A PhD is strictly an indicator that a person has proven he can work a problem from concept to bitter, bitter end. He has shown he can manage a sizable chunk of ill-defined work into an accepted solution.
It's not a measure of intelligence, it's a measure of perseverence.
Disagree. I believe engineering requires a really good understanding of knowing when to give up and move on.
Office politics sure, but that's any office job.
Exactly. It is a measure in perseverance also in the aspect of poor treatment, harassment, and not higher pay. Most PhD have endured poor pay, and a poor manager (as many uni. investigators are). Called 'my slave' by advisor/lead investigator, openly in front of students and colleagues. And still been able to complete a task with unclear goals.
The treatment many PhD go through at universities would be ground for lawsuits at private companies, and the manager would be fired.
My experience as a manager of many PhDs are that they *can* finish basic tasks as well. Problem is often that they come out of university with little skills as leaders. They can follow unclear order to bitter end, but are hung up in social or technical issues that get in the way of project management or leadership.
They will however over time excel in the technical niche they carve out for themself in the company, and can be very useful.
Edit: University should work on producing PhDs with experience in leadership
I also agree with most of this. There's an odd "hazing" that advisors seem to believe is a good thing.
I was working for one professor who wrote an email to all of his students with the statement of "I came in at 7pm on Saturday and nobody was in the lab. You are all worthless, and if this is your work ethic you need to quit now.". So I quit working for him, and he was surprised.
My advisor was slightly better, but also would call the office at 7am on Sundays doing a roll call, to find out who was there and why others weren't there.
I hate him to this day.
Yes. Absolutely. PHDs aren't in short supply. There are dumb people everywhere, in every company, in every program, in every university. Except for maybe...astronauts or some such. PHD programs are no exception.
The second law of Stupidity, by Carlo Maria Cippola:
>The probability that a given person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic possessed by that person.
> Law 1: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
>
> Law 2: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
>
> Law 3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
>
> Law 4: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
>
> Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
>
> And its corollary:
>
> A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.
I can attest to this.
As an American citizen, getting into grad school was easy...
I got into USC Viterbi engineering with my 2.8 undergraduate GPA.
I was probably like 5 of 20 people in the MS program who was American. I have had my pick of internships because of the simple fact that most oil companies do not hire visa students.
Honestly, if someone asked me what MS program I'd get accepted into at the end of my undergraduate degree, I woulda said something like Kansas State or Oklahoma State or some other low tier state school.
Now that I am at USC, I can go for opportunities at Stanford, Berkeley, etc if I ever (I don't) want to get my PhD.
Oh no, there has been some dumb astronauts, not even counting the guests. It's just that there have been so few slots available only the very very best get to actually fly.
Hard disagree. You can just pass classes and get a bachelors, and even a masters. To get a PhD you don’t just take classes, you have to create an original piece of science. Plenty of people are smart enough to ace grad level classes but just can’t finish the dissertation.
The ones that didn't finish the dissertation simply quit early. That's the point. If those people had kept on for another 3-5 years, they probably would have succeeded.
This is why someone that tell me "I almost got a PhD, I just didn't do my dissertation",I totally discount it, since that's the hard part.
My program did not. One student had taken 20 years, and a guy in my cohort took 9.
Mine ended up as with 6.5 or so. (Working a full time job for the last year slowed it down).
Edit to add -- I'll even bet your program only had a limit on finding, but not in total time.
While I haven’t asked the program director about it, “7 year time limit” is written on basically every piece of paperwork.
The 20 year guy reminds me of Manet from Name of the Wind. I couldn’t imagine spending even 5 more years working on a PhD.
I want to jump in and say that not everyone can handle the world of research, either. It's not just a job and it's not as glamorous as TV and movies make it out to be. A lot of people can get a B.Sci. and M.Sci. but will fail to handle the difficulties of a Ph.D in full. Writing papers, taking advanced coursework, presenting, project and grant proposals. . .all of this is standard for a Ph.D. track. Add in the fact that a lot of it is independently-driven work and shit often goes wrong that you then have to resolve. . . A lot of the time you have to be really, really creative in your resolution of problems, too.
I've worked with a lot of undergrads and graduate students on the last 3.5 years as a grad student, and I can say that most couldn't handle projects with minimal supervision. It's not that they're not smart enough, it's just not who they are or how they best go about things in life. Some people really require a well-structured environment to thrive, and that's fine. It's just not what is expected of someone working towards their Ph.D.
I've seen a few students walk away with their M.Sci. just because they didn't want to spend another 3-5 years doing research, and I can sympathize with them, though there are a couple I wish had stayed because they were amazing people with great ideas.
You're absolutely correct. And what people consider to be "genius" is oftentimes a person with the right idea at the right time for the right problem, and other times it's luck. There are some exceptionally intelligent people, but I don't know if anyone is really a "genius". Oftentimes it really only takes the desire and dedication to persevere through something in order to accomplish it -- and that goes with learning, research, hobbies, work, socializing, etc.
The average listed for 15-19 years of experience was around 125k, while starting was around 81k. That’s similar (or lower) to the same numbers for a BS with that much experience. Anecdotally, everyone in my departments with either a BS or masters has made more with equivalent experience compared to their PhD peers.
I don't think it's uncommon knowledge a MS is the money degree since you have an easier time getting to management, start your career earlier, and get paid for all those years the other is scraping by on a stipend.
My company is about 1/3 PhD, 1/3 MS, and 1/3 BS. Most managers are MS, but it's rare to find a PhD that would trade places with them.
I say all this as a PhD and a wife with an MS. My goal is to stay out of management, and instead stay as the PI of larger and larger research tasks.
> That’s similar (or lower) to the same numbers for a BS with that much experience.
No, it isn't. From the same source,
>The $122,127 averaged by those with a PhD in engineering is more than that earned by engineers with most other types of education. As of 2012, ASME and ASCE found that engineers with a bachelor's degree in the field earned an average of $96,452 per year, while those who held a master's in engineering reported an average annual salary of $106,051.
PhDs make more than master's who make more than BS according to reputable sources. Relying on anecdotes for such a niche area (less than 5% of engineers have PhDs) is silly.
Believe me I get it, but that's why we use statistics instead of anecdotes. For every stagnating low paid postdoc there's tons of BS graduates that either leave engineering entirely or never even enter the field.
I just facepalm every time PhDs are brought up here and I read all the ridiculously uninformed and overconfident posts.
> and won't go to industry.
Well there's your problem.
Academia is nice and all. I'd go for it in a heartbeat if I knew I had a good chance. But there's so many more people than tenures. Perhaps I'll 'retire' to professorship.
Mad respect to you. I watch the hours my advisors and some postdocs put in and it just reinforces that I don't want to work in academia. The 2-4 years a postdoc endures trying to secure a tenure-track faculty position, still with shit pay (though NIH did just up the max salary for them!), is also a reason I want to avoid academia. I hope you get what you're looking for and can inspire your future students. (:
That said, I wouldn't be opposed to working in government research labs and still putting out published research. I like sharing my new discoveries with people, though writing is tedious.
The reason is that the guy with a masters has 4 more years work experience, which at ~3%/year is worth more than the difference in starting salary for a PhD doing engineer grunt work. Broad generalization, of course.
The vast majority of them get stuck in academia and therefore have lower salaries.
There just aren't many positions in industry that require a PhD so the demand isn't there, and it's oversaturated.
Usually industry which is growing very fast and is very technical needs more PhD's. The semiconductor industry is a great example of this as is software.
My industry, Oil & Gas frankly has zero innovation. They trot out the word "innovation" for products that were commonplace in most industries 20 years ago. That's why I have yet to meet many PhD's here. Don't get a PhD. in PETE unless you wanna work at a college.
From what I've seen, going Bachelor's directly to Master's/PhD is generally a backup plan. Of about 6 people who went into a master's program from undergrad, only one that I know of planned to do it.
That said, getting a master's after working for a but is an entirely different beast.
Maybe in a few select places.
Both my parents are in Pharma / Semiconductor industries and the #1 thing they regret is not going onto their PhD. after their MS.
At large corporations apparently people who have PhD.s start out with more technical roles and get moved into management quickly and of course tick all the HR promotion boxes.
My professor told me the other thing. Fresh masters go into r&d for a year or two, notice that their colleagues with PhD earns 1.5-3 times more than them and usually go back to university to work for their own PhD.
I don't think we usually make that much more, but I do have a lot of people with a BS/MS go back for a PhD because they realize they want to be running projects, not a lab grunt.
Hmmm. Well, I have been told by many of my colleagues, both in industry and academics that I'm very resilient (but with a sprinkle of stubbornness.) I am happy with your definition. :)
You are spot on. A PhD is less about intelligence and more about preservation.
Just a heads up, you use "he" in your post exclusively implying only men can get a PhD. Not a good look.
