I have a PhD, because at the time I wanted a career in academia, and I enjoyed research. I did a short post-doc, because I still wanted a career in academia, and enjoyed research. I quit academia because I no longer wanted a career in academia, and I didn't enjoy the research (or my boss).
I don't regret my wasted years. Sure, I would have likely earned more money, but it was fun, and made me who I am.
I do find it a bit of a shame that my current and previous employers couldn't give two hoots that I have a PhD etc, but oh well.
EDIT: I have a PhD and post-doc experience in Cell Biology, and now work as a software engineer at a fairly large hardware company.
A lot of careers have very effective feedback loops for telling you that you're progressing, while being almost completely silent on whether the destination is one you actually want
Well said. When I was a grad student, chasing what would have been a doomed career in cellular neuroscience, I was unfortunate enough (fortunately in the end, perhaps?) to get struck down by a significant depressive episode. This ended up being the feedback signal I needed to consider changing things up, and I did.
> But you may know the move: when a project or career no longer survives a basic question, you respond by making it more elaborate.
When I'm defending a political position and it's going so badly that I have to add epicycles, I know I'm on the wrong track. But if I go back to first principles and develop a simpler internally consistent argument, it is usually insanely extremist to modern sensibilities.
Turns out that human morality and logical consistency are usually strangers.
beware: you can spend your life avoiding the thing you know you must do. You can even become rich or famous or get any other external validation you deem important in the process of not doing the thing you know you must do.
The thing you know you must do probably is an internal thing, but can also be an external thing. It's hard to navigate this, but no one cares if it's hard.
> any passage could be interpreted that way through a sufficiently flexible framework (and enough imagination), it was difficult to say what evidence would prove the claim wrong
> Much of my research began with a large claim about society (e.g., "consumer culture constructs identities") and I then searched texts for language that could illustrate that claim. Because almost any passage could be interpreted that way through a sufficiently flexible framework (and enough imagination), it was difficult to say what evidence would prove the claim wrong.
Doesn’t sound like you’re doing science, to me.
In fact, this is the crux of the whole reproducibility crisis in social sciences, is it not?
This reads like Claude in its abstraction ... I'd rather hear the story about what degree you actually got, what the dissertation was, and some concrete experiences of being disillusioned along the way, etc.
Complexity becomes a way to postpone the verdict. etc.
to be honest, there's no interest in studying capitalism unless you study its mechanisms critically. and i fear yours was foucault-slop, pseudo-radical drivel that doesn't even aspire to change anything. no change = no direction = no meaning.
there's some philosophical interest in the question, altho i cannot say exactly where. but if you start from a statement like that and your thesis is mostly a display of what you read, it's barely social science. it is social theory at best, and not particularly good social theory either.
the interesting questions - especially in social science - are the hows and not the whys. the mechanisms. that would have been more empirical and more interesting.
push it further and you'll find you're doing marketing, which is applied sociology anyway: who buys what, and how, and maybe why, at the end.
but twenty years of foucault-slop isn't bad at all. at least you chilled.
I have a horrid memory of interviewing "a kid" for an entry level engineering job during on-campus recruitment. The "kid" had just finished his PhD in chemistry following a master's and bachelor's in the same field.
He was now closer to 30 to than to 20, was interviewing for the same job that a BS-grad can go after, and wasn't competitive compared to them.
I asked him why he had spent so much time in chemistry just to pivot and he just literally didn't know. It was hard to look at his graduate education as anything other than a wasted decade that actually has set him back career wise.
One interesting question is how does someone do that to themselves?
Another interesting question is - what is the value of a PhD when someone uninterested in the field and not-that-thought-out about it can get one? We think of PhD designating that someone has committed to the field and pushed a little edge of the frontier forward through sheer motivation and brillians and it was just hard to imagine this being true for this guy.
A friend of mine did a PhD in computer science solely and specifically so he could prove to himself that he could do a suspended, multi-year solo project and complete it. He then got a job he totally would've gotten 4 years earlier as well, with just the MSc. When asked (eg by recruiters/interviewers), he always said "because I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it" and personally I find that a very satisfying answer.
All I'm saying is, not everyone doing a PhD and then leaving academia was accidentally climbing up the wrong ladder. Some did it on purpose, just to admire the view.
Oh hey that’s me! Not literally me. Probably I was a little better off. But I was recently in a similar position, and feel like my PhD was a lost decade in some ways.
The answer, as I’m sure many already know, is idealism and a certain kind of naïvité. It’s not an absolute naïvité, but it is some kind of belief in the value of doing something that isn’t “mere” careerism. You think it’s noble to contribute to science. And you do contribute, a teeny eensy weensy bit. And then you’re 30 and one day you unblind yourself. You look at the job market, and how much money various jobs actually pay. More importantly, you realize quite suddenly that money can actually make your life better, and that, whatever damage it might have wrought on your soul to pursue it, it would at least have enabled you to own a home one day. Maybe have kids. Shit. And the fresh grads who went straight into tech and finance making $300k (hold on, you can make $300k? Wait a second, that’s not a senior executive salary? That’s a normal-ish bourgeois white-collar HCoL salary that people make fresh out of school? Hold on, that’s basically a starting salary in that world? WHAT?)… just naturally understood.
