Reimagining the PhD

I’d describe my time from 2015-2020 (when the book will be published) in three distinct phases:

• Phase I: 2015-2016: Discovery, exploration, initial research, hypothesis generation (funded by the Ford Foundation)


• Phase II: 2016-2018: Experience, experimenting, hypothesis testing (working at GitHub)


• Phase III: 2018-2020: Refining, summarizing, consolida

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I tried to embrace “learning in public” as much as I could. In addition to writing blog posts and tweeting, I created a bunch of other artifacts, like conference talks (developer conferences are a thing, which was new for me!), interviews, a podcast series, and lists published as GitHub repositories.

I’d describe my time from 2015-2020 (when the book will be published) in three distinct phases: Phase I: 2015-2016: Discovery, exploration, initial research, hypothesis generation (funded by the Ford Foundation); Phase II: 2016-2018: Experience, experimenting, hypothesis testing (working at GitHub); Phase III: 2018-2020: Refining, summarizing, cons... See more

I can’t overemphasize the value of getting hands-on experience, combined with the time I’d previously spent on research.

Building relationships was, in parallel with hypothesis generation, the most important part of this phase. I got a strong response to my initial post, which I think was an unintentional effect of spending a lot of time trying to get to know open source developers beforehand. Once I started publishing, those conversations meant that there were a bun... See more

At each point between phases, I didn’t know where my next source of funding was going to come from. What I can say is that if you’re writing thoughtfully, in public, about a topic of niche interest to a certain set of people, and getting those people to engage with your work, it’s very likely that someone will come along and offer to pay you to kee... See more

I can’t overemphasize the value of getting hands-on experience, combined with the time I’d previously spent on research. I think it’s unlikely I could’ve gotten to my current point of view just by reading and talking to developers. Through my initial work, I’d become very familiar with what developers think about open source. But in trying to turn ... See more

The most important thing that I think academia has to offer is giving researchers a stable career path to explore long-term questions. I’ve come to appreciate this more after my last phase of work. Working independently was useful to me in earlier stages of research. As public discourse starts to mature, it became more important to have a community... See more

If you are able to fund your research independently, and you’re willing to build your own support network, I think independent research is at least worth considering for those who might otherwise have done a PhD. If you’re thinking about this route, here are some of the building blocks that I found important to include.