PhD Value Debate

Before getting a PhD, you should consider that this might make you less qualified than someone holding a bachelors or masters degree. As the author states, academia breaks you down and remakes you in its image, which will make it harder for potential employers to break you down and remake you in theirs, and they generally know that. Unless I was running a research lab, I would prefer to hire someone with a master level of education before a PhD unless the research topic involved buildin

A PhD certifies that you are able to do research independently, at least in theory. Unless you are aiming for one of the very few CS research positions in industry or for one of the jobs developing a product that require very specific cutting edge knowledge that your research happens to have been in, a PhD is likely to be of very little use.

Why bother getting into a PhD program?

Is having a PhD really that big a deal to get a job in tech in the US?

To be fair, this is really field dependent. In the sciences this is (mostly) true, but in the humanities your output for your PhD is sometimes just your thesis. The problem is fundamentally that the PhD traject is geared towards an academic career, but there are not enough academic positions for all those PhD students, so they end up in industry. And there their skills don't really translate that well, as OP also says.

A PhD is an apprenticeship to become an academic. If you aren't planning to take your career in that direction it's hard to see a reason to do one. It's a negative in the non-academic job market.

Industries that want PhDs are quite limited IME. Very few companies are running their own research labs. I guess pharma would but in CS? Not one company in my country.I also don't remember seeing PhD requirement/advantage in who's hiring on HN. There may be, but they are for sure rare.In my country, in some job positions, a company is also required to give higher salaries to PhDs, so they reject such candidates because of overqualification. I know of a few cases where people

I have a PhD in Pharmaceutical Science / Biomedicine.Its easy to confuse the value a PhD holds and there is a large amount of misinformation around the internet which doesn't help. The following are my opinions and experiences and shouldn't be viewed as an authority. Different PhDs, different specialties and different universities will result in different experiences and outcomes.A PhD is simply a ticket that gives its holder an opportunity to move into fields (academia typi

I agree that people can enter and follow the programming career path easily without a PhD. Completing a PhD equips you to follow your dream of science, of being a patent clerk by day and brilliant theorist by night, but it doesn't exactly help you make money. Like studying classical music for ten years and then complaining you can't get a job: dude, I hate to upset you, but a "job" wasn't the point at all.

There is an obvious conflict of interest but it doesnt make his views invalid. Several other PhDs have said pretty much the same thing. Frankly, I dont see much more utility for working in industry beyond a Masters. You really should have the skills to learn anything else by the time you complete a thesis.