Dave's Data

As you may have guessed from my recent post analyzing the TCO of my former automobile , and my post on finances for CS Ph.D. students , I've been thinking about finance a bit lately.  After a thought-provoking discussion with a senior colleague in another department, I've come to the conclusion my financial satisfaction graph looked something like this -- and I bet it's similar for many other no-kids-at-completion academics who end up enfamilied (can I make up that word?). (In case I seem too negative about kids, don't get me wrong.  As the absolutely awesome book All Joy and No Fun notes, being honest about the myriad costs of having a child isn't at odds with also being very glad that the little wriggling worm is in your life.  Great book.  If you haven't read it and you do or may have kids, read it.) The Taulbee survey suggests that the median assistant professor in Computer Science has a 9mo salary of about $96,055.  Assuming you pay your summers, that...

This post is based upon a few recent conversations I've had with my own Ph.D. students.  Its intended audience is Ph.D. students at mid-to-upper-end computer science programs in the United States, who are either US citizens/permanent residents, or plan to remain and retire  in the U.S. In graduate school, you too can dress better than a professor! Welcome to graduate school in computer science, where not only do we not charge you tuition, but we shower you with so much money that you can afford to eat, have a house over your head, and wear shirts that have fewer than five holes in them! In fact, you can probably do better than that, and get a nice boost to being financially independent.  But it takes some advance planning. Why Bother? Mostly, because flexibility -- or, more crassly, "FU Money."  (You can google that in case the meaning isn't obvious.)  Getting started early on the path to financial independence lets you  be in charge of you...

I was just indulging in my favorite bad habit (reading hacker news), when I came across a discussion about  prestige in faculty hiring  - namely, the fact that the majority of CS professors across the US come from the top 18 or so universities, and that even within that, there's bias.  The HN discussion turned to Ph.D. admissions, with a commenter noting: " I'm not sure, but I'd bet that the best institutions actually don't care where their applicants come from. They can afford to just choose the best. It's the so-so places that have to signal their quality by 'hiring the best'. I've seen this in graduate school applications - students with poor marks often stand a better chance of admittance in a top program than a so-so one. " I just finished chairing the CMU CS Ph.D. admissions committee, so I thought it might be worth writing down my experience in doing so.  With two very important notes: I'm not doing it next year, so please don...

There's been an article going around about why not to get a Ph.D. (h/t John Regehr for the link). I'm using it as an excuse to toss out a bit of unsolicited advice about the Ph.D., and some anecdotes that perhaps some fresh entrants may find comforting. Or not. For context, I loved my Ph.D. experience (after the first semester of hell when I was convinced I'd get kicked out for being too stupid. I'll return to this in a few days.). But I also have a very smart, competent friend who had an absolutely miserable, manipulative-evil-advisor kind of experience in a different program, and, while completing the Ph.D., ended up leaving the field entirely as a result of it. Both of us were at top programs in our respective areas. I was fortunate enough to have an incredible advisor and be in a program that generally supported its grad students pretty well. It matters. I'm also a ridiculous optimist, which I think helps a lot in research. (It doesn't make your ...