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Software jobs, PhDs and over-qualification

22 点作者 paulsb大约 16 年前

9 条评论

lallysingh大约 16 年前
Odd, (I'm still finishing my PhD) I haven't gotten any such negative feedback. OTOH, it helps if:<p>1. Your PhD has real-world applicability. Which is not hard.<p>2. Your potential employers could apply those skills.<p>3. You can actually code pretty well, too.<p>I think this third item is often the issue. PhDs often have underdeveloped programming abilities compared to industry vets the same age -- too much classwork, not enough larger-scale projects. There are good ways around this: graduate research assistantships that require reasonable code, collaborative research that requires you build your part of a system, internships, etc.<p>At least for the places that I've worked and do work now, if they think you can get the job done, you're in good shape. Then again, I don't apply to the 1000-monkeys on 1000 typewriter coder/body shops, either.
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kurtosis大约 16 年前
Wow this is really depressing to contemplate. Has anyone here been through the experience where you went to grad school for curiosity and found that it made you unemployable? I really fear this outcome. I went to graduate school because I looked up at the end of my undergrad degree and realized that my knowledge of Physics was very shallow. I was pretty obvious just from the numbers I was extremely unlikely to get any kind of academic employment, but I decided that it didn't matter because I was sure I could talk to someone and convince them that I was a "practical" person. In another year I'm going to look seriously for a job and this story scares me. Is it really this hard to find a job solving hard practical problems with computers? Would someone seriously say that it's "too theoretical" to have experience building scientific instruments and software to control them in a lab, software that by construction has a <i>real</i> user? It really worries me that someone with a PhD in soft eng from CMU had such a hard time. This doesn't leave me much hope of crossing fields.
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troystribling大约 16 年前
I am a PhD, in physics, that left academic research about 10 years ago for a programming career. As a researcher I studied Computational Fluid Dynamics. All of my programming jobs have been in network management or a related field. My Ph.D has been a plus at every job I have held. Over qualification has never been an issue.<p>I left academia for two reasons: pay and a preference for programming to the drudgery of publication. I started my programming career near the peak of 2000 tech bubble and had doubled my salary within with a couple of years. Six figure programming salaries are far more common than six figure salaries in academic research.<p>An additional bonus which I did not anticipate was the competitive advantage I would have. Competition for academic positions is quite intense involving many capable people. This is likely why salaries remain low. In programming the typical skill level is much lower.
edw519大约 16 年前
"usually employers look for someone that codes like a robot"<p>Wrong. Usually employers look for someone to get the frickin job done without rethinking the problem. Classic example right now: I have PhD in Strategic Planning telling me to make the algorithm calculate the Economic Order Quantity when creating the Purchase Order. The Buyer immediately gave me 4 reasons why that will never work in the real world: the vendor will have to interrupt set-ups for plan changes, the bank will never approve that line of credit, the rev level may change before the end of the run, and oh, by the way, that many won't fit on the truck.<p>"...trying to get a plain ol’ developer position..."<p>You have an attitude problem. There's nothing "plain ol'" about what we do every day. While you were busy in your ivory tower for 8 years, <i>someone</i> had to keep the world moving.<p>"companies want the 20 year-olds to code quick and turn out an app with a 6-month lifetime"<p>On what planet? You were obviously too busy in college to actually find out what really goes on in the real world.<p>"6-8 years in graduate school under constant stress torn your ego into to pieces"<p>Poor baby. Get a job. Feed, clothe, and shelter a family. Deliver something every day to someone who is depending on you. For those of us who have been doing this for years, earning a PhD sounds like a vacation.
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angstrom大约 16 年前
<i>Even though you are screaming at your prospective employer, saying “yes I’ve done all the crazy stuff during the PhD, but now just want a job to code to feed my family”, they may not hire you not so much of over-qualification, but rather over-thinking.</i><p>Case in point, if you want a lower level position, remove the PhD from your resume. Stop over-thinking the problem. It's a perfectly valid solution to say you have a masters or bachelors instead so you can feed your family. Employers are perfectly valid in excluding PhDs if they are concerned about over qualifications costing more or leading to boredom.
electromagnetic大约 16 年前
The thing I always wonder about is 'PhD stupidity'. Basically, PhD's usually seem to get a sense of entitlement, which may put them at a disadvantage when entering the real world and leaving the academic world. What the author seems to be misunderstanding, is that employers aren't impressed by a PhD for an entry level job (actually it probably makes them very hesitant). However, the PhD is likely to get trapped into the whole 'I have a PhD so I'm important' mentality that seems to go around, so they never figure out that the PhD is stopping them getting a real job.<p>I think the other major problem is that people take PhD's that won't help them get a job. I've known forensic scientists who've been stuck in deli counters, because there's only a handful of available jobs in the entire western world. I've known journalist grads who've been flat out rejected because of their degree, because it teaches them poor skills (the main skill desired now is the ability to write with personality, which journalism courses actively discourage).<p>So I'm sure there's a lot of ways that can contribute to a PhD making you unemployable, however it's probably always down to poor choice or poor judgment.<p>Personally I'd love to get a PhD in physics out of pure interest. However, the one thing I'd worry about, and I've told to friends going the PhD route, is that taking a PhD keeps you out of the career field for 10+ years. So you have to really evaluate if 10+ years of experience is better for you career wise than a PhD and 0 years experience, because all the fields I'm interested in (career wise, not academically) don't give a damn if you have a PhD, so even though I'd like to have a degree in something I'm not going to waste my time.
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dinkumthinkum大约 16 年前
I don't understand this. Why is a recent PhD trying to get entry level programming jobs?
geebee大约 16 年前
I think we need to rethink what we mean by "overqualified". An MD isn't necessarily overqualified for a job as an RN - in fact, such a person might be underqualified. Just because you have "higher" credentials doesn't necessarily mean your credentials are a superset of what is needed.
puzzle-out大约 16 年前
I'm wondering how many HN users have phds. Poll time anyone? (or has it already been done).
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