I’m a postdoc in computer science. During my time in academia, I’ve had many conversations with PhD students who felt lost, underguided, or unsupported by their advisors — and I’ve come to believe this is one of the biggest, least talked-about gaps in how PhD programs work.
Faculty are hired for their research — sometimes for their teaching — but almost never for their ability to supervise. Nobody asks a job candidate for letters from their past PhD students. So supervision quality varies wildly, and students are left to figure out on their own how to get what they need from an advising relationship that was never really designed with their development in mind.
Supervision, on the other hand, is my favorite part of my own work. I can’t give you topic-specific expertise in your subfield — that’s your advisor’s job. What I can do is:
- Help you build the research skills that often go untaught: reading efficiently, scoping a project, managing a long, ambiguous timeline.
- Be an outside, non-evaluative person you can talk through your situation with — someone who understands the CS PhD landscape but has no stake in your specific lab politics.
- Help you think strategically about how to work with your advisor, whatever their style.
- Remind you, concretely, that you are not the only one going through this.
Why I started PhDMentor
I bought this domain because I kept having the same conversation, over and over, with different students who each thought their situation was uniquely bad. It usually wasn’t. What was missing wasn’t ability — it was support.
I’m building this as a side practice alongside my postdoc, starting with free sessions so I can genuinely understand what people need before I try to formalize anything. If that’s useful to you, I’d love to talk.