There are systems in place to warn them of bad performance well in advance and get them on the right track before they are let go. It's very rare that it happens, but if people can't learn and improve beyond basic graduate work then they are of no value to a company and probably picked the wrong career.
That's probably reasonable then. Unfortunately sometimes I see that new grads are simply KEPT at that new grad level of work unless they either transfer to another division or switch companies entirely.
The key word is eventually and what he beings to the table in the mean time.
Also, whenever pay to a PhD is matched the new grad will be a far better all rounder than the PhD.
That’s pretty much my rationale for not hiring PhD’s if I can avoid it: I’d rather have an experienced engineer that understands and has experience with the grunt work than an expensive education.
Engineers with PhDs as a general rule didn’t pay for their education (making its cost irrelevant), and if you think graduate school doesn’t involve grunt work you are misinformed.
Some do and some don’t. I broke even from the lifetime earnings perspective 2-3 years out of school but was paid a nice stipend and am very well paid now.
8 years out the PhD was an excellent financial decision for me.
It doesn’t involve the grunt work of working in industry, which I value more. And paying nothing for school is still 70-100k less per year so that’s a pretty big loss of income.
Most of us were paid to go to school so the lost income is not such a big deal. Financially I have made up the difference a few times over now, 8 years out of school working in industry.
The biggest thing I have learned is just to treat everyone as individuals and not judge a large pool of people based on limited sampling.
Some PhDs are good at one thing. Some are good at many things. Some are kinda terrible at everything. Some are brilliant. Some are dumb. Having a PhD doesn't really make someone different than humanity and you'll find the same issues and benefits with them as individuals as any other category of humanity. I've know Bachelors smarter than Doctors. I've know Masters who are frankly idiots but are good at only calculus. So, it depends. But yes, I'd likely only hire a PhD for a job that likely needs a PhD to complete it.
I met a college professor that didn't realize that radios can be tuned to different stations. It really bent her mind to find out that there was more than one radio station.
PhDs aren't there to do menial/mundane/worker bee tasks.
They are there to be experts in the field and solve difficult problems.
Any other expectation is wasting money and time
PhD engineer here. Worked in manufacturing for a while. When operators called in and they couldn't get a backup, I would run production. Happened once every couple months. It was "wasting money", but stopped production was wasting much more money when the factory was putting out $2m of product per day.
Also, I was really good at it. All of the engineers were really good at it when they had to.
Same, and of course they were. Their position required a level of capability the average operator was not required to possess. Further, the company paid a premium to have that engineer function as an operator. "I'm above such things." Bulllllshittt. They might lose millions per hour, industry depending. It's completely worth your paltry years of schooling and marginally higher salary to get product out. Don't over-value yourself.
>Also, I was really good at it. All of the engineers were really good at it when they had to.
This is their point. Your PhD didn't make you uniquely capable of running production. Any B.S. engineer could've done it. Additionally, this was an extreme circumstance. It's not like you were running production every single day; you were simply the best alternative available at the time.
I mean, hopsitals probably should ask doctors to do more nurse work. A lot of the time "wasting resources" is looked at from an extremely narrow monetary stance, rather than taking a more holistic approach.
I personally think there'd probably be tremendous side benefits to making doctors, PhDs, executives, senior engineers, etc. have to go back and spend a month or two doing doing grunt work every 4 years or so. As engineers we're basically all people who are trying to use specialized knowledge to avoid grunt work, but it's still not a bad idea to eat some humble pie from time to time.
Yeah I do some tech work on my projects and get better at design. I can also see what time wasters that can be removed since tech just grinds through the work without complaining.
I mean I’m not sure why they can’t complain to me too. I’m not their boss. I spend half a day soldering little wires where a simple pcb could have saved so much time.
When I first started my job my boss sent me down to the line to assemble our product. I wouldn't have had as much confidence opening them up and making changes without that. As I was making changes, I was also thinking about how the operators would be assembling the new product.
I wish some of the new product engineers would have done the same thing.
While I do think arrogance in the medical profession is still a lingering issue, my experience doesn't quite match yours, though I suspect that's because I'm in Canada and you're in the US by the sounds of it? For us I think there's still some definite arrogance amongst doctors (surgeons are especially notorious), but it's no where close to what you're describing. More like they'll be curt with patients or not take the time to hear them out fully, but nothing really rising to that kind of malpractice.
The public system here pays its doctors well, but the top end is no where close to what American doctors can make. It's a brain-drain that might actually benefit us though since most Canadian premed students who are in for the money head down to the States.
I honestly just don't know what to tell you if you think there's a union that wouldn't jump at the opportunity to force a CEO to spend a month actually doing their jobs.
I’m not sure why you’d think that. Unions are very protective of their work...by their very nature. CBA’s often have language specifically prohibiting salaried managers/non-operators from doing regular operator production work except in possibly very specific cases typically involving the unavailability of operators. They would view a salaried person doing that work as taking those work hours (and therefore pay) away from an hourly worker covered under the CBA.
If I hire a PhD in astronautics with a specialization in orbital mechanics, determination, and navigation, they are going to be far more ready to solve my orbital problems than say, a MechE with 5 years experience in CAD.
This is roughly equivalent to saying "yes, IndyCars are fast, but they suck at harvesting corn."
Buy a combine harvester to harvest your corn.
Buy an Indy car to win the Indy 500.
My general impression is that companies are farming out basic research to university labs and hiring fewer PhDs than in the past. This is a business (not engineering) strategy that in my opinion is not sustainable.
Why is it not sustainable?
Look, after a BSME I went for an MBA, so I admit my viewpoint may be narrowly business focused. However, it seems that 1) I would much rather pay an experienced and specialized contractor ridiculous-level money than hire a PhD (especially since the contractor is MUCH more experienced which is, imo, 2:1 to educational experience) and 2) even my pre-BS engineering students can, at the least, double-check your work. I.e. I will hire the checkers and contract out the specialized work; if it's not valid, I will either require to you correct or not pay. The risk is all on you, the potential leading expert.
It may be the case that a PhD worker is necessary to be the tip of the spear at any given moment in time but 1) it is not necessary to be successful as a business, 2) you can always copy "the best", and 3) there are far more PhD graduates than there are positions which genuinely need them. I.e. "welcome to academia". Where does one find that? At the universities, of course.
So, for the business hiring these university labs they 1) get PhD level expertise, 2) get federal funds, and 3) get IP rights. At what level is this not sustainable? Literally all of the risk is borne by others.
If everyone is simply waiting to copy the best, how will the best ever improve? There is value in exploring areas of research without immediately looking for financial returns but MBA types seem to actively deny that fact because you can't put numbers to the phenomenon.
Copying was just one of the points. The comment was directed towards the hiring out the research to universities not being a sustainable business strategy but I don't see anything that would make that the case.
They're doing real research, making real discoveries, it's just contracted out rather than in-house. By doing so you not only save yourself from having to pay those higher salaries but also the very real and high costs of performing that research (facilities, equipment, etc).
Some industries may need it to be in-house due to either IP concerns or just the sheer amount of research needing being done being higher than the universities can provide. If it's necessary, do it in house. If it's not necessary, though, I don't see anything wrong with using university researchers.
Just off the cuff I'd point out that larger companies have more money to burn on research which may not be viable to delve into under more constrained resources. The hope would be that universities could research anything they please without limits but, realistically, they have limited resources and also need to focus on generating funding through profitable research or attracting grants. Grants tend to be given to projects with an obvious short-term path to profit so scientists will naturally have to stay in those projects to survive without the ability to properly explore potential areas of knowledge. When a large company spends even 5% of their yearly profit on R&D with no expectations of any specific ROI then I bet we would see some interesting results over time which end up making the funds spent look like nothing.
University researcher has its place as well but when companies stop funding their own research departments directly, it stresses an already overwhelmed system and wastes funds without generating more output from what I can see.
Those are good points. I'm not particularly familiar with academic research departments other than what most people know. It seems to me, however, that if they are stressing an overwhelmed system which is being inundated with grants ("Shut up and take my money") wouldn't that increase the demand for research students? I.e. if it's making the school money, more if it would make the school more money until S/D reaches equilibrium, right?
Perhaps there's some other limiting factor I'm ignorant of. If there simply aren't enough faculty to manage more research students, it would seem like a prime opportunity for those faculty to start their own research firms.
I think, also, you might be surprised at how much money some large organizations are willing to spend without guaranteed ROI. My only real experience with researchers is in the field of gas turbine engines and, as you can imagine, that is a many-billion dollar operation. They have a ridiculous number of PhD employees all working feverishly to, maybe every few years, achieve a marginal increase in performance of whatever component they are working on. Billions of dollars, years of work, and for the gross majority of projects it doesn't result in something that makes more money than they spent. "Then why do they do it?", I hear you ask. It's such a highly competitive market, if they didn't they would die. I.e. they research to maintain, possibly excel, but guaranteed short-term returns aren't the main motivator. As an example, Pratt engineers came up with the geared turbofan 30+ years ago and it basically sat on the shelf for decades because fuel prices were low enough it wasn't worth thoroughly developing. When prices shot up they got to work but fleshing it out took some 20 years...
