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Ph.Ds in IT - Good or Bad for a Career?
Posted by
Cliff
on Tue Aug 19, 2003 09:51 AM
from the is-the-extra-education-worth-it dept.
from the is-the-extra-education-worth-it dept.
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?"
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Degrees? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Degrees? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I have a Ph.D. in computer science. Yes, I got a great job from it. But the Ph.D. is not an instant credibility pill - you have to build your credibility the same way as anyone else.
Parent
Re:Degrees? (Score:4, Interesting)
Note that this isn't against all Stanford Ph.Ds. Just the horribly arrogant ones who feel a need to point out they have Stanford (or some other famous school) Ph.Ds every 15 minutes rather than actually doing any work...and I think we've all dealt with one of them at some point...
That said I'll have my MS in 3 years and leave it at that. Maybe I'll go for an MBA at some point.
Parent
Re:Degrees? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Degrees? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've never been asked to prove it.
I have a Ph.D. in both Comparative linguistics and Paleoanthropology, I've never been able to get a job at either!
The question to ask now that I'm coming to the end of my working lifetime is, Was it worth while?
I think that the answer is YES!
Parent
Re:Degrees? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is *no* better point to a PhD.
It's called having a life.
Parent
Re:Degrees? (Score:5, Insightful)
I need to disagree with this statement. In general, most serious engineering design involves many PhD level people, either in managing the MS/BS guys or in solving really hard problems. Walk through GM or Ford or Nvidia or Intel. There are lots of Drs. around.
Now, a PhD in I.T. sounds overly broad. The area of specialization is key with advanced degrees. My advanced degree is not in engineering or even mechanical engineering...it is in computational fluid dynamics. A PhD in security or networking or algorithm design could be highly useful and lead to well paying positions doing that sort of work. A PhD for someone who is changing network cards and installing Windows service packs is a complete waste...
Parent
Re:Degrees? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, doctor-employing companies such as GM or Ford or Intel employ a very small fraction of the world's population. Ph.D.s are really and truly only intended for the people really and truly motivated enough to get them without second thoughts. These are the people heading up the design labs, and not the people who got the Ph.D. because it was "something to do after college."
Parent
Not so much overeducated... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, lets face it, would you feel fulfilled working in a burger king if you had a PHD? No. At some point there's a level where you will feel that, and many companies may believe that your credentials will put you above them.
Parent
dated? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dykstra, Turing, Bessier, Knuth -- outdated? Damn! I guess I've been doing this CAD development work completely wrong for the past five years....I should read SIGGRAPH more closely.
Parent
Re:Degrees? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a silly statement.
I am amazed when I see enterprise systems implemented without any thought whatsoever when it comes to concepts like scale, distributed cache coherency, distributed deadlock, distributed transaction management, right down to the basic concept of protocol overhead when chosing the communication medium.
I see a lot of talk about J2EE vs
"The stuff schools are teaching in quickly changing fields like IT is already dated anyhow."
You mean like Linda? (JavaSpaces)
Athena? (Kerberos)
Andrew? (OSX/MACH)
Those are all concepts taught in a single Graduate Level class from research done years ago. Yet they are "new" in the commercial world--and that's just a few off the top of my head!
I took a Geospatial database course years ago....and I see Oracle finally started shipping their GS enabled prduct.
Implementations come and go--concepts live on. If you don't even understand the concepts, then you will truely be lost come implementation time--and the performance, scalability, and stability of the resulting system will surely betray your lack of education.
Parent
Re:Degrees? (Score:5, Insightful)
I see a lot of talk about J2EE vs .Net. Very few people who don't have graduate level knowledge of the concepts mentioned above are even qualified to make the comparison, let alone an educated descision over which platform is right for their application.
I think you over-estimate the benefits of an education against relevant practical experience.
I know architects (and the above issues are architectural) who don't have any degree at all, who are more than qualified to discuss all those issues, and who have written and deployed systems in at least one (and sometimes both) of J2EE and .Net. Quite frankly I'll believe their recommendations ahead of someone fresh out of uni with a PhD in whatever you choose.
