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Comment by yxhuvud

4 days ago

The Germans are also pretty ridiculous around titles, in that not only can you have multiple titles, and each are mentioned, but you can also have several copies of each. So someone can be Herr Doktor Doktor Professor.

But "Doctor" means you have an actual PhD, a doctorate. That's a worthy title, IMHO

  • My country has a fairly high % of PhD holders, but nowhere near enough jobs for them, so they end up getting regular jobs (e.g. I have a friend who got a PhD in laser physics, who now plays with AI models for license plate recognition).

    These people usually leave the PhD off their CV, as some employers frown upon it, as they think the person will have higher expectations and be hard to work with.

    • Your example seems kinda funny.

      Most people would think working on AI models for computer vision problems is a perfectly reasonable outcome for a STEM PhD, even if it's not a direct continuation of the thesis research.

      Turning a physics PhD into any sort of modeling, statistical analysis or engineering work is pretty normal in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more physics PhDs working in finance than academia and government research labs.

    • > These people usually leave the PhD off their CV, as some employers frown upon it, as they think the person will have higher expectations and be hard to work with.

      Most of them are hard to work with. As is with any people that climb on titles. They consider themselves special. That's why it is difficult for them to integrate in a team.

      2 replies →

The senior title comes first -- Prof. Dr. Dr. Honorary doctorates are "honoris causa", abbreviated h.c. If you get multiple of these, you write Dr. h.c. mult. So you occasionally find Prof Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. X (would have been the correct way to address Umberto Eco, for instance). After introductions, people generally name only the most senior title, if any.