[vladoh]

I like the reasons described in the post. I would like to add one more that was really important for me when deciding to do a PhD in CS - learning to write papers.

While it may seem like a burden for some people, I think that describing your research in a very limited space (something like 8 pages) teaches you very valuable skills. You should also write it in a way that most of the readers will understand your ideas easily, considering the fact that the readers and even conference/journal reviewers often have very different backgrounds. I have seen papers with very good results being rejected because of bad explanations and also not so impressive papers that get accepted because they are very nicely written.

[thomasjames]

This is important to me. It is the reason that most of the jobs I am interested in require a PhD. Outside of the start-up and web space, there are actually a lot of industrial research jobs that will not even give your resume the time of day without a PhD because you are expected to produce technical literature and patents. I thought it was kind of funny in the article how they still mentioned the "I want to be a professor" reason. No interest in that rat race.

[arethuza]

Don't those kinds of industrial research jobs also usually require the kind of publication track record that you have to acquire in academia to survice?

Do industrial research labs really employ freshly minted PhDs - who probably haven't acquired the most important skill in modern research: the politics of attracting funding/backing?

[seanmcdirmid]

> Don't those kinds of industrial research jobs also usually require the kind of publication track record that you have to acquire in academia to survice?

Yes.

> Do industrial research labs really employ freshly minted PhDs - who probably haven't acquired the most important skill in modern research: the politics of attracting funding/backing?

Yes. How do you expect freshly minted PhDs to learn the art of attracting funding and backing?

[arethuza]

The black arts of attracting funding seems to be what junior academics spent considerable amounts of time doing when I worked in academia - mind you that is going back a bit so wouldn't surprise me if things have changed a lot.

[seanmcdirmid]

Keep in mind parent was talking about industrial labs, where funding is obviously a bit different. I don't really know much about academia beyond what I hear from peers.

[thomasjames]

It is actually very common to go to a research facility after a PhD. Anyone with a doctorate from a reputable program will have a list of publications that demonstrate a clearly defined interest and quite possibly even grants. For those that aren't at the level of a research scientist, there are often post-doctoral fellowships. If the companies are large enough, grants are less of an issue because there is a built-in R&D budget. There is less of the panhandling you see in academia.

[arethuza]

I did know some colleagues who went to work for large corporates in research labs - but they seemed pretty rare in the UK. Most stayed in academia or left to work in finance - and some even left to found startups (like me!).

Out of interest, what are some examples of the "research facilities" you are talking about?

[thomasjames]

IBM T.J. Watson, IBM Dublin, Oracle Labs, Google Mountain View, PARC Inc.,... there are some other ones that are more specific to HPC.