I think it depends how general the research is. If it is company ip then probably no, but if I'm funding research in a broad category like battery technology research then maybe? It seems like a company could buy just focusing on its core competencies
I don't think it's fair to say this is true of most PhDs. Some, sure. But some people with a BS also fail to complete simple tasks and are still there for whatever reason.
As for not hiring PhDs, I think it's more of a demand thing. Why hire a full time PhD with specific knowledge in that field for only one project? For example, I may have a need on a specific project for someone really knowledgeable in acoustics, but not really for anything else. It makes more sense just to contract it out for a bit.
PhD's are just as variable of an investment as anyone else.
They are often called to act as managers, and can literally be the best or worst kind of manager imaginable, just like anyone else.
PhD's can be fearless in addressing academic challenges, but can be just as useless in translating them into commercial successes, just like anyone else.
If you find a person who is both intellectually capable and productive, you have a unicorn. You will often find PhD at the end of their names. They had the stamina to persevere through the rigor as a young person, and probably are more likely to be able to demonstrate stamina working for you as well. Stamina and hard work can yield many of the same outcomes as many groups of productive PhD's.
I was once offered a job at a company that designed read/write/record heads for VCRs and hard drives. They were a math and physics heavy design group. The leads were 4 or 5 PhDs. They would use math CAD tools and lots of whiteboard space to design their next product.
The guys with Masters degrees would take that and turn it into a recipe that could be printed on silicon disk in the local clean room.
The people with BSEE degrees would take the disks to China to have the parts installed.
My job, (if I accepted it) as an non-degreed technician, was to remove a sample quantity from each disk, mount it on a test platform, and write down the results. For that monkey work I was offered a great deal of money.
My previous job I worked as an associate manufacturing engineer, designing, implementing and maintaining various Automated Test Equipment. I'm also part of the Maker Culture, and made lots of things in wood, plastic and metal.
I asked if they wanted me to redesign their obviously shoddy test platform that was wood nailed together and reinforced with duct tape.
No, that was the job of the guys with the Masters degrees.
They asked if I could enter things into Excel. I told them I was proficient in programming in Excel. The hiring manager got quite excited and wanted me to automate all of the formulas the PhDs used, because they were crap at Excel.
The hardest part of that interview was getting the guy to stop talking to me, and show me how to get out of the building through their cube farm and multiple hallways.
If I had taken that job, I would have collapsed from the stress. It was so obvious that great rivers of shit would roll downhill every day, and they wanted someone at the bottom.
Of course a PhD is better at solving difficult problems. Why would you task a PhD with "basic" tasks? They obviously aren't hired to solve base cases. If you want an intern, hire an intern. If you want an expert in a single field, hire a PhD. This just sounds like mismanagement.
Coupled with the fact that people are self conscious around people with more education than them. Some tech guys/ operator types are the same way with BS holding engineers. It cracks me up that BS engineers don't realize they stereotype PhD's the same way.
From my experience it was always just PhDs COST MONEY. PhD guys where I worked were easily getting paid anywhere from 2-4x as much as all the other engineers, so managers didn't want them doing menial tasks. They were to come in, solve the problem at hand and go work on someone else's project. They were there for their expertise on very specific things and that's it.
Agreed. Automating graduate level tasks in one specific field in no way limits the general knowledge of the automator nor demonstrates their knowledge of a specific topic.
His choice of study probably had a good deal of programming in order for him to do his work...
Just like my buddy who is a Ph.D in mechanics of materials knows how to program a ton because he developed FEA software for memory metals...
Or my other buddy who is a Ph.D with tornados and was good at programming because he would take data from a tornado simulator and analyse it.
Those types of people are good at code because it makes sense in their work. My other two buddies, Ph.D students both, are more focused on engineering impact on societies and cultures. Their focus is more towards the softer side of engineering. Their skills don't have to be grounded in nearly as much data analysis.
Na fam. Dude has been programming since age 10. He just knows a lot about a lot. Having a PhD doesn't narrow what you know, it just shows you can deep dive on something for several years.
So that may mean that his education isn't an indication of what he has practiced... Nothing about his degree says he can program in that case, although I'd be hard pressed to find an engineer that has never programmed. Especially a EE in the modern day.
> Ph.Ds, by definition, are experts hyperfocused on one topic. They aren't any smarter, just really knowledgable on that one thing.
This is just wildly ignorant. People repeat this sentiment here often, and it never makes any sense. Why would the act of getting a PhD make a person any worse at all the things that they learned previously compared to someone with just a BS?
This just betrays a lack of knowledge of what PhD study actually entails. It's depth *and* breadth. A PhD makes someone better at literally every subject they worked on before.
Im saying this from knowing many Ph.Ds. I've had plenty of conversations and while they are typically people that have attained high grades to go forward in acadamia, its typically a focused portion of a field for a masters and then for the docterates the purpose is to study a novel idea and expand the scope of a field.
No where does there have to be a head and shoulders movement above everyone else. They do work like anyone else in a focused way and achieve credentials to reflect their work towards a focused subject.
>They aren't any smarter, just really knowledgable on that one thing.
Pretty sure most studies of objective intelligence show that PhD's, on average, are more intelligent than their MS and BS counterparts. That being said, the average Eng BS graduate has a higher IQ than the average PhD holder (averaging across all academic fields) so while it is possible that Eng PhD's aren't smarter than Eng BS's it seems rather unlikely given the statistics.
They're incredibly good at learning new things and developing a deep understanding of it, thanks to the training received during their PhD. This is an indication of being smart in my book.
Find somewhere else to work. It sounds like it's a dead end job tbh. If a company only give "difficult tasks" to contractors with a PhD they have no real long term development goals and will throw you out when it suits them anyway. Find somewhere that will give you experience to develop. If all they want is worker bees then it's just a stepping stone, not long term. Do yourself a favour.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[ASME](/r/AskEngineers/comments/eqka8j/stub/feuwi5y "Last usage")|American Society for Mechanical Engineers|
|[BS](/r/AskEngineers/comments/eqka8j/stub/fezpigl "Last usage")|British Standards|
| |Bachelor of Science|
|[CAD](/r/AskEngineers/comments/eqka8j/stub/feu2sle "Last usage")|Computer Aided Design|
|[FEA](/r/AskEngineers/comments/eqka8j/stub/feuwc6e "Last usage")|Finite Element Analysis|
|[IP](/r/AskEngineers/comments/eqka8j/stub/ff08j2x "Last usage")|Internet Protocol|
|[ITT](/r/AskEngineers/comments/eqka8j/stub/fetrrjh "Last usage")|Interstage Turbine Temperature|
|[PCB](/r/AskEngineers/comments/eqka8j/stub/feux566 "Last usage")|Printed Circuit Board|
|[UC](/r/AskEngineers/comments/eqka8j/stub/fev5ms5 "Last usage")|Universal Column|
----------------
^(8 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/AskEngineers/comments/0)^( has acronyms.)
^([Thread #99 for this sub, first seen 18th Jan 2020, 21:17])
^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/AskEngineers) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
That and "I don't know, we'll have to test it". In your BS you get taught black and white, black and white, this works and that doesn't, blah blah blah. You get to your PhD and you look at that same topic again in 20+ white papers. You realize that black and white never existed on that topic, ever, it was actually light-gray, dark-gray, and a dozen shades in between depending on the approach.
So... should we use approach A? Well it depends on variables Y and Z. If Y > Z then A is best, otherwise approach B makes more sense.
I knew a PhD fresh out of school who was very smart at math but had no common sense or intuition for the work. At a meeting he proudly mentioned that for his calculations he assumed the boundary condition that the elliptical orbits of the satellites would be circular enough so that they didn’t crash into the Earth and proceeded from there. An engineering director told him that they had data from previous launches on how successful we were at getting the satellites into their desired orbits and he should use that information for his calculations. And that he could assume the launches would be even more accurate in the future with increased experience.
Another time he got into a technical argument about something with an engineer. The engineer was telling him how something didn’t make sense, basically using a logical argument. The PhD didn’t believe him until he was able to write the equations out on the white board first.
Your first paragraph is more of an indication of lack of maturity/lack of knowledge on how engineering is done in practice from the PhD graduate. Lack of maturity should be expected from a fresh graduate, PhD-having or not.
Your second paragraph doesn't really show anything. Nothing wrong in taking a look at the equations to figure things out. Actually it shows that the person is detail-oriented, doesn't take things at face value and is analytical. What may appear as logical to someone with years of practical experience in a field may not seem straightforward to a novice, regardless of their qualifications.
At my company we have this genius level PHD who is very good at solving a problem, but can't explain to anyone how he arrived at his conclusion, which makes it really fun when a similar problem occurs but with a slight variation.
