It's cultural. Their PhD advisors treated them the same way. A PhD is effectively a hazing ritual required to break into academia.

The power your advisors wield over you is terrifying in graduate school. You are severely underpaid AND they have you over a barrel.

It's 1000 times better especially when your research is clearly not on the cutting edge and you end up comtemplating life choices because what you're doing are basically useless to the world, and you're only doing it because some funds decided to throw money on it.

At least that's how it is for people whose primary research method is coding, such an easy exit. The powerpoint making variety have it harder though.

I realize this isn't the case for everyone, and I realize my situation was odd, but... there's always a trump card: you can drop out. I get that for international students it's not always so simple (losing your student visa, having to go home) and can be a very hard choice.

My supervisor and my department occasionally tried to push for things that I believed were ridiculous, and the threat of dropping out seemed to work reasonably well to push back on that. My understanding is that a supervisor having a low completion rate is a black mark that can hurt them, especially if they're chasing tenure. I didn't pull this out like a petulant child stomping their feet when they didn't like their chores, but rather when things were getting stupid.

Tony: "This is totally unreasonable and the timeline doesn't work for me."

Supervisor: "This is how it must be. There's no other option."

Tony: "I could drop out and continue on with my life."

Supervisor: "Now wait a minute, let's see what we can do to make this work..."

Normally, during tenure decisions, the grad students and postdocs will be interviewed by the dean. If you work for a pre-tenure prof, and decide to leave, meet with the dean and let them know your concerns before dropping out. Make sure to include lots of physical documentation, such as emails requesting you to do inappropriate things.

I still look back and would have loved to do that research, but I appreciate his honesty.

In Germany PhD is almost always done after an MS and the PhD usually takes 4-6 years depending on the group.

Your definition is painfully on point.

And the perks of "getting into academia" are getting smaller with each day.

But hey, you get to have those 3 letters next to your name and probably can ask for a higher salary, that is if you don't go back into the academic machine and the hunger games of chasing grants/contracts and eventually tenure (but it is my impression funding a successful startup is easier than getting tenured today)

The rewards for a successful startup are about 2 orders of magnitude higher than the rewards for tenure, too. The latter means that you have a job for life; the former means you don't need a job for life.

>The rewards for a successful startup are about 2 orders of magnitude higher than the rewards for tenure, too.

Massive [citation needed] on both these claims. "But my brother-in-law" is not evidence. It's not at all obvious that there are more startup markets than tenure positions. Also, founding a successful startup is largely a matter of luck, and being in the right place at the right time.

And for the first decade and a half it was great to make money, but also possess the grounding to build things collaboratively with academics. But then AI happened, and the market inefficiency that academia created for itself by making 3/4 of us make less than a high-school dropout with a trade skill caused tech to suck them all up like a sponge to feed the AI craze.

And these days, the same craptastic culture that drove me out of academia (pedigree, PhD (even though I have one but not from one of the 4 horsemen of AI or even one of the right schools so it's nearly worthless apparently), and the coveted "applied scientist" title which at least at AMZN means you get 15% higher comp to order both the scientists and engineers around because you convinced an L10 you were one whatever your actual qualifications are) are now status quo in tech. But I'm old now, and every day I am tempted to just throw in the towel and retire.

Commence those downvotes guys! None of what I just wrote could possibly be true in any way. Tech is clearly awesome and we just need to keep up the great work so we can hit that singularity sprint goal by 2030 or so to save Ray Kurzweil from squandering his hard-earned money on an Alexa-equipped toupee.

As of 2016, academic institutions hired 21,511 full-time, tenure-track professors [1]. Your odds of getting tenure given that you're in a tenure-track position vary by institution, but seem to range from about 75% at elite private institutions to 90% at state schools [2]. Figure about 18,000 professors were hired into positions that will eventually grant them tenure.

AngelList lists about 30,827 companies at the Seed or Series A/B/C stage [3]. Crunchbase has 33,577 funding rounds that occurred within 2016 [4]. The former stat has issues in that it includes funding rounds over a broad time period, and the latter potentially has issues with multiple funding rounds for the same company happening; however, given their general consistency and the existence of funded companies that do not appear in AngelList nor Crunchbase, 30,000 companies funded per year seems about right.

