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Comment by ntwalker | Hacker News Reader

This feels basically exactly like my experience too this year and last. I even had a professor tell me straight up when I emailed him that I basically wouldn’t get in since he already had prospective students with publications in the exact area reach out to him. I’ve kind of realized that without a string of publications ahead of time you’re basically out of the game before you even try. It’s like you have to have done PhD level work before you can do the PhD. It’s left me totally lost on what to do from here, getting a PhD has been a life dream for me so it’s hard to ditch the idea. I guess we might be in the same boat.

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Don't despair. PhD life looks good from the outside because all parties involved (students, professors, administrators) have incentives to make it look good. The reality can be much different.

Besides, you've got to think how would you use this degree after you finish. Inside academia, you will be locked in a job with a mid-low salary with scarce options to advance. Outside of academia, PhD is less valued than most people think. I know quite a few people who do great research in the industry with only a BSc degree.

> I know quite a few people who do great research in the industry with only a BSc degree.

But what kind of recognition do they get? I know somebody who worked at some really good labs for ~10 years and did great work. He co-authored a couple of Nature (?) papers of which he did most of the work and writing. But ultimately with a BSc you're just a lab tech and nobody takes you seriously.

OTOH, that person just finished his Ph.D at Harvard but this is pretty much the end of the road for him--I don't think he's keen on navigating the cut-throat world of academia or commercial research.

It's kind of a lose-lose. If you love basic research, no recognition and you're stuck following orders. If you want recognition and some autonomy, you're stuck playing politics.

This is something that definitely weighs on my mind, I think. I've got an MSc, but I feel intense self-doubt and feel like I can't be an expert until I've gotten a PhD. In that sense maybe I've internalized the idea, and telling myself I'm not "qualified" to speak on issues of science in my field. And not to mention, doing a PhD brings the benefit of several years of being able to devote full time to learning and development. A full-time job can (should) be a growth environment but one's work will always be subordinate to business needs (most often applying knowledge you have rather than learning new things), and take most of the time of your week.

The quest for autonomy and recognition is rough, it's a very tough game and it's not easy to stay motivated at trying to make progress.

> But what kind of recognition do they get?

They get paid well. Most of the stuff they do cannot be published due to intellectual property reasons, so they indeed miss out on academic recognition. This is a trade-off one has to make.

Sad to hear the story of that person. Ideally, you should not start a PhD unless you have a burning question to answer and need ample time to study it. Given that a career post-graduation is not guaranteed, it's best to hedge your bets and study something that has immediate applications and/or gives you transferable skills.

The big draw for me is to be able to actually invent and innovate and not just implement old ideas over and over in a boring corporate space. All the exciting research jobs I see in my field (NLP) require a PhD, so I feel like I'll hit a career ceiling at some point and be implementing boring corporate solutions for the rest of my life and never really innovating.

But as you say, appearances can be deceptive and it's like the grass is always greener, so maybe I need to broaden my horizons somehow. It's definitely hard to find that path at the moment though.

Edit: Oh and I do have to admit the fancy title that lets me feel like I'm truly educated and learned, and satisfies credentialism in the world is a draw too... Peer pressure is a hell of a drug

Companies explicitly requiring a PhD is an unfortunate consequence of having too many PhDs being already out there and additionally produced each year. If you have done some interesting work and can get in touch with a recruiter, you can probably challenge that requirement in your case.

If you don't have a PhD, you do have to compete with everyone who has it. But it is still possible to gain an edge on them by simply studying what your prospective employers need. For PhD students, it is actually harder to do that unless their PI is doing something closely related.

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