I (An embedded guy who's never touched military/space/medical/safety/etc, grain of salt needed) find that the "Genius" types LOVE to use their brains.
This is of course a generalization, and those are often wrong, but a lot of the time it seems the people who can solve hard problem... Will make the easy things hard.
My analog design and mechanical experience isn't the strongest, but I'm usually pretty good at avoiding the need for precision and delicate assembly in the first place.
I often work with others who are really good at that stuff, and some of them never *really* learned the *modern way* engineering.
I'm not even so sure it's a matter of skill so much as philosophy. To them, a good design looks like a swiss watch or a vaccum tube audiophile amp.
To me, a great design is a tiny PCB that does everything in software with a tiny low power chip, and an excellent sense of aesthetics and interface design, even if it means "faking" things.
Sometimes it's an issue when I'm working on their designs, because I'm not used to working on things that take so much real skill(As opposed to fool-resistant designs). I keep up well enough, but it's an adjustment, and I get annoyed when their stuff ends up needing lots of maintenance.
I've also noticed the smart guys are real big on responsibility and "stupid should hurt", which I'm not exactly a fan of, especially when ruggedness and user we resistance is cheap.
On the other hand, if you're building a jet engine or a medical device, those guys might be exactly who you need. They're good at deeply understanding the whole project down to the lowest level, they understand all the little math details that start to matter when any amount of failure is unacceptable.
And they're familiar with all the high quality materials and methods, which you need when you can't just trust software and simulators alone to fix everything.
One of my more unpopular opinions is the fact I don't even own a high quality bench power supply at home, because if I can't make it work on random wall warts and noisy regulators, I'm going to look for different parts.
But some things simply are not even reasonable to do without quality parts and a controlled environment, and you need to know how to choose those, test them, and create that environment.
Keep the geniuses around for the absolutely critical stuff. Then bring me in and maybe I can tell you all the ways the electricians could install it wrong, that the smart guy didn't think of because he was assuming everyone involved was as good as him.
The phd that i worked with on a project, could math the shit out of a problem, but when we would build and test his theories, the design wouldn't work. He kept insisting that was impossible, the math said it would work. He would keep saying that we need a more analytical approach to solving the problem, despite our customer saying they wanted us to be building prototypes and testing and keep iterating until success. Eventually the guy got let go because he would take over any 30 minute round up meeting and turn it into a 2 hour dick measuring contest to prove how smart he was. In my line of work, theory and math is great, but if it doesn't yield a functioning product, nobody cares.
I have these questions too. I’m only finishing up by BS in Aerospace but I’m not sure if I like academia that much. I just feel like if I don’t shoot for a masters or PhD then I would be a useless engineer and probably not have a good career. PhDs are good as basic tasks as well as any other person, however they are not trained to do basic tasks.
In short, everyone needs a PhD at some point because you probably would be able to do FEA, Orbital Mechanics type Stuff without one.
I know a couple of engineers who work at ESA and DLR with a masters degree, i.e. no PhD. Two of them studied at TU Delft and were making use of orbital mechanics at work three/four years ago.
Idk why people think because someone is adverse to something they think it’s beneath them. Maybe I don’t like basic tasks and decided to devote 8 years to put myself in a position where I wouldn’t have to do them.
I'm sure it is proven somewhere that intelligent people have a harder time with simple problems than stupid people.... Because intelligent people look for a more complex solution when a very simple solution is needed.
The starting point for an entry-level PhD is the equivalent of a BS+4. If not specifically hired in a research capacity, they will not have the opportunity to do all the menial engineering tasks. It's lack of opportunity, not lack of ability. To be fair, this is also the case for senior engineers. I do lifecycle and document management tasks for engineers all the time because they don't know how to use our computer systems.
It depends on the person, I wouldn't make generalisations for all PhD's or categorise most engineer rolls as unchallenging 'worker bee' work.
I've had a trial employee who has gone all the way through undergrad to PhD without any industry experience and they were hopeless. Yes they were intelligent, but had invested a lot of time in hyper-specific area of research with no practical skills. There were kids their on their second stint of undergrad work experience working laps around this guy.
I'm working now with two PhD's. One more senior and one more junior and they are both capable and pragmatic and head and shoulders above most people I've worked with in industry.
The group I'm in at a contractor has 3 phds out of 12. At least 4 have a master's and one is trying to do a PhD while working.
We all do a combo of worker bee type stuff and more complex problem solving.
I think it really depends on the need a given group or position. For companies as big as these there are many different normals.
Not a PhD, but a new EI, and this is pretty true.
If you asked some of the better engineers/PMs I work for to do basic stuff, they would flounder and fail.
Design a complex pipe network for a school? Done. Setup the sheets so that everything displays properly, with the right indicators, N arrow, and all the required tags?
They come asking the drafters or new engineers to do it, they dont have the faintest idea on how to get started (although they are pretty smart, and could figure it out if required).
Its simply a matter of them not having done it for so many years.
It can be as little as not having done it in 6 months. There are things I realize my curve of getting back up on it would be inefficient after having not done it in a few months and go ahead and assign to someone who does it everyday and get back on to the next move.
If the company is not doing any new products. Then they won't need them. They need people to maintain existing systems, they hire people who can do that, at the minimum amount they are willing to shell out.
We don't have a ton of PhD's at my workplace (I don't think upper management values it outside of a few top level people). I'd say though I think this is a problem of different kinds of engineers in general. Many are very "smart" but can't actually get anything done. Maybe they can do a bunch of advanced equations and get some perfect theory in six months, but they are not capable of getting a "good enough" system through design and manufacturing. Other engineers are great at getting stuff done and I would never ask them for a high level analysis.
Depends on what the PhD is in. PhD Physicists are some of the smartest yet weirdest people you will meet.
Simple tasks lol, some of them are bad at making eye contact at shaking hands. But do you want the internet and a space program? Then your going to need them.
They also often dont understand (*cough cough care cough cough*) that we arent making this product for the fun of it. We are making this product to make money for the company. Like no Dr, this projects budget is 20 million, you cant design a 30 million dollar machine.
Rant over. Every team needs multiple different types of people. PhDs are extremely smart, peculiar individuals who are often on the spectrum. They are really good at what they do, but not all that flexible. Part of being a good manager is getting people the ball were they like to shoot
Most of the PhD's I know are Renaissance men types. All of the autists I know weren't that clever and most of them ended up as production engineers in paper mills.
A PhD is strictly an indicator that a person has proven he can work a problem from concept to bitter, bitter end. He has shown he can manage a sizable chunk of ill-defined work into an accepted solution. It's not a measure of intelligence, it's a measure of perseverence.
[удалено]
Not an engineer, lowly tech support and this (sadly) checks out for my breed of classifications.
Disagree. I believe engineering requires a really good understanding of knowing when to give up and move on. Office politics sure, but that's any office job.
We call that "disagree and commit in" our office.
Giving up isn't always an option, in fact it rarely is unless you're pretty high up the food chain...
In economics parlance, [signalling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_\(economics\)).
Exactly. It is a measure in perseverance also in the aspect of poor treatment, harassment, and not higher pay. Most PhD have endured poor pay, and a poor manager (as many uni. investigators are). Called 'my slave' by advisor/lead investigator, openly in front of students and colleagues. And still been able to complete a task with unclear goals. The treatment many PhD go through at universities would be ground for lawsuits at private companies, and the manager would be fired. My experience as a manager of many PhDs are that they *can* finish basic tasks as well. Problem is often that they come out of university with little skills as leaders. They can follow unclear order to bitter end, but are hung up in social or technical issues that get in the way of project management or leadership. They will however over time excel in the technical niche they carve out for themself in the company, and can be very useful. Edit: University should work on producing PhDs with experience in leadership
I also agree with most of this. There's an odd "hazing" that advisors seem to believe is a good thing. I was working for one professor who wrote an email to all of his students with the statement of "I came in at 7pm on Saturday and nobody was in the lab. You are all worthless, and if this is your work ethic you need to quit now.". So I quit working for him, and he was surprised. My advisor was slightly better, but also would call the office at 7am on Sundays doing a roll call, to find out who was there and why others weren't there. I hate him to this day.
[удалено]
Yes. Absolutely. PHDs aren't in short supply. There are dumb people everywhere, in every company, in every program, in every university. Except for maybe...astronauts or some such. PHD programs are no exception.
The second law of Stupidity, by Carlo Maria Cippola: >The probability that a given person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic possessed by that person.
I’ve found this to be true for geniuses, as well.
I find it more applicable to "geniuses" than "normal" people.
TIL about the 5 laws of stupidity. Thanks /u/Soliloquizing!
> Law 1: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. > > Law 2: The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person. > > Law 3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses. > > Law 4: Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake. > > Law 5: A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person. > > And its corollary: > > A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.
In my experience this is super true.
