I recently found myself struggling with context switching, so I googled around a bit. This article sounded kinda smart but I would love to hear the options/experiences of other (more experienced than me) developers.
Maybe it's totally different for PMs than it is for devs?
I really like this style of writing, lead with the conclusion. Then elaborate on why. If someone isn't interested in what's being said, then you'll save them the time, and readers often ironically have a higher amount of patience with meandering text if they understand what the payoff is going to be than if they aren't sure where you're going with it.
I suppose, as long as these 4 messages arrive in quick succession you're fine.
If you wait a minute between sending each, that's where you should feel guilty :P
A PhD is one of those rare periods of life where you are completely on your own, navigating unknown territories without anybody telling you what you should or should not do, where your professional success depends entirely on your own ideas and decisions. The reason to try a PhD is that you are truly free to test your limits. It can be liberating, but also daunting. And definitely humbling.
In some ways, it is not so different from being an entrepreneur, as in both cases you are forging your own path trying to do something new that a certain community likes.
I really love what you said, and this is why I did it too.
The journey is long and hard and there are a ton of bumps along the way to complain about. But the overall journey is worthwhile.
I think it is similar to marriage. If you meet someone who's been married for 50 years, and you ask them how it has been they will say it was wonderful and then immediately start telling you about all the tough times them and their partner went through. THey might tell you how hard it was when they both lost their jobs or when they almost broke up 10 years in, but they still love the other person and are happy to have had them.
To an outsider it feels like these aren't compelling reasons to get married, but the married person has other feelings that are hard to quantify like the joy of being next to their partner during the hard times, the ability to share in the joys of that new job, the ability to offload some of their stress, or even the joy of waking up next to them each morning. Those outweigh the shitty things, but the shitty things often get mentioned the most because they stand out.
I think the same thing is true for the PhD. It takes most people 3-7 years (averaging around 4.5) to get a PhD. This is a significant journey that will have ups and downs. You hear all the shitty things on here. But there are joys of learning something you truly love at a detail of focus that is not possible with any other degree. There is the joy of breaking new ground with research and the satisfaction of being the shoulders that future generations will stand on with their own research. The joy of having a paper published or the networking that you get to be a part of. The journey is worth it. It is unique for everyone and you are in control. Its a ~5 year journey that will inheritly have ups and downs. Do you need a PhD to succeed in life? Certainly not. But can it be one of the core pillars of your life if you choose to do it? 100% Yes.
Interesting that you point out the symmetry between pursuing education and entrepreneurship.
One of the tough things about the education route is that winning at entrepreneurship can result in huge tangible life changes, but it seems like the effects of winning at education is harder to visualize.
I actually really like the analogy. You are running a "business" of ideas. You are competing against a lot of other very smart people who are also trying to start their own ideas business and competing for a very limited pool of support (funding, postdocs, tenure-track jobs, etc.). The professors you are trying to impress in grad school are "investors" and having their imprimatur on your business will help in both advice and in obtaining more funding and convincing others that your business is worth supporting.
If you can run a successful ideas business for 10+ years in multiple locations and convince several gauntlets of committees to keep supporting you, then there's a great deal at the end for choosing this education route--your business gets a significant degree of permanent support and protection (tenure)! But to get to that point, you have to sell your ideas and develop a product that will get buy-in and support from others in your field.
There are no limits on how hard or how much you can work. There are also no guarantees that working hard will pay off either. There's a lot of luck and sometimes the market just isn't buying what you're selling at that time, even if your product is great.
Sometimes hotels and airlines mistake PhDs for medical doctors and give out upgrades... just keep your fingers crossed that there won't be an in-flight medical emergency.
Very much on point. Where else can you get payed for doing essentially whatever you like for a few years?
At least for me, that was actually worth the hardship. Although there was a lot of hardship. It was still an incredible, and ultimately empowering, experience.
As painful as it can be at times, it is a truly beautiful phase of life during which your main obligations are to become an expert in something that interests you and to make enough money to not starve and have a place to live. If you are single, coming directly from the "broke college student" lifestyle, and end up at a university with a good stipend, it won't even feel like you are "poor" and the money is mostly enough. But the life of a grad student in a large public university can come with much more financial instability and heavier teaching loads from day one, with less time for slacking off and letting ideas marinate. Less so if you are in a field/have an advisor with good/consistent funding. The devil is in the details.
Wouldn't change it for the world though, and anecdotally most people I know who ended up finishing the PhD feel the same way.
Main shortcoming of the (American) grad school experience imo is lack of preparation to join the corporate workforce (in my field, there are easily >10x the graduating PhDs each year than there are available university jobs). Academia has done a terrible job preparing grad students for the harsh reality of a non-academic career. Keeping this in mind throughout grad school will help a lot -- you can see the difference in non-academic career trajectory between people who had a backup plan and those who didn't.
