[tanzam75]

For those interested in a career in development, a PhD is rarely helpful. For the PhD candidate, it can even be counterproductive, as any gains in initial salary will be more than offset by the lost salary during the 5-6 years of the PhD.

Only for a career in research is a PhD important.

[pgbovine]

i will vehemently argue that a Ph.D. in CS is one of the best ways that a young hacker can spend his/her 20s, regardless of which career they end up pursuing in the future. pursuing a Ph.D. + interning at several companies during summertimes = amazing combo for a wide variety of future careers.

the ONLY enduring downside (which you mentioned) is the lost income.

see: http://vimeo.com/73178238

[tanzam75]

> i will vehemently argue that a Ph.D. in CS is one of the best ways that a young hacker can spend his/her 20s

No need to argue that point, because I'm not arguing against it. Look at the comment that I was replying to:

> For those interested in a career in research and development, a PhD is almost a must.

A PhD is a must for a career in research. It is not a must for a career in development. We use the term "R&D," but those are quite different things. There's a lot less "R" around, and a lot more "D."

When I say that the PhD is "rarely helpful," I do not mean that it is totally useless. I mean that the person who would otherwise have done the PhD is probably a self-starter who would've done other equally-valuable things in the meantime. Different things, certainly. But unlikely to be worse than what you would've done in the PhD. Thus, it is not helpful compared to what else you could've done in the meantime.

For a career in the "D" side of computer science "R&D," it's about your technical skills and experiences. Doesn't matter if you acquired them while doing a PhD, or in a company, or working on open source. This is very different from a career in research, where it is much more important to have a piece of paper with "PhD" written on it.

[pgbovine]

"I mean that the person who would otherwise have done the PhD is probably a self-starter who would've done other equally-valuable things in the meantime." -good point! i agree with that a lot. i see what you mean now.

[af3]

this video comes from a professor, good joke!

[pgbovine]

s/professor/postdoc/g

(also, my first job out of grad school was in industry and had nothing to do with my Ph.D. work)

[af3]

Hey, I read you book! I thought you will never go academia... things change...

[pgbovine]

whoa thanks! then you probably know that i've thought a lot about this decision to dive back in :)

[elemeno]

The parent comment should probably be read as 'research and development' - working for IBM's research arm, Microsoft Research etc.

[tanzam75]

And I read it as exactly that.

I was pointing out that the PhD is useful for "research", but not for research "and development."

[scott_s]

In my experience, the people who can do the D are better at the R.

[tanzam75]

> In my experience, the people who can do the D are better at the R.

Agreed. But less so, the other way around.

Which is why development jobs don't reward the PhD enough to pay for the opportunity cost. It counts as 6 years of industry experience -- which you could've gotten in 6 years of working in industry.

[DrSpock]

That is true to an extent. But, most people don't do PhDs to end up doing purely software development.