This doesn't mean a PhD is useless - it's always good for getting higher pay, and impresses the girls. Heck, it may occasionally even be directly applicable to the work at hand.
Usually though, a PhD is in fluid dynamics, or string theory, or some other intellectually high brow area that the average business IT department just doesn't care about. Universities tend not to teach people how to architect, write and deploy a system in fewer weeks than originally estimated, in the face of changing requirements, when your team is forced to attend corporate monkey days, with ever-reducing headcount, while supporting the systems the guys before you wrote, under the management of people pushing their own careers ahead of all other concerns.
For the record, I only have a BSc, it's not in IT, and it's not holding me back at all at the moment - probably because I also have immense demonstrable practical experience.
~Cederic
Parent
Re:Degrees? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it isn't.
I am amazed when I see enterprise systems implemented without any thought whatsoever when it comes to concepts like scale, distributed cache coherency, distributed deadlock, distributed transaction management, right down to the basic concept of protocol overhead when chosing the communication medium.
You might be suprised to learn that "enterprise systems" jobs are relatively rare taking the world as their context.
Regarding the fact that most employees don't know squat about scale, transactions, etc., well that is the fault of the company for not recognizing the shortcomings of their employees and providing TRAINING. These concepts don't require advanced degrees--they usually require simply educating the people about the issues. Rarely does transaction processing require a mathematical proof--people simply implement it, ideally knowing beforehand what's at stake.
Schools, at the employee's expense, are simply the wrong place to learn about domain-specific issues of a particular company at a particular point in time.
Parent
Re:Degrees? (Score:5, Interesting)
B.S. EE - $47/yr
B.S. Computer Science - $43k/yr
B.S. Computer Engineering - $48k/yr
B.S. EE/B.S. Comp E - $52k/yr
B.S. EE/B.S. Computer Science - $48k/yr
M.S. EE - $73k/yr
M.S. Comp. E (this was a new program)- $69k/yr
M.S. Computer Science - $65k/yr
PhD CS - $67k/yr
PhD EE - $55k/yr-$75k/yr wildly varying based upon specialty. Those specializing in control or power systems were at $55k, those specializing in Semiconductor Fab related stuff were up at the $75k.
Most IT salaries I knew were BS only and fell around the $45k mark. This was over the period 1996-2001, around New York City. New York is not exactly a hub of geekdom, I work at Bell Labs (aka Lucent - We outsource/resell the things that make communications work) which is about the only major technology company in the area, and was in the middle of all offers I received. (Am I wrong? Who else is in the area...) New York DOES have a lot of banks and hired a lot of IT guys in it's time, however I hear those jobs are in india now
My opinion formed on this data is that a PhD has absolutely no financial value regardless of degree. It is a research degree however, which means if you want to do research and you don't want to be someones lab assistant, you MUST have it. This agrees with how things should be. You do not want people getting PhD's for the money.
That said I can't imagine that there is a lot of active research in IT, and I think if I had that degree and was considering a way to boost my career viability I would consider an MBA. I take my own advice and that is the degree I will pursue next fall. There is such an intense lack of technically competant businessmen in the world, and contrary to popular opinion, it really is hurting everyone.
Parent
Re:Degrees? (Score:5, Funny)
You can always spot the DeVry [devry.com] graduates....
Parent
Too much is better than too little (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Too much is better than too little (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:Too much is better than too little (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, getting graduate degrees while employed full time is the only way to really maintain a competitive combination.
Parent
Re:Too much is better than too little (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah and from my experience, 1 year of experience and 5 years of BS doesnt take you very far :P
Parent
Re:Too much is better than too little (Score:5, Insightful)
Or do what so many people in CS programs, be they BS, MS or PhD, end up doing. Contribute to Open Source projects. It gives you experience, and you can do it while you work on your degree.
Parent
Re:Too much is better than too little (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Too much is better than too little (Score:5, Insightful)
I think if you want a fairly high-profile, powerful job that doesn't have a lot of people applying because they're not qualified, a PhD might be for you, not just for research purposes. At least, that's what I've learned with my experience. I think someone working in the field and getting a Master's degree is pretty valuable itself. (Because I'm doing that! :) )
Parent
Depends on your experience (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Depends on your experience (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason is, if you apply for a job with a Masters and someone else with a bachelors and 3 years of experience, you won't get the job. Why? Because experience is more important than extra education; plus, the bachelor is cheaper. With higher degrees comes higher expected pays!
