I always thought that I was going to get a Ph.D. It’s what both of my parents did, and I always assumed that I would follow in their footpaths. Now, there’s a very good chance that I’ll be the only Onvural in my branch of the family to not have a doctorate when all is said and done.<\/p>\n
Why?<\/p>\n
Frustration. I don’t think that the value added of a Ph.D is what it might have once been. Once upon a time there were industries built upon their research and development departments. The kind of work that came out of Xerox, Bell Labs, IBM Research, etc. redefined the world around us. Today these hallowed institutions are being passed by, and with them is dying the value of research-oriented development. <\/p>\n
Again, why?<\/p>\n
Unless industry is directly involved with research, then it will always contain itself to the world of conferences, papers, and academia. I say this because of the overwhelming quantity of research that goes on, and the overall lack of commercialization that comes from it. I also say this because while research for the sake of knowledge is a noble goal, without proper incentives (read this as methods of monetization) it’s usually just a good idea. Case in point is the push for alternative fuel sources. Have we not known for years the harmful affects of carbon-based fuel? Why are we today pushing for alternative fuels? Because gas prices are finally high enough that people are interested in finding alternatives. An industry drives research.<\/p>\n
What does this mean?<\/p>\n
I think that this will evolve into a generation where breadth is overvalued. Get a breadth of skills, get out into the workplace and innovate. Innovate at Red Hat, Google, Microsoft, wherever, but don’t innovate in classrooms and research labs. Unless your innovation is Google, you’ll be overqualified for private sector work and find yourself underpaid or in academia. I’m not trying to knock academia, but the incentive structure for getting tenure is different than the incentive structure to innovate.<\/p>\n
It’s really a shame too, because I thought Melih Onvural, Ph.D sounded pretty cool…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I always thought that I was going to get a Ph.D. It’s what both of my parents did, and I always assumed that I would follow in their footpaths. Now, there’s a very good chance that I’ll be the only Onvural in my branch of the family to not have a doctorate when all is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[13,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQyAq-15","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":64,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2007\/08\/22\/first-day-of-classes\/","url_meta":{"origin":67,"position":0},"title":"First Day of Classes","date":"August 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I started my final year of college for this go-around. I think that before I die, that I will end up with a Ph.D in Economics. I think that if Economics in the real world weren't such a banking\/finance endeavor, that I would have found myself doing Economics full\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "School Year 07-08"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":512,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2012\/02\/15\/open-letter-to-netflix\/","url_meta":{"origin":67,"position":1},"title":"Open letter to Netflix","date":"February 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Dear Netflix, Looks like the competition is heating up. In the words of Gandhi, the fight has begun. It's been quite an impressive ride though. Your stock price. How you've pushed the competition to bankruptcy. Quite impressive. If you want to win the next round (which by the way is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "just thinking out loud"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2006\/05\/04\/mysql-startup-error-2002-hy000\/","url_meta":{"origin":67,"position":2},"title":"MySQL: Startup Error 2002 (HY000)","date":"May 4, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I installed MySQL 5.0 on my MacBook Pro and got the following error when I tried starting the server after a computer restart: ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '\/tmp\/mysql.sock' (2) It turns out that others were having this problem, and I wanted to go\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":28,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2006\/11\/02\/ssa-iii-day-one\/","url_meta":{"origin":67,"position":3},"title":"SSA III - Day One","date":"November 2, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"The flight today was really difficult. I stayed up all night doing laundry because I'm an idiot, and then made it to a 8:15am flight. A gentleman woke me up before final boarding call, and that's the only reason I made my flight to Atlanta. I hit the window and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "SSA III"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":255,"url":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/2010\/02\/08\/another-bug-bites-the-dust\/","url_meta":{"origin":67,"position":4},"title":"Another bug bites the dust","date":"February 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been working on an interesting project lately that I hope to share with everyone soon. I keep running into the oddest of problems trying to get things going. It's almost as if just getting the whole thing started is the biggest challenge. After that... it's going to be a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technology"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onvural.net\/melih\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}