Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomw2005 | Hacker News Reader

tomw2005

I appreciate the article is written from a US perspective but here is how it works in STEM in the UK:

1. Get a funded PhD offer for 3-4 years (The funding is tax free so comparable to the average grad salary).

2. Complete in 3-4 years (it is hard to get more than a 6 month extension, technically they can take their money back if you do but this rarely happens as the system wants you to quit early or succeed).

3. Be more employable (I'm speaking from personal experience here. I didn't go looking for jobs like I did after my undergrad, they came to me via LinkedIn/Monster etc.)

As an avid reader of PhD comics I have always struggled to understand why the US system is so different.

As a side note it is worth pointing out that it is foolish to assume that doing a PhD inherently leads to a Professorship now. What it does do is give you 3-4 years experience (which employers like) and a vast range of research and communication skills (which employers love).

View on HN

I would be dubious about the "more employable" bit. There are plenty of examples where having a PhD makes one less employable. It would vary by field as well, so at the end it would be a wash, and not specifically a reason to do a PhD.

Anecdotal evidence, but I found my MASc [1] to be a very hard sell for most employers. That is even if it was very applied, the goal at the end of my project was pretty much to have a good enough prototype to get funding for a startup [2]. One company thought it was interesting and made an offer, but I ended up accepting a second offer from another company, a position which had already been offered to me after undergrad.

All in all, I don't regret, it was 2 years spent with a lot of autonomy on an interesting R&D project, which is mostly unheard of in industry, especially for junior roles. But I can't say it was really a plus for my career, 2 years of experience would have allowed me to get P.Eng. and that plus experience is much more valuable in the eyes of employers.

[1] In Canada, MEng is generally 45 credits of coursework and 15 credits of research+thesis, while MASc is the opposite (major research component).

[2] We were eventually denied government funding, which made private capital also pull out. The reason was apparently the shakiness of the business case, which I unfortunately was not much involved in.

PhDs in the UK are different from US PhDs. At least in CS, a US PhD in computer science is probably more like a UK PhD + a postdoc. That means the time-investment for a UK dissertation is lower.

I do agree with this comment. I work as a c++ programmer and my friends who stayed at uni to do their PhDs are bringing more money home each month than I do, mostly because it's tax free and they get paid a lot of money to do marking and demonstrating on top of their PhD stipend. And yes, you have to finish in 4 years, extensions are uncommon.

On yeah, I used to take home around 200GBP a month when I did teaching. It did make Tuesdays a minimum 12 hour day though.

On the other hand though, if they cannot get on track for a role in academia, once they get a job in industry they'll likely make less than you because of lack of practical experience. In such an ageist marketplace as programming in particular, being older and inexperienced is really unattractive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com