In typical Twitter fashion, the discussion around this not-completely-serious "change my mind" tweet has gotten totally out of control. https://twitter.com/tallinzen/status/1264941450099331072

This was meant to be a comment on the value of software engineering in academic research. No, I don't think have work experience as an engineer should be a requirement for getting into a computational PhD.

If I had spent as much time wording my original tweet as I had to spend clarifying it, I wouldn't have used the word "standard" - I definitely see why people interpreted it as suggesting that there's a single Right Path.

I didn't follow such a standard path myself (in a number of ways), and neither have my students, so it would be weird for me to prescribe one. And having many nonstandard paths is a good thing for any field. https://twitter.com/zacharylipton/status/1265049437669376000

Maybe a better way to phrase the original tweet would have been, "I wish it was more common for people to work as SWEs for a bit instead of going straight from undergrad to PhD".

In other words, Twitter is the worst.