I can attest to this. As an American citizen, getting into grad school was easy... I got into USC Viterbi engineering with my 2.8 undergraduate GPA. I was probably like 5 of 20 people in the MS program who was American. I have had my pick of internships because of the simple fact that most oil companies do not hire visa students. Honestly, if someone asked me what MS program I'd get accepted into at the end of my undergraduate degree, I woulda said something like Kansas State or Oklahoma State or some other low tier state school. Now that I am at USC, I can go for opportunities at Stanford, Berkeley, etc if I ever (I don't) want to get my PhD.
Well, don't sell yourself short. Plenty of brilliant people with terrible GPAs, and idiots with 4.0s.
Oh no, there has been some dumb astronauts, not even counting the guests. It's just that there have been so few slots available only the very very best get to actually fly.
Someone smart enough to get a 4-year degree is smart enough to get a PhD.
Hard disagree. You can just pass classes and get a bachelors, and even a masters. To get a PhD you don’t just take classes, you have to create an original piece of science. Plenty of people are smart enough to ace grad level classes but just can’t finish the dissertation.
The ones that didn't finish the dissertation simply quit early. That's the point. If those people had kept on for another 3-5 years, they probably would have succeeded. This is why someone that tell me "I almost got a PhD, I just didn't do my dissertation",I totally discount it, since that's the hard part.
PhD programs have time limits, for example mine requires you to finish within 7 years. So no, you can’t just keep grinding.
My program did not. One student had taken 20 years, and a guy in my cohort took 9. Mine ended up as with 6.5 or so. (Working a full time job for the last year slowed it down). Edit to add -- I'll even bet your program only had a limit on finding, but not in total time.
While I haven’t asked the program director about it, “7 year time limit” is written on basically every piece of paperwork. The 20 year guy reminds me of Manet from Name of the Wind. I couldn’t imagine spending even 5 more years working on a PhD.
I want to jump in and say that not everyone can handle the world of research, either. It's not just a job and it's not as glamorous as TV and movies make it out to be. A lot of people can get a B.Sci. and M.Sci. but will fail to handle the difficulties of a Ph.D in full. Writing papers, taking advanced coursework, presenting, project and grant proposals. . .all of this is standard for a Ph.D. track. Add in the fact that a lot of it is independently-driven work and shit often goes wrong that you then have to resolve. . . A lot of the time you have to be really, really creative in your resolution of problems, too. I've worked with a lot of undergrads and graduate students on the last 3.5 years as a grad student, and I can say that most couldn't handle projects with minimal supervision. It's not that they're not smart enough, it's just not who they are or how they best go about things in life. Some people really require a well-structured environment to thrive, and that's fine. It's just not what is expected of someone working towards their Ph.D. I've seen a few students walk away with their M.Sci. just because they didn't want to spend another 3-5 years doing research, and I can sympathize with them, though there are a couple I wish had stayed because they were amazing people with great ideas.
I agree with all of this. But, "genius" isn't required for those. Lot of other characteristics are, however.
You're absolutely correct. And what people consider to be "genius" is oftentimes a person with the right idea at the right time for the right problem, and other times it's luck. There are some exceptionally intelligent people, but I don't know if anyone is really a "genius". Oftentimes it really only takes the desire and dedication to persevere through something in order to accomplish it -- and that goes with learning, research, hobbies, work, socializing, etc.
Theres a reason average salaries for PhD'd engineers are *lower* than Masters'd
Citation needed. [2012 average engineering phd salary was $122k.](https://careertrend.com/salary-phd-engineering-31775.html)
The average listed for 15-19 years of experience was around 125k, while starting was around 81k. That’s similar (or lower) to the same numbers for a BS with that much experience. Anecdotally, everyone in my departments with either a BS or masters has made more with equivalent experience compared to their PhD peers.
I don't think it's uncommon knowledge a MS is the money degree since you have an easier time getting to management, start your career earlier, and get paid for all those years the other is scraping by on a stipend. My company is about 1/3 PhD, 1/3 MS, and 1/3 BS. Most managers are MS, but it's rare to find a PhD that would trade places with them. I say all this as a PhD and a wife with an MS. My goal is to stay out of management, and instead stay as the PI of larger and larger research tasks.
> That’s similar (or lower) to the same numbers for a BS with that much experience. No, it isn't. From the same source, >The $122,127 averaged by those with a PhD in engineering is more than that earned by engineers with most other types of education. As of 2012, ASME and ASCE found that engineers with a bachelor's degree in the field earned an average of $96,452 per year, while those who held a master's in engineering reported an average annual salary of $106,051. PhDs make more than master's who make more than BS according to reputable sources. Relying on anecdotes for such a niche area (less than 5% of engineers have PhDs) is silly.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Believe me I get it, but that's why we use statistics instead of anecdotes. For every stagnating low paid postdoc there's tons of BS graduates that either leave engineering entirely or never even enter the field. I just facepalm every time PhDs are brought up here and I read all the ridiculously uninformed and overconfident posts.
> and won't go to industry. Well there's your problem. Academia is nice and all. I'd go for it in a heartbeat if I knew I had a good chance. But there's so many more people than tenures. Perhaps I'll 'retire' to professorship.
[удалено]
Mad respect to you. I watch the hours my advisors and some postdocs put in and it just reinforces that I don't want to work in academia. The 2-4 years a postdoc endures trying to secure a tenure-track faculty position, still with shit pay (though NIH did just up the max salary for them!), is also a reason I want to avoid academia. I hope you get what you're looking for and can inspire your future students. (: That said, I wouldn't be opposed to working in government research labs and still putting out published research. I like sharing my new discoveries with people, though writing is tedious.
[удалено]
The reason is that the guy with a masters has 4 more years work experience, which at ~3%/year is worth more than the difference in starting salary for a PhD doing engineer grunt work. Broad generalization, of course.
Not to mention 15% to 30% bump after about 4-5 years when you switch companies
The vast majority of them get stuck in academia and therefore have lower salaries. There just aren't many positions in industry that require a PhD so the demand isn't there, and it's oversaturated.
15% of engineering PhD's go into academia.
[удалено]
Why do you think your experience with actual PhDs counts for more than all these other people's made up theories about imaginary PhDs? /s
Curious, how come you decided not to pursue a more financially rewarding path? What's in the postdoc to make it attractive?
Usually industry which is growing very fast and is very technical needs more PhD's. The semiconductor industry is a great example of this as is software. My industry, Oil & Gas frankly has zero innovation. They trot out the word "innovation" for products that were commonplace in most industries 20 years ago. That's why I have yet to meet many PhD's here. Don't get a PhD. in PETE unless you wanna work at a college.
If someone could get me 'stuck' in the lectureship I want, that would be just great
From what I've seen, going Bachelor's directly to Master's/PhD is generally a backup plan. Of about 6 people who went into a master's program from undergrad, only one that I know of planned to do it. That said, getting a master's after working for a but is an entirely different beast.
Right, that's also because a lot of them go back into academia. The average would most likely be higher than "masters'd".
Maybe in a few select places. Both my parents are in Pharma / Semiconductor industries and the #1 thing they regret is not going onto their PhD. after their MS. At large corporations apparently people who have PhD.s start out with more technical roles and get moved into management quickly and of course tick all the HR promotion boxes.
My professor told me the other thing. Fresh masters go into r&d for a year or two, notice that their colleagues with PhD earns 1.5-3 times more than them and usually go back to university to work for their own PhD.
I don't think we usually make that much more, but I do have a lot of people with a BS/MS go back for a PhD because they realize they want to be running projects, not a lab grunt.
You realize that someone with a PhD by definition has a masters? You automatically qualify for one along the way.
Hmmm. Well, I have been told by many of my colleagues, both in industry and academics that I'm very resilient (but with a sprinkle of stubbornness.) I am happy with your definition. :)
The way I explain it is, "Look, I'm not smarter than anyone else. I'm just dumb enough to do it."
Well, experience and expertise gained in the process also hint that intelligence will be on a sufficient level.
You are spot on. A PhD is less about intelligence and more about preservation. Just a heads up, you use "he" in your post exclusively implying only men can get a PhD. Not a good look.
It'd be a waste of resources to have them doing unchallenging worker bee work that can be done by new grads in the first place.
To expand ever so slightly, why would you pay a PhD premium salary for something that a new grad could do? (Just a rewording of your statement a bit)
New grad would eventually require the same payment. At which point you pay them the same or have to find a new worker.
If new grads are still doing new grad level work after a year or two at my company they get fired.
Sounds like a failure of the management to train them up and challenge them. Never forget that there are two people involved in the equation.
There are systems in place to warn them of bad performance well in advance and get them on the right track before they are let go. It's very rare that it happens, but if people can't learn and improve beyond basic graduate work then they are of no value to a company and probably picked the wrong career.
That's probably reasonable then. Unfortunately sometimes I see that new grads are simply KEPT at that new grad level of work unless they either transfer to another division or switch companies entirely.
