Sadly, I agree -- when hiring, I've always viewed a PhD as a strike
against somebody that needs to be proven otherwise. The problem isn't
one of intelligence or training, but of culture. In the academic world,
you get kudos for being clever or new. In the software world, you get
kudos for solving problems.
An easy example of the difference is illustrated by the toolbar found in
most GUIs. Whoever thought of this did a tremendous service to the
software world and made users' lives easier everywhere. But no
university in the world is going to give anybody any credit for a few
bitmaps and simple calls to existing APIs.
(XML itself is another good example. From an academic viewpoint, it's a
rehash of existing technology. From a software standpoint, it's a
technology rewrite that makes a huge class of previously insoluble
problems solveable.)
The other problem with the academic world is that as soon as the
prototype is done and the paper is written, the players are often ready
to go on to the next big thing. In the software world, that's barely
arriving at the starting line.
That said, academics does have a place in the software world. When we
are able to understand the theory behind a given class of applications
(e.g. parsers), we are able to write better code, and that is a step in
the software world that is too often overlooked.
-- Ron
David Lee wrote:
( I don't REQUIRE a Phd when I look for a good developer, but nor do I
disqualify people
because they have one. I am taking my good developers wherever I find
them. )
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