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- Hacker News
- Could anyone copy the text for us paywalled peasants?by aswegs8
- He can still go for gig jobs like 320 million Chinese do.by feverzsj
- Meanwhile big firms are fighting for AI/ML phds for hundreds of thousands dollars.by ratsimihah
- This just confirms what I've suspected all my life... I should have been a plumber.by pythonRon
- Your credential is only one factor that determines your employability. Others include things like: competence, experience, personality, culture fit, and qualifications. Having a 10/10 credential is nice, but having a 0/10 in any other area is often still disqualifying.by 0xbadc0de5
- The article does not talk about numbers. It is hard to understand competition in the field he is applying to. Then having the opinions of his parents does not help, it’s odd I need his mom telling me the CV looks good. It would have been better to question Princeton here as it is in their interest to make sure alumni get the jobs. It would be useful to ask some recruiters about the possible red flags for this guy, just to be sure. In any case sure I understand and sympathise, anyone would be mentally broken after that many job applications.by sublimefire
- This feeds off a misconception people have of the idea of a PhD. A PhD is not something you get by studying more, taking a few years more in advanced courses.
It is something you get by specializing on a topic so much that you are pretty much THE expert on that specific topic. (The inside joke is that at the end of your PhD you must know everything about nothing)
This fundamentally makes the usual job search strategy of casting a wide net completely useless. A PhD is typically a worse employee than a normal malleable undergrad you can train unless you really need an expert on the topic the person has a PhD on.
It’s not uncommon for top tier Phds to land good jobs regardless of, but that’s more because of willingness to do different things, give up on solving problems you have invested half a decade into, and the general availability of researchy jobs.
The last one is the least important.
by fooker - I find myself really disliking articles like this one, because it seems they don't present any information that can challenge people's perceptions. The image they want to paint is that this individual is extremely talented and still can't get a job, so what are the chances for those who are not? Yet this is one data point, and many of us have seen people with much less impressive resumes get jobs. There's no reason for this one data point to carry any more weight than your personal anecdotes, and we're not even seeing his resume. We only hear what he (and his parents) say. Not exactly independent observers.
So it seems to me that the article only serves to confirm your biases. After reading the article, you might feel that the job market is impossible, or you might feel that there's something important left out about the subject of the article. Or even both. Either way, I don't see anyone reading this article with their view of the world challenged.
by lancebeet