How to explore?

What shall I get from the exploration?  The answers are clear, since they are the motivation for me to spend time on exploration. But it is still necessary to write them down, because I may feel confuse and lose confidence when under some pressure. Exploration won't lead to instant output, but for the long term, it will have great meaning.


As I recognize knowledge as a connected "body". The first step is getting familiar with the framework of knowledge. For a specific area, identify the curtail points. That is building the map of knowledge.

The answer is that it really depends on what the PhD research topic in.

Even in a bad economy, there is a need for people with expertise in certain domains:

• Algorithms and information retrieval (used by companies like Google)
• Pattern recognition and machine learning (finance and search)
• Natural language processing
• Robotics (very strong, but tends to fall on the defense side of things)
• Bioinformatics
• Vision (very strong, but again, often on the defense side; some medical)
• Computer graphics
• Computer architecture (suggested by DasBoot, often under EE, useful for Intel, etc.)
• Certain aspects of verification and testing (typically government jobs, NASA, defense)
• Parallel processing and scientific computing (many government research labs)

Unfortunately, many many PhD topics fall outside these areas. In these cases, there is limited benefit to having a PhD unless you happen to score an academic or research job and that is very competitive. In bad economies, universities shut down hiring and research labs and organizations are the first place to be frozen in large corporations.

So unless you are in those fields, I highly recommend against it. Once you go to the academia, you are also losing time that you could spend becoming a more experienced engineer. You are then also not able to get any engineering positions, at least not entry-level one.

Your background sounds like robotics may be your field. If you can get security clearance, that may be a good direction to pursue a PhD in.

If you want specific stories, I am getting a Ph.D. in software engineering from a top-4 school. My research focused on the usability of APIs. I am going to burn the diploma the day I get it as a symbol of how I burned my career. Getting a Ph.D. is a gamble, it may be preferable to play it safe.

Also, it is important to realize that Ph.Ds. are more common than one would expect. This year, for example, Cornell University which is a top-ten school received more than 400 applications for faculty positions. If you imagine that most Ph.Ds. didn't even bother trying to aim that high, it's a scary number. The top schools produce tons of Ph.D.s (hundreds), and they compete against people from lower ranked schools that also do amazing work, etc.