I want to do cool stuff. I have done research (currently semester #3 of it) and have generally found it to be new and exciting, but that's also how I've felt about working on Mongrel2.
If you told me that the only way I was likely to find new and interesting problems was to go to Grad school, I would choose grad school.
I'd go even further and say get a PhD only if you want to be a professor. If you just want to work on interesting projects in industry, a Masters degree might be a better RoI.
Also consider the increased difficulty of re-entering the commercial workplace after spending a long time working in an uber-specialized field while getting the PhD. If you're more of a generalist by nature, don't do the PhD (this is advice I wish someone stressed to me before I did mine).
There have been several other similar threads to this on HN from memory which also contained some solid advice.
Yeah I think I would agree. I did a PhD without wanting to go into academia and while I had plenty of reasons for doing it I'm not convinced it was a great idea.
I think part of wanting to do a PhD is wanting to complete the ultimate intellectual marathon. To get that seal of approval. Its a really stupid reason and I strongly suggest you do some soul searching as to which parts of your ego feel they need that validation.
Cool and new. Yeah I think that might have been how I described my motivation as well. I don't think research is about cool and new. I think successful research is about learning a difficult and advanced area and then carefully contributing a very small uncool piece of the puzzle. I think trying to be creative gets you shallow and unuseful work.
It's probably better to think about the PhD as learning about a really specialized subfield and a small amount of contribution. I'd also say only certain subfields are worth getting a PhD in. In some fields like machine learning a PhD can be an entry into all sorts of useful jobs and roles, in other fields its only an entry to academic roles, and finally in some fields it won't be a good entry to academia and industry will be left scratching their heads as to why you wasted your time.
One of your previous comments is, I think, one of the most succinct descriptions of why I'm planning to leave CS academia. (That said, CS academia has been pretty good to me.)
"While amazing, groundbreaking research is possible in academic computer science - the general lifecycle of research is some irrelevant poorly made prototype that ignores any number of real world concerns and leads to a couple of uninspired papers that noone reads."
Well that was definitely my experience, I'm not sure how well it generalizes.
I think there are probably some deeper factors at play in this. I think in most fields of computer science its hard to articulate the importance of the research in itself. That is I think my vague outsider view of Maths and Physics research is that its easier to quantify the significance research on its own. In CS I feel their is a stronger need for outside justification - that is this research will do x faster or better - but that research tends to be divorced from industry to the extent that it rarely contributes directly. Fundamentally there just isn't as much need for academia in lots of fields of CS - it doesn't take expensive equipment and its not so abstract that it can't be undertaken by a profit seeking concern. Add to that most universities want to take good research patent it and spin it off anyway, and you might as well just start a company and keep your equity.
Do you like writing grant proposals? Do you like teaching? Do you like writing and reviewing papers? Academia consists of a lot of non-coding work that I frankly cannot stand. Heck, I thought I might actually like teaching and it turned out it was the most unpleasant job I've ever had.
