thanks, it is useful to step back and think about all the other people in the field who don't have phds, or who (like me) don't even have PL backgrounds, but are still happily working on interesting problems. it's just been "different" moving from working on code architecture to working in a field with way more academic than industry representation; i can't help but notice that i can write the code but i'm far from being able to write the papers.