Let me underline this part: Do not do your Ph.D. now. There is no rush.
At best, you would be wasting the extremely valuable "get out of industry free" card that an as-yet-unearned graduate degree represents. If you find yourself two years from now, trapped in an industry job which you hate, or in the aftermath of a failed startup, or -- worst of all -- laid off in a really down economy, you can go back to school then, reinvent your resume, revisit academic fields that have made progress in your absence, and meet an entirely new set of fellow students/potential co-founders.
At worst, if you go to grad school without sampling the actual world you could spend another half decade or more getting an advanced degree in a field that, once you graduate and the rubber meets the road, you might discover that you hate working in. Academic computer science and the software industry are rather different things. Being a grad student and being a professor are rather different things. Shop around a bit before committing yourself too hard to any of these paths.
We all have different perspectives depending on the school, the subject, the adviser, the project, and how many years you're currently at in your PhD career.
To speak purely from experience, I would have to say that I had similar choices coming out of my undergrad. I went directly into a PhD program. The first two years I hated my life, and I would have agreed with you then. Now, my life has completely changed.
First of all, it takes a while to build a new community. Grad school (and just life after college) is just different. You are no longer a part of the same social groups. You also have to find a project you are passionate about. For the first two years I was working on something I hated. I made a critical decision to switch and I haven't looked back.
Second, coming back to do PhD is not easy. As more time passes from undergrad, the more bills you have to pay, the harder it is to get recommendations, and the higher expectations will be. Passing your qualifying exam may be tougher.
Third, a PhD does not rail you to anywhere. It OPENS doors. American students do not fully comprehend this fact, and as such, American PhD students are the minority in most PhD programs.
"Third, a PhD does not rail you to anywhere. It OPENS doors. American students do not fully comprehend this fact, and as such, American PhD students are the minority in most PhD programs."
American students are a minority in PhD programs because the risk/reward is traditionally awful, relative to the other options available to US citizens. The calculation is different for foreign students (particularly those from emerging economies), which is why you see more of them in graduate schools.
the risk/reward is traditionally awful, relative to the other options available to US citizens
Mind you, this is not true for every US citizen, and it could change. If you can't get a job, getting a graduate degree is a lot better than taking to drink. (Unless your graduate degree drives you to drink, which I have seen happen. Try to remember that doppelbock is not a food group!)
But the original submitter is fortunate enough to have three job opportunities, at least, so that doesn't seem to apply in this case.
While I agree, I also think there is more to it than that, such as how Americans value education.
I would be interested in seeing how many PhD students come from affluent backgrounds. How do those statistics compare to foreign students and their backgrounds?
Doing a PhD worked for me as a way to find out what I really enjoyed, by investigating all sorts of avenues (unrelated to my actual topic, which I soon hated), after aimlessly doing as I was told in undergrad and not really knowing what I wanted to do.
You don't sound like you're in the same boat at all. Maybe you have an incredible project that will fascinate you for 3-4 years, surrounded by equally passionate people; I can't tell. Equally likely you will grind it out for the last year or two, regretting not doing that start-up or something else.
No Ph.D. railroads you into academia. English Ph.Ds get software jobs too. They just do it later in life.
Yes, there are industry research opportunities. They're a lot of work to get, because you have to get a Ph.D., and then you have to compete with all the other folks who want them. And the thing about careers is that there's no guarantee that the one which takes more work to get will be more enjoyable for you, or more renumerative for anyone, than the one which you could have gotten with just a college degree (or, as folks sometimes argue, a high school diploma -- I think that takes the argument a bit too far myself, but it worked for Jobs and Gates). The only way to know which career is right for you is to sample them. And while I'm not sure of the optimal order in which to sample them, trying the difficult, poorly paid, emotionally exhausting route first is probably not the optimal order.
The key here is that you've got to fail quickly when you're young. And no matter how smart you are, a PhD is simply not a fast form of failure -- it takes years just to get a sense of what the research life is like, let alone know if you'll be any good at it. A PhD is something to pursue after your confident that all other, faster options are deemed undesirable.
The only exception I'd make, is if you're one of those rare people who knows that you want to be a professor, with no doubts whatsoever; in that situation, you should get into the best graduate school possible, as soon as possible, and never look back.
