Does anyone have recommendations for someone about a decade out of school thinking about going for a PhD? …or just wanna talk me out of this?

Can be totally reasonable! I'd say: • Try to make sure you understand why you're doing it, and that the reasons aren't rationalizations for something deeper. • Be clear-eyed about the cost and ROI. It's hard to not over-estimate ROI. Make sure it won't bankrupt you if the ROI is 0. • Be very open to dropping out half-way. We all have some stigma attached to it in our heads, but it's important to realize it's only in our heads. Getting a few years of grad school experience may well be the most important benefit of a PhD. Don't dilute it by staying well into the region of diminishing returns.

• Be very open to dropping out half-way. We all have some stigma attached to it in our heads, but it’s important to realize it’s only in our heads. Getting a few years of grad school experience may well be the most important benefit of a PhD. Don’t dilute it by staying well into the region of diminishing returns.

❤️

I’d be happy to have a chat with you about it.

Thanks @Tudor Girba — that’d be really rad!

Ok. We’ll coordinate separately.

Most of my friends in my PhD program started with very little sense of what topic they were interested in, and a large fraction dropped out. I managed to finish, but it didn't really get me much more. I knew within a few years that most of the people in my field were working on problems I didn't care about, so I spent my summers doing internships and landed in industry. So my #1 recommendation is to figure out before you apply who is doing work that you find exciting. And since you're asking here, I'll assume your interests are somehow related to building the "Future of Coding". It would be worth looking into why some of the top people in the FoC community have chosen to do independent research instead of following the typical academic route (e.g., Andy Matuschak), and how other people who are in academia have made it work (e.g., Philip Guo's Python Tutor).

My advice is to get a PhD if you want a career in academia, especially as a professor, but otherwise investigate other paths carefully before you make any sort of decision.

Yeah. This is sort of where I’ve landed after about a week of hemming and hawing. Once upon a time I dreamed of teaching. But these days I’m not so into the idea of working in academia.

I started a PhD in HCI a few years ago and I dropped out after 18 months, because I felt like nobody was working on ambitious/interesting enough problems, nor were they able or willing to support me working on such a problem. The "norms" of academia are very suffocating. As Jack Rusher said, I wouldn't recommend doing a PhD unless you are really keen on making institutional academia your career.

PhDs are best if you want to play the academy game.