My PhD Cost Me $1.17M (But I'd Do It Again)

by karakoramon 3/16/2026, 3:34 AMwith 1 comments

by hihellokathon 3/16/2026, 5:58 AM

as someone who considered doing a phd but instead took the path of working for 4 years at Google, this was an interesting read :) software engineering and making a real world impactâ„¢ (plus money and perks) were fun for the first few years, but it's slowly gotten more monotonous and I've been missing thinking about / working on interesting problems. I told myself that in theory I should be able to just... do research on the side, but the 9 to 5 really gets you haha. certainly tradeoffs to taking the safe and economically rewarding path