
Funny enough, a good two thirds of my fellow grad students are returning to school after anywhere from 2 to 10 to 30 years of working. Most of us are here for the love of it. A few have returned for career boosts, and they're the most miserable.
In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
But I have known some worthless PhD's and some pretty smart Cisco Guys, so maybe the comparison is apt.
I just have a bachelor's, these thoughts are way above my pay grade...
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
Get a PhD. if you love your field. The process is very demanding in just about every way there is to be demanding. You get paid next to nothing, you teach only the course professors don't want to teach and the work is considerably more difficult than anything else you've done in school by orders of magnitude.
Even in a field like mine, Philosophy, where a PhD. is required just to get interviewed for a position getting the degree is incredibly difficult and often tedious. In a field where you can get a good job without one there is little incentive to get a PhD. beyond personal desire.
Succinctly, if someone where to ask you, "Why are you in the doctoral program?" Your first answer should be, "Because I can't imagine myself doing anything else." If that isn't your first answer then you should probably do something else.
Even comparing 1st year with 4th year. In 1st year, we would go through 1 chapter of a textbook a month. In 4th year, it was about 1 chapter per week. These days, I try to get through 1 technical book a month and 1 non-technical book a month. That's on top of the 50 hour work weeks that I put in.
It's just a whole different ball game. If you continuely challenge yourself, you will adapt.
Btw, this is not a knock against academia. Do what you love. Do what challenges you. If that happens to be academia, go with academia.
I got my Masters degree in computer science because I read the course descriptions and said "I gotta have some of that."
If you aren't drooling over those courses like I was, I can't recommend post-grad work at all.
If you also don't know you want that PhD, but you are drooling over the course descriptions, consider a Masters. My institution offered a course-only Masters program, and I took that, because I looked around and I thought the Masters projects were a joke, and I figured I was better off working on my own. Can't say if I was right yet but it has at least been fun.
Whoa! Don't listen to this guy. It's obvious that he hasn't the first clue as to what it takes to get a PhD at a good school in a difficult feild such as computer science or mathematics.
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PhDs are definately hired, but usually right into a management position. Also, you will end up looking at different type of jobs, usually research related rather than simple a progammer or similar.
Only hiring PhDs:
http://www.research.att.com/areas/stat/res
Again, mostly PhDs only:
http://domino.research.ibm.com/hr/research
Note the mention of 'postdoctoral-researcher' at the bottom of each job description:
http://research.microsoft.com/about
Again, *requiring* PhDs:
http://www.caprion.com/content/careers/bio
And I could go on and on. Basically you will be looking at totally different types of jobs. Jobs that the parent can't even get! And yes, they will pay you well. But no, you can't get a job doing basic programming easily. You are over qualified.
First off, let me say that I have a PhD. However, I didn't do it straight out of my BSc, I took a couple of years out, did an MSc, took a couple more years and then did my PhD. Even then I was only persuaded to do the PhD because it was clear I was suited to it, something I didn't know when I did my BSc. I think too many people go straight into a PhD from their undergraduate work and these people can often struggle. I have seen a number of students who did well at their BSc but who didn't fit into the PhD style of work.
Is it worth having a PhD? I did mine because I was told by someone I respected that if I didn't do it then I would always be someone's assistant rather than ever get to lead my own research. This is true within academia but is less true in the commercial world. If anything, a PhD can make you less employable because you may be seen as too expensive, too 'brainy' or too much of a threat to the higher ups. If you think about getting into management the MBA people are likely to look down on you as a PhD because they will think you are far too interested in research and less interested in making money. This is a sweeping statement I know but it does come from my personal experience.
So, a PhD is hard work, the effect on your pay and job prospects is likely to be minimal unless you want to stay in academia, and people who don't have one will consider you a threat and you may have to hide the fact that you have it. IMHO.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
Get some input from recent PhD grads who are now working in industry, and some who have been in the industry for several years. Contact the school that you are looking to study at and ask them for contact information for some of their recent grads. Most schools will also have overall statistics about where their PhD grads have gone and what they are doing. I would think that the ACM would have some data as well, but I am not sure that they do. Most Slashdotters are not going to be in a very good position to answer your question. Ask the people who are.
That's your fault then. You should call them Computer Scientists not software developers. Computer Science is the theoretical aspect of computers such as classifying languages, developing new paradigms, and developing more theories. Computer Science is not meant for "practical" usage. If you want someone fairly highly skilled get a Software Engineer. If you want a great coder get someone from a community college. They are usually trained on specific tools (e.g. .Net) and are expected to know the ins-and-outs of all applicable apps including Microsoft Project Manager.
I am one of the few people in my school who is really interested in Computer Science. My major interest is in the semantics of programming languages and how they attempt to structure the way they look at problems. *THIS* is Computer Science and please do not complain when I write shitty assembler. I'm not knocking anything but there are specific degrees for specific career paths. Computer Science ==> Software Developer is not one of them.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
It seems to me that the situatin is a bit different in North America, in Europe, you need a Masters' in order to do a Ph.D. (It's actually a bit more complicated than that, but with the reform, it should be this simple from now on).