The average tenured professor salary varies heavily by field, but the Chronicle of Higher Ed reports it at $104820 [5], Glassdoor at $70385 [6], PayScale at $71993 [7], Indeed at $66921 [8]. There were 12,688 mergers & acquisitions in 2018 [9], the vast majority of which were for undisclosed amounts (companies do not have to disclose the transaction if it's for < $75M). Given the distribution of the ones that are disclosed, it's a good bet that most of those are for between $1M-20M (I've heard $1M/engineer as the going rate for aquihires, where the team succeeds in delivering a product but the product fails in the marketplace). This is still roughly 100x what the tenured professor makes though.

[1] https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/10112018%20Data%20S...

[2] https://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/dont-worry-t...

[3] https://angel.co/companies?stage[]=Series+A&stage[]=Seed&sta...

[4] https://www.crunchbase.com/search/funding_rounds/a416e3bdb17...

[5] https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Much-Did-Professors-Ea...

[6] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/tenured-professor-salary-...

[7] https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Tenure_Professor/Sa...

[8] https://www.indeed.com/salaries/Professor-Salaries

[9] https://www.statista.com/statistics/245977/number-of-munda-d...

So, it’s clear more people get funding than tenure. However, difficultly really is a function of the success rate of each track and the amount of investment they make in it. Still, for the average collage freshman tenure is likely much harder.

The average college freshman is not trying to get a phd. Picking a low starting point like that is just a way of making it appear more difficult than it is. The more appropriate number is the number of phd's attempted.

I didn't respond to your comment because the right denominator is going to depend on who is reading this thread. A Stanford CS major with a 2400 SAT whose parents successfully founded a tech startup is coming from a dramatically different pool than a data-entry drone with no college degree and no technical skills who figures that a weekend startup is his ticket to riches. The former's chances at both getting a funded startup and a tenure-track position are pretty good. The latter's chances are effectively zero. The latter falls into the pool of people who could conceivably "start" startups, but doesn't fall into the pool of people who attempt Ph.D programs.

You are not a lottery ticket.

Realistically, I think that tenured professorships and funded startups largely draw from the same pool of people and hence have the same denominators. That's why I focused more on the numerator. If you have the skills, dedication, and knowledge needed to become a tenured professor you usually (not always) have the skills, dedication, and knowledge needed to found a high-growth company, but there are more opportunities for the latter around, as well as fewer gatekeepers that can exclude you for arbitrary reasons.

If you think a hazing ritual is required, as a kind of filter for who wants to be a professor most, you can set high standards for the work while still treating people with respect.

One's PhD experience is highly dependent on the university one attends and especially the professor that one works under. Each lab has a different culture and each professor treats students differently. It also matters a lot whether you are on fellowship or not (someone funded directly from a professor's grant is easier to bully/exploit).

Just like you should speak to employees at a company before joining it to get an idea of culture and work/life balance, prospective graduate students should speak to current graduate students to get an idea of life at a given lab. Most graduate students are openly aware of which professors are known for treating students like indentured servants and which are known for being hands off and generous with research funds. If you are trying to pick a university/lab, definitely go to visits and speak to 4th/5th year grad students (preferably over a beer or two). Typically by the end of their PhD, graduate students are willing to tell you the truth about the different labs/professors.

Also, remember that is often totally ok to switch labs within 1-2 years. Yes, it may set you back some on your progress, but it can be much better than being miserable for 5 years.

My experience in FAANG research, outside of the pay > 100x multiplier, has been very different! In grad school we could work from anywhere at anytime, there was no requirement to be glued to a desk 14 hours a day and having to respond to emails on Friday nights or weekends or risk a bad performance review from your manager, no dystopian open office space, unlimited conference travel flexibility, etc. I actually kind of miss grad school despite having made 30K a year as a PhD student.

which Univ gives 30K/year PhD? My top pay was 18K/year in my last year.

I have a friend who was in a PhD in Physics program at CalTech. Absolute genius of a kid, and was surrounded by other people who are incredibly smart. My friend was always a very ambitious person, and wanted to join Wall Street as a quant after completing his PhD because he was interested in maximizing his income, and found the problems presented in finance/markets more compelling than those found in academia.

When he intimated this to people in the Department, they looked at him as if he had suddenly grown tentacles, because it's unbelievable to them that anyone would want to do something other than academia. This is a stark contrast to friends I have at places like Stanford, where no one quite frankly cares.