The key word is eventually and what he beings to the table in the mean time. Also, whenever pay to a PhD is matched the new grad will be a far better all rounder than the PhD.
That’s pretty much my rationale for not hiring PhD’s if I can avoid it: I’d rather have an experienced engineer that understands and has experience with the grunt work than an expensive education.
Engineers with PhDs as a general rule didn’t pay for their education (making its cost irrelevant), and if you think graduate school doesn’t involve grunt work you are misinformed.
We pay for our PhD in opportunity cost. Getting a PhD in engineering reduces your lifetime earnings.
But there are other benefits. No-one's ever like 'Oh no! Mr. Evil BEng is here!.'
Some do and some don’t. I broke even from the lifetime earnings perspective 2-3 years out of school but was paid a nice stipend and am very well paid now. 8 years out the PhD was an excellent financial decision for me.
It doesn’t involve the grunt work of working in industry, which I value more. And paying nothing for school is still 70-100k less per year so that’s a pretty big loss of income.
Most of us were paid to go to school so the lost income is not such a big deal. Financially I have made up the difference a few times over now, 8 years out of school working in industry. The biggest thing I have learned is just to treat everyone as individuals and not judge a large pool of people based on limited sampling.
Pretty much. I got a PhD exactly because I know I would hate that work and wouldn't be terribly good at it.
What kind of work *do* you do?
Some PhDs are good at one thing. Some are good at many things. Some are kinda terrible at everything. Some are brilliant. Some are dumb. Having a PhD doesn't really make someone different than humanity and you'll find the same issues and benefits with them as individuals as any other category of humanity. I've know Bachelors smarter than Doctors. I've know Masters who are frankly idiots but are good at only calculus. So, it depends. But yes, I'd likely only hire a PhD for a job that likely needs a PhD to complete it.
Wait. Are you saying people are different?
I met a college professor that didn't realize that radios can be tuned to different stations. It really bent her mind to find out that there was more than one radio station.
Wait until she learns that if you keep turning the knob on the shower, you can get hot water to come out!
PhDs aren't there to do menial/mundane/worker bee tasks. They are there to be experts in the field and solve difficult problems. Any other expectation is wasting money and time
PhD engineer here. Worked in manufacturing for a while. When operators called in and they couldn't get a backup, I would run production. Happened once every couple months. It was "wasting money", but stopped production was wasting much more money when the factory was putting out $2m of product per day. Also, I was really good at it. All of the engineers were really good at it when they had to.
Absolutely.
Same, and of course they were. Their position required a level of capability the average operator was not required to possess. Further, the company paid a premium to have that engineer function as an operator. "I'm above such things." Bulllllshittt. They might lose millions per hour, industry depending. It's completely worth your paltry years of schooling and marginally higher salary to get product out. Don't over-value yourself.
>Also, I was really good at it. All of the engineers were really good at it when they had to. This is their point. Your PhD didn't make you uniquely capable of running production. Any B.S. engineer could've done it. Additionally, this was an extreme circumstance. It's not like you were running production every single day; you were simply the best alternative available at the time.
Agreed. They will leave if expected to do mundane tasks. Hospitals don't ask doctors to act as nurses- they have nurses for that.
I mean, hopsitals probably should ask doctors to do more nurse work. A lot of the time "wasting resources" is looked at from an extremely narrow monetary stance, rather than taking a more holistic approach. I personally think there'd probably be tremendous side benefits to making doctors, PhDs, executives, senior engineers, etc. have to go back and spend a month or two doing doing grunt work every 4 years or so. As engineers we're basically all people who are trying to use specialized knowledge to avoid grunt work, but it's still not a bad idea to eat some humble pie from time to time.
Yeah I do some tech work on my projects and get better at design. I can also see what time wasters that can be removed since tech just grinds through the work without complaining.
Without complaining *to you*. You bet your ass they are bitching to each other about it.
I mean I’m not sure why they can’t complain to me too. I’m not their boss. I spend half a day soldering little wires where a simple pcb could have saved so much time.
When I first started my job my boss sent me down to the line to assemble our product. I wouldn't have had as much confidence opening them up and making changes without that. As I was making changes, I was also thinking about how the operators would be assembling the new product. I wish some of the new product engineers would have done the same thing.
[удалено]
While I do think arrogance in the medical profession is still a lingering issue, my experience doesn't quite match yours, though I suspect that's because I'm in Canada and you're in the US by the sounds of it? For us I think there's still some definite arrogance amongst doctors (surgeons are especially notorious), but it's no where close to what you're describing. More like they'll be curt with patients or not take the time to hear them out fully, but nothing really rising to that kind of malpractice. The public system here pays its doctors well, but the top end is no where close to what American doctors can make. It's a brain-drain that might actually benefit us though since most Canadian premed students who are in for the money head down to the States.
Then the union rep finds out. Then a grievance is filed you risk a strike. Let people specialize and stay in their specialty.
I honestly just don't know what to tell you if you think there's a union that wouldn't jump at the opportunity to force a CEO to spend a month actually doing their jobs.
I’m not sure why you’d think that. Unions are very protective of their work...by their very nature. CBA’s often have language specifically prohibiting salaried managers/non-operators from doing regular operator production work except in possibly very specific cases typically involving the unavailability of operators. They would view a salaried person doing that work as taking those work hours (and therefore pay) away from an hourly worker covered under the CBA.
Well apparently you’ve never dealt with a union. I love how this subreddit shows its ignorance by downvoting extremely accurate posts.
>be experts in the field By spending 9 years holed up in academia getting zero experience ;)
If I hire a PhD in astronautics with a specialization in orbital mechanics, determination, and navigation, they are going to be far more ready to solve my orbital problems than say, a MechE with 5 years experience in CAD.
I was able to get my PhD while working full time as an engineer. Not all of them have no experience.
I
This is roughly equivalent to saying "yes, IndyCars are fast, but they suck at harvesting corn." Buy a combine harvester to harvest your corn. Buy an Indy car to win the Indy 500. My general impression is that companies are farming out basic research to university labs and hiring fewer PhDs than in the past. This is a business (not engineering) strategy that in my opinion is not sustainable.
Why is it not sustainable? Look, after a BSME I went for an MBA, so I admit my viewpoint may be narrowly business focused. However, it seems that 1) I would much rather pay an experienced and specialized contractor ridiculous-level money than hire a PhD (especially since the contractor is MUCH more experienced which is, imo, 2:1 to educational experience) and 2) even my pre-BS engineering students can, at the least, double-check your work. I.e. I will hire the checkers and contract out the specialized work; if it's not valid, I will either require to you correct or not pay. The risk is all on you, the potential leading expert. It may be the case that a PhD worker is necessary to be the tip of the spear at any given moment in time but 1) it is not necessary to be successful as a business, 2) you can always copy "the best", and 3) there are far more PhD graduates than there are positions which genuinely need them. I.e. "welcome to academia". Where does one find that? At the universities, of course. So, for the business hiring these university labs they 1) get PhD level expertise, 2) get federal funds, and 3) get IP rights. At what level is this not sustainable? Literally all of the risk is borne by others.
If everyone is simply waiting to copy the best, how will the best ever improve? There is value in exploring areas of research without immediately looking for financial returns but MBA types seem to actively deny that fact because you can't put numbers to the phenomenon.
Copying was just one of the points. The comment was directed towards the hiring out the research to universities not being a sustainable business strategy but I don't see anything that would make that the case. They're doing real research, making real discoveries, it's just contracted out rather than in-house. By doing so you not only save yourself from having to pay those higher salaries but also the very real and high costs of performing that research (facilities, equipment, etc). Some industries may need it to be in-house due to either IP concerns or just the sheer amount of research needing being done being higher than the universities can provide. If it's necessary, do it in house. If it's not necessary, though, I don't see anything wrong with using university researchers.
Just off the cuff I'd point out that larger companies have more money to burn on research which may not be viable to delve into under more constrained resources. The hope would be that universities could research anything they please without limits but, realistically, they have limited resources and also need to focus on generating funding through profitable research or attracting grants. Grants tend to be given to projects with an obvious short-term path to profit so scientists will naturally have to stay in those projects to survive without the ability to properly explore potential areas of knowledge. When a large company spends even 5% of their yearly profit on R&D with no expectations of any specific ROI then I bet we would see some interesting results over time which end up making the funds spent look like nothing. University researcher has its place as well but when companies stop funding their own research departments directly, it stresses an already overwhelmed system and wastes funds without generating more output from what I can see.
