CMU's Black Fridays: a graduating PhD student's perspective

I've always been amazed that the CMU department really knows what its PhD students are up to -- the big stuff as well as the little stuff.

Allow me to elaborate.  As a PhD student at CMU, you receive a sort of "report card" at the end of every semester during on what is known as "Black Friday." You first submit a short summary of your accomplishments and goals for next semester.  Then, on this special day, the professors talk to each other about their students (probably in some secret sound-proof discussion room).  While faculty are discussing our fates, we, the students do the opposite.  We relax, watch movies, play games, and *imagine* what our superiors are discussing.  Black Friday letters serve two roles, a role for the faculty, and a role for the students.

Image courtesy of diypapers

For the faculty, Black Friday is a way for the department to evaluate and monitor the progress of their PhD students.  Faculty members get a chance to discuss their students' hardships as well as their successes.  For the students, these letters are way to keep us in *check*.

"You better check yo self before you wreck yo self" - Ice Cube

The Black Friday letter lets us know explicitly what research qualifiers, writing qualifiers, etc they expect us to complete next semester.  They let us know if they are happy with our progress or unhappy.

Photo by Mattox

In practice, I found the letters to be a combination of "the good" and "the bad."  The good (a statement such as "we are happy that you got your paper accepted to ___") is like getting A's in grade school -- a yipee! moment.  The bad (a statement such as "we have noticed that you are struggling taking your experimental research to the next level, and feel that you are spending too much time on ___"), is what pushes us to experience those yipee! moments the following semester.  In the past, my Black Friday letters have included details regarding elements of my research and coursework that I didn't know any faculty member even knew about.  But the faculty care!  The students are the future, and there is nothing like critical feedback to help us achieve our goals.  There have been several times during my 6 years at CMU's Robotics Institute when my letter helped keep me in check.

I only wish there was a way for students to provide Black Friday letters to their faculty mentors...

Further reading:
Black Friday from Peter Lee
How do you evaluate your grad students? by Matt Welsh

PhDs make many smart programmers become software engineering n00bs

This is true. A couple of years in a PhD program -- reading papers and writing throw-away code in Matlab, and it easy to become a throw-away programmer, a sort of liability in the real world. It is no surprise many companies look down on hiring PhDs. I've seen kids enter the PhD program with real programming talent and exit real software engineering n00bs. In graduate school, you might code for 6 years without anybody grading your code. If you get sloppy, you will be worse off than when you started.

The problem is that many advisors don't care about their students writing good code. Writing good papers and giving good presentations -- you will be told that this is what makes good PhD students. Who cares about writing good code? -- we'll just have some 'engineering' people re-write it once you become famous. This is what students across the globe are being fed. This is no surprise, because your advisor won't get tenure by turning you into a mean mathematically-inclined super hacker. Then again, your advisor won't care if you go bald, are malnutritioned, and have no life outside research. There are many things that one has to take care of themselves, and software development skills aren't any different.

Note to the real world looking to hire talent: You should grill, I mean really grill fresh PhDs regarding the software development skills. Don't become mesmerized by their 4.0s, their long publication lists, and all their 'achievements.' If you want to hire a fresh PhD to write code, whether in a research or an engineering setting, then give them one hell-of-an-interview. I agree with Google's interview process. I studied for it, I am proud of my own software engineering skills, and I was proud to have been an intern at Google (twice). But I know of companies who were sorry they hired PhDs only to learn these recent graduates could only dabble on the board and would utterly fail at the terminal.

Note to PhDs looking to one day take our skill-set and impact the real world: Never stop learning and never stop writing good code. Never stop taking care of yourself. You were the brightest of the brightest before you started your PhD, and now you have 5-6 years to exit as a real superman. With all the mathematics and presentations skills you will acquire during a PhD ,on top of good software engineering skills, you will become invaluable to the real world. Its a real shame to become less valuable to the outside world after 6 years of a strenuous PhD program. But nobody will give you the recipe for success. Nobody will tell you to exercise, but if you want to pound your brain with mental challenges for decades to come, you will need physical exercise in your daily regiment. Your advisors won't tell you that keeping up to date on the tools of the trade, and being a real hacker, is very valuable in the real world. You will be told that fast results = many papers and its not worth writing good code.

After obtaining a PhD we should be role-models for the entire world. Seriously, why not? If a PhD is the highest degree that an institution can grant, then we should feel proud about getting one. But we are human, and one is only as strong as their weakest link. We should become super hackers, fear no quantum mechanics, fear no presentation in front of a crowd, and be all that one can be.

This is a part of a serious of posts aimed at finding flaws in the academic/PhD process and how it pertains to building strong/intelligent/confident individuals.