This doesn't touch on any alleged bad behavior or stress or pressures or experiences that people have while in grad school, but I believe that the cultural forces at institutions govern how people feel pretty strongly. That isn't a profound observation or even revealing, but I just thought that people would like to see a quick human anecdote to maybe relate to people going through this.

The victims must deserve it! Anyone so subhuman as to tolerate these conditions and abuses is evidently in need of punishment for being such a shank.

You can drop "knowing the perks of industry". There's no excuse for doing that under any circumstances, even if there is no industry alternative. I see this in many fields where grad students work in labs and are funded by grants. I wish universities would clean it up. There's simply no excuse for it. There's nothing about being in grad school that makes this behavior okay.

I think you had a bad advisor(s)! They’re not all like that. Maybe the group you were in was under a lot of funding pressure or something, that can cause bad behavior.

But no thesis hanging over your head :)

But people in FAANG do work nights and weekends and it's totally not unusual to be assigned sudden bitchwork by your manager and have no recourse against it.

Yes, I have a PhD. Yes, I paid my own graduate school tuition. Yes, I had a successful career in ML.

Where you are right is that I did allow myself to be treated like that. I could have quite any time, of course.

I learned a lot being a squeaky wheel, but I didn’t change the culture in any meaningful way beyond getting us a lunch room.

Before AI, the most I had ever made in a year was $800K based on a long stock options play for a public company I knew was undervalued (and I was there for its rock bottom). And in academia, the most I ever made was $30K as a post-doc and $13K as a grad student before that. That anyone wonders why non-tenured sorts flee is mind-blowing.

In contrast, I've seen ruthless tenured types pull 7 figures with multiple labs at multiple institutions and lucrative consulting contracts with private industry and the military. All whilst cheating on their spouses or sleeping with their students, sometimes both.

My attempt to go into management was pretty disastrous due to my inexperience and toxic internal politics. And that made me lose interesting in pursuing it further because politics are just not my strong suite.

Mid-range engineers at FB I know personally are making ~$500K supporting AI efforts. AI is really lucrative for now and probably always will be. But I hope there's a purge of the posers in the field somewhere down the road.

ML isn't much higher paid than standard engineering, but new PhDs from top schools who would've been competitive faculty applicants tend to get jobs at top paying firms and enter toward the top of the non-executive ranks.

Yessssss this. Even as a more permanent lab member (staff) I don't have clear defined role outside of, do what no one else wants to. It's not just the students!

The sweet spot, in terms of ROI, is to get a bachelors degree and go immediately into industry. The student shows they are competent enough to succeed on their own at a school environment where they have a nonzero probability of failure. For foreigners they stay in school for as long as possible so their green card can process. It’s not worth the risk of working for a company where they can be fired immediately and sent home, and it’s likewise not worth the cost of an h1b to companies for an undergrad. Since we graduate more phds every year than academia can absorb into teaching positions the green card process is effectively subsidizing postgrad programs, where the product is Indians and Chinese (primarily) who are desperate to get a high paying job in industry. Look up the numbers if you’d like.

At a societal level this is disastrous as it means that we have many foreign born who disproportionately hold the highest paying positions in society. Prosperity gospel and American exceptionalism aside this just leads to mass discontent and nationalism. It’s hard to argue they are wrong - why should a native born American allow a foreigner to take the highest paid jobs if given a choice? This leads (among other ways the country ignores and marginalizes poor native born citizens) to the election of people like Donald Trump.

This is not to say foreigners are bad - they often come from hard places where life isn’t easy. The real villains in this story are the aristocrats of the education empire. “More money for me and fuck everyone else,” seems like a common refrain these days.

There is a demand for people with scientific and data skills and not enough natives hold these qualifications. However, I do agree that the education system is broken and the main reason why native born citizens don’t pursue higher studies is that they are usually under the burden of large educational loans.

There is also a smaller issue that liberal arts is a common choice for American students, which makes many of them unemployable. However, perhaps due to cultural pressure, many Indians and Chinese end up in science and engineering, which are in very high demand.

I can't think of one successful tech leader with one. I'm sure there are many but they stopped being included when they discuss successes.

I think it’s not just devaluing the PhD, it’s changing it from something that gets you a job in research, hopefully academia, to in many cases just another credential to help you in the immigration process and getting a coveted American job.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That's one gentle way of describing conspicuous consumption.