I have a BS, MS and PhD in CS and Comp. Eng. I needed a job. Turns out my PhD wasn't such a hot commodity, at least in the DC area. For a GS type job, it can translate to automatic pay grade, and a contracting company may want a PhD on paper for their bids. Coding interviews might be a bit easier.
But, the actual dev ops work I do, while I use a bit of distributed systems theory to understand things, is mostly orthogonal to my education. The theory I do use I can easily explain to non CS background employees in about 10-20 minutes. The practical knowledge I use (Linux, coding, s/w eng.) I picked up in my own time and one or two classes.
Why did I get the PhD? Primarily for pie in the sky reasons. The knowledge and research. Not in order to get a job or teach in academia.
Would you do it again? Get the PhD, I mean.
Re:Teach Yourself Computer Science
by throwawayaway12 on Saturday July 21, 2018 @03:53PM
(#17583533)
I don't think it is that unusual for grad students to research a try during PhD, decide it is not for them, and then move onto other things afterwards. This is from a physics grad school perspective though.
If you have many I'm going to assume that's at least three. Surely that's a PhD then? Otherwise you've been standing still doing multiple bachelors or masters degrees, which wouldn't make any sense.
If you've done a PhD and then go into a field which didn't need that research, then that's unusual. Why did you bother with the PhD?