This blog post is dedicated to Master students who are at the end of their Master’s programs. And wonder if the PhD track is best for them, or rather, they should go for the industry job instead.

If you happen to be a PhD candidate or PhD graduate reading this post, it would be great if you also share your thoughts. And think of some other advice you could give to Master’s students and drop it in the comments below (yes, this is a call to action!)

Why Is This An Important Choice And Unimportant Choice At The Same Time?

First of all, working with Master’s students on their career developments feels great! In the blog post “The tree” dedicated to how employment changes people’s personality (in a negative way) it was explained why. The vast majority of fresh graduates have energy and a positive mindset, are idealistic, not cynical, and willing to work hard — especially if it’s for a good cause.

But if they step into the wrong environment, then things change. After just a few years they might become cynical, broken people with a learned helplessness syndrome. That’s why it is so important to make a good (or at least, a well-calculated) decision of “where to go” at the start.

This decision is hard, though; as a typical Master’s student, you didn’t have much practical working experience just yet. And you just don’t know what works for you in the working environment and what doesn’t.

With jobs, it’s a little bit like with relationships. Most people don’t succeed at the first go, as they don’t know at that point which types of people they would resonate with.

Even if you have some internships under your belt, an intern and an employee are two substantially different types of experience. The expectations towards an intern are much lower than those towards an employee.

What Should You Accept About This Decision?

So, you need to just accept that your first job after you graduate from the university is just a starting point in the long, 40-45 year-long journey—the longest journey in your whole life. You will most likely need to change your life plans and strategy on the job market at least a few times in the process. 

Hoping that your first job will end up with a straight career path towards the top in this exact area of the market is like hoping that your high school sweetheart will become your spouse. You then expect to live happily together ever after.

That’s why in your first job, it is important to choose an environment in which you can grow and develop in many directions. It all depends on what you will discover about yourself in the process.

This choice is important because you need to find an environment in which your natural potential won’t be blocked. But at the same time, it is not as important in terms of where you end up as a professional in the long run.

The Right And The Wrong Reasons To Choose Academia.

This is a bit of a controversial subject. There are diverse opinions on whether it’s a good idea to go for a PhD. Some assume that it is just an additional 3-5 years-long professional training before looking for the first job in the industry.

To my mind, this is not a good motivation as you always need to think of the alternatives. What (constructive) things would you do with the same amount of time if you didn’t go for a PhD?

Those who go straight to industry after their Master’s have enough time to gain practical experience. They build expertise in their branch of the industry before they hit 30. So they usually end up in better positions than those who spend a few years behind closed doors doing a PhD first.

Also, since the number of PhD graduates substantially increased within the last two decades, things changed. A PhD by itself is no longer unique enough to make you a special commodity in any way.

According to the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, the number of science and engineering doctorates awarded in the U.S.

grew by roughly 61% over the past two decades (NCSES, Survey of Earned Doctorates). For this reason, it is advisable to choose a PhD only when you are a fanatic of science. And if you seriously consider an academic career as a way of living.

One remark to make here is that it’s the worst possible scenario to go for a PhD just because you have no better idea of what to do with yourself. And you want to postpone your career decisions by another few years. Roughly, 15-20% of all PhD candidates have this exact motivation.

What Are the Wrong Reasons to Choose a PhD?

Take into account that the time in your life in which you will be doing your PhD, which is typically some time between 23-30 years old. This is also the time when most people reach the top of their creativity, energy, and initiative. After that, the energy level and the affinity to take personal risks start rapidly decreasing.

So, do you really want to spend this time locking yourself behind a closed door and struggling with very complex research problems? All while thinking that this move just buys you more time to think about your future? 

For most people, graduate school is physically and emotionally draining. And going for it as “the easy solution” is comparable to going to the Marines.

You think that it’s just giving yourself more time before you start your adult life. Frankly, no one with that motivation would ever be happy in academia.

To sum up, the best motivation to go to academia is probably when you are deeply in love with the research topic from your Master’s. And feel talented in this discipline. Plus, you can see yourself working as a researcher for the rest of your life.

