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0 pointsgajjanag9y ago0 comments

> Personally, I had an awful time during my PhD, and between the penury and the toil and the bleak prospects afterward, I'd say you're definitely in the minority on this one.

Do you have any evidence for the minority claim beyond the personal anecdote? Also, this is field dependent, so a mention of the field could be helpful.

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sndean9y ago

> Do you have any evidence for the minority claim beyond the personal anecdote?

As a second anecdote, I've never met anyone who's said getting their PhD was fun. (My building is ~95% PhDs from a range of different disciplines)

johan_larson9y ago

My claim is based on my own experience as a CS PhD student and my conversations with other graduate students within the department and outside it during my studies. Christ, there was so much bitching. And it consisted of the kind of grim complaints I never heard during undergrad days or later on the job.

That said, CS PhDs are pretty lucky. The worst case fallback position of a job as a software developer isn't bad. It gets much worse for less commercial disciplines. God help the poor blighter with a PhD in Medieval Literature who doesn't snag an academic post.

tgarma12349y ago

Yes... the two languages requirement is A LOT easier in technical field than in the humanities. Try being fluent or functionally fluent for an exam in two human, spoken, academic languages vs learning a couple of programming languages. At least that was the experience I had. Learning enough French and German to read and write in French and German at the PhD level was absolutely soul destroying whereas now that I have had several normal business jobs and been asked to learn various programming languages as part of the work was basically... easy by comparison. A few jobs in software development are rapidly becoming the "webmaster" of our time.

enmi20159y ago

Good point. I did a PhDs in the humanities even though I am from a technical background. Had a great time.

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