[eshvk]

> As a sidenote, I think getting a PhD increases your likelihood of getting an otherwise unlikely outcome in the sense of career success/advancement, getting rich, etc. (unless you choose academia). I mean, over the course of your career, you could really leverage your PhD, or you could not. In theory (and probably in practice most of the time), it won't hurt to have one, career-wise.

To give you another counterpoint, as a person who dropped out of a C.S. PhD and went to industry. Sure, it won't hurt to get a PhD. Getting rich unfortunately is only weakly correlated with technical ability beyond a certain point. 1) You are not going to get rich purely as a salary (wo)man unless you are lucky enough to be an early stage employee (which I don't see how the PhD or otherwise helps you that much. ). 2) To found your own company and leverage your PhD skills seems tempting but rarely if ever do PhD's have research that can be converted into successful industry products. Boston Dynamics is one of those rare examples. However, these opportunities are not closed to off to people who while they may not have done research in the field and know every other implication of certain strategies but have great contacts and know how to get things done.

[javert]

1) You are not going to get rich purely as a salary (wo)man unless you are lucky enough to be an early stage employee (which I don't see how the PhD or otherwise helps you that much)

I think this is basically true, but I wonder about a couple of potential exceptions:

(a) I suspect that in huge corporations (IBM being a canonical example), just having the credential can help qualify you for leadership roles (e.g. leading, say, groups of 100 to 1,000 people), if you are also a good leader/strategical thinker/do-er. And at some point, these leaders are probably getting paid significantly more, which (with wise investments) could potentially (?) be bootstrapped into getting rich. I'd be interested if anyone with personal experience can comment on any of the above.

(b) I would think that having a PhD would help qualify you for the top-level executive roles. Although, frankly, I've looked at company websites, and top-level executives with PhDs are not _that_ common, even in software companies. But yeah, I mean, there _should_ be a top-level decision maker who is _at least_ keeping a close watch on any research related to what the company does (I'm talking software companies here, not companies that _use_ software)... and the vast majority of people who have the necessary skills will be people who did PhD-level research. Anyway, this person should be able to advocate for how the company can leverage new research, and this should not just be left to lower-level (hierarchically) technical folks who have no true strategic voice in the company.

To found your own company and leverage your PhD skills seems tempting but rarely if ever do PhD's have research that can be converted into successful industry products.

Do you think this is true even of CS PhDs? I feel like in my research group, there is a real chance for any of we (students) to do this, but AFAIK I am the only one who has ever really thought about it, because my colleagues tend to keep their noses in the books and focus on narrow technical concerns, whereas I'm really a big-picture thinker. So: in my case, plenty of opportunity, just not much interest among actual PhD students.

[eshvk]

> (b) I would think that having a PhD would help qualify you for the top-level executive roles. Although, frankly, I've looked at company websites, and top-level executives with PhDs are not _that_ common, even in software companies. But yeah, I mean, there _should_ be a top-level decision maker who is _at least_ keeping a close watch on any research related to what the company does (I'm talking software companies here, not companies that _use_ software)... and the vast majority of people who have the necessary skills will be people who did PhD-level research. Anyway, this person should be able to advocate for how the company can leverage new research, and this should not just be left to lower-level (hierarchically) technical folks who have no true strategic voice in the company. I think there might be a correlation causation thing happening here. :) A PhD doesn't necessarily give you leadership ability, you might join at a higher position and move up in a shorter time frame (because you joined at a higher position).

> Do you think this is true even of CS PhDs? I feel like in my research group, there is a real chance for any of we (students) to do this, but AFAIK I am the only one who has ever really thought about it, because my colleagues tend to keep their noses in the books and focus on narrow technical concerns, whereas I'm really a big-picture thinker. So: in my case, plenty of opportunity, just not much interest among actual PhD students.

My experience is mostly of C.S./Machine Learning PhDs. Let me give you an illustration. Say you spend your entire PhD figuring out one specific problem in recommendation systems, like for example, building optimization algorithms where the error rate is 6% or so. This is incredibly cool stuff but when you go out into the real world, you don't necessarily need that fancy algorithm inorder to solve problems. Really simple stuff works and the way production code works, keep it simple stupid is an important thing!

[_dark_matter_]

I'm currently an undergrad senior getting degrees in CS and Physics. I just finished applying to CS PhD grad programs, but I've really been leaning towards dropping out after completing my masters and going to work in industry.

I'm just interested in your experience of doing just that. I've found very little reference material on it, except some comments by professors and people currently working in industry that people are courted by companies once they finish their qualifying exams.

This may be off topic, but what's your experience with this? Were you courted before you decided to leave? How far did you get? What affected your decision? What was the salary difference? What do you do now? Was it worth it to even go for a little?

[javert]

I'm not the person you're asking this question of, but rather, the person who faced the same decision and decided to stay in grad school.

I couldn't let my advisor down. After sticking with me for two years, I would have felt horrible if I had left him after my masters. I did not _expect_ this going in, and I planned to have "leaving after my masters" as a real option.

To be clear, I still would have left if I had had a good reason. Ultimately, I wanted to stay. But if it had been borderline, I would have still stayed. And "borderline" for grad school may very well be "I'm tired of killing myself with overwork, I don't really feel like doing this shit for a few more years. But I could just suck it up and keep going, since I'm already like half way there." Grad school can be pretty crappy.

I definitely could have turned summer internships during grad school into full-time work, though, and gotten a well-paying engineering job.

[eshvk]

> I'm just interested in your experience of doing just that. I've found very little reference material on it, except some comments by professors and people currently working in industry that people are courted by companies once they finish their qualifying exams.

There are tons and tons of companies that come to a school every year. If you have a linkedin profile or some sort of web presence, you will be courted. It doesn't necessarily happen once you finish quals or whatever, but it will keep happening.

> This may be off topic, but what's your experience with this? Were you courted before you decided to leave? How far did you get? What affected your decision? What was the salary difference? What do you do now? Was it worth it to even go for a little?

I do data science (machine learning, scalability engineering) stuff. Lots of people have PhDs, I presume they make a good 20% or so more than I do. However, keep in mind that they have spent 3+ years finishing a PhD so I can probably make up. Honestly, if you are going into industry, I don't think you'd need a PhD. Companies these days think it is fancy to hire someone with a big name degree but a master's degree hasn't hampered me. I miss school terribly mainly because I felt stupid there (I know how silly this sounds) and the problems were terribly hard.