So, I always tell people to get a job with a bachelors and have your company pay for the graduate degrees. That way you get what you want (your grad degree) with a bonus (your grad degree for free!) and your company gets someone with experience AND a grad degree for cheaper than hiring one straight outta school.
Parent
Re:Depends on your experience (Score:5, Insightful)
A Masters degree is a "Specialization." It means you can do the bachelors stuff, and especially this one particular topic. So if you find a job in that particular "topic," THEN you get payed more, and are valued more.
A doctorate is not so much a further specialization, but a doctorate dubs you an innovator in the field. Excellent when budgets have money for research and development. But I must warn that anything Non-product related will be the first thing to go when budgets get tight.
Parent
$ is all that matters, sometimes. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
A Job? (Score:5, Insightful)
--jeff++
Re:A Job? (Score:5, Interesting)
The only valid reason for chosing to do a PhD is that you really want to. Forget career - that should have nothing to do with your decision. Doing a PhD is hard work, and you will almost certainly go through times when you wish you'd never started and wonder if you should just cut your losses. On the other hand, it can be immensely rewarding, and will teach you a whole new way of thinking.
As for jobs afterwards, outside academia at least, it's a lottery. Some companies value them, others don't. So that shouldn't really affect your decision.
Parent
Re:A Job? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would probably be happier as a professor, but I may not find a tenure-track position at a university I like. In that case, I would try to find a job in the industry, but I wanted to see if getting a Ph.D. would close more doors than it would open.
Parent
Re:A Job? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is a job the only reason why you want a Phd?
As far as I know all the people who started doing Phd _just_ to improve their career oportunities did not finish. Why? It has something to do with motivation :-) Finishing a Phd requires a very different mindset from just doing an MSc. You actually have to get trough dozens of situations when you're honestly stuck, or even worse when someone else has published the solution of the problem you have been working on etc.
So I would suggest not doing a Phd, unless you really want to do a Phd for the sake of research and being in academia.
Besides having a real job, and doing it well, for 3-5 years can really advance your career much more than a Phd.
That said I've got friends who have stared Phd's for their interest in the subject (one doing DPS, one AI) and they have completed them and now they both have really interesting jobs, which they probably won't find were it not for their degrees.
Parent
Yes, it happens (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
a biased opinion (from an undergrad) (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Do you care about research? (Score:5, Insightful)
Read lots of papers, write some papers, get published.
This has as much to do with computer engineering in most companies as having your IBEW (electrician) certs.
If you want a career in research -- either in an academic institution or a semi-private or private lab (think Bell Labs or Lawrence Livermore Lab), then get a Ph D. If you want to "do" computer engineering, than a Ph D won't likely help you.
It is certainly not likely to result in a pay differential from a master's degree equivalent to the time lost earning the Ph D (4 - 6 years generally).
P.S. I'm a Ph D student in Systems Engineering (similar to operations research)
Re:Do you care about research? (Score:5, Insightful)
The group I was in was small but exceptional. Two of them now work for Eidos (one's the TD). One of them is at Nasa, One's a TD at CNN Money, and the remaining two of us own our own companies. Getting a PhD certainly didn't hold any of us back.
We were (mainly) investigating neural networks for pattern identification. My contribution was the introduction of context in a meaningful way. A fair few of our ideas were fast-tracked to the product stage within the MOD, not all worked in the field, but some did.
Simon.
Parent
From both sides of the fence (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
[OT] Old Joke (Score:5, Funny)
"So you know what B.S. is?"
"Yeah."
"Well, M.S. is More of the Same, and PhD is Piled Higher and Deeper."
When hiring (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:When hiring (Score:4, Insightful)
Where I work, our customers tend to be concerned with having our software work correctly. Maybe this doesn't matter much to you...
