young PhDs in the workplace

[mdanh2002]

Hi,

For the past 5 years during my career I have worked with a few colleagues and friends who happened to be young PhDs from famous local universities. Unfortunately many of them disappointed me to a great extent. Sometimes I wonder what those degrees are for or what those people really learned at school. I am posting this to seek some opinions from other members who may have similar experience.

Let me list down some of the incidents which are still on my mind:

1. Someone who has a PhD degree in electronics insisted that his LCD monitor must use an HDMI cable even though the existing VGA connection worked just fine. According to him, VGA is analog, subject to noises and will eventually damage the computer.
2. Another young PhD in computing whose research focuses on software development methodology - whatever that means - was employed as a software engineer in my company. One month into his stay, we learned that he did not even know what HTTP, XML, HTML, and many other common terms are. Every day he would study the existing Java source codes and insist that variables must be named according to some strict standards which he learned at school. Yet he requested to be promoted to the lead of our web development team...
3. Another friend of mine, who was in his final PhD year at a local school at the time, was thinking of upgrading his Macbook. He sent me a message asking if a certain price for what he called a "Macbook Pro 2012 mid 111" was reasonable. I told him there was no such thing, to which he angrily replied with a link to some unknown website having a reference to that name. If those people were really familiar with doing research, wouldn't they have referred to Apple or other well-known websites for models and price list?

I also question the English proficiency of many of those people. Despite having a high IELTS/TOEFL score (required by most local schools in order to pursue postgraduate programmes if you come from a non-English speaking country), many of them can't even write a simple report that is free of spelling or grammar errors. Some of them have problems communicating at our office.

So what do you all think? Please share similar experiences or your opinions here. I am not against anyone pursuing postgraduate programmes. In fact I do respect many of them and do know many other PhDs who are knowledgeable and have chosen to commit to a research career. I just wonder if the cases I encountered are isolated. Or have higher education and even well-known international English tests become nothing more than a business for those organizations and quality control is no longer a concern as long as the tuition fees or exam fees are paid?

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Being a university graduate doesn't mean they have any particular skills, and certainly doesn't mean they have any common sense.

The rubbish about VGA/HDMI proves that, VGA is just as good as HDMI (and 'can' be better), and certainly couldn't 'damage' the computer - I wouldn't employ anyone who had such a poor understanding of electronics, never mind someone claiming a Phd.

Incidentally, my daughter (who has recently completed a Masters Degree in Chemistry) is currently doing a funded research Phd at a top UK University (Durham).

 

[tcmtech]

I can relate.

I went back to college a second time back in 2001 to add a second degree in EE to my Industrial Maintenance TEch degree.

As a older than average student I already had considerable hands on electrical and electronics experience plus a good deal of hands on real life work experience.

The short story is I was into my 4 year degree for 3.5 years and got pretty well fed up with having had classes in everything except that which had any real relevance to EE work. I asked my advisor when I would be getting some real EE class work and he flat out said that when I get a job as an EE working for a company they will more than likely send me to one of their schools to get the training I need to do their work.

Basically what you are seeing in your new workers is the results of our modern day diploma mills. The guys put in their 4 - 5 years and many $10's of thousands of dollars of money and in return they gt a piece of paper that says they are hireable. The rest of their relevant education to make them actual useful workers falls to the fools that hire them.

Lets just say that if you hired some guy off the street with no formal education in EE and trained him to do what you need him to do you would likely come out further ahead. At least he wouldn't start out thinking he was a EE to begin with.

 

[jpanhalt]

One thing to consider is why the person got a PhD. Was it just the next step for staying in school and avoiding the workplace? Was it to qualify for a particular level of job? Was the person really driven by an interest to do and to continue doing research?

Another factor to consider is the proliferation of advanced-degree programs and inflation of the number of degrees. Getting a PhD used to be relatively rare. Now, it is much more commonplace. It is no longer the "highest" level of training and is often followed by additional years of fellowship and/or post-doctoral training.

