[dxbydt]

> you could have been getting paid a lot more in that time

I'm sure you are familiar with the concept of fuckyou money. Its a different number for different people.

Say that number is 5. I will give you many examples below. Every example is a real living person. I personally know every one of these people.

(enterprise programmer in stodgy bank in usa) 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5

(enterprise programmer in stodgy bank in poor country) 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5 + ... + 0.5 = 5

( steady progress in startup until faang acquired it) 0.5 + 0.8 + 1.2 + 1.2 + 1.3 + 6 > 5

( many failed startups in valley until 1 success) 0.5 + 0.8 + -2 + 0.5 + 0.7 + -2 + 0.5 + 20 >> 5

( phd student whose invention was purchased by salesforce ) 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 15 >> 5

( phd student who ended up in fang ) 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 2 + 3 > 5

etc.

[hnuser355]

One of the reasons I like the PhD in my case is I consider it to be “fuck you education”. I don’t expect it to give me any significant income advantages in software company, but I feel like it opens enough different areas of employment and gave me a big and strong enough skill set that I’m not intimidated by much.

I suppose it might not work out in such a way for all research though. I was lucky enough that my coursework left me with enough math and statistical skills to either learn or fake my way through most relevant math intensive computing stuff while my actual work was things like parallel optimization schemes for neural network training (and lots of programming in the big frameworks)

[rxhernandez]

I mean if we're going by anecdotes:

- I made more on my first day of work than almost any of my professors will make on their last day work.

- I also personally know 3 PhDs at tech companies in the Bay that make substantially less than me despite being 4-6 years older than me.

- I am also acquainted with two people that made an obscene amount of money from their tech skills; one maxed out at a high diploma and the other a PhD.

- The other 20 or so PhDs I know don't make substantially more than I do.

- I've also seen a few PhDs at my last company end up as systems engineers which is incredibly depressing because they could have been employed in that same role if they stopped at a bachelors.

[Osmium]

> I've also seen a few PhDs at my last company end up as systems engineers which is incredibly depressing because they could have been employed in that same role if they stopped at a bachelors.

It’s only depressing if they feel like they didn’t get anything out of their PhD :)