Since this Phd/no-Phd thing is going on in my timeline I think I will offer my perspective.
I don't have a Phd. I almost started a Phd, but the British gov offered me the opportunity to do hush-hush compsci research, and I did that instead. (1/...)
I don't have a Phd. I almost started a Phd, but the British gov offered me the opportunity to do hush-hush compsci research, and I did that instead. (1/...)
This meant that my formative research experiences were very different than most, driven by time limited, practical problems in adversarial spaces most people don't know exist.
After a few years of that, I went to Amazon and learned how to engineer *within* a ridiculously large system, building and deploying reliable systems while reducing operational load.
And also how to secure ridiculously large legacy systems.
And also how to secure ridiculously large legacy systems.
Still, part of my dissatisfaction there was missing research but I had no desire to go back to academia (and especially not to play the academic position pyramid scheme game) - so I started doing research on my own, mostly going back to skills I'd developed in gov.
I am definitely aware of gaps in my knowledge a Phd would have fleshed out, while I am very good at intuitively understanding concepts, my ability to formalize ideas is still weak, and I have a slight disdain for how ideas are packaged in academia - some are worse than others.
Nevertheless research that I have done has been cited a bunch across multiple disciplines (from compsci to social sciences), I've given numerous guest lectures, and I know I've helped make positive changes to the overall field of privacy enhancing technologies.
That's petty cool
That's petty cool
Like anything in life, no direction is absolutely closed...I guess my 2 cents would be that you don't need a Phd to make positive contributions to a field, but you do need experience and a Phd is definitely a more consistent way to get research experience than the way I did...
