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Comment by anonymousDan | Hacker News Reader

Go back and do a PhD?

+'s -

   When you finish, you should be pretty marketable
   Pick up a whole new set of research skills
   Support group shouldn't be a problem in a university environment
   Potential for coding if you want to.
   Someone with industry experience will tend to have
   a good idea of what will work in reality

-'s

   You will take a hit money wise until you qualify

You could perhaps look at doing a masters as an intermediate step?

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Do - not - listen - to - him !!!

PhD is a long and uncertain education path... that leads to an even longer and more uncertain career path.

Oh, and you will be 5+ years older that everybody else.

Depends where you do your PhD! It's only 3 years (in theory!) in the UK/most of Europe.

3 years out of undergraduate school? The program I dropped out from was, as you say, 3 years on paper. However, you had to have already a masters degree in roughly the same area of expertise as your dissertation theme.

Otherwise, they had a "special" Direct PhD program where they would put you in the same classes with all the introductory classes with the rest of the masters students (4yrs vs 2 + 3 yrs).

Besides that, everybody knows that figures are extremely optimistic. I have heard from different people that 4 years is considered the bare minimum you need to finish. Then, there comes the limbo of post-doc stints before making it to adjunct professor.

Are there attractive, single members of the opposite sex involved with this? If so, just let me know which colleges I should apply to.

Only if you're female.

Depends what you do your PhD in.

Biology probably has the best balance between "attractive" and "sane" you're going to find.

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