You don't say what your office does nor give any information to indicate that the job opportunities you offer would be attractive to the most able of the PhD's. Maybe your experience reflects the end product of a self-selection process in which you are seeing mass produced PhD's of the fist type, i.e., individuals without particular goals or motivation who just stayed in school and now have to find a job.

John

 

[tcmtech]

One thing to consider is why the person got a PhD. Was it just the next step for staying in school and avoiding the workplace? Was it to qualify for a particular level of job? Was the person really driven by an interest to do and to continue doing research?

I know when I back to school it was from hands on experience of working around engineers.

I thought, WOW! half of these people are the brilliant types who I want to work with and learn from every day!

Then there was the other half that made me think, WOW! if these idiots can do this job.....

 

[jpanhalt]

Remember, less than half the people you meet are above average.

John

 

[mdanh2002]

Honestly I do not think the companies that I have worked for specifically need to employ anyone with a PhD degree, except for very limited occasional research job. The projects that I have been involved in, for example custom USB/bluetooth devices for Windows computers and Android tablets, require both software and hardware knowledge. In a typical day I will probably be using Visual Studio (for Windows application), Eclipse (for Android apps) and Microchip MPLAB (to develop the device firmware). Like what tcmtech and jpanhalt said, it is far better for me to choose somebody with a passion in software/EE and train him for the task at hand, rather than someone who got his PhD simply to avoid the workplace. But the management mindset is sometimes very different - they hire PhDs or Masters degree holders (and pay high salary) just because they place their trust in the local universities and believe those people can do a much better job given what they have been through to get their degrees. Even after the previous guy is fired due to poor performance, the mindset remains and the next person who comes for interview with a piece of paper saying "I am a PhD" simply gets the job.

For VGA and HDMI, my new 24-inch LCD connected via HDMI will sometimes flicker if my neighbor, who is operating a laundry service, turns on his high capacity washing machine! Transient voltage spike on the line affecting the HDMI signals - I guess. The VGA monitor will still work just fine.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Remember, less than half the people you meet are above average.

You don't live where I do

MOST are below average

 

[Brian Griffin]

Whoa, I'm planning to do my PhD too in Electronics. I guess I need to really brush up my electronics knowledge real good and perfect too.

 

[jpanhalt]

But the management mindset is sometimes very different - they hire PhDs or Masters degree holders (and pay high salary) just because they place their trust in the local universities and believe those people can do a much better job given what they have been through to get their degrees.

In the US, you may hear the term, "Revenge of the C student" to describe that. The "Peter Principle" is another statement of the same observation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle ). It is not entirely farcical. Managers have a tough time finding equivalent positions when they are displaced. Therefore, they jealously protect their own positions.

John

NB: I draw a line between a "director" and a "manager."

 

[ghostman11]

I have mentored PhD student's, my field is Biology (Embryology). You can't train a student for every situation, alot has to come from experience. However towards the end of my stint at mentoring, i noticed a decline in general, basic subject knowledge. This is solely down to the dumbing down of some courses, of course chemistry and some biology degree's can not be dumbed down.
So as a postgrad mentor you have limited option's, In the uni i mentored it was easy. You interview the candidate and reject any that are not of standard, this however was a little while ago, and university's had cash from industry and government, as well as other funding. So we could pick and choose who was taken on the course, now it would seem to me, as long as the candidate is sponsored then they are in.
Break's my heart to see something i worked hard for to obtain, and actually meant something special (i did mine in 1993), has now become a commodity to be brought and sold. Only the very best of university's, such as St Andrews, Oxford,Cambridge, MIT over there and a few other's , are in a position where they can apply strict criteria for entrance.
But this is education in general as well. Governments give target's to school's, School's report that there is no chance of meeting that target. So government lower's the bar and hay presto, the educational secretary can appear on TV, and boast how there Government is achieving higher exam pass rates, due to there policies, therefore they are better than XYZ party!
It wont be long before this kind of thing is applied to other area's, how long until say the police sniper course, reports no one is able to hit the target at 300 yard's (just a made up example), and the government say's ok make the requirement a shorter distance.
Drop target's in school's, focus on quality. But you cant do that here, there was a time when those that were not bright enough, to get the grades were Factory Fodder on production line's. Now we dont have the factories! so what do you do with the fodder? you GIVE them the qualification and dump them into the job market, and let industry try and sort it out

