After entering a Ph.D. program, it quickly became obvious that when in academia, the only respectable job is considered to be, you guessed it, academia.
The whole article relies on that sentence, but it's not supported by anything but an anecdote. Certainly that was not my experience. Although I did pick an advisor who was very practical and worked in industry before coming back to academia, I don't recall any of my friends feeling like they were being pressured towards academia (this is across many departments at many schools).
Similarly, I'm not worried about jobless PhDs. If you're smart enough to get a technical PhD, you're smart enough to do many things (check the unemployment rate by degree level if you don't believe me). Friends who have gone the postdoc path typically chose that over more lucrative and stable job offers from industry, and with full knowledge that it could very likely lead them nowhere in their career. You might be ignorant of the harsh realities of becoming a tenured professor when you start your PhD, but you certainly aren't by the time you finish.
Of course, these are just my anecdotes... but I guess my point is that I probably wouldn't submit my anecdotes to HN without something more meaningful backing them.
Yeah, that doesn't fit my experience either. I meet plenty of people with PhDs who aren't in academia but who are perfectly well respected by academics. Many of them still do research and come to conferences, too, because in CS many industry labs also publish research papers [1]. Some of those jobs are more respected than academic positions are, even among academics. For example, Pixar employees are bigger big-shots at SIGGRAPH than just about any academics are.
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After entering a Ph.D. program, it quickly became obvious that when in academia, the only respectable job is considered to be, you guessed it, academia.
The whole article relies on that sentence, but it's not supported by anything but an anecdote. Certainly that was not my experience. Although I did pick an advisor who was very practical and worked in industry before coming back to academia, I don't recall any of my friends feeling like they were being pressured towards academia (this is across many departments at many schools).
Similarly, I'm not worried about jobless PhDs. If you're smart enough to get a technical PhD, you're smart enough to do many things (check the unemployment rate by degree level if you don't believe me). Friends who have gone the postdoc path typically chose that over more lucrative and stable job offers from industry, and with full knowledge that it could very likely lead them nowhere in their career. You might be ignorant of the harsh realities of becoming a tenured professor when you start your PhD, but you certainly aren't by the time you finish.
Of course, these are just my anecdotes... but I guess my point is that I probably wouldn't submit my anecdotes to HN without something more meaningful backing them.
Yeah, that doesn't fit my experience either. I meet plenty of people with PhDs who aren't in academia but who are perfectly well respected by academics. Many of them still do research and come to conferences, too, because in CS many industry labs also publish research papers [1]. Some of those jobs are more respected than academic positions are, even among academics. For example, Pixar employees are bigger big-shots at SIGGRAPH than just about any academics are.
[1] Example: http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html