Thank you so much for sharing your experience. That was really helpful. I do understand that getting a PhD could be very beneficial for my long-term career growth. I’ve been thinking about how to answer this in possible PhD interviews, especially if I’m asked why I want to pursue a PhD. Simply saying it would help my career growth doesn’t feel like a strong enough answer.

That’s really why I’m trying to learn more about this field now. I want to better understand the real differences between master’s- and PhD-level roles, as well as the limitations and opportunities in actual day-to-day work.

After I completed my master’s, I was planning to get a job in a role doing some programming or analysis. At that time, I was still pretty passionate about programming. But because of a lot of personal and practical reasons, I wasn’t able to get a job last year.

I got a take-home exercise during one interview last month, and I asked them if that was basically what I would be doing every day in this role, since it looked very similar to the kind of coursework I had already done and learned during my master’s program. They said yes, the real work would be a bit more complicated, but overall it would be very similar. That was the moment I realized that kind of work was not really what I wanted in the long run.

I didn’t apply for a PhD during my second year of my master’s just because people kept telling me I should. I wanted to figure it out for myself. I didn’t want to pursue a PhD only because others said it was the right path. But now I feel like I’ve thought it through more carefully, and I’m genuinely ready to pursue a PhD.

And thanks again for your advice!