Ph.Ds in IT - Good or Bad for a Career? 781
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?"
Too much is better than too little (Score:5, Insightful)
Too much education (Score:2, Insightful)
Given that Slashdot's readership is probably (Score:0, Insightful)
$ 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.
Professors (Score:2, Insightful)
A Job? (Score:5, Insightful)
--jeff++
PhDs in my department (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Experience... (Score:2, Insightful)
Dont get the PhD unless you want to teach. (Score:1, Insightful)
If you want to go back to school and learn more about computers, perhaps you could pick some other field and get another masters applying computers to solving problems in that domain. Not only might that be fun, but it will make you a lot more marketable as well.
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)
Same deal with me getting my masters (Score:2, Insightful)
The reasoning is that a masters demands more money, after all, I've been to college for longer and know more. However, I don't have the work experience to compete with other people who have recently gotten their masters (after being in industry for 10 years). Also, it sounds like I will get the same job with a masters degree that I'll get with a BS unless I go into some academic area (like research).
I don't know how many of these apply to you, but I know I'll take a good hard look at the market next spring and decide whether I should stay in school for another year.
What do you want to do? (Score:3, Insightful)
Education (Score:1, Insightful)
In engineering education doesn't amount to squat.
You either have it or you don't. It seems to be like art. Education can make a good artist a better, but the raw talent must already be there.
In fact of my 3 best engineers 1 doesn't have a degree and the other 2 do, but low level and not in engineering.
I am also as yet to interview a EE/SE PHD that has any ability or talent, and I have interviewed hundreds of them.
Evil Man
win some, lose some (Score:3, Insightful)
There are three reasons, generally, for this: first, you spent years in school whereas your peers went out and got work experience (or just learned a lot about unemployment benefits), so you will compete with people that have experience, whereas you do not. Second, your prospective employer will fear that you will want a higher salary (or other benefits) due to your degree, and they won't want to hire you when they can get a cheaper programmer that can do the job just as well. Third, they will (rightly) suspect that you will not find the work stimulating, rewarding or career-enhancing enough, leaving them with the need to do the hiring process all over again in six months or a year.
That said, a Ph.D. opens up whole new career paths that you really aren't qualified for otherwise. You of course have the research and teaching career path sort-of-open (though that is for masochists only, the way academia is going). You are also suddenly eligible to pursue an R&D career in big corporations. Last (but not least), the added knowledge and insights you get, the contact network (especially if you do a post-doc as well) and the skill you get in doing research means it is feasible to go out on your own with your own company R&D-oriented company (alone or with colleagues).
So, you lose some opportunities at the lower end, but gain some at the top. Of course, doing a Ph.D. is also a lot of fun (at least afterwards
Just don't get the attitude (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
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.
Re:Degrees? (Score:2, Insightful)
Depends on where you want to work (Score:2, Insightful)
If you want to be a heads-down enteprrise software programmer building the very latest Java edition of that old VB/COBOL application, then a PhD is definitely a liability.
The assumption is that a PhD is interested in new research, and so yes, it limits you because as a hiring manager, I don't want you running off to teach Discrete Math at the local university because you're bored with 10 hour VB.NET / Java Programming days.
Even a Masters puts you in that category to a certain degree.
what? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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.
Thoery versus practical experience (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that you're already interested in seriously pursuing a doctorate would already start to make me nervous.
Although theory is nice, I've all too often seen educational types create truely horrible software. Grand pie-in-the-sky designs that have no place in the real world (and rarely function properly anyway). Overdesign is a bad thing (see: PKCS#15, ASN.1, CORBA, GNU "configure" crap, etc).
So unless you're only interested in the research and education fields I would spend the time learning how to write and design good solid software in the real world.
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.
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.
Depends on Organisation you wish to join (Score:2, Insightful)
blue_teeth
My friend has a PHD... (Score:2, Insightful)
What are you doing? And why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Be Wary of Academia (Score:2, Insightful)
A lot of people have already mentioned the PhD-is-good-for-research theory, so I won't rant on that.
I've seen a lot of people lately who are staying in school rather than throwing themselves at a tough labor market. Personally, I think staying in school to escape "the real world" is a really weak excuse. If you've only been in school and don't have practical experience then I highly suggest getting out and getting a job. I don't get along as well with my friends who are still in school (I graduated five years ago with a BS). A lot of them seem to be in perpetual procrastination about putting together a resume, interviewing for jobs, and in constant pursuit of the next easy part-time job.
Now, having said that, perhaps you have some personal goals you'd like to accomplish or a certain area of study you really want to pursue. Doing that in a non-academic environment can be rough and then it makes sense to stay in school.
There's lots of exciting things to do in this world besides working on a thesis. While I think pursuing a career (you do have a grad degree) is good, I'm sure you could come up with something more original. Go work on a cruise ship for a year. Take off and lay on the beach in Thailand for a while. Spend the winter skiing.. of course that's what I did and accidentally never left.