Of course, you will have a chance to verify and change your plans later. But if you don’t really see yourself as a professional researcher from the very start, it’s better to skip the PhD. Go straight to industry.

Academia Vs Other Options.

Academia, startup, corporation, public institution, or perhaps your own company? First, there are no better or worse working environments—after all, every environment is built by people. What is important is to find an environment where people have similar qualities or values to yours.

To some people out there, the quality of life largely improves after moving to industry. Others were deeply disappointed with life in the industry and are much better off in academia.

Again, this is what you will most likely need to discover from your own experience. Do not blame yourself for miscalibration in case you need to change your working environment in the process.

Briefly, the major differences between academia and other working environments are as follows

(-) More idealists than elsewhere, yet the rules stay the same. Many academics are in deep love with science/knowledge, value the intellectual qualities higher than practical aspects of the job, such as the salary. They don’t use elbows while working with other people.

Yet, the rules for getting promoted in academia are as harsh as everywhere else. If you don’t develop a thick skin and don’t start thinking strategically early on, be warned. It might result in deep disappointments and burnout down the line.

(-) You are on your own. This can be taboo in academia. But teams are only on paper because, at the end of the day, everyone needs to take care of their own CV.

What About Career Incentives?

In fact, the way of incentivizing people in academic projects does not promote teamwork at all. Every single project results in a research paper.

And your place in the sequence of the authors on that paper determines how outsiders perceive your scientific achievement. This includes grant agencies that decide about your future in the field.

As a result, academics have an incentive to get their name onto as many papers as possible. At the same time, they do as little as possible for each one of the projects they participate in. As their publication record will be the major factor that the granting agencies take into account while dividing the money for future projects.

Furthermore, since academics prioritize finishing projects in which they are the leading authors over other projects, delays follow. They often delay their input to the projects in which they are supporting authors. And as a result, they successfully block them.

The situation is not any better when we look at the employer-employee relationship. Unlike in industry, in academia, bosses and their employees often have contradictory goals.

Namely, your boss often wants you to exploit their own research ideas that they developed a long, long time ago, and work on expanding their fame even further. This comes at the expense of working out your own future line of research.

What About Job Mobility?

Typically, there is also less mobility in changing the boss. In many countries (such as the Netherlands), you are paid a salary straight from your lab’s budget and not from the department’s budget.

In a way, this means that you belong to your boss. According to Levecque et al.

(2017), supervisor leadership style is one of the strongest predictors of PhD students’ mental health. The situation is different in some countries, such as the US, where graduate schools offer fellowships.

In such a setting, theoretically, you can change your lab affiliation within the same graduate school in the process. But it makes your life harder and is often perceived as a failure.

(-) You will not experience gratification on a daily basis. While in companies, employees usually need to accomplish several small tasks during the week.

They get some small personal gratifications for each one of them (often as little as a thumbs-up and smile, but that counts), academics need to develop sacred patience as the days of triumph are very scarce.

One or twice a year, you will publish something and celebrate. And once or twice a year, you will present at a conference. Other than that, research is a peaceful grind away from the world.

So, you need to motivate yourself or find a peer group to support each other. Or otherwise, your life will get very hard.

(-) Games. You can expect that once in a while, there will be an extra author(s) on your paper, even though they did nothing for the project. This happens only because some professor owes something to another professor, because the project is a part of a consortium, or so.

What Are the Upsides of Academia?

In fact, there are lots of games you will have to tolerate to survive in academia. But this is material for a whole book, so let’s skip the details here.

(+/-) Unlike in other fields, in academia, you are often expected to have experience working abroad before you get a permanent academic contract. This might be good news or bad news, depending on how fond of traveling and relocating you are.

(+) You contribute to human heritage. This is also one of the very few places on the market where you are paid for learning. (And for reporting the results from what you’ve learned in the form of research publications).

If you have a natural curiosity and affinity to drill deep into problems and learn about them in every detail, good news. This might be the place for you.

