[jroesch]

I almost have a PhD from UW and concur. One failure mode I’ve observed in people getting a PhD is not fully understanding what it entails before starting. Later they undergo a painful period of rectifying reality and their idealized version of what it means to be a PhD student. Often realizing it wasn’t for them, and they would be happier elsewhere. I think for many people it’s important to overcome the sunk cost fallacy and leave.

Like many things in life a PhD is what you make of it, and I know many people who have had a miserable time, and those who’ve had an awesome time and everything in between. My PhD has been exceptionally tough, and not for the reasons Philip talks about, I have an awesome advisor, great lab, focus, lots of papers and it’s still just a challenging process. To me the PhD is much like ultra-marathon training, I’ve had the opportunity to do amazing things that I would have never got to do at a company for 5 or 6 years and wrote cool papers and built high impact systems. Though I’ve had to do all those things while making almost no money, and working with exceptionally limited resources.