Re:Too much is better than too little (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:well...how do you define inplementation (Score:3, Insightful)
I cannot see getting a doctorate as precluding you from implementation (or a job for that matter), but instead adding the responsibilities of research, development and mentoring lower level employees through implementation.
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.
Re:Depends on your experience (Score:0, Insightful)
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.
so you are an education snob then?
what about the guy that has his Associates Degree and has been coding for over 10 years?
He's full of experience that the school-boys can not have base completely on the fact he has been ther eand done that.
I hire on experience first, denonstratable skills second and education dead last.
Just because you had the money and time to spend on college time does not make you an expert, and it never is an indicator of how well someone does the job.
Re:Do you care about research? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd have to agree. Even a degree in Computer Science is of questionable use when you're actually in the real world (I have one btw). I work for IT in a College, and we have all sorts of shit from Comp Sci students who think they know more than we do, just because they're Computer Scientists. The world of education is so very different than the world of IT. Unless you're aiming to work in a very specialised field, getting a PhD is unlikely to increase your career prospects.
Start a company (Score:3, Insightful)
If you feel you aren't a candidate for the job market, no matter reason why, start your own company. That's what I did. Over or under-qualified, it doesn't matter. The worst it can do is fail, and then you can start another or go back to academia, unlike careers with large companies.
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.
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...
Phd's and Hiring (Score:1, Insightful)
The short and sweet:
1. Education is great... its a stepping stone to that 1st job (the entry fee). But beyond that its for your own betterment.
2. Once you get that 1st job kid... its all how hard you work/what you put into it from that point on that matters. If you're smart you'll worry more about who your boss is and his integrity... who your mentor is and the advice they give you then why didn't you get a phd. The best thing you can do is pick a good boss... it'll make all the difference in your job.
-Been there done that... now a silly PHB boss.
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.
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.
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.
Avoid the Ph.D. for a normal job. (Score:1, Insightful)
Also, consider the lost wages and lost time spent persuing the degree. It typically takes much longer than 4 years to get it and I can almost guarentee that from a pure financial perspective that it will not pay off. You have to want to do research or teach, AND love the subject matter. That is the only sensible scenario for getting a Ph.D.
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.
Re:Just remember... (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
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.
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.
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:Too much is better than too little (Score:3, Insightful)
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! :) )
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...
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.
Re:Be Wary of Academia (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, I'll just run out and pick one right up. I need some bread and apples too.
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.
Re:Too much is better than too little (Score:3, Insightful)
Along those lines, I've noticed that when a particular job market is oversaturated (as IT currently is), then of course, salary levels drop, and employers will hire the most amount of education that they can get for their money. Instead of Bachelor's degrees soaking up all of the entry-level positions, it's the people with the Master's degrees who are knocking the B.S's out of the way, and Doctorates start taking the mid-level positions. The B.S.'s are scrambling just to FIND jobs.
Is it possible to have too much education? Only if your education is so specialized that it severely limits the number of available employers.
Also, somebody else hit the nail on the head. A doctorate won't do you a lot of good if you don't have the requisite people skills for the salary level.
Most famously, the question is not, "Where will I be if I get this education?"; the question is, "Where will I be if I DON'T get this education?" Yeah, in this job market, a doctorate may not look like it's worth the effort, but it's probably a helluva lot better than not having one.
Re:Degrees? (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Engineers vs. PhDs (Score:3, Insightful)
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."
Re:Degrees? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is *no* better point to a PhD.
It's called having a life.
Several things to mention... (Score:3, Insightful)
B.S. does NOT mean Bachelor of Science, it means BULL SHIT!
M.S. does NOT mean Master of Science, it means MORE SHIT!
Ph.D. does NOT mean Doctor of Philosophy, it means PILED HIGHER AND DEEPER!
First you have to carefully evaluate your career goals. Is this what you really want to do? Next, is their a job market for Ph.D.s? I've been reading about the mass exodus of high tech jobs over to India and Asia, not good. Second, it matters significantly where you get a Ph.D. in science, in addition to any experience you have acquired. Do you have a really good track record of success? Any failures? How did you handle the failures? What types of companies do the graduates get to work at and for how long? Is the turnover number high for a particular job position or company?
A masters degree may be all that you really need. If you have the desire to get a Ph.D., an alternative to getting a Ph.D. is launching your own business as an independent programmer, consultant, etc... This too can be very rewarding both personally and financially. There's nothing quite like being the boss. Plus, you get to use travel and luncheons, dinners, small vacations as business expenses. In addition, after you've had several successes with a business venture, casually mentioning it to your employer may indicate you're more competent than the average Borg Drone and could make you a candidate for promotion.
Another alternative is to go back to school and get an M.B.A. The M.B.A. was designed for non-business majors, professionals in science and many other fields to work in administrative positions. Again, where you the M.B.A. also matters.