(+) You put your name on your work. This might sound like a detail. But for many academics switching to industry, it is disappointing that they are no longer recognized as authors of their work in public.

When you are in academia, you put your own name on every single research paper. And then it becomes public and visible to everyone around the globe.

In industry, on the other hand, the whole team produces a new product or a document under the brand of the company. And the public opinion doesn’t know what your exact input was.

Of course, a good manager should make you feel very important to the team. Yet still, your name won’t be mentioned in the history books even if you did something truly groundbreaking.

So, if you need to be recognized for your work, academia is a good place. It is one of the few places where you are guaranteed to get this recognition.

What Other Benefits Does Academia Offer?

(+) You are encouraged to share your know-how. As mentioned in the blog post, “Things learned in science, for the good and for the bad,” one of the things can be hard after starting a company.

It is the realization that you are no longer able to openly share your know-how. In the private sector, the company’s know-how is highly protected, and everyone who breaks the rules would likely be fired. 

Companies don’t organize international conferences so that everyone can share every detail of their projects with representatives of other companies. No one shares their pipelines so that their results can be reproduced. So, if sharing what you do with public opinion matters to you, academia is the environment to go for.

(+) If you successfully climb up the ladder, you have a chance to get a tenure position. This basically means that you are getting a lifelong appointment.

And you won’t ever need to apply for a job again in your life. Only academics have this luxury.

Warning #1: The Bubble.

One reason why grad school might screw your professional and social life on many levels is that, mentality-wise, academia is a bubble. Why? Well…

Warning #2: The Classic Dropout Story.

Warning #3: PhD Won’t Make You Smart!

One reason many people consider going to grad school is the assumption that it will make them smarter. Well, that could not be further from the truth.

The day only has 24 hours. And if you dedicate yourself to a very narrow discipline and to becoming a frontier expert capable of publishing original research in that field, there is a cost. You are often left with little to no time to study or learn anything else.

Sometimes people ask me, “So, how does the brain work?” And I always smile at that question. I sometimes feel that my general understanding of how the brain works may actually be lower than that of an average parent casually watching Discovery documentaries on a Sunday afternoon with their kids. 

And does a PhD actually make you smarter? 

I would argue that the answer is not necessarily yes. Academia is often far removed from the realities of the outside world, where problems are messy, ambiguous, and full of uncertainty. Most of the time, researchers propose solutions on paper and test them under highly controlled laboratory conditions.

Or even purely on a computer. That has limited overlap with real life, where you need to operate in noisy, stochastic environments and make decisions with incomplete information.

So whether a PhD truly trains your general intelligence for practical life is debatable. I can honestly say that I know just as many morons with a PhD title as without it.

What it will teach you is systematic thinking, persistence, and the ability to solve highly complex theoretical problems. But if you expect a PhD to transform you into some sort of intellectual ninja capable of solving any real-world problem, you may be disappointed.

Lastly, Don’t Make Decisions out of Fear!

There are two main reasons people pursue a certain career: love or fear. What’s your reason?

Now, after AI has invaded the job market for knowledge workers, I notice that increasing numbers of young people join grad schools. Mostly, this is because they have no better idea for what to do with themselves.

Well, it’s hard to blame them. The knowledge gap — the widening mismatch between the education system and the expectations placed on entry-level employees — keeps growing.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for young graduates to find good jobs. So it’s no surprise that many decide to spend another four to six years behind a desk studying a highly specialized subject.

On the surface, it sounds like a no-brainer: you are paid to study. And at the end, you receive a PhD title that can open many doors.

It seems like a safe and socially respected choice. Yet in the long run, it can also become a trap.

Why Does This Matter for Your Creativity?

These are often your most creative and energetic years. And you may end up spending them becoming deeply specialized in a narrow field that has limited applications outside academia or your specific research niche.

That’s why it’s important to consciously compare a PhD path with alternative career options. For example, internships or graduate programs at organizations such as Deloitte, Amazon, Google, the Ministry of Science, the United Nations, General Motors, or other international corporations and institutions. These provide broad exposure, practical experience, and opportunities for growth.