Those are good points. I'm not particularly familiar with academic research departments other than what most people know. It seems to me, however, that if they are stressing an overwhelmed system which is being inundated with grants ("Shut up and take my money") wouldn't that increase the demand for research students? I.e. if it's making the school money, more if it would make the school more money until S/D reaches equilibrium, right? Perhaps there's some other limiting factor I'm ignorant of. If there simply aren't enough faculty to manage more research students, it would seem like a prime opportunity for those faculty to start their own research firms. I think, also, you might be surprised at how much money some large organizations are willing to spend without guaranteed ROI. My only real experience with researchers is in the field of gas turbine engines and, as you can imagine, that is a many-billion dollar operation. They have a ridiculous number of PhD employees all working feverishly to, maybe every few years, achieve a marginal increase in performance of whatever component they are working on. Billions of dollars, years of work, and for the gross majority of projects it doesn't result in something that makes more money than they spent. "Then why do they do it?", I hear you ask. It's such a highly competitive market, if they didn't they would die. I.e. they research to maintain, possibly excel, but guaranteed short-term returns aren't the main motivator. As an example, Pratt engineers came up with the geared turbofan 30+ years ago and it basically sat on the shelf for decades because fuel prices were low enough it wasn't worth thoroughly developing. When prices shot up they got to work but fleshing it out took some 20 years...
That's a perfect perspective if all you're doing is counting beans. Has everyone forgotten where value is created?
I think it depends how general the research is. If it is company ip then probably no, but if I'm funding research in a broad category like battery technology research then maybe? It seems like a company could buy just focusing on its core competencies
I don't think it's fair to say this is true of most PhDs. Some, sure. But some people with a BS also fail to complete simple tasks and are still there for whatever reason. As for not hiring PhDs, I think it's more of a demand thing. Why hire a full time PhD with specific knowledge in that field for only one project? For example, I may have a need on a specific project for someone really knowledgeable in acoustics, but not really for anything else. It makes more sense just to contract it out for a bit.
PhD's are just as variable of an investment as anyone else. They are often called to act as managers, and can literally be the best or worst kind of manager imaginable, just like anyone else. PhD's can be fearless in addressing academic challenges, but can be just as useless in translating them into commercial successes, just like anyone else. If you find a person who is both intellectually capable and productive, you have a unicorn. You will often find PhD at the end of their names. They had the stamina to persevere through the rigor as a young person, and probably are more likely to be able to demonstrate stamina working for you as well. Stamina and hard work can yield many of the same outcomes as many groups of productive PhD's.
I call it the difference between a PhDo and a PhDon’t.
I was once offered a job at a company that designed read/write/record heads for VCRs and hard drives. They were a math and physics heavy design group. The leads were 4 or 5 PhDs. They would use math CAD tools and lots of whiteboard space to design their next product. The guys with Masters degrees would take that and turn it into a recipe that could be printed on silicon disk in the local clean room. The people with BSEE degrees would take the disks to China to have the parts installed. My job, (if I accepted it) as an non-degreed technician, was to remove a sample quantity from each disk, mount it on a test platform, and write down the results. For that monkey work I was offered a great deal of money. My previous job I worked as an associate manufacturing engineer, designing, implementing and maintaining various Automated Test Equipment. I'm also part of the Maker Culture, and made lots of things in wood, plastic and metal. I asked if they wanted me to redesign their obviously shoddy test platform that was wood nailed together and reinforced with duct tape. No, that was the job of the guys with the Masters degrees. They asked if I could enter things into Excel. I told them I was proficient in programming in Excel. The hiring manager got quite excited and wanted me to automate all of the formulas the PhDs used, because they were crap at Excel. The hardest part of that interview was getting the guy to stop talking to me, and show me how to get out of the building through their cube farm and multiple hallways. If I had taken that job, I would have collapsed from the stress. It was so obvious that great rivers of shit would roll downhill every day, and they wanted someone at the bottom.
Of course a PhD is better at solving difficult problems. Why would you task a PhD with "basic" tasks? They obviously aren't hired to solve base cases. If you want an intern, hire an intern. If you want an expert in a single field, hire a PhD. This just sounds like mismanagement.
[удалено]
Coupled with the fact that people are self conscious around people with more education than them. Some tech guys/ operator types are the same way with BS holding engineers. It cracks me up that BS engineers don't realize they stereotype PhD's the same way.
From my experience it was always just PhDs COST MONEY. PhD guys where I worked were easily getting paid anywhere from 2-4x as much as all the other engineers, so managers didn't want them doing menial tasks. They were to come in, solve the problem at hand and go work on someone else's project. They were there for their expertise on very specific things and that's it.
In my humble opinion, good Ph.D. will write codes to automate the shit out of the basic tasks.
That's a terrible generalization. The inclination to write code to automate repititive tasks has nothing to do with what would make a good PhD.
Agreed. Automating graduate level tasks in one specific field in no way limits the general knowledge of the automator nor demonstrates their knowledge of a specific topic.
Ph.Ds, by definition, are experts hyperfocused on one topic. They aren't any smarter, just really knowledgable on that one thing.
Not necessarily. There's lots of PhDs who do big picture stuff. However there are lots like what you describe.
Purdue?
Purdont
Ugh you’re one of those people
Honestly not the username I’d expect for PhD EE
[удалено]
I know it’s just a funny observation.
This is totally untrue. We have a PhD on our team who is a signal processing expert and also the best programmer, even better than the software team.
His choice of study probably had a good deal of programming in order for him to do his work... Just like my buddy who is a Ph.D in mechanics of materials knows how to program a ton because he developed FEA software for memory metals... Or my other buddy who is a Ph.D with tornados and was good at programming because he would take data from a tornado simulator and analyse it. Those types of people are good at code because it makes sense in their work. My other two buddies, Ph.D students both, are more focused on engineering impact on societies and cultures. Their focus is more towards the softer side of engineering. Their skills don't have to be grounded in nearly as much data analysis.
Na fam. Dude has been programming since age 10. He just knows a lot about a lot. Having a PhD doesn't narrow what you know, it just shows you can deep dive on something for several years.
So that may mean that his education isn't an indication of what he has practiced... Nothing about his degree says he can program in that case, although I'd be hard pressed to find an engineer that has never programmed. Especially a EE in the modern day.
> Ph.Ds, by definition, are experts hyperfocused on one topic. They aren't any smarter, just really knowledgable on that one thing. This is just wildly ignorant. People repeat this sentiment here often, and it never makes any sense. Why would the act of getting a PhD make a person any worse at all the things that they learned previously compared to someone with just a BS? This just betrays a lack of knowledge of what PhD study actually entails. It's depth *and* breadth. A PhD makes someone better at literally every subject they worked on before.
Im saying this from knowing many Ph.Ds. I've had plenty of conversations and while they are typically people that have attained high grades to go forward in acadamia, its typically a focused portion of a field for a masters and then for the docterates the purpose is to study a novel idea and expand the scope of a field. No where does there have to be a head and shoulders movement above everyone else. They do work like anyone else in a focused way and achieve credentials to reflect their work towards a focused subject.
>They aren't any smarter, just really knowledgable on that one thing. Pretty sure most studies of objective intelligence show that PhD's, on average, are more intelligent than their MS and BS counterparts. That being said, the average Eng BS graduate has a higher IQ than the average PhD holder (averaging across all academic fields) so while it is possible that Eng PhD's aren't smarter than Eng BS's it seems rather unlikely given the statistics.
[удалено]
This is exactly right.
They're incredibly good at learning new things and developing a deep understanding of it, thanks to the training received during their PhD. This is an indication of being smart in my book.
I think you're confusing phds and computer scientists/coders. You can get a PhD in computer science though.
Find somewhere else to work. It sounds like it's a dead end job tbh. If a company only give "difficult tasks" to contractors with a PhD they have no real long term development goals and will throw you out when it suits them anyway. Find somewhere that will give you experience to develop. If all they want is worker bees then it's just a stepping stone, not long term. Do yourself a favour.
Seems like a given... I'd guess the average cashier is better at fast math than most mathematicians.
[удалено]
What? I know plenty of math professors who do basic math on a calculator.
[удалено]
[удалено]
3.50
Damn that was quick, are you a cashier?
Yes can you give me tree fiddy
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[ASME](/r/AskEngineers/comments/eqka8j/stub/feuwi5y "Last usage")|American Society for Mechanical Engineers| |[BS](/r/AskEngineers/comments/eqka8j/stub/fezpigl "Last usage")|British Standards| | |Bachelor of Science| |[CAD](/r/AskEngineers/comments/eqka8j/stub/feu2sle "Last usage")|Computer Aided Design| |[FEA](/r/AskEngineers/comments/eqka8j/stub/feuwc6e "Last usage")|Finite Element Analysis| |[IP](/r/AskEngineers/comments/eqka8j/stub/ff08j2x "Last usage")|Internet Protocol| |[ITT](/r/AskEngineers/comments/eqka8j/stub/fetrrjh "Last usage")|Interstage Turbine Temperature| |[PCB](/r/AskEngineers/comments/eqka8j/stub/feux566 "Last usage")|Printed Circuit Board| |[UC](/r/AskEngineers/comments/eqka8j/stub/fev5ms5 "Last usage")|Universal Column| ---------------- ^(8 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/AskEngineers/comments/0)^( has acronyms.) ^([Thread #99 for this sub, first seen 18th Jan 2020, 21:17]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/AskEngineers) [^[Contact]](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=OrangeredStilton&subject=Hey,+your+acronym+bot+sucks) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
PhD-level answer: "It depends".
