I regret my decision to go to graduate school, advice?

[chuie]

I just finished my first two semesters of a PhD program in computational biology. I was excited by the prestige of going to a PhD program at an ivy league university, but now that that has worn off I am being bombarded by anxiety that I have made the wrong choice and that I will struggle to find a decent job after I graduate in several years.

I have previous industry experience, how might I go about transitioning back to a software development position?

[CyberFonic]

I'm in the 7th year of a PhD (just weeks from submitting my dissertation) and wish I had dropped out at the end of the 3rd year when my supervisor disagreed with the direction of my work.

Whilst I can't help you - only you can make the final decision, I offer some questions which might de-fuzz your thinking.

Other than the motivation of prestige and possibly having "Dr" in front of your name, what excites you about computational biology? Does it still excite you? Do you enjoy reading the stacks of papers by other academics? Have you written any draft papers yet? Do you enjoy the collegiate atmosphere at your uni?

Anxiety is a normal part of the package of being a PhD candidate. Everybody goes through that phase. The bigger issue is whether you are still excited about the area of your research. If not, then it will only get harder to continue. Talk to your advisor, fellow researchers and other PhD students - especially those who have done a few more years and have had some papers published.

Do you plan to go for an academic job? If so, consider that competition is fierce and you will pretty much be writing grant applications and papers and teaching and only doing a small amount of actual research. And all that for a lower salary than a good software developer can earn.

If you are thinking of finding an industry job with your PhD, then what sort of jobs are you thinking of? Have you done any research as to whether your speciality will be in demand? Of course, you could work in a different area, e.g. Wall St (some PhD's in computational biology have made that switch).

If you decide to abandon your PhD work, then the best strategy is to continue from where you left off with your industry experience. If you have acquired any new skills in the past year, then add them to your CV. But otherwise, you might have to pretty much treat the past year as an adventure holiday. Whatever you do, don't expect any potential employer to put any value on your academic work.

[riker2]

PhD's are not for everybody. Don't sweat it. I know people who took 6-7 years to figure that out.

Start applying for jobs. Expect rejections and interviews to go badly initially. Working at a PhD lab doesn't really prepare you for the standard dev position interview process. Unless you have worked on something interesting that a company is interested in, you have to put in some interview prep work. Put in the hours in prep, it will pay off.

If you made it into an Ivy League school, you can make it into any dev position you want. I can understand the self doubt and feelings of uncertainty you are experiencing, but the key is to refocus the mind on interview processes and prep. Good luck!

[brudgers]

In several years, the job market may be such that everybody is struggling to find decent jobs. However, I doubt that computational biologists are likely to struggle significantly more than programmers in general in such a situation.

That doesn't mean that a particular Phd program is the right place for you right now. Maybe it isn't. Maybe there's a better fit in another program, maybe no program is the right fit, maybe it's a good fit an this is just somewhat normal graduate school anxiety.

I guess the deep question is the nature of your motivation for a Phd. There is inherently nothing wrong with pursuing a Phd as an ambitious challenge. There is inherently nothing wrong with pursuing a Phd as vocational training [but it may be a hell of a roundabout way of doing so].

Good luck.

[dekhn]

First, determine whether you really want to stay for the PhD program. You may have made the wrong choice, but you need to decide that for certain. You say you are worried about getting a decent job- personally I find with a PhD in quantitative stuff, the PhD gives you a small additional set of jobs you can do (mostly academic) but good employers in tech will also hire you to just code/analyze data.

Assuming you decide to leave, Prepare your resume and apply for jobs. If you have industry experience and got accepted to a PhD program you shouldn't really have a lot of trouble finding a job if you live in an area with a large pool of jobs (boston, NYC, SF, Seattle).