Oh, what should I write here... on one hand, grad school should not be confused for undergrad school. As a grad student, you're basically an employee and your professor/advisor is like your boss. You work as hard as you'd work in a commercial company for not a whole lot of money.

Yeah... In some respects it would be a step backwards. It's just an idea I've been toying with, especially with things changing for the worse at my company.

In 1998, a PhD in CS could get you some very sweet jobs in research labs if academia wasn't for you. These days, most of those lab jobs are gone. That puts a lot more pressure on academia to hire the PhD production, radically changing the shape of the supply/demand curve.

That's a very interesting perspective. I figured the recent changes in the IT industry had affected PhD's as well, but I figured a lot of them would have just switched gears and drifted towards senior technical jobs outside of the educational system. Guess it makes sense that it'd also create a glut of wanna-be professors.

On the other hand... I'm always looking for good graduate students. If working on computer security interests you, and having an advisor who appreciates your empeg habit is something you think is a good idea, give me a call...

Well, interestingly enough I do computer security work for a living. Not quite as advanced as what you're doing, I'm sure, but that'd certainly be a direction I would be looking at if I did pursue a PhD. But I'd definitely have to evaluate the pros and cons some more before taking any serious steps in that direction.