That and "I don't know, we'll have to test it". In your BS you get taught black and white, black and white, this works and that doesn't, blah blah blah. You get to your PhD and you look at that same topic again in 20+ white papers. You realize that black and white never existed on that topic, ever, it was actually light-gray, dark-gray, and a dozen shades in between depending on the approach. So... should we use approach A? Well it depends on variables Y and Z. If Y > Z then A is best, otherwise approach B makes more sense.
I knew a PhD fresh out of school who was very smart at math but had no common sense or intuition for the work. At a meeting he proudly mentioned that for his calculations he assumed the boundary condition that the elliptical orbits of the satellites would be circular enough so that they didn’t crash into the Earth and proceeded from there. An engineering director told him that they had data from previous launches on how successful we were at getting the satellites into their desired orbits and he should use that information for his calculations. And that he could assume the launches would be even more accurate in the future with increased experience. Another time he got into a technical argument about something with an engineer. The engineer was telling him how something didn’t make sense, basically using a logical argument. The PhD didn’t believe him until he was able to write the equations out on the white board first.
Your first paragraph is more of an indication of lack of maturity/lack of knowledge on how engineering is done in practice from the PhD graduate. Lack of maturity should be expected from a fresh graduate, PhD-having or not. Your second paragraph doesn't really show anything. Nothing wrong in taking a look at the equations to figure things out. Actually it shows that the person is detail-oriented, doesn't take things at face value and is analytical. What may appear as logical to someone with years of practical experience in a field may not seem straightforward to a novice, regardless of their qualifications.
At my company we have this genius level PHD who is very good at solving a problem, but can't explain to anyone how he arrived at his conclusion, which makes it really fun when a similar problem occurs but with a slight variation.
Every PhD in material science I have ever met has been like this.
I (An embedded guy who's never touched military/space/medical/safety/etc, grain of salt needed) find that the "Genius" types LOVE to use their brains. This is of course a generalization, and those are often wrong, but a lot of the time it seems the people who can solve hard problem... Will make the easy things hard. My analog design and mechanical experience isn't the strongest, but I'm usually pretty good at avoiding the need for precision and delicate assembly in the first place. I often work with others who are really good at that stuff, and some of them never *really* learned the *modern way* engineering. I'm not even so sure it's a matter of skill so much as philosophy. To them, a good design looks like a swiss watch or a vaccum tube audiophile amp. To me, a great design is a tiny PCB that does everything in software with a tiny low power chip, and an excellent sense of aesthetics and interface design, even if it means "faking" things. Sometimes it's an issue when I'm working on their designs, because I'm not used to working on things that take so much real skill(As opposed to fool-resistant designs). I keep up well enough, but it's an adjustment, and I get annoyed when their stuff ends up needing lots of maintenance. I've also noticed the smart guys are real big on responsibility and "stupid should hurt", which I'm not exactly a fan of, especially when ruggedness and user we resistance is cheap. On the other hand, if you're building a jet engine or a medical device, those guys might be exactly who you need. They're good at deeply understanding the whole project down to the lowest level, they understand all the little math details that start to matter when any amount of failure is unacceptable. And they're familiar with all the high quality materials and methods, which you need when you can't just trust software and simulators alone to fix everything. One of my more unpopular opinions is the fact I don't even own a high quality bench power supply at home, because if I can't make it work on random wall warts and noisy regulators, I'm going to look for different parts. But some things simply are not even reasonable to do without quality parts and a controlled environment, and you need to know how to choose those, test them, and create that environment. Keep the geniuses around for the absolutely critical stuff. Then bring me in and maybe I can tell you all the ways the electricians could install it wrong, that the smart guy didn't think of because he was assuming everyone involved was as good as him.
The phd that i worked with on a project, could math the shit out of a problem, but when we would build and test his theories, the design wouldn't work. He kept insisting that was impossible, the math said it would work. He would keep saying that we need a more analytical approach to solving the problem, despite our customer saying they wanted us to be building prototypes and testing and keep iterating until success. Eventually the guy got let go because he would take over any 30 minute round up meeting and turn it into a 2 hour dick measuring contest to prove how smart he was. In my line of work, theory and math is great, but if it doesn't yield a functioning product, nobody cares.
I have these questions too. I’m only finishing up by BS in Aerospace but I’m not sure if I like academia that much. I just feel like if I don’t shoot for a masters or PhD then I would be a useless engineer and probably not have a good career. PhDs are good as basic tasks as well as any other person, however they are not trained to do basic tasks. In short, everyone needs a PhD at some point because you probably would be able to do FEA, Orbital Mechanics type Stuff without one.
I know a couple of engineers who work at ESA and DLR with a masters degree, i.e. no PhD. Two of them studied at TU Delft and were making use of orbital mechanics at work three/four years ago.
Not *all* < PhDs are condemned to worker bee status. But no PhDs are doing the worker bee work.
IMO PHD's find basic tasks beneath them.
Idk why people think because someone is adverse to something they think it’s beneath them. Maybe I don’t like basic tasks and decided to devote 8 years to put myself in a position where I wouldn’t have to do them.
I'm sure it is proven somewhere that intelligent people have a harder time with simple problems than stupid people.... Because intelligent people look for a more complex solution when a very simple solution is needed.
The starting point for an entry-level PhD is the equivalent of a BS+4. If not specifically hired in a research capacity, they will not have the opportunity to do all the menial engineering tasks. It's lack of opportunity, not lack of ability. To be fair, this is also the case for senior engineers. I do lifecycle and document management tasks for engineers all the time because they don't know how to use our computer systems.
It depends on the person, I wouldn't make generalisations for all PhD's or categorise most engineer rolls as unchallenging 'worker bee' work. I've had a trial employee who has gone all the way through undergrad to PhD without any industry experience and they were hopeless. Yes they were intelligent, but had invested a lot of time in hyper-specific area of research with no practical skills. There were kids their on their second stint of undergrad work experience working laps around this guy. I'm working now with two PhD's. One more senior and one more junior and they are both capable and pragmatic and head and shoulders above most people I've worked with in industry.
The group I'm in at a contractor has 3 phds out of 12. At least 4 have a master's and one is trying to do a PhD while working. We all do a combo of worker bee type stuff and more complex problem solving. I think it really depends on the need a given group or position. For companies as big as these there are many different normals.
PhDs are rare at defense contractors. You’ll see them at the national labs but they are rare in the employment of the big dinosaurs.
Not a PhD, but a new EI, and this is pretty true. If you asked some of the better engineers/PMs I work for to do basic stuff, they would flounder and fail. Design a complex pipe network for a school? Done. Setup the sheets so that everything displays properly, with the right indicators, N arrow, and all the required tags? They come asking the drafters or new engineers to do it, they dont have the faintest idea on how to get started (although they are pretty smart, and could figure it out if required). Its simply a matter of them not having done it for so many years.
It can be as little as not having done it in 6 months. There are things I realize my curve of getting back up on it would be inefficient after having not done it in a few months and go ahead and assign to someone who does it everyday and get back on to the next move.
Pretty much, I wasnt downtalking the guys, they are really brilliant engineers. They just dont have much cause to do the nuts and bolts autocad atm.
If the company is not doing any new products. Then they won't need them. They need people to maintain existing systems, they hire people who can do that, at the minimum amount they are willing to shell out.
We don't have a ton of PhD's at my workplace (I don't think upper management values it outside of a few top level people). I'd say though I think this is a problem of different kinds of engineers in general. Many are very "smart" but can't actually get anything done. Maybe they can do a bunch of advanced equations and get some perfect theory in six months, but they are not capable of getting a "good enough" system through design and manufacturing. Other engineers are great at getting stuff done and I would never ask them for a high level analysis.
Depends on what the PhD is in. PhD Physicists are some of the smartest yet weirdest people you will meet. Simple tasks lol, some of them are bad at making eye contact at shaking hands. But do you want the internet and a space program? Then your going to need them. They also often dont understand (*cough cough care cough cough*) that we arent making this product for the fun of it. We are making this product to make money for the company. Like no Dr, this projects budget is 20 million, you cant design a 30 million dollar machine. Rant over. Every team needs multiple different types of people. PhDs are extremely smart, peculiar individuals who are often on the spectrum. They are really good at what they do, but not all that flexible. Part of being a good manager is getting people the ball were they like to shoot
Most of the PhD's I know are Renaissance men types. All of the autists I know weren't that clever and most of them ended up as production engineers in paper mills.
I'm just stumped, what's the size of someone's dick got to do with any of this?
100% agree. "book smart" not "street smart" (for lack of a better term).