Then you try to explain this on a message board or something. Half the people call you a class traitor. The other half call you a mediocre sucker.
Academia is not a waste of time just because it doesn't translate into "productivity" and wealth. Some people enjoy the pursuit of knowledge, and find great meaning in it.
Increasingly the arts are being defunded based on a similar argument, and humanity as a whole is worse off because of it.
There is a real conflict here. People are getting loans for their education. A loan is an investment, and should only be taken if it will pay off.
If you are getting education because you are interested in the topic but won't get a job in it: I fully support this. However you should not take a loan out to get this education: there are too many other things to do in life that you also will want to do. Worse the loan means you cannot change your mind later if you are wrong (or you can, but you will still have to pay for the mistake instead of whatever you are interested in today).
There is one other reason for education: to become a better citizen (don't fall for bad politics). However that should be to everybody and I haven't seen much evidence that higher education really helps much.
A PhD demonstrates the ability to think deeply about something. It thus isn't useless for any good job. However there are often better trainings for that job.
At least chemistry is objectively useful knowledge. Even if he would rather work in software engineering, there are a lot of places where domain expertise like that is very valuable. Plenty of software in the sciences.
As another poster mentioned, I also wanted to add that this attitude is why there is so much stress and pressure on kids these days to figure out everything in their lives by the time they're 22. It's pretty amazing to me that anyone can look at a PhD in Chemistry and say that was a wasted decade. Why was he not competitive? What skills were you looking for? In what way are you already biasing candidates based on your preconceived notions about what makes someone helpful, useful, intelligent, etc.
I know broad generalizations aren't too useful, maybe this specific person had real significant shortcomings compared to the other 22 year olds you interviewed, but I encourage you to consider why we are doing "all of this" anyway (is it money? productivity? prestige? big houses?) and why someone might prioritize going so far in a field to actually CONTRIBUTE something new to the field (as one does through a PhD). Maybe consider why someone might not slot perfectly into your idea of the perfect economic pawn, though nevertheless have chosen an absolutely fine way to spend ones life (or ten years of it).
Many would dream to be top scholars of their field, to the point it feels like a personal mission. The reality kicks in for the first time when you can’t progress through the system anymore, be it 25 or 30.
At the age of 17 or 18 how do you actually know? My kids are going through this now. He's like I don't even know if I want to be an engineer, people just tell me I'd be good at it.
That isn't the right question. The right question is can you do it, and will it pay enough to provide "a good life" (whatever that means to you). If you love [whatever] more power, that is the best case. However don't lose track of the fact that in the end no matter what job you pick there will be times when you have to do something you hate (not something unethical where you should quit, just something you hate), but you need to do something to be a good citizen.
If your kids already have a good career picked out I encourage a secondary study in some hobby thing. Go ahead and sing in the choir even though as an engineer it is a waste of time - that is fun and that is good (there are thousands of other fun things). Just don't lose sight that the goal is a good life and this will include things you don't want to do but have to anyway.
One thing I always hated about university education is how it’s entirely designed nowadays as a sort of “coming of age experience” for teenagers coming out of high school.
I don’t have any higher education. I was stupid and arrogant and thought it would be a waste of time and money. However even if I did attend at 17/18, I almost certainly would have squandered it. I wouldn’t have been mature or aware enough to understand how and where to focus my time and energy in such a setting.
By about my mid-late 20s I felt like I had a better idea of what I could or could not get out of such an experience, but by that point I had a life and bills to pay and a job to attend to allow for any of that. There’s barely any time or money for education now. I’ve thought about trying to go back for the last decade, but it just becomes less realistic every year.
Graduate school is not about passion and pushing frontiers. It is about training new researchers. It is it not a place that I would recommend to anyone who has real passion or brilliance in any field.
I would have felt that he was at least technically savvy; and, beyond that, he might have the spark of one of the best qualities of a future colleague i.e. interesting-ness - one can't underestimate that.
I have a PhD, because at the time I wanted a career in academia, and I enjoyed research. I did a short post-doc, because I still wanted a career in academia, and enjoyed research. I quit academia because I no longer wanted a career in academia, and I didn't enjoy the research (or my boss).
I don't regret my wasted years. Sure, I would have likely earned more money, but it was fun, and made me who I am.
I do find it a bit of a shame that my current and previous employers couldn't give two hoots that I have a PhD etc, but oh well.
