Touché! Bobby Knight's of the world unite. As always, it all depends on your point of reference. In my case, the universe is a little more representative.

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"This is a game that rewards patience and balance. You must think like a man of action and act like a man of thought."
-Jonas Skarssen

I would be curious to see how this chart looks if you break it down by specialty. If you are in many of the social sciences / liberal arts, then I could see a graduate degree making a larger difference (or even in fact, the difference between getting a job in your field, and a job unrelated to your field). For many technical areas I'd imagine the difference is smaller (especially if you consider the difference between a PhD, vs. a Bachelor's with 3-6 years relevant experience). As others have mentioned, for some fields having a graduate degree can be a hindrance, as now you are overqualified (anecdotally, I knew of some people who had master's degrees in chemistry and it was almost a curse. They had too much education to get a position that would normally hire a bachelors chemist, however they we not qualified for the research roles that were looking for PhDs). Most studies I've seen usually come to the conclusion that getting a PhD is just about a wash from a monetary perspective, and the difference is really more in what type of work you want to be doing (that is a PhD lends itself more to research/academic-type work). As always, your mileage may vary.

Not to get this conversation back on track or anything...

I'm actually also interested in any responses or more information on Kirby's comment above. How easy is it to get a job in some of the suggested places if you're a US citizen. I lived in Thailand with my family for a few years, and would be interested in possibly living (and working) out of the US. The thing is that I don't really know how much extra work it would be to even try and get a job (find one, get hired, or even be able to legally work).

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KGS: schultz [?].

Because Kirby says that he works as a programmer, I naturally assume the IT sector.

I guess one of the closest Ph.D. degree in the IT sector is Computer Science. From what I know, in the IT sector, a Ph.D. in Computer Science often leads to an overqualification. A major factor is because the focus of Ph.D. is on research while IT companies typically focus on software engineering, leading to a mismatch in skillsets. IT companies want working solutions to solve real-world solutions, and they do not care about mathematical foundations or frameworks. Some research fields are still immature and do not yet contain solutions that can be sold to customers, who typically have little tolerance for errors. In many solutions, small increases in performance can be achieved by tweaking parameters and by feeding in better data, but such steps would often be considered engineering rather than research contributions. Larger IT companies often put in a lot of emphasis on development processes and software frameworks, but in research who cares if you implement a solution by using a shell script to glue together components written in different languages, some written by yourself and some downloaded from various web sites.

I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. Research is necessary to move an entire field forward. Computer Science research do occasionally produce solutions that is usable commercially. But the skillsets acquired in a Computer Science Ph.D. is quite different from the skillsets required by IT companies.

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My homepages: http://senseis.xmp.net/?Unkx80 and http://yeefan.sg/.

In my 20 years in the IT world I rarely came across with PhDs in computer science. When I was hiring a new employee I was looking for hands-on experience with the hardware and software we were using at the time. I didn't want anyone with theory but no practice.

The funny thing is that when I decided to return to the academic world I had not held a full time academic position in about 20 years. I had forgotten a lot of the mathematics I had known but was an expert in many aspects of computer science and IT, especially databases. I applied to teach in both the mathematics and computer science departments a a state university. It was obvious in talking to them that I knew a whole lot more about the day-to-day workings of IT than most of the faculty members in CS but because I did not have 15 hours of graduate classes in CS I was not eligible to work full time in that department (despite having taught graduate computer science at a private university as an adjunct). On the other hand I had not done any serious mathematics in over 20 years but because I had a PhD in that subject I was offered a full time position.

I think this illustrates the disconnect between computer science in academia and in the real world. The CS PhDs don't have a clue what it is like out there.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

I think this more illustrates the fact that there's a whole world of difference between computer science and IT. Hire a programmer to write programs, and a sysadmin to administer your systems. I wouldn't expect a theoretical computer scientist to do either job, just like I wouldn't ask tech support to help me with cryptographic research.

EDIT: One point I will concede, though, is that there's a stronger overlap with computers between practical and theoretical work. Still, I would trust an architect to design a building for me even if he were useless at putting up shelves.

I just hate the endless conflation of computer science as broad academic research discipline with writing or using software.

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http://www.pseudonymity.net
http://www.pseudonymity.net/~joss

What gives you that idea? Academic mathematicians with no exposure to the real world are some of the worst of them all.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

Unless he earned his PhD qualification on "modern techniques in cryptography" perhaps?

Too easy to classify people on simple statuses or qualifications. When employing people in IT, I got far more out of an initial interview than I did from their CV / resume. I ended up looking for interesting people who seemed interested in the work we did rather in "just getting a job", and guessing how good they actually were through interviewing them.

Touché.

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http://www.pseudonymity.net
http://www.pseudonymity.net/~joss

I completely agree, and I know one or two incredible researchers who have no formal qualifications at all. They make up for it through sheer demonstrated, and documented, competence. To be fair, though, when interviewing someone for a job with a given skill set you need some form of evidence that they hold those skills. Qualifications aren't the only way to do that, but they do exist for a reason; they're just a rough proxy for actual achievement. They're certainly not a golden ticket to anything, though, which is why interviews are always there for almost any job.

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http://www.pseudonymity.net
http://www.pseudonymity.net/~joss

I agree that the conflation between IT and CS is one of the most perpetuated misconceptions out there. My feeling is that many people would not really understand the difference unless they have already gone down the Ph.D. path, or at least a Masters by research. Masters by coursework do not count.

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My homepages: http://senseis.xmp.net/?Unkx80 and http://yeefan.sg/.

There is definitely a difference between "industry IT" and computer science. I prefer computer science, but I am trying to get used to industry.

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be immersed

Sorry to hijack the thread again, but this was too relevant. I live across the road from a petrol station, and I just went to buy some milk. I was chatting to the guy who works behind the till, and it turns out that he has a PhD in molecular biology from Oxford Brookes, and his wife has a PhD in organic chemistry from Oxford. (At least theirs are both relevant to their business... )

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Now that you have posted this, I find it difficult not to post the case of a Singapore taxi driver with a Ph.D.. Read his introduction here.

I do not know exactly what happened. Because the research and education sector is pretty much controlled by the government, my personal feeling is that he likely offended somebody up there.

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My homepages: http://senseis.xmp.net/?Unkx80 and http://yeefan.sg/.

How much money can a bum make annually?

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be immersed

Nah, I think I am greedy, too.

I heard that humans sometimes think of things in relative terms. People can have a lot of good things in their life, but they focus on what's not there.

I think that I do that, sometimes, too.

I was pretty much kidding around when I was asking how much a bum made for money - I didn't know how else to respond to the comment

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be immersed