NOW WHAT? PhD OR REAL WORK?

A friend asks:
> Back to China and school.
> I am thinking about sacrificing next precious years
> to really study something.
> What do you think?
> Should I get down to work to get some working experience
> or just go on and finish my PhD?


There is no direct answer, but here's how I suggest you think about it.

It depends very much on
- your field
- what your goal is within it.

The more technical and less human the field is, the lesser the value of "real world" experience.

A technical example: chip design. In the industry they say that the "half life" (as in radioactivity) of a PhD in EE specialized in chip design is (was) 3 years - meaning that in that time 1/2 of all things learned become obsolete. On the job, because of this AND because of normal aging (same as in high mathematics) it is understood that people give all their best in the 1st 5 years. Now, this is seen from the employer's point of view AND keeping people designing chips, not doing something else, like managing designers. From the point of views of the graduate, this means that you can be a star with a top-notch technical education that you can only get in a top school, and only focussing on studying, but AS A DESIGNER and FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY. I am under the impression that employers really don't want to discuss what happens later, as it would distract employees form their work and interfere with the hiring process.

At the other end of the spectrum: take many fields of management, say corporate finance, organization, marketing, etc etc. Here, you can learn all the theories in the world while in advanced training, and do well in mock "work" exercises (see the "case method" from Harvard Business School, used to various extents all over the world), but you generally do better both in school and afterwards if you mix experience and school. Much of the learning can't be completely formalized, as working with human beings goes down literally to extremely complex psychological and neurological levels. This is similar to excelling at sports: yes, scientific training methods help, but IT IS NOT THE ATHLETE THAT RUNS THEM, it is a support specialist. In the end it al must be literally embodied - absorbed in the athlete's "muscular" or otherwise inconscious memory. SO THE SPECIALIST IS NOT THE ONE WHO WINS MEDALS. I personally know an extemely technical bioengineer who is himself already a budding a champion in one sports discipline, but he trains athletes in another with his technical skills, and is trained by another specialist in his own.

You may analyze the "soft" stuff to write a scientific article, but in many cases there isn't much you can do to apply that knowledge in the real world. On the other hand even in management there are plenty of areas where the "half life" phenomenon may apply to some extent. See for example: http://singletrackanalytics.info/?p=53 - Even there, i am pretty sure someone in the organization must be thinking as a (presumably young) mathematician, but this person is not necessarily the best paid or the one with the better long term career prospects.

One interesting example is the "up or out" method used e.g. by McKinsey in their main consulting career track. You normally come in very young, work in an initlally very analythical capacity, then you graduate to the next level - which involves more and more management and somewhat less technical thinking - or you're expellled. McKinsey also has one or more different tracks for people with specialized knowledge. These can come in at a later age, but normally aren't expected to progress as much.

Then, there are fields where success is to a varying extent reputational rather than purely "hard", and it may take many years, often a whole career, for the field to expose you as a incompetent or behind the curve: psychology, economics, and many of the arts. In these cases, soft skills and many other personal features pay. Can you be a successful economist it you write poorly? If you are cross-eyed or have warts all over your face? If you stutter and are afraid of speaking in public or facing a TV camera? Even height or the timbre of one's voice or having nice legs may matter.

Also, fields vary a lot in how much volume of talent they require. How many top notch theoretical phasicists are "needed"? How many lawyers? Diplomats? Weapon designers? In the case of experienced steel blast furnace and cement kiln operators, not more than perhaps few thousands for the whole world. How many top models or top artists? See "tournement economics", where the winner takes it all. In such fields, the stakes and visibility are so high that they naturally attracts a huge multiple of the number of people that eventually really make it there. For nonwinners, little or nothing is left, but it's something you may realize when you are too old to change job successfully.


To sum it up:

- In the end, every organization is a business, including academia. If you expect career progression, at some point you find yourself enmeshed in the politics of business management.

- Knowledge moves, and in a fast moving technical field you may have an advantage if you come in with top academic knowledge. Age is also a factor.

- If you are in such a field, either you move away from the cutting edge, or your own edge gets duller over time.

- In some less fast moving fields, sheer volume of knowledge and experience may help. See law: there is always new knowledge (in this case, new laws and court precedents) but you may go on building for a lifetime on deep experience. If you are a star at aiming cannons, what good does it do you if for any reason you can't stay in the army?

- Hitler farted a lot and had a killer bad breath, but he never interacted meaningfully at a short distance.

- In some fields, the winner takes it all. If you don't have have a second set of skills to fall back on, expect to end up waiting tables or watching a parking lot.


 How that applies to Islamology, I am not sure, but I suspect you might know.