Hey all, hope you had a great weekend! I’ve always wanted to get a PhD for the fun of it and be a professor after I gain real world experience and sell a software company or two. I’m wondering what people think of distributed systems as a concentration? I do distributed systems / SRE right now and it doesn’t feel like work. Definitely want to go deeper into something worth while though. Any distributed systems or PhD’s out there that can give some context on this decision? Happy to hear from others too :) Cheers 🍺
Definitely don’t do a PhD “for the fun of it”. The successful PhDs I know were people who couldn’t imagine doing anything else in life except what they studied.
If you are asking this question, you probably should not do it. It is highly rigorous and often brightest folks drop out in 2 years. There is not any shiny algo to implement , mostly in proving correctness of algo meant to improve performance or reduce failure by tiny bit. UIUC is best known for distributed systems. Check out professor’s reserch if that is something you would want to grind for 6 years without any sort of social life in worst case
What? I’m just trying to get feedback on what people think of it. I can definitely handle it intellectually lol. 3 people in my immediate have earned their PhD in something technical. Do you know any good programs on the west coast?
It’s not about handling it intellectually. Unless you are incredibly driven by the research itself, you’re going to burn out and eventually drop out.
It depends. a. You can code b. You can sing/dance etc