ph.d and employment in engineering 5

[TurbulentFluid]

While trying to figure out which direction I should take in my future career, a ph.d study has come up as an interesting alternative. I already have an equivalent of European MS degree (dipl.ing. in my country) and have a good opportunity for a ph.d. study in a field I'm interested in, plus work at the institute (at least for now). However I am not interested in an academic career on long-term basis. Is a ph.d. study a smart move? Could a ph.d. degree represent a kind of an obstacle when I apply for a "real" engineering job after a few years of studying + work at a college institute (I do industry-related projects at the institute, not teaching.

 

[corus]

PhD's attract a higher salary and better promotion prospects in the right company. It's a status thing for a company to have Dr. So-and-so working for them. In the wrong company, however, no manager would employ a clever dick who is smarter than them, and could possibly outshine them in technical matters. You just have to pick the right company.

corus

 

[tygerdawg]

If you expect to get paid a premium for having a Ph.D., then you will have to seek a company/type of work/location that will support this payscale. I'd say those are generally scarce.

Then, there's my experience (Master's degree) and ditto Corus: you'd have to deal with the envy problem and "whatcha gonna do NOW, College Boy?" attitudes.

I knew of one guy that was fairly happy in his engineering postition because he did not tell them he had gotten his Ph.D. They thought he was a bit of an egghead, but it worked out OK.

TygerDawg

 

[prost]

Getting a PhD is a very big risk, with potentially just as big rewards. Many doors are opened for you with a PhD that are not open, but be careful, more doors are closed to you with PhD. For instance, almost no one would hire you to do scientific level research without a PhD, but almost no one will hire you to do entry level engineering with a PhD. The doors that will be open to you with a PhD though will very often lead you to far more challenging and rewarding career.

 

[Ashereng]

It also varies within industry.

Not many PhD in the oil patch. I would imagine lots of PhD in the corporate research department of Exxon, Shell, BP, ...

Depends on what you want to do.

"Do not worry about your problems with mathematics, I assure you mine are far greater."
Albert Einstein
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[TurbulentFluid]

Thank you all for your replies... What prost said is pretty much what I figured, so I'm not quite sure what to do. My field of interest is modelling in fluid dynamics. Ideally I'd want to do car or aeroplane aerodynamics optimisation, however any simillar work would do (wind / water / gas / steam turbines design, pipeline fluid flow optimisation, etc - the only one I'd like to avoid is military, eg. modelling aerodynamics of projectiles). Right now I'm working on a project of thermal plant cooling system optimisation including pipeline optimisation and thermal pollution modelling.
What do you think, what level of (dis)advantage would a phd in this field bring...?

 

[kontiki99]

Every once in a while I run across advertisments for PhDs in engineering and profesional society journals. The IEEE's monthly magazine usually has a bunch.

If you have access to a technically oriented library (maybe at a university), it might not hurt to scan through the back of some of the more generic society journals and see what's out there.

 

[JStephen]

Long ago when I was getting my MSME, my perception was that the main uses for a PhD in ME were either teaching or military-related- not much in general industry.

 

[TheRaptor]

I believe that a Ph.D. is more suitable for teaching and research related work.

There are probably only a handful of companies who employs professionals with a Ph.D. degree. In most cases, these weirdos serve as external consultants for the projects.

Since you have mentioned that you are not interested in an academic career, a Ph.D. is certainly not necessary. For fluid dynamics/CFD, a proper Masters degree should be more than sufficient.

 

[TurbulentFluid]

I see the opinion here is that a ph.d. is pretty much either unnecessary or useless in general engineering - unless one wants to do research or teaching... Which is pretty much how I thought about it too. At present, my idea is to start a ph.d. study since I have an opportunity to, and then finish or not finish - regardless I'll benefit from the knowledge, but won't let it obstruct my main course in the career. I think soon (in 10 - 15 years) a ph.d. might become as common as a college degree is nowadays, so maybe taking a few steps twoard it while I'm still fresh from college isn't a bad idea. What do you think, how likely is that it'll become useful?

 

[TheRaptor]

Education is always useful. In that sense Ph.D. is good. Since you have the opportunity, go for it.

 

[UcfSE]

Does having a Ph.D. actually hurt you in the job hunt? Let's say you have a Ph.D., will you get turned down for a job in favor of a someone who stopped with an M.S.?

 

[TDAA]

A Ph.D can hurt if you act like it makes you that much better, and you deserve a lot in return.

I don't think it is bad to have it though. If you are not socially inept, then it should not hurt. If you worry that it will keep you from getting the interview, then leave it off. Bring it up at the interview after they see you are normal. Explain that you did not have the oppertunity to add that to your resume yet. Explain why you wanted to get it, and that you know that you will be starting as an entry level engineer. The fear is that Dr. Soandso will think they know everything about the business and practice of engineering then they just know a lot about studying. Once you get some real experience, however, the two together can be pretty powerfull.

