Comment by cryptography | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cryptography | Hacker News Reader

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Here's what nobody talks about: the author was RIGHT about the structural problems.

But completely wrong about the solution.

The PhD glut? Real. The postdoc treadmill? Absolutely real. The funding crisis? Still here.

But here's what changed:

The same skills that make you survive a PhD—deep research, systems thinking, hypothesis testing, data analysis—became the EXACT skills the market desperately needs.

2025 reality: - AI companies hiring PhDs at $300K+ base - Biotech startups led by former academics - Data science roles requiring scientific rigor - Deep tech ventures solving real problems

The trap wasn't the PhD. The trap was assuming the ONLY path was tenure-track academia.

The researchers who thrived? They took their training and built different careers: → Industry R&D leadership → Technical founding teams → Quantitative roles in finance → Policy and strategy positions → Scientific consulting

The irony: that essay discouraged a generation from science right before scientific thinking became the most valuable skill set in the economy.

The lesson isn't "don't get a PhD."

It's "don't limit yourself to one narrow definition of what a scientist does."

The best training for solving hard problems is still solving hard problems.

You just get to choose which ones.

I've been on LinkedIn a bunch lately while I'm looking for work. The cadence and "But here's what changed:" are extremely LinkedIn coded. I hope this is just an LLM and people aren't actually starting to talk this way.

Yeah, the only difference between that post and a full linkedIn post is the AI generated illustration.

It's the LinkedIn version of the challenge to tell people they can prove P=NP without te ...

As far as Jane Jacobs (not a professional) is concerned, this is the hardest problem for any tribe of humans: how to survive as a culture?

On values (some say fumes) or on money. Values vs value. Academia back in the days of Athena was a "solution" on the values end of the spectrum. Religion, too, until they figured out they could appeal to the "charity" of the spiritually hungry rich (& later, everyone)

(I appreciate the Benedictine orders for limiting their offer of spiritual goods to some devilish brews )

Most academic topics have near-zero applicability to industry. A classmate just got her PhD on some paleoclimate records of biomarkers in permafrost. It's not a job. If you love the topic and do research in it.. then awesome. Otherwise, hope you enjoyed the ride. You're gunna have to retrain for the next gig.

The training otherwise is a bit of a joke.. you can write some janky Python to shit out crappy plots. You learn to skim papers.. and some bare-minimum stats. It's not worth doing for some nebulous "scientist training"

If you only understood how White Hot and Stone Cold a research field can be! Five years ago crypto was white hot and today it's almost Stone Cold! People get intoxicated with the money beams that get blasted at people in the white hot subfields but realize that only 5-10% of phds are majoring in the white hot subfields and they simply got lucky 5 years ago to pick that subfield and all that attention hopefully lasts for 10 years which is enough time for them to get tenure or succeed with a startup! if the field isn't white hot for 10 consecutive years they will get fired at tenure time!

The problem with your take is that you neglect the nuanced difference between demand and need.

Demand is where people are willing to pay you at the right price, and you aren't struggling to find work. Need is where they aren't, and you are struggling, and people only get jobs when there is suitable demand.

Jobs where there is great need but distortions that cause zero or extremely low demand, you don't get people. These jobs have great need, but there is no economic benefit that justifies the people development cost for that crop. These resources are wasted resources after demand is met.

A lot of this is basic economics, and the tragedy is that just like in science, structure dictates function. Distortions beget more distortions, and when they are not based in the core principles that determine wealth of a nation, then they may become chaotic at which point structure fails.

The lesson the OP author is trying to make is, make sure the juice is worth the squeeze, and be extremely discerning because there are a lot of people that will lie for imaginary personal benefits. Enough that he says don't do it, and that's coming from an insider who has known and seen how it goes bad in detail, but was still successful.

I did my PhD while working, so it's not even that either or. And just to add to your point, it is really so rare to get that kind of mentoring, feedback than in a PhD program. It might depend on the program, but you finally have access to the brightest minds in your field and get to socialize with them.

Is this LLM written?

This is absolutely true. And the mistake I see from PhDs who want to switch into industry, is looking for work around the exact subject they did their research on. Rather they need to identify a useful industry area and demonstrate how their research skills give them an edge in that new area

It’s not hard to do but you have to let go.

Quantity matters, how many scientifics work for an AI company versus how many are unemployed?

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