 

[jpanhalt]

You have to go back a few years, actually half a century or more, to when students in PhD programs and other advanced degrees were supported by industry, endowments, and competitive grants given to the mentors. Then government got into the business. That changed the process drastically. The amount of funds a university got was proportional to the number of students in advanced training. The amount received by the university (or other training facility) exceeded the actual cost of doing the training. Thus, there was profit in increasing the number of such trainees, and the obvious happened.

One very clear example of that happened in post-graduate medical training in the US beginning in the latter half of the 1960's. Funds for "residents" (a general term for post-graduate physicians doing advanced work) were almost unlimited. Salaries and overhead expenses were paid either directly or indirectly by Medicare and other insurers. The obvious happened. Every hospital, including those with no academic mission, developed residency programs. Overhead reimbursement that came with the residents supported various expansion programs. Many quite poorly qualified physicians were hired just to fill slots and bring in additional reimbursements (i.e., empty slots were not funded). They were cheap labor and were so poorly trained that they had almost no chance of passing a certification examination. The term, "Board Eligible" was applied to such physicians who could actually begin practice in a specialty without passing the examination. It then became a self-catalyzed system. Poorly trained hired more poorly trained. Corrections have been applied to address that abuse, but for every correction, there is a workaround. The route cause is, of course, abundant money and no accountability.

John

 

[ghostman11]

The one thing i forgot to mention, and something that may help some youngster's in the future.
Because the system now makes everyone equal, everyone pretty much gets the same grades, regardless of talent or ability. So how do you make yourself stand out and above everyone else?
The way we are doing this with Logan, forget his OCD for a moment, each and every project he does, no matter how simple, he documents and documents it neatly. One of the reason's (apart from his OCD), is because i have told him that course admittance tutors, now pay far more attention to the personal statement you write, when you apply for a university course. So one way to stand out for a place at a top uni, is to do what he is doing, then you list your work in the statement and supply a copy of the documentation as an appendix to the application pack. BE careful here and first discuss this with the admin tutor of the course your applying for, some will reject application's that are not strictly to the format.
Also i have told him that the documentation, should also form part of an appendix for his resume. That way employer's now you are of genuine interest and for many employer's this will make a big difference, especially when trying to fill a vacancy where 30 people all have 1st class degree's.
I dont see too many other way's to stand above the crowd these day's

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

The way we are doing this with Logan, forget his OCD for a moment, each and every project he does, no matter how simple, he documents and documents it neatly. One of the reason's (apart from his OCD), is because i have told him that course admittance tutors, now pay far more attention to the personal statement you write, when you apply for a university course. So one way to stand out for a place at a top uni, is to do what he is doing, then you list your work in the statement and supply a copy of the documentation as an appendix to the application pack.

Sounds a reasonable idea - however, with his existing (and more to come in the future) knowledge he should have no problems getting on an Electronics course - many (most?) students seem to do Electronics degrees with no prior knowledge or interest.

A friend of my daughter's (Chris) dropped out of Uni (doing Electronics) just a few weeks before his final exams, I suspect he had no interest or aptitude for it

So which Uni's are you looking at for Logan?, I know it's a while yet, but I presume you've given it some thought?.

My daughter went to York (5th in the UK for Chemistry at the time, and top for females in Chemistry), and is now at Durham for her Phd. She looked at Oxford/Cambridge, and decided they weren't places she wanted to go - too 'stuck up', and provide the lowest amount of lecture/teaching time of most UK Uni's. She has attended a course at Oxford though, as it was relevant to her Phd work and was offered by Durham.