EDIT: I have a PhD and post-doc experience in Cell Biology, and now work as a software engineer at a fairly large hardware company.
A lot of careers have very effective feedback loops for telling you that you're progressing, while being almost completely silent on whether the destination is one you actually want
Well said. When I was a grad student, chasing what would have been a doomed career in cellular neuroscience, I was unfortunate enough (fortunately in the end, perhaps?) to get struck down by a significant depressive episode. This ended up being the feedback signal I needed to consider changing things up, and I did.
> But you may know the move: when a project or career no longer survives a basic question, you respond by making it more elaborate.
When I'm defending a political position and it's going so badly that I have to add epicycles, I know I'm on the wrong track. But if I go back to first principles and develop a simpler internally consistent argument, it is usually insanely extremist to modern sensibilities.
Turns out that human morality and logical consistency are usually strangers.
beware: you can spend your life avoiding the thing you know you must do. You can even become rich or famous or get any other external validation you deem important in the process of not doing the thing you know you must do.
The thing you know you must do probably is an internal thing, but can also be an external thing. It's hard to navigate this, but no one cares if it's hard.
> any passage could be interpreted that way through a sufficiently flexible framework (and enough imagination), it was difficult to say what evidence would prove the claim wrong
The field of social research in a nutshell
> Much of my research began with a large claim about society (e.g., "consumer culture constructs identities") and I then searched texts for language that could illustrate that claim. Because almost any passage could be interpreted that way through a sufficiently flexible framework (and enough imagination), it was difficult to say what evidence would prove the claim wrong.
Doesn’t sound like you’re doing science, to me.
In fact, this is the crux of the whole reproducibility crisis in social sciences, is it not?
This reads like Claude in its abstraction ... I'd rather hear the story about what degree you actually got, what the dissertation was, and some concrete experiences of being disillusioned along the way, etc.
Complexity becomes a way to postpone the verdict. etc.
Meh
"consumer culture constructs identities"
to be honest, there's no interest in studying capitalism unless you study its mechanisms critically. and i fear yours was foucault-slop, pseudo-radical drivel that doesn't even aspire to change anything. no change = no direction = no meaning.
there's some philosophical interest in the question, altho i cannot say exactly where. but if you start from a statement like that and your thesis is mostly a display of what you read, it's barely social science. it is social theory at best, and not particularly good social theory either.
the interesting questions - especially in social science - are the hows and not the whys. the mechanisms. that would have been more empirical and more interesting.
push it further and you'll find you're doing marketing, which is applied sociology anyway: who buys what, and how, and maybe why, at the end.
but twenty years of foucault-slop isn't bad at all. at least you chilled.
Be Jewish/Indian/Canadian = win because they only hire their own
Not one of those? Try being Mexican if you are good at manual labor - endless work available, no credentials or experience needed.
[delayed]
I have a horrid memory of interviewing "a kid" for an entry level engineering job during on-campus recruitment. The "kid" had just finished his PhD in chemistry following a master's and bachelor's in the same field.
He was now closer to 30 to than to 20, was interviewing for the same job that a BS-grad can go after, and wasn't competitive compared to them.
I asked him why he had spent so much time in chemistry just to pivot and he just literally didn't know. It was hard to look at his graduate education as anything other than a wasted decade that actually has set him back career wise.
One interesting question is how does someone do that to themselves?
Another interesting question is - what is the value of a PhD when someone uninterested in the field and not-that-thought-out about it can get one? We think of PhD designating that someone has committed to the field and pushed a little edge of the frontier forward through sheer motivation and brillians and it was just hard to imagine this being true for this guy.
A friend of mine did a PhD in computer science solely and specifically so he could prove to himself that he could do a suspended, multi-year solo project and complete it. He then got a job he totally would've gotten 4 years earlier as well, with just the MSc. When asked (eg by recruiters/interviewers), he always said "because I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it" and personally I find that a very satisfying answer.
All I'm saying is, not everyone doing a PhD and then leaving academia was accidentally climbing up the wrong ladder. Some did it on purpose, just to admire the view.
That's a good answer. Not the answer I got in the story.
Oh hey that’s me! Not literally me. Probably I was a little better off. But I was recently in a similar position, and feel like my PhD was a lost decade in some ways.
The answer, as I’m sure many already know, is idealism and a certain kind of naïvité. It’s not an absolute naïvité, but it is some kind of belief in the value of doing something that isn’t “mere” careerism. You think it’s noble to contribute to science. And you do contribute, a teeny eensy weensy bit. And then you’re 30 and one day you unblind yourself. You look at the job market, and how much money various jobs actually pay. More importantly, you realize quite suddenly that money can actually make your life better, and that, whatever damage it might have wrought on your soul to pursue it, it would at least have enabled you to own a home one day. Maybe have kids. Shit. And the fresh grads who went straight into tech and finance making $300k (hold on, you can make $300k? Wait a second, that’s not a senior executive salary? That’s a normal-ish bourgeois white-collar HCoL salary that people make fresh out of school? Hold on, that’s basically a starting salary in that world? WHAT?)… just naturally understood.