Parent
I only have two years of college (Score:5, Interesting)
(
I would say that what really matters is how well you perform on the job. A phd may affect your ability to get your foot in the door (whether because a phd would command more respect or, in contrast, reek of "academia") and may affect your starting wages, but that's all moot after your first review.
About the only thing I can say is you may be making a bit less than someone with only a masters because you don't exactly get to use a lot of the theory you picked up. And you may have a catch-22 with the whole "over-qualified" for entry level (because of the PHD) but under-qualified for senior positions (due to lack of practical experience). And in the end, you may be bored a lot of the time with easy work - I know I am.
I have a co-worker with a phd (but not in comp eng) and he's pretty much treated the same as all the others around here. He's not an exceptional programmer, but he never complains about his salary (unlike, say, the guys in PC support
Of course, this is Ask Slashdot, so you're only going to get a bunch of anecdotes anyways =) YMMV
People get turned down for many reasons... (Score:5, Insightful)
We recently searched for a part-time office admin for our company, and got _lots_ of CVs. But we rejected them all: far too qualified for the job. It sounds bizarre but when someone has too much experience they get bored doing banal things, and when someone has too much training, they often become too arrogant to do banal things.
And banal work is the bulk of it.
Then there is also the question of money: people with more experience and more qualifications expect more pay, and if the job does not justify this, there is a mismatch that will often cause problems.
Finally, many companies have a specific culture (social, business, technical), and it takes time to learn the culture. Extra training and experience can be useful but can also simply get in the way.
Lastly, as people get older, they appear to become more cynical and (in some cases) corrupt. "Sure, I can steal from my employer, after all everyone does that, right?" Perhaps it's an attitude that is there in young and old alike, but I've seen it much more in older people.
Give me a smart, young, motivated mind and I can do more with it than with an older mind with experience and training.
Sad, but for me (and I have lots of experience, ironically), true.
Over time... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the longer term it can be a tremendous advantage, if you work in the field you studied. There is no doubt that getting a PhD is genuinely hard work and most companies know this and respect it. You will be an acknowledged expert in your field. If you specialize in an area that can be applied to commercial problems - for example security, parallel processing, AI, visualization - then a PhD is a almost required if you aspire to be lead the technology division of a company that specializes in that area. A very disproportionate percentage of CTOs of high tech. companies are PhDs.
That said, if you just want to be a software engineer or a sys admin, the PhD isn't going to help you much and you will perhaps always be seen as overqualified.
Finally my most important advice: don't start on a PhD if you don't have a deep interest and genuine passion for the work. You will spend several years of your life learning and discovering more about some arcane corner of the universe than all but a handful of people in the world. It is an enormous amount of hard work and requires true dedication. If you aren't energized by that prospect you won't make it. A PhD is not something you do because it will enhance your career, its something you do because you need to do it.
Experience with this at our company (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The dotcom boom is over (Score:5, Interesting)
1) There are lots of tech people out of work, so you could very well be over-qualified with a PhD or even a Masters.
2) There are a lot of people out there to work the grunt jobs, and fewer people getting a higher education in IT. This could be an advantage.
It is all going to depend on what companies are around you. If they are all small, private companies doing web work, you may be out of luck. If you are near an IBM office, or some other tech giant who may have a use for someone with a PhD, then you could have a chance.
It is a real issue that people can be overeducated for a lot of jobs.
I used to work at Motorola, and we hired a contractor that was really smart. He was hired to help us test a release of some real-time cellular products. He had worked at NASA for years, and had some good stories. But he was worthless as a "regular" employee. He kept 3 sets of notecards in his shirt pocket, each set being a different color. One color was for process stuff, one was for technical stuff, and the other was for something else. When you would tell him something he would whip out his notecards and write it down on whichever category it fit into. If you ever wanted information from him, he went to his notecards. He was a good guy, and really smart, but he was too smart for the job.
I worked with another guy at a small company who didn't know Unix, but said he could learn it. He had a Masters and was working on his PhD. (I was surprised he didn't know any Unix, but whatever) We thought he was capable of picking it up, but he clearly wasn't. Two months after he started, he still had to refer to his notes to remember how to list a directory's contents. He was a smart guy, but he just didn't get it.