That said, if you're asking the rest of us what you should do, then you don't really want to be a professor.
I'm not sure I agree with your assessment about which is a faster route to failure. A startup can definitely be a fast route to failure. Working in an established corporation can be a startling experience though. Sometimes people seem to do absolutely nothing and collect a nice bonus or raise at the end of the year, etc. On the other hand, when I started grad school, it was very clear that some students were in over their heads and they were mostly gone by the first semester. Other people did take longer to realize that grad school was not for them, but the largest group of drop outs seemed to happen around the one semester mark. I think a lot of people just have their preconceived notions of grad school undone, and almost always in a negative way.
I'm assuming that the OP is smart and reasonably motivated. If so, he's not likely to be one of the fast grad-school washouts.
You're right that there are a few of those in every class, but the average smart person takes much longer to figure out that a PhD is a soul-sucking waste of youth and vitality.
First: I don't believe this. I went to grad school (in physics) with a couple of students who had spent one to five years in industry first. They weren't exactly indistinguishable from the other students: my impression is that they had a better idea of why they were there and what they wanted to do once they left, a more finely calibrated sense of what to study and who to work for to advance their chosen careers, and perhaps a slightly shorter time to graduation. They certainly didn't seem to find it much harder than anybody else.
(Anecdotal evidence, obviously, and a small data set. You're welcome to bring your own anecdotes if you like, or even data.)
Second: I'm not advising that someone work in industry or on a startup for fifteen years and then go back to school. You can sample careers pretty quickly unless that career is "professor". I believe most startups do you the favor of giving you a quick but intense taste of the startup life and then promptly failing, saving you the embarrassment of having to quit. There's also no rule that says you need to sit at your desk at Microsoft until they kick you out: You can work there for a year or three and then go back to school, and the choice is yours. By contrast, it is really hard to leave grad school and then return, so once you're two years in to your Ph.D. program there will be strong incentives to stick around until you're done, even if it takes eight years. The only way out is through, unless you want to become what Matt Groening once called "The Bitterest Person in the World: The Grad-School Dropout".
Now, it is true that getting a professorship could take you a very long time, and that you therefore want to start as young as possible so that you still have some youthful vigor left to find a new career after you can't secure a tenured position. But you can spare a handful of years.
"Now, it is true that getting a professorship could take you a very long time, and that you therefore want to start as young as possible so that you still have some youthful vigor left to find a new career after you can't secure a tenured position."
Ha!
I'll add the following quote, which I think is brilliant:
"Two years in [to a PhD program], and quitting will be like gnawing your own leg off."
He doesn't say why it should feel that way, or does he? It is great if somebody is sharing advice, but that person sounds a bit like "yeah, I made it through grad school, but I highly doubt that you have what it takes to do the same".
"If you decide in your first year that it is not for you--indeed, suppose you conclude that you're better than all of this, a broader, richer thinker who can't be constrained by the ivory tower--you will still have to deal with the nagging fear that somehow, some way, you just weren't good enough, that you couldn't cut the mustard. That fear will almost certainly be wrong. Perseverance can get most students through graduate school. You should feel good about how well you know yourself if you decide to quit. But academia is a total culture. It changes your standards for what is good and what is bad, what is smart and what is dumb."
I don't think there's anything in his writing that suggests that you're less of a person if you don't go to grad school, or if you decide to drop out. It's just the culture that encourages you to think this way; you shift your conceptions of good and bad to fit the academic ideal.
His page seems much more relevant to humanities grad school. Dropping out after two years of engineering/CS/science is called a masters and you go get a job in industry.
I am 36 now and a PhD seems pretty much unthinkable. I don't need that much money yet, so a startup still seems very much feasible.
Investing in a startup at least brings a chance for earning more money, whereas I would consider doing a PhD as mostly for fun.
Also, at least in Germany it becomes harder to get grants when you are older. For the common government grants there is an age limit of 30.
Many professors seemed to prefer younger student, too. I was about 31 when I started looking for professors to work with, and many said they prefer younger students.
I think the definition of "later in life" makes a big difference. Five years is probably not a big deal in my experience (I worked and traveled for 3 years before grad school). As far as startups, I think you are probably in a much better position to do a startup when you're young if you need to live on a near zero budget, since you are less likely to have a family, etc.
