I bailed out of my PhD when it became time to write my thesis, and it was the best decision of my life. I went on to start my own business, which I ran for 30 years, and retired comfortably four years ago.
At the time, it was impossible to get my ducks in an acceptable line with regard to a supervisor, committee and time table (they liked to keep a doctoral student four to five years). Although I loved learning, I became disenchanted with the department politics and hypocrisy of many academics.
People like my mother thought I failed to use my (debt free) education. But in fact, I used it every day of my life and it made my life wonderfully full and interesting.
Whatever you do, don’t end up as the bitterest person in the world.
Do you have enough results (theorems proven, or whatever else is needed for a PhD in math) to graduate if you wrote it all down in a thesis and had your thesis defense?
If yes, it may make sense (for long term career benefits) to go through the final steps and get that degree (after finding another advisor)
If not, it makes more sense to leave and try industry.
I know it doesn’t fit easily in a cv, but you have done a LOT of real teaching here on the SDMB – more than any other Doper, I think (I’ve said so before) – I’m talking quality, not quantity. Maybe you now regret having directed some of your teaching energies our way, but at least you can take comfort in knowing that you ARE our teacher, and we thank you for it.
What kind of CS background do you have? How much experience writing code? What do you want to do?
A B.S. in CS from a top school.
In some sense, a lot; I’ve been programming since 4th grade, used to be really into writing computer games and, later, toy compilers, had a couple coding internships in high school and as an undergrad, got that B.S. in CS, etc.
But while I know very well how to code, and have experience with a variety of languages and paradigms and such, I’m not a guy who’s spent as much time in the software engineering trenches as competitors whose life passion is writing code, of which there is no shortage these days. Software engineering, per se, doesn’t drive me, and I have no portfolio of masterpieces to point to. I haven’t actually had any code-writing jobs since undergrad, and in recent years, my day-to-day programming has only been trivial bits of Haskell (or, rarely, C++) from time to time to sate trivial curiosities, along with whatever I’ve had to do when I TAed programming courses.
So, you know, whatever that puts me at. I feel like, if it were seven years ago and I were applying fresh out of college, I would be a hard candidate to beat. But with the added information given by the seven year hole in my résumé, my confidence is rather less.
This is the biggy. I don’t know, and of course I need to figure it out.
Even if I had the Ph.D., I wouldn’t want to do the academia track afterwards; too many downsides (little choice over where to live, publish-or-perish pressure, the sheer odds are not great for achieving the outcome of a tenured position at a good school, and the whole thing would be simply prolonging the unenjoyed experience of grad school) for too little upside (it’s not like I need a professorship to think about math, after all; it would just be a cushy environment in which to focus on it, and a bit of automatic authority to soothe my ego).
And honestly, after the narrowing I’ve undergone while in grad school, I’d like to widen myself again. I am not solely a math-person. I look forward to having new experiences and learning new things. But in terms of actually isolating some passion of mine and a joyously matching job, I have no idea.
I guess I petulantly feel like I have skills and talent which could surely be quite useful to somebody in some capacity, even if I don’t know it. Given that I need a job to live, it’d be nice if some employer would just figure out from me such a use for the time being. I can work on a dream job later. (Of course, I know that’s not how it works…)
Thanks; I do take some comfort in that. And thanks to others who made similar comments, as well.
I just finished my doctorate, and based on what I know right now, I’d drop out in a heartbeat if I had it to do over again. Leaving once you’ve realized that you know it’s not for you is infinitely smarter than sticking around and trying to tough it out. And yeah, it sucks that you’re in this situation, but it really sounds like you’re doing the best you can.
(Also, shoot me your resume at the email in my profile and I can pass it around if you’re interested.)
If it makes you happy to drop out of the PhD program you should do it. I’m not suggesting you burn your bridges, but if that’s what you need, then that’s what you need, and you don’t need anybody’s approval to do it.
I would advise that you maintain a plan to continue your pursuit of a PhD, at least to the extent that you can state in a job interview that you plan to continue that pursuit. That can be a pretty low level of planning without being dishonest. There’s no need to limit your opportunities over a point like that.