My suggestion? If you go for the PhD, do something in the computer security field. There will always be a need for computer security gurus, and in that field you'll be up against snot-nosed kids for the jobs. :-)
An answer FROM a PhD (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
It depends... (Score:4, Insightful)
In general - someone who has a BS in CS (for example, myself) and leaves it at that and enters the work arena (well, this applied not since 2001 since there is no work arena currently) is, in my view (and apparently the view of many companies I've been with) better qualified as PROGRAMMERS than someone who has spent most of their time pursuing higher education.
Indeed, I've experienced people who didn't go to college but were computer savy, and who entered the work force and have gone to the top of the list in their companies - and in some cases gone on to head their own corporations.
In general, and in most conversations I've entered in on concerning this topic - the feeling is that a GOOD programmer (and I stress the word GOOD) who begins the work force early has much much more practical experience.
In the 25 years (I'm 45) that I've been professionally programming, I've written literally hundreds of compete applications - some with teams but most on my own or with a single partner (PC games, image processing systems, paint systems, medical software etc). In many cases, not only written the applications but supported them and marketed them myself (or with the team).
In some occassions, teams I've put together have included Masters and Phd's... and while very bright they often tend to lack the ability to see "the entire picture". Now, there are two types of programmers out there... first, there are the ones that code routines and are merely told input and output expectations and they deliver. The second set of programmers work with entire application concepts, and have the ability to understand what is required in a full application and how to go about designing it, as well as coding it. In my experience, most (not all of course) masters and phd's fit better into the first category as PROGRAMMERS.
Indeed... a Phd shouldn't be used as a programmer, more over they should be used as a visionary. Keep 'em away from the code layer because they have LITTLE practical experience designing REAL-WORLD applications. They often don't understand time-frames - since they havn't experienced real-world programming conditions and requirements (e.g., shitty management decisions ;). On the other hand, they have MUCH experience in pushing boundries and concepts. So as a VISIONARY - that is where they are better off in my opinion.
So it comes down to what you want to do... do you LOVE programming for the joy of programming? If so, get out of college and get to work! On the other hand, do you enjoy thinking about possible concepts and pushing the boundries of understanding? If so... than a masters or phd might be perfect for you.
One last thing... small companies rarely have use for a Phd or Masters. They cost too much and don't provide the small organization enough bang for the buck (unless they're going after venture capital and want a pretty-face). It's your larger corporations that have more of a need for the Phd level visionary - and can afford it. Think IBM FELLOW for example.
Aloha... over and out
Re:well.. (Score:5, Informative)
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I've waited seven years for my PhD to matter (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:ComEng fo ?IT? (Score:5, Interesting)
- 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:
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Re:ComEng fo ?IT? (Score:5, Insightful)
(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!
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Re:Too much education (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never understood the "over qualified" position. Who cares if you're over qualified?
In the past, I didn't understand the "overqualified" concept either. It wasn't until I took a job for which I was overqualified that I understood the problem. I had gotten laid off when my employer went bankrupt, and was lucky enough to get offered a job rather quickly at a larger company - but with a lower title.
I was perfectly happy to have been offered the job, and I'm still there. So in that sense, "overqualified" is a bogus issue.
However, I'm here because the job market is dreadful. If it weren't so awful, I'd be out the door here in a second ... and my employer knows that. The "overqualified" rationale is that people like that will leave for a more appropriate job as soon as they get the chance, and nobody wants to hire employees that are just waiting to bolt.
Similarly, being overqualified means that (even moreso than usual) you tend not to enjoy your job because you're not meeting your potential. You're doing work for people that you are equally qualified with (or more qualified), and it tends to breed disgruntled employees. I'm not terribly disgruntled because I feel lucky to have been given a decent job in a relatively niche technology industry ... but I'm also counting the days until I can get another position where I can learn and grow.
So "overqualified" is to some extent crap - if you're happy to have a job, overqualified or not, then it isn't relevant. But if you hate the job you're overqualified for and are bitter/waiting to bolt, then companies do have a reason for avoiding you. It's the fact that companies can't tell which type you'll be which leads them to often avoid all "overqualified" folks.
Just my $.02.
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