You have to bear in mind, students need to be happy where they are living - they have a long time there

I presume Logan will be applying to Scottish Uni's though?, seeing as it's free isn't it?

 

[cowboybob]

All this presupposes, however, that those doing the hiring are themselves qualified to discern the education/talent/experience needed for the job at hand.

 

[ghostman11]

Sounds a reasonable idea - however, with his existing (and more to come in the future) knowledge he should have no problems getting on an Electronics course - many (most?) students seem to do Electronics degrees with no prior knowledge or interest.

A friend of my daughter's (Chris) dropped out of Uni (doing Electronics) just a few weeks before his final exams, I suspect he had no interest or aptitude for it

So which Uni's are you looking at for Logan?, I know it's a while yet, but I presume you've given it some thought?.

My daughter went to York (5th in the UK for Chemistry at the time, and top for females in Chemistry), and is now at Durham for her Phd. She looked at Oxford/Cambridge, and decided they weren't places she wanted to go - too 'stuck up', and provide the lowest amount of lecture/teaching time of most UK Uni's. She has attended a course at Oxford though, as it was relevant to her Phd work and was offered by Durham.

You have to bear in mind, students need to be happy where they are living - they have a long time there

I presume Logan will be applying to Scottish Uni's though?, seeing as it's free isn't it?

It's too early to actually short list yet, but living here we can pick any university not just Scottish ones.
A couple more year's then like you we will look at which is getting the best degree's. Oxford/Cambridge, over over hyped these day's, however if your aim is something like politics, then they are a must!! More so for the contact's rather than the education.
Chemistry like medicine or law are unique degree's, they require alot of skill in the subject area. Compare chemistry with philosophy, in a philosophy degree you can never be wrong, as it's based on opinion. No wonder they call it the drinking man's degree
If St Andrew's does electronics, then i would like him to go there, it's one the top universities in the world. As long as he avoids going to Stafford shire i will be happy .
Utter mine field these day's!

 

[jpanhalt]

And in chemistry, you can definitely be wrong or ignorant. I have a few scars to prove it.

On the other hand, if you consider law, 4 out of the 9 best judges in the US are often wrong.

John

 

[ghostman11]

And in chemistry, you can definitely be wrong or ignorant. I have a few scars to prove it.

On the other hand, if you consider law, 4 out of the 9 best judges in the US are often wrong.

John

Our legal system is far too dissimilar to yours for any meaningful comparison, but over here it would very difficult to PROVE a judge wrong, and take alot of money to go to a higher court. I was thinking more about the level of work required to gain those types of degree's, rather than the quality of the people taking them. You also have a different education system, and in some way's there is alot i admire about it, particularly the acceptance of older/mature students.
Difficult to discuss system's with so many differences, interesting all the same tho, especially as neither system seems to guarantee any sort of quality at the end . A sign of the times? or are we just older and more experienced?

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

If St Andrew's does electronics, then i would like him to go there, it's one the top universities in the world. As long as he avoids going to Stafford shire i will be happy .

Manchester and Sheffield are pretty high in the rankings for Electronics (an old friend of mine went to Manchester - last I heard he was writing software for guided missiles!).

Glasgow and Edinburgh aren't too far behind either.

No sign of St Andrews in the rankings, but overall they rank below Durham (6th as opposed to 5th) - neither though are ranked for Electronics.

 

[ghostman11]

Manchester and Sheffield are pretty high in the rankings for Electronics (an old friend of mine went to Manchester - last I heard he was writing software for guided missiles!).

Glasgow and Edinburgh aren't too far behind either.

No sign of St Andrews in the rankings, but overall they rank below Durham (6th as opposed to 5th) - neither though are ranked for Electronics.

Glasgow would be good! 60 miles up the road! he could get home weekends to clean my car