I was told by my undergraduate academic advisor NOT to get a Ph.D. from a non-ranked chemistry program. At the very minimum, one would want to get a Ph.D. from Ohio State University or the University of Michigan in AnnArbor, because the Ph.D. is a terminal degree, meaning there is no other degree above that, and with a Ph.D. you will be expected to perform with the same level of expertise, competancy and detail, and responsibility of your peers graduating from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, Brown, (Ivy Leagues and many second-tiered schools).
So, very carefully evaluate what you think is best for you. Don't get a Ph.D. just so you can be called "doctor". Being called "doctor" from a non-ranked program can be more embarrassing and humiliating than the greatest on-the-job screw up you've ever done. When you go applying for positions that require Ph.D. experience, you may be at the interview to make the other candidates who graduated from better and more selective programs look better. I know, I've earned a masters degree from a non-ranked program (which is "OK" for most careers in chemistry), however, my next goal is to get an M.B.A. because that will take me further and get me out of the laboratory.
ALL YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS ARE BELONG TO YOUR GENETICS AND ENVIRONMENT.
Re:I've waited seven years for my PhD to matter (Score:3, Insightful)
why would I want a CS degree?
In my case, because doing web or DB work makes me want to shove a fork into my eye. I would say this -- plumbers can make more money than you, why are you wasting your time doing web work when you can sweat pipes? I'd say it's because you're lucky enough to be doing what you like to do, you didn't have to go to school specifically for it, and you make good money -- kudos to you. Not everyone is that lucky, and not everyone dislikes coursework.
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.
Re:Too much is better than too little (Score:3, Insightful)
As for being overqualified, I know one guy who had to leave half his certifications off his resume to get a job.
My hiring experience (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Generally, a Masters is the most useful, because it sets you apart from the field while not pigeon-holing you in one specialized are or as a "researcher".
2. Depending on your desired area of study, it may help or hurt. Esoteric fields of study will likely peg you as a "researcher" and thus not suitable for the practical.
3. In a tight economy (like this one, at least in CA) one can be perceived as overqualified or desperate. (I've seen people with Ph.D.s apply for technician work.) When companies are short on cash for salaries, many tend to shy away from those with Ph.D.s since they expect a higher salary.
4. I've found many people with Ph.D.s make lousy programmers, frequently trying to make everything research or "perfect" when "good enough" is what's required.
5. Unless you get it from a highly rated University and/or with a noted advisor, it may not even count for much and your time would be better spent broadening your skill-set.
6. Particularly in CS, I've found (and many people in Ph.D. programs I've talked to agree), that it's more an exercise in persistence than intelligence.
7. Consider an MBA, it can make your more marketable, especially if you want to move into leadership. (You may not now, but what about in 5-10 years when you are perceived as "old", i.e. over 35.)
8. One thing that is valued is people with both hardware and software expertise. Consider an additional Masters in Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering.
9. Depending on your industry, learning a foreign language can be a big plus.
Re:The dotcom boom is over (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't follow to that conclusion. Do you have more evidence? All I hear you saying is that he was smart and crazy organized. This makes him worthless as a regular employee?! WTF? Sounds like he'd have an edge over others in tough times to me.
Of course I have more evidence, I didn't base that conclusion on just those statements. But I didn't want to write a book here. :-) On paper, the guy was qualified. In person, he was out of his element. He was used to working at NASA, where process is strict and extensive. We were in a more laid-back environment (to him) and he had trouble dealing with it. He became frustrated easily because of the environment. His experience and extensive knowledge didn't help him in this case, it was detrimental. When you have to think on your feet, you flounder if all your thoughts are on color coded index cards.
This "overqualified" management speak is such a load of rubbish. Underqualified? Yes, we call that "not qualified". Overqualified? Huh? That's "qualfied", with extra breadth, character, untapped potential, etc. That's life. If you have a brain, if you're well read, if you pay attention and analyze the life that streams past you, then you're "overqualified" because no position could possibly tap all that knoweldge, widsom, experience, etc.
Holy cow, nobody has ever referred to something I have said as "management speak". :-) Technically, he had great experience in engineering environments. He should have been able to tone down to fit the environment, but that wasn't the case. You can't unlearn certain things. Once you are used to working in certain environments, it is very hard to go backwards, so to speak. If you are used to working in a slower paced, government organization where everything is triple-checked, you may not fit into a small company where decisions are made quickly. Maybe you are right that someone could be conidered "unqualified" instead of "overqualified", but overqualified implies something that unqualified does not. The person may have the technical skills needed, but perhaps they aren't a fit into the environment. Overqualified may also mean "you know too much, you have too much experience, and we aren't willing to pay you what you are worth".
Re:Degrees? (Score:4, Insightful)
Some Thoughts on PhD's and when they matter (Score:3, Insightful)
Education v. Learning (Score:2, Insightful)
Thaths
Re:Degrees? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just the horribly arrogant ones who feel a need to point out they have...
You get a D- for leadership and teamwork. This will go down on your permanent record. Good luck. You'll need it.