[kevstev]

What specific differences did you see? I was also at a mid tier school, though I did have a scholarship, and was intimidated when I got a job working alongside an MIT grad and a PHD from Yale. The MIT grad was a very good solid guy, and the Yale guy was also solid, I'd be happy to work with or hire either again, but there was no 10x difference, maybe more like a 1.3x difference at best between the team average and the MIT guy.

In general the phds I've worked with were tbh below the average- they always seemed to be big on ideas but less so on actually implementing them and following through.

This was from my days in the finance industry, working in algo trading/hft, but I will admit I was definitely in a tier below the groups that were absolutely minting money, but these were coveted jobs.

[DANK_YACHT]

The biggest difference was that most people were interested in something. One friend was really into robotics. He introduced me to a lot of robotics concepts and he had a plan on how to pursue a career in robotics. Personally, robotics wasn’t my cup of tea, but I ended up with a lot of exposure to the subject. Another friend wanted to study AI, specifically neural networks. This was over 10 years ago, so neural nets weren’t widely deployed like they are today. Another friend was into music, and wanted to play music all the time. Even through I wasn’t super into any of these topics, each interaction was enriching to me and expanded my mind to include new and interesting aspects of computer science and software engineering.

Regarding phds, I totally agree that they are not effective workers usually. The desire to get a phd is almost like a mild form of ocd where people get obsessed with one particular problem and are willing to dedicate ungodly amounts of time to the topic. This is usually the opposite of what you want when trying to deliver something in the commercial sphere.