This question follow's JeffE's comment here:
In most industries, a PhD has negative value.
I am curious about what potential negatives there may be with having a PhD, particularly in industries. For example, my PhD has applications for image sensors, and the potential of working in that field is appealing—would having a PhD be a potential barrier? Would it be a case of how explicit the practicalities of the PhD can be made? Would this make any difference?
Answer
Though a Ph.D is not necessarily a disadvantage, depending on the field and the nature of the Ph.D, it may also not be as competitive as the equivalent number of years in industry.
Think from a perspective of a hiring dev team leader who needs a good systems engineer yesterday to help integrate some obscure API from a vendor into their product. You're choosing between a pile of resumes.
On one, you have a candidate who has 3 years as a junior engineer in a company that worked on image sensors, 2 years of work as a systems developer II, and one year as a lead developer on a computer vision project. He's delivered seven projects in total and has worked in a highly cross-functional team of hardware and software engineers, salespeople, and on-site support staff. The products he worked on brought the company revenue of $86.3 million dollars over seven years.
On another, you have a candidate who has done 6 years in a Ph.D and 1 year worth of internships in total. He's worked on a computer vision project and has contributed a novel algorithm to solving "Line tracing under low UV light conditions" (I made that up, I have no idea if that's a real problem in computer vision), and has written six publications. He also has taught a course on 3rd year systems programming and has TAed robotics three times.
While they are both good candidates, chances are that unless you need someone who does "line tracing under UV light", the first candidate might be more attractive. Less training, less having to work with that person to integrate them into a product-based flow, proven record of delivering product and making sales, etc...
I personally feel that the "disadvantage" of a Ph.D is more about lost opportunity cost than an actual disadvantage. In many cases, the culture of academia vs. industry are different enough that it's like switching fields even if the technologies are similar. Basically, someone with 7 years actual work experience has enough to basically go from a new grad hire to a project team lead, whereas someone with 7 years of Ph.D is proven to deliver in an academic setting but not in a for-profit product-based one. However, at the same time, there are many industries that want to have Ph.Ds on their staff as well because they are long-term, deep thinkers who are rigorous and detailed.
No comments:
Post a Comment