Moreover, we live in an economy where the skills valued today may no longer be valuable five years from now. Committing to a five-year-long project, therefore, means placing a major bet.

And investing a significant portion of your young life. Based on assumptions about the future that may ultimately prove incorrect.

Sometimes, a few months-long internship can be more valuable than a socially prestigious PhD because it gives you a stronger professional network, more practical skills, and a better understanding of how the real economy works. Plus, it’s NOT a few years-long commitment. In many cases, it simply makes you more adaptable, more street-smart, more agile, and better prepared for today’s rapidly changing job market.

How Is Academia Structured?

Many people outside academia believe that the academic path looks like this: PhD candidate -> Postdoc -> Professor. In fact, it is much more complicated than that. To a large extent, it depends on the country, as academic systems vary around the world.

Typically, PhD graduates need to jump over many more hurdles than just one or two Postdoc positions on their way to landing tenure. It’s a 10-15-year or more journey, and within this time, many extenuating circumstances can happen. For example, the equipment that you are working on can become obsolete, which can affect your further career opportunities.

How Can You Prepare For a PhD?

Now that we can assume, despite all my warnings, you’ve set your mind on a PhD. Still, there is a huge difference between landing a PhD contract and landing a good PhD contract. Two factors are crucial, of course: 

(1) to land on the topic that you find truly fascinating, 

(2) to get under the wings of a good supervisor and mentor. 

The second factor is usually even more important than the first, for a simple reason. An incompetent or a sociopathic supervisor will spoil even the best project. Many Master’s students undervalue the importance of the supervisor in the project and go for interesting topics.

This often backfires. To find the right supervisor, you will need to spend more time on networking and visiting labs. But believe me, the effort will eventually pay off.

And, if you ask the current and former students of a given professor about their experience from working with them, be specific. It’s good to ask them for “3 good things versus one negative thing they can say about their boss“. This way, they can honestly share one downside of the person without feeling guilty for it.

What Should You Keep in Mind?

Furthermore, it’s important to keep in mind that a good PhD is also about the environment you work in. And not just your direct supervisor. It’s good to make sure that you will also have daily contact with someone assigned as your daily supervisor.

And that you are going to be a member of a graduate school where more students like you complete their PhDs at the same time. Otherwise, you might feel very isolated and demotivated after a few months.

Furthermore, before you launch your academic career properly, you will need to have a plan. Academia is a complex environment because the currency in academia is double. While companies aim to increase their profits, academics first need to publish papers to attract grants (in a way, also “profits”) later.

And it’s important to choose a topic with a strong potential for publication. Or, to pivot if any major problems with the project emerge in the process.

You know, even within one lab, one student might have a wonderful project from which they can produce multiple high-impact publications. Meanwhile, another student might have a project that can result in one paper at best. And the journals that might be interested in this type of material have one order of magnitude lower impact factor.

Choosing the right supervisor might account for 50% of overall success, and choosing the right project for another 30%. The work put into the projects is only the remaining 20% of the success, unfortunately.

What Do Other PhD Candidates Say?

Many PhD candidates hear from their supervisors that the graduate school is “just a school”. Namely, that they should not be fixated on publications.

The main point of the PhD is to learn and produce good quality work, and not to publish. Supervisors often say this because they believe that taking the publication pressure off students will make them more relaxed… and more likely to publish.

Beware of this: if you buy into this rhetoric and don’t pay attention to publishing, beware. You can expect the rhetoric to change drastically in your last year of the PhD. And all of a sudden you will be bombarded with questions about your current and future manuscripts.

So, instead of listening to this advice early on, it’s better to assume from the start that you should care about publications. Make sure that your project has a good publishing potential.

Assessing the potential of the research projects is very hard and requires many years of experience in the field. Many full professors are still poor at spotting good publication opportunities! Therefore, to approach this issue, it is advisable to come up with at least a few alternatives, and 

(1) checking in which types of journals the topics that are interesting to you tend to appear; 

(2) asking at least 3-5 researchers in the field for their opinion, preferably those who already have some experience (which means Postdoctoral researchers and senior researchers)

During The PhD.

