Well, this is a question discussed, debated and pondered over very often, and for really time in my colleagues' (or friends') circle. By the way, if you spend most of the time of the day in the lab, with your lab-mates, and almost every day of the week, then, your lab-mates or colleagues become your personal friends too (not a general rule though !), provided they are not nut-heads or introverts or fierce rivals. I can not generalize it, but at least for some members in our group (and including a couple of co-PhD students from an another group with similar research area as mine), the borderline between personal friends and professional colleagues is kind of a diffused one. It is a really good thing, where you not only work towards a healthy research ambiance with an extremely helpful attitude sans rivalry and competitions but also share personal stories of happiness and sorrows very often. More on this later !
That is the bad habit of me in writing - I tend to get diverted from the main topic of discussion. I was supposed to write on 'depth or breadth?' as obvious from the title. It is a self-explanatory title, no doubt, but I would still like to put it in a formal manner to provide it with better perspicuousness. In a PhD career spanning say, on an average five to six years, do the advantages (or disadvantages) of working in several different sub-areas (where you acquire 'decent' expertise in various sub-domains), outweigh the advantages (or disadvantages) of remaining supremely focused on one specific topic (where you become master in one particular topic) ? For example, in a research group in Electrical Engineering spanning multi-disciplinary research activities & collaborations in solid state electronics + materials, a PhD student X does little bit of various things - works on graphene devices for sometime, fabricates LEDs and characterizes/measures them, does epitaxial growth (or atomically precise deposition) of hetero-structures and studies material properties and also works on high-speed transistors. He/she gets a good number of papers published working in so many areas since even if he/she writes two-three papers in each area, he/she gets about ten papers, 1st-authored ! Now another PhD student Y is extremely focused only on designing, epitaxial growth, fabrication, characterization/measurements of only high-speed transistors for power applications. Basically, Y knows A-to-Z in transistors, and by virtue of 100% focus and expertise over this topic, has managed to achieve record-high operating speeds of transistors, and has fabricated high-performance transistors which have set new standards for the rest of the world researching on similar areas. Y has also therefore, published in around say, 8 to 10 papers (1st authored) and is known to almost everybody in the transistor community in the world.
Who outperforms whom ? While applying for a faculty position in academia (let's assume none of them has a Post-doc), does X outweigh Y, or vice-versa ?
X sure is not as good as Y in transistors, but has the hands-on experience in working with various materials, various devices - optical and electronic, various equipments, etc. He/she lacks the world-class expertise in any field unlike Y who is a world-class expert in one particular area. On the contrary, Y has some knowledge about various things by virtue of his/her academic courses and discussions with peers/colleagues throughout his/her PhD career, but can not weave a big picture because he/she lacks the practical experiences in any other field. X, on the other hand, while applying for a faculty position, can connect various pieces together with his diverse experiences, invoke a strong inter-disciplinary approach to propose building a vibrant collaborative effort towards multi-disciplinary research in the university he/she is applying to. On the flip side, X is not very well-known to any community - be it transistors, optical devices, materials growth or graphene etc. He/she has just got something of everything. Y, on the opposite pole, can not impress with a proposal on inter-disciplinary research but can stress research-proposals only on one particular area but of course, he/she can claim to deliver the best in that area.
Whose application has a higher probability of getting though ? I don't know for sure ! I am just going to be in my fourth year and certainly lack experience in this matter. Any comment from anyone who knows/has experienced about it, would be highly appreciated.
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