[ajdecon]

I took the same route, "mastering out", and that cultural perception that "leaving your PhD is failing at life" was my biggest hurdle. I knew I could get a job, knew that I could probably find something interesting, but the looks of pity and disgust from my colleagues were not so easy to ignore. I think the comment I heard most often was, "what a waste."

Until I was actually out. Then I started getting furtive emails asking me questions like, "how do you write a resume?", "is the pay ok?", and most often, "are you happy?"

I still think a PhD is absolutely worth it in many cases, and trains you to be a scientist better than any other path. But it's a long hard road, and there are many people out there (me included) who do it because it's presented as the default path. If you're interested in physics, or biology, or any other science, it's just what comes next after undergrad. And that's not a good enough reason.

Edit: 'You know, most Ph.D.ers are smart and successful people. Hence they have a difficulty in saying “This is not for me”. They instead say “I’ve been successful all my life, and I finished everything I started, so I should finish this as well”. By saying that, they choose to hang in there for many years in a depressed state.

This.