Then you try to explain this on a message board or something. Half the people call you a class traitor. The other half call you a mediocre sucker.
Academia is not a waste of time just because it doesn't translate into "productivity" and wealth. Some people enjoy the pursuit of knowledge, and find great meaning in it.
Increasingly the arts are being defunded based on a similar argument, and humanity as a whole is worse off because of it.
There is a real conflict here. People are getting loans for their education. A loan is an investment, and should only be taken if it will pay off.
If you are getting education because you are interested in the topic but won't get a job in it: I fully support this. However you should not take a loan out to get this education: there are too many other things to do in life that you also will want to do. Worse the loan means you cannot change your mind later if you are wrong (or you can, but you will still have to pay for the mistake instead of whatever you are interested in today).
There is one other reason for education: to become a better citizen (don't fall for bad politics). However that should be to everybody and I haven't seen much evidence that higher education really helps much.
He did not seem to enjoy it or find meaning in it.
Something could be valuable despite being "useless" but not in this case.
Why do we need artists anymore? I can just ChatGPT to draw me pretty pictures if I want.
A PhD demonstrates the ability to think deeply about something. It thus isn't useless for any good job. However there are often better trainings for that job.
most jobs don’t require deep thought.
in LLM terms low to no reasoning is better than ultra.
You must be blessed. To always know why you do stuff?
Umm yes, what I did for 10 years and why is a reasonable question especially of someone on PhD level.
At least chemistry is objectively useful knowledge. Even if he would rather work in software engineering, there are a lot of places where domain expertise like that is very valuable. Plenty of software in the sciences.
As another poster mentioned, I also wanted to add that this attitude is why there is so much stress and pressure on kids these days to figure out everything in their lives by the time they're 22. It's pretty amazing to me that anyone can look at a PhD in Chemistry and say that was a wasted decade. Why was he not competitive? What skills were you looking for? In what way are you already biasing candidates based on your preconceived notions about what makes someone helpful, useful, intelligent, etc. I know broad generalizations aren't too useful, maybe this specific person had real significant shortcomings compared to the other 22 year olds you interviewed, but I encourage you to consider why we are doing "all of this" anyway (is it money? productivity? prestige? big houses?) and why someone might prioritize going so far in a field to actually CONTRIBUTE something new to the field (as one does through a PhD). Maybe consider why someone might not slot perfectly into your idea of the perfect economic pawn, though nevertheless have chosen an absolutely fine way to spend ones life (or ten years of it).
Many would dream to be top scholars of their field, to the point it feels like a personal mission. The reality kicks in for the first time when you can’t progress through the system anymore, be it 25 or 30.
At the age of 17 or 18 how do you actually know? My kids are going through this now. He's like I don't even know if I want to be an engineer, people just tell me I'd be good at it.
> I want to be [whatever]
That isn't the right question. The right question is can you do it, and will it pay enough to provide "a good life" (whatever that means to you). If you love [whatever] more power, that is the best case. However don't lose track of the fact that in the end no matter what job you pick there will be times when you have to do something you hate (not something unethical where you should quit, just something you hate), but you need to do something to be a good citizen.
If your kids already have a good career picked out I encourage a secondary study in some hobby thing. Go ahead and sing in the choir even though as an engineer it is a waste of time - that is fun and that is good (there are thousands of other fun things). Just don't lose sight that the goal is a good life and this will include things you don't want to do but have to anyway.
One thing I always hated about university education is how it’s entirely designed nowadays as a sort of “coming of age experience” for teenagers coming out of high school.
I don’t have any higher education. I was stupid and arrogant and thought it would be a waste of time and money. However even if I did attend at 17/18, I almost certainly would have squandered it. I wouldn’t have been mature or aware enough to understand how and where to focus my time and energy in such a setting.
By about my mid-late 20s I felt like I had a better idea of what I could or could not get out of such an experience, but by that point I had a life and bills to pay and a job to attend to allow for any of that. There’s barely any time or money for education now. I’ve thought about trying to go back for the last decade, but it just becomes less realistic every year.
Graduate school is not about passion and pushing frontiers. It is about training new researchers. It is it not a place that I would recommend to anyone who has real passion or brilliance in any field.
Most graduate school students don’t do research and don’t go on to do a PhD though? And what’s wrong with having more researchers?
>One interesting question is how does someone do that to themselves?
Because the system arounds you encourages it.
I would have interviewed him too.
I would have felt that he was at least technically savvy; and, beyond that, he might have the spark of one of the best qualities of a future colleague i.e. interesting-ness - one can't underestimate that.
On the other hand
> he just literally didn't know
That would have been disappointing to hear.