One of the reasons we work is for personal development. I like to ask the question “How many years of experience does it take to equal the output in a company of an engineer” due to my frustration that some individuals without engineering degrees produce the same or more as engineers. Outside of my frustration, what if we expanded that thinking?
Could we develop a Ph.D. level of knowledge in a topic in the work world? Essentially a Pseudo PhD.
It seems that individuals are incentivized to move around in their careers but what if we started looking at our careers like we are trying to become an expert in something? Consider an asymptote. In the beginning, you gain knowledge quickly but as your career progresses the knowledge is harder to gain because the topics are more difficult (cutting edge).
What do you want to become an expert in? Here are some thoughts to help develop your ideas:
- Who do you know of that you want to be like?
- What do you want to accomplish or fix in your company?
- What are you interested in? What books or articles are you repeatedly drawn to?
- What are you better at professionally than others?
Here are some PhD Concepts
Progression of degrees.
What level of knowledge is equal to a bachelor’s, a master’s, or a PhD?
Tenure, Academic freedom, and job stability.
In industry, there is no contractual tenure but by the time you reach that level of expertise, you have proven yourself and can be trusted with difficult and complex tasks. This allows you to spend time working on the projects you are interested in and declining the ones you are not. This requires you to stay in roles that align with your topic of interest for an extended time without hopping around too much. This also allows you to ignore some of the requests that you don’t want to do.
Advancing the state of the art.
For much of our career we are implementing ideas from others, be it from college, other employees, or books. What if you became so knowledgeable in a topic that you started seeing the knowledge gaps at the cutting edge? Then you could start working to fill those gaps. This research can be on the web but it will require you to research the work of others studying this topic including at universities. You may even have to interact with professors to advance your thinking on the topic. Could you write/publish research papers on the topic?
There is probably more to this but you don’t have to hop around you can become an expert and gain more control of your work.
Coffee can fix a lot: https://www.instagram.com/p/CzSPD1CtmO0/