Even if you want to stay at the university, you have to consider that a lot has to do with politics and the chance if you get a professorship depends on this.
I would think you need to do a Ms before starting on a Ph.D., just to get the 'practical' and 'theoretical' background required.
You have to consider that, once you have a Ph.D., the expectations in industry are also larger: if you just want to 'score', go right to industry; if you like a challenge, get the degree (challenge 1) and next fulfill the high expectations of your employers... (challenge 2..n).
And most importantly, don't do it for the money (in any case): do it because you are interested in the field and have a passion for it; you like to dig into a problem where little is known of and you don't get to sleep easily unless you figured out the problem... If you have this, you will not mind the pushing around that much and still love what you are doing and work with collegues with the same passion.
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
If you plan on being technical at all in your job, get a Masters, but not a PhD. I have a Masters in Computer Science, and I get plenty of respect. However, anybody with a PhD gets treated like they can't handle the simplest of technical tasks, and for the most part, it's true. They sit around and write documents that are of no use to technical people and spout off ideas that never work in practice. The PhDs that can handle technical stuff try to keep people from finding out that they're doctors. (Yes, this is a generality, but stereotypes are born out of reality)
Plus, a Masters will get you more pay, while a PhD might keep you from getting a job, because companies feel that they can't afford to hire you.
However, do decide now. If you don't get the Masters right after your Bachelors, it's not really worth your time. If you wait, you'll be forced to just go to some local college or university rather than choosing one that's really suited to you. You'll get a poorer education and it'll be more difficult to balance work and school.
I agree with But no, you can't get a job doing basic programming easily. You are over qualified. But would add it may be difficult to get initial advanced programming job. You may be underqualified. The problem is there is a perception of a large gap between the two. I'm also willing to bet someone just finishing a Csci degree goal was not to be management.
Perhaps I sound a bit bitter, because I am... I was a bioinformaticist, who slowly devolved to a soulless code whore (and then worse) when the money shifted. The management notes came from feedback as I wandered further from my niche looking for a better job. I'd disagree with PhDs are definately hired, but usually right into a management position, because that did not happened from personal experience (or others I knew). In one case I was explicitly warned the interviewers would filter all 'science stuff' and to leave advanced degrees off the CV. They were right.... the money was right... my life forked from what I expected...
The kicker is I *do* know how much work it was for me and how much it was worth to them. How does the poster go, "sometimes your purpose in life is only to serve as a warning to others?"...
And yes, you listed some of the exceptions I mentioned. To that, I would also look for positions that required clearances and/or heavy research departments.
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Most shops avoid hireing fresh PhDs unless they really need them. Everything (H)elix1 wrote is basically true. The fear of an overqualified employee leaving is a valid concern. It is an employers market right now, so employers can be selective.
In contrast many employers appreciate an employee who earns a PhD while on the job. Part time graduate work is quite common. Even the few R&D shops that really appreciate PhDs seem to prefer PhDs earned while on the job over fresh PhDs.
I started with a BSEE then got a Ph.D. in Physiology because I was interested in Biomedical Engineering. I did 3 years of a post-doctoral research at Harvard and Columbia and then did the academic thing for 7 years. During all that time I did a fair amount of software development for my research. When I had it up to my earlobes in academic and medical school crap, I tried various stints as a programmer, finally getting some good positions doing S/W development work. My first one outside of academia was landed because I had a Ph.D. and the owner of the company said that I would have good problem solving skills, even though I lacked specific experience. This was a stepping stone to my current position where I am a senior S/W engineer earning a good 6 figure salary. Again, I had some requisite experience even though I lacked formal S/W engineering training. I would say that the degree did open doors for me.
Would I do it again? Probably not however. I was burned out for two years following my dissertation! However, I had an ulterior motive for going to graduate school--it kept me out of Vietnam!
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
Simple math demonstrates that most PhD's don't go onto a teaching-style academic position. People in said positions have students under them, and tend to graduate at least one new PhD every year or two. That's Fibbonaci growth--we'd be overrun with PhD's if that were the case. The majority go into industry.
The result of getting a PhD is two-fold: it teaches you to think/do totally orginal things on your own, and teaches you to focus on one small problem. Those two qualities are universally useful, but because of the intense focus, you're likely to be inexperienced in fields not related to your research area. OTOH, you know a *lot* about your research area. Systems and architecture are areas that industry is always hiring (even during "hiring freezes"). However, both areas can take 2 to 3 years longer to complete, an especially tough row to hoe.
You can get jobs in industrial research labs, MS Research, Lucent, Bell Labs (still exists, just smaller), IBM (at multiple sites), and just about any other large company. You can get jobs in development, if you know something specialized and hard. AI and networking are approved of by game companies, for example. You can get jobs at government research labs (LLNL, Sandia, Argonne, etc.). And of course there's work in academia, from pure teaching to a research position.
Don't expect to get rich doing it though; you're taking years out of your life to earn crap wages for hard work, and although starting pay once you're done is good, you won't recoup the lost earning potential of those years. OTOH, check out what the professors at good research universities drive...