A PhD requires a lot of self-management skills. You will be put in the same pot with plenty of other young and ambitious people who will have similar career goals to yours. And in that sense, they will be your competition to some extent.

Academia is very individualistic and puts a lot of pressure on productivity and personal branding. Self-management in academia is a big topic (and probably, material for the whole new book). But you can find some tips here.

I’m Not Sure I Want To Become a Professor, But I’d Like To Do a PhD.

In some areas of industry, it’s good to hold a PhD. For instance, Google is known for its preference to hire people with a PhD.

In case you think of a PhD solely as a way of advancing your position in the job market rather than as a start of your research career, there is an option. You can think of a PhD in industry.

In this scheme, you conduct your PhD directly in a company. The company proposes a topic and collaborates with some research institutions, where you’ll get supervision for your project and eventually defend your thesis.

In this scheme, you will learn much more about the industry from behind the curtains. However, you need to accept that the hosting company has an interest primarily in their projects and products, and not in your publications.

Thus, if you enter a PhD program this way, your publication record will likely suffer. It will be worse than your colleagues’ records at the end of the program.

This might effectively block you in case you change your mind in the process and wish to develop an academic career. If you are interested in more insights from a person who went through this type of PhD, please take a look at the interview with Dr. Alican Noyan, PhD, who conducted his PhD program at Hewlett-Packard.

What Happens Next?

And, what happens after your PhD? Well, unfortunately, most PhD graduates these days need to leave academia simply because there is not enough space for them.

According to Larson, Ghaffarzadegan, and Xue (2014), published in Systems Research and Behavioral Science, the academic system produces far more PhD graduates than it can absorb into faculty positions. In some fields, only around one in eight graduates can ultimately attain an academic post (Larson et al., 2014).

Many PhD candidates don’t really think about these statistics while starting their projects (and neither did I!). They are in love with science, they plan to do science for a living, and don’t think about the odds.

However, it’s a better option to think about the alternatives from the start, assuming that becoming a full professor is an unlikely scenario. And choose projects that guarantee the maximum number of transferable skills. Sometimes, two different branches of the same field result in a drastic difference between career prospects for graduates. 

What Does This Mean in Practice?

For instance, if you study optical physics and build equipment to conduct new experiments, the engineering skills that you get are narrow. They will only be useful in the branches of industry where you can continue building similar setups. That usually means no more than a few academic and industrial laboratories in the whole country.

On the other hand, if you study medical physics, you will write software to perform signal analysis. With this competence, you can work in almost any company as a data scientist, machine learning engineer, or analyst. So, it’s wise to take this factor into account while choosing the scope of your PhD.

The last thing worth mentioning is that the job market changes very quickly. The landscape of options will likely be different when you enter graduate school than when you reach the end of your PhD project. Therefore, rather than planning your career ten years ahead, it’s better to track the job market and be aware of the new trends and opportunities.

Some Good Resources To Look Into.

I can also recommend watching a 15-minute guidebook on the subject of choosing the right PhD project by Vera Chan (@verabschan), PhD, entitled, “PhD Application Advice – How to Choose the Right PhD Supervisor?“ In this movie, Vera explains the weight of this choice and its influence on your future research career. She also introduces major pitfalls that might block your career for good. Highly recommended watching it!

Furthermore, Simon Clark (@simonoxfphys), PhD, wonderfully explained the importance and possible consequences of choosing to do a PhD. See his movie, “Why you shouldn’t apply for a PhD“.

Plus, Prof. James Arvanitakis, the Dean of the Graduate Research School at Western Sydney University, gave a very interesting view from the perspective of grad school management. See his movie, “5 Things To Think About Before Starting a PhD“.

Conclusion.

Are you still asking yourself: “Shall I pursue a PhD?” Now you can check with the help of the Ontology of Value®️ Test! :