 

[IRstuff]

You might. There are various justifications for that:

> You're overqualified for the job, so you'll get bored and leave PDQ.

> You're overqualified and will expect a commensurate salary that blows the budget.

> You're a PhD, so you're probably a bookworm who likes to stick to a single subject and only a single subject.

The plus side is that you can play up your tenacity, e.g., you stuck with a x-year program to get the darn thing in the first place; your ability to drill into a subject, e.g., your PhD thesis; which also demonstrates your ability to span different levels of detail on a problem.

If you emphasize your flexibility, your varied interests, your desire to be a broad-area expert, etc., you should be able to mitigate some of the negative connotations.

TTFN

 

[GregLocock]

Although not applicable in this case -if it was a full time PhD then you have not got 3 years of real world experience that your cohort has. This does not matter much to a 40 year old, but given the choice between a 26 year old PhD with no industrial experience, and a 26 year old BSME with 3-4 years of useful industrial experience, then there is a strong case for the second guy. I've worked with about 5 PhDs, 4 of whom had done their's full time. I was about to give a breakdown of their performance, but decided against it. Let's just say the odds aren't great. To be fair we don't do much rocket science.

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[keepinitcool]

If you enjoy the subject you are studying then you might go for it, since you may not get the chance again. But as some mention, you should look at the employment ads and see what the companies are really looking for.

If you have a plan like "I'm going to work for NASA" then you should be able to direct your work toward that path.

 

[JStephen]

One of the issues I ran into was choice of research topics- there simply weren't any that interested me all that much. Now that I've been working for twenty years, I can think of all kinds of problems of practical significance that I'm too busy to try to solve.

Another issue to keep in mind is that in my experience, people get pigeonholed very quickly. If you have any experience in any field, then nobody even thinks about interviewing you for anything but that one field. It is very peculiar to me to pay engineers good money based on their intelligence while at the same time assuming they are too stupid to learn anything new, but that's the way the system works. With electronic jobhunting, it seems every opening must have about 800 applicants, all of whom are already working elsewhere, so it can be a frustrating mess. I think this effect would put you at a disadvantage in job hunting for "normal" jobs when you have a PhD.

Re the comment: "Every once in a while I run across advertisments for PhDs in engineering and profesional society journals. The IEEE's monthly magazine usually has a bunch."

What I remember about ads like that is they are nearly always universities looking for faculty. I don't know what the demand is for professor types right now. Either there's plenty of PhD's or there's not. If there's plenty, you've got an uphill struggle to get on to a good job that way; if there's a shortage, it'd be a bit different. When I went to college 20 years ago, there were still two or three of the old professors or associate professors that only had MSME's. But all the guys under 60 had PhD's, and even that only seemed to get you on as a "lecturer" if at all. Professors seem to make good money, but getting to be full "professor" is a bit of a trick, it seems.

I remember that I used to see these weird ads in the ME magazine. They'd go on a for long paragraph about the exact technical qualifications required, experience with this or that software and this or that application, and then you'd get to the end, and the pay would be substandard. I finally figured out those weren't ads looking for anyone- they were ads for positions currently filled by foreignors, with the intent of showing there were no "qualified" applicants and that the existing job holder's visa should be extended. Seems a peculiar way to work things.

 

[kontiki99]

I have heard that the reason there are so many foreign born PhDs teaching engineering classes in US universities is because industry and government snap up US citizens with PhDs in technical fields.

I heard this from someone that was on a board that selected faculty candidates at a well know US university. The conversation took place about 15 years ago. I don’t know how much things might have changed.

 

[IRstuff]

I don't even think that was true a while back.

American PhD candidates have been far and few between. Americans have, for the last 220 yrs or so considered PhD types as geeks and "Mr. Peabody's." "Yankee" ingenuity has always been about the uneducated common man being able to outthink the intellectually trained. This has gone even further overboard wince the 60's.

That's about when the foreign graduates became more prevalent, as Americans "dropped out and tuned out." As with the auto industry, it will be decades before we realize that something drastic has changed. The only saving grace is that many foreign graduates stay on because their home countries lack the infrastructure to support them in their chosen fields.



TTFN

 

[TheRaptor]

Just echoing Greg's point a little further.

No company would like to hire a Ph.D. scholar with little or no experience and then offer him/her extensive training and a handsome pay package.

In today's engineering world with most design and manufacturing processes being automated (CAD/CAM/CAE/CAPP), a Ph.D. degree holder is definitely considered over-qualified. Companies prefer to hire professionals with bachelors, masters or even technical degrees and spend less on them in terms of training and compensation.

Just how many ads do we see these days asking for guys with Ph.D.'s? I reckon not more than 5%.

Cheers.