Thanks; I do take some comfort in that
[/QUOTE]
Given the above, and given that you do such a great job explaining things, would teaching (at any level) be something you’d like to do, or are you set on going into industry using your CS degree?
Some possibilities for jobs that you may not know about:
Galois Connections are hiring in Oregon. They use Haskell exclusively and tend to work on interesting projects.
Investment banking. They’re the biggest employers of functional programmers. Jane Street Capital, for instance, are one of the largest software firms using OCaml. Standard Chartered also employ quite a few Haskell programmers. They also tend to want people with a good grasp of mathematics to be able to talk with the quants.
Microprocessor verification engineers. There’s a lot of firms that use interactive theorem proving to prove their microprocessor designs correct (especially tricky parts like floating point and vector operations). Rockwell Collins, AMD, Intel, ARM, Infineon and Centaur Technologies all have verification groups using tools like HOL Light and ACL2. If you enjoy programming and proving theorems (though the type of theorem you’d be proving isn’t necessarily as interesting as those in pure mathematics) then this is a good mix.
Thanks for the leads, Capt.. I’d already heard about Jane Street Capital and contacted a friend there, but I’ll check out the rest as well.
I’m feeling a little bit better now; after telling my advisor of my decision not to continue with another advisor, he sent me a very nice e-mail saying he was sorry things ended up this way, it was an issue of timing with him having taken on other commitments in my long absence from contact, encouraging me to still work on writing up the ideas which would have become my thesis and consider publishing them, to stay in touch, and a few other very nice things I needn’t go into. So that was some relief of some of my worries about burnt bridges. But, complete relief probably won’t settle in until the terror of the job search has abated and I’ve settled into whatever comes next.
I’m only posting this because it’s from the Center for Advanced Study and looks like it might be the basis of an interesting quasi-academic niche.
Sometimes it works just exactly like that. When I interviewed for my current position I told them that my interest was in the organization, rather than the specific position, and that I just wanted to be a part of it and find a way to contribute. As it turned out the actual job description was really vague and they were looking for someone to come in and play pick up with whatever needed tasks were a good skills match. I’ve been there a year and the job is still changing as supervisors say hey moejoe, there’s this new project we think you’d enjoy and be good at, want it? It’s a perfect fit for me but I couldn’t have designed it in advance, I just needed a job and decided to worry about the dream job once the bills were paid.
You’re being very brave right now, might as well enjoy it. If you’re going out on a limb, go on and go all the way out to the edge of it. Google is full of smart, interesting people who will definitely get you and understand how much you have to contribute.
Bon Voyage.
You aren’t the first or last to make a decision like this. I went through something similar* and found that pretending everything was OK was the worst way to go about it (both while I was in college and for several months afterward). It felt like the world was ending, and it kind of did for awhile. But if you can get through this part of your life, the rest of it will seriously be a piece of cake by comparison. Start by getting your mental health issues treated–a job with Google would be a great way to get the health insurance to do so. Or hell, even Altavista!
*I quit my undergrad under the same circumstances, which is much less of an investment both temporally and financially. But I also hated what I was doing, whereas you have to *really *love math to be pursuing a PhD in it. Thus I’m sure your heartbreak is even greater than mine was. I ended up crashing back with my mom, did a few shit stints in retail, and eventually worked my way up to white-collar and out of depression. You can do it, too.
For what it’s worth, I took the Google job, which was most likely what I’d have ended up doing even if I had completed the Ph.D. So that’s something. Still, it’s nice to fantasize that I’ll someday return and file my thesis* (since I did make discoveries I’m quite fond of, and just never managed to make myself write them up properly)…
[*: Wittgenstein-style, in the most extreme variant of this fantasy]
That’s good news Indistinguishable, thanks for the update! Are you enjoying your job?
I didn’t post back when you wrote the OP, but my SO got stuck in a similar situation. He’s a philosopher. He’s back to writing things up now, after several years. He also did publish some other stuff. Closing a door doesn’t mean you can’t open it again later!