I have a book upstairs I authored that I can go to and be reminded there was a moment my mind was like a samurai sword for one very specific problem. I solved it by holding a thought in my brain consistently for ~3 years straight, and trying everything known and new tricks to solve it. I can barely read my thesis anymore, let alone understand it, the quality of what I did feels almost super human compared to what I've been asked of by the world outside academia. A lot of people who never spent any time post undergrad think its all nonsense, mostly because they meet slacker types. But if you really challenge yourself you will produce something singular and at the best of your ability. It's extremely rare you get that opportunity and support in time to do that anywhere else. Unless your PhD translates to commercial application directly! Perhaps artists with healthy commissions get to feel it. Startup life is similar I guess, but the pressure of commercial success is a very different driving force vs intellectual curiosity and understanding something new in the world. Post PhD I know that if I felt like it I can operate at an incredibly high level intellectually, that I choose not to post PhD is also the other confidence PhD gives you. Most people I know are pretty down to earth post PhD and leaving academia, its ultimately a humbling experience especially if you had fun with mental health during getting it done. You know you can do something, but you also know at what cost to yourself and people around you.
I wanted to go into academia to do research and teach, so I went for a Ph.D. and got it in 4 years in computer engineering without much burnout or issue. I was always cheerful and enjoyed my journey. I did have a great advisor and while I was at a top-100 university, it was outside the USA and maybe that makes a difference.
You should really only go into a Ph.D. because you really want to, which sounds tautological but basically you need to want to go into academia or get the kind of industry R&D job that requires one (several of my graduating colleagues). If you're on the fence about doing Ph.D. - don't. There's a very real opportunity cost.
1. If you manage to get through it, you will be a world expert in a niche that can be valuable. $$$$$$$$
2. You will develop the invaluable skill of not giving up even when all the odds are against you
3. You will be able to swim by yourself, parsing enormous amount of literature, identifying what is useful and useless and solve problems that no one else before you has solved.
4. Access to academic positions that offer stability
5. Access to academic network that provide infinite talent
> If you manage to get through it, you will be a world expert in a niche that can be valuable. $$$$$$$$
This depends highly upon your field, the current needs of industry, and your own work ethic. For example, if you want to write or architect software for a living, a PhD in computer science really doesn't get you much. Neither is it a good idea to go for a PhD just because you can't think of anything better to do to further your career. But if your goal is to make new discoveries in a field you are passionate about, then that would be a different story.
Also I have met a lot of PhDs who are absolutely not experts on anything at all, except for knowing how to thrive in the socio-political academic system by being "book smart," and writing bullshitty articles/papers.
> You will develop the invaluable skill of not giving up even when all the odds are against you
Are you saying people don't wash out of PhD programs all the time? Even if this was somehow true, you don't need to throw money at a PhD program to learn this!
doing a PhD for the earning potential is hilarious. you'd be better off getting a normal job, living frugally, and pumping as much into savings for the same amount of time
the long tail of profit in a startup is wildly higher than a PhD. To be clear, I say this as one who's gone through a math PhD; none of my fellow graduates make significantly more than they would've made bypassing the PhD for industry, especially when you consider the opportunity costs. Academia is very much for people who either prefer ideas or prestige to money.
Well I am bit biased because 2/14 of my PhD class, 10 years after defending, they are >50M worth, by leveraging their expertise.
I can accept the argument that a unicorn startup might have higher tail monetary benefit compared to a PhD. But a startup job will not open as many research job opportunities as a PhD. These are typically the highest paid individual contributor jobs in companies.
Of course if managerial track is your thing, you should probably not waste your time doing a PhD.
Me? I just realized I'm not motivated to get up to work in industry. I just can't get up to chase and achieve goals that serve the needs of shareholders or any other stakeholders. In academia, I probably still won't care about the stakeholders, but I'll at least get to explore stuff that interest me. Well, that's the hope anyway! Haha!
Reminds me of how many entrepreneurs don't become entrepreneurs to become rich. They do it to become free from having bosses. Except for me, I'm not sure I'd be able to make it as an entrepreneur if I only chase what interests me instead of what a market wants. If I chase what the market wants instead of what interests me, my motivation drops. Been there, tried that. So... here I am. Even though it's painful right now.
Savor it while you can. As a former academic, for me the lack of intrinsic motivation to "create value for shareholders" is the hardest part of working in industry.
If you have a cool idea which is novel in your field, a PhD might allow you to work on it without selling out to VCs. There are still people to convince, but the time horizon for results is longer than with an average seed funding.
A PhD is one of the hardest, yet most rewarding time of my life. Its perhaps the only period where I have the opportunity to do nothing else, but "think"; where I can spend many months just reading papers, learning and attacking what seems like one little problem. It is very hard work, no doubt. Going back in time, I would still do it again. And in fact, I have seriously considered doing another PhD in an entirely different field.
But still I generally do not recommend people do it. You have to be in it, because you are very interested in the field. You have to feel rewarded by learning, and by solving problems. And also there is a lot a lot of luck involved: advisor, topic, ideas etc.
Because tenured faculty members at research universities often have lovely careers. The road there is long and challenging, but the result can be exceedingly rewarding.
I clicked expecting an article on a secret formula used by tupperware but was positively surprised by some pretty math in the morning. Nice breakdown, thanks!
I mean it's very good. I have some 25 year old Tupperware in my kitchen and it's still doing absolutely great. Glass eventually breaks, Tupperware plates live. Cheap boxes sometimes break in less than a year. It's worth buying for the longevity alone.
A lot of FUD articles use that word, and your first link is probably the most factual. But FYI the only Tupperware products that have had BPA are those made using polycarbonate (PC), which is a hard and brittle plastic very different from most of their products and not the first to come to mind upon mention of the brand; on the other hand, the semi-flexible containers they're most known for are PE/PP, which don't require plasticisers at all.
