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There are people for whom PhD is worth. If you are those people don't read this. It's easily knowable if you are or not. Now for people like me: Give me at le

There are people for whom PhD is worth. If you are those people don't read this. It's easily knowable if you are or not. Now for people like me: Give me at least a million USD to invest in next PhD in CS. The most BS form of PhD is PhD in CS. It chirps your life away, with no clear benefits. It doesn't scale well enough in a field where innovation is rapidly progressing. Also when you are being underpaid while working for someone else's vision. You can't do what you want, because "supervisor" may not like it. And once you come out of your PhD, who is going to hire you? Industry or academia? Well even in academia, there are tons of PhD already, so goodluck competing that. And in industry goodluck finding that sweet industry that requires research. I was always sold by the dream that PhD gives time and opportunity to involve in high leverage problems. Turns out it is a just another churn. What value does this paper bring? Nothing. When most of valuable work is being done in industry and groups collaborating across nations. And to be in such group, you have to have background. (People whom I mentioned earlier) Instead of wasting 5 yrs on CS Phd, invest on one single company. That will bring value x10 than stupid PhD.

rscho 5y ago
What you describe is not particular to CS. It's the same in every field. However, most people don't view PhDs as a money-making endeavor. IMO, that's a good thing. And no, most of the important work does not happen exclusively in the industry. Academia is very valuable, just not for the same kind of stuff.
ModernMech 5y ago
> And once you come out of your PhD, who is going to hire you? Industry or academia? Well even in academia, there are tons of PhD already, so goodluck competing that. Since you seem to be talking about a CS Ph.D. in particular, there are actually many open faculty positions because industry is able to absorb so many graduates. It's quite common for a CS Ph.D. to get an academic tenure-track position right after graduation, without having to do a post-doc. We are interviewing many such candidates right now at my department, and we have been running searches since before my time. I was hired this way actually. It's competitive, sure, but you won't be sitting around for 5 years like my friend in Biology. Actually the most searches fail because it's really a buyer's market for applicants. They can negotiate huge startup packages by leveraging competing offers that our department can't even hope to match, and so the search continues...

rscho 5y ago

What you describe is not particular to CS. It's the same in every field. However, most people don't view PhDs as a money-making endeavor. IMO, that's a good thing. And no, most of the important work does not happen exclusively in the industry. Academia is very valuable, just not for the same kind of stuff.

ModernMech 5y ago

> And once you come out of your PhD, who is going to hire you? Industry or academia? Well even in academia, there are tons of PhD already, so goodluck competing that. Since you seem to be talking about a CS Ph.D. in particular, there are actually many open faculty positions because industry is able to absorb so many graduates. It's quite common for a CS Ph.D. to get an academic tenure-track position right after graduation, without having to do a post-doc. We are interviewing many such candidates right now at my department, and we have been running searches since before my time. I was hired this way actually. It's competitive, sure, but you won't be sitting around for 5 years like my friend in Biology. Actually the most searches fail because it's really a buyer's market for applicants. They can negotiate huge startup packages by leveraging competing offers that our department can't even hope to match, and so the search continues...