Htydjtk

I am currently working on my PhD in a Canadian university. I already had a master's degree before joining the PhD program. In my department (chemical engineering), the normal timeline for getting a PhD is 3.5-4.5 years (if joined with a prior master's degree). We take only 2 courseworks in the first semester. More are taken if the advisor or the committee instructs one to do so. Rest of the time is dedicated to research, TAship, etc...

However, due to my own mistakes (taking too much time initially to explore the research area and scope) and wrong decisions (investing too much time of a day in developing my hobby), I will be defending later this year with the total PhD duration equalling 5 years 4 months.

I will have 4 publications (in decent journals) by the time I graduate. I also have couple of other works that will eventually get published. I am not concerned about my publications record at the moment as that's something in my control and which is directly proportional to the hard work I put in the future.

My question is: Will my above average number of years spent on a PhD be considered a red flag in future academia or industry positions?

It's well known that there is a significant amount of variability in the time that it takes for a student to finish a PhD, particularly in programs with more rigorous standards. My own graduate department, for example, preferred people to finish in 5-6 years, but was somewhat infamous for allowing some to take as long as 10 years.

In fact, I would venture to say that it is the opposite. I would typically consider it a red flag if somebody took a short amount of time to obtain their Ph.D. Typically if you have a really good student, you don't graduate them faster, but instead you graduate them in the normal time but with a much stronger portfolio of results. Shorter Ph.D. studies, on the other hand, are typically a sign of somebody rushing to depart the program by meeting the bare minimum of requirements.

Bottom line: if you've done good work and have good publications, the fact that you took one more year than is typical for your department will barely even be noticed, let alone held to be significant. This is even more true for most industry jobs.

If somebody does actually ask you, however, focus on the first of your reasons (time spent figuring out an appropriate area of focus) rather than the latter reason (time spent working on out-of-work projects), as the second may be of legitimate concern to future employers.

In my department the normal time to finish is 4-6 years, but there were some cases with >6 years too. And they are all doing fine in academia as well as industry. As long as you have something concrete to show your output from a PhD then you should be good.

"Red flag" is a definite exaggeration. There is probably some correlation of faster Ph.D.s being stronger, but it is weak. Even there, there is huge variability.

I find the variability being more with longer Ph.D.s having some very outstanding people than the converse. Disagree with the answer above that sees short Ph.D. as a red flag (or at least mild negative). I see it as mild positive.

As for your papers, that sounds fine. You've checked the boxes (stereotypical "three strikes and you're out"). At this point, I would not be wistful about your grad school career. Although it is natural human instinct to be so at this stage. It is not unusual to have some wheel spinning during this time. But you got the job done. Finish up and move on with a smile on your face and looking for next challenge.

It might but indirectly, because you are a bit older. While I don't have a picture for industry, in academia I would say that is of minor impact.
It can even don't show up in an interview or audit, when the activity of the candidate has been up, of quality, and constant.

I recently hired several people for our company. If I saw that somebody took more than 5 years to get a PhD, a red flag would go off, and I would actually start looking at their dissertation to get a sense for whether the extended time was actually necessary. (5 years 4 months probably wouldn't trip my alarm though). In my view, a long period of time completing a PhD should only be warranted for an exceptional dissertation.

One way to mitigate this would be to indicate why the PhD took so long on your cover letter. For instance, one candidate took approximately 10 years, but had a severe medical issue for several of the intermittent years. That is valuable information to me as the one screening the applications.

I would just add one more point. And that is that typically, we will screen literally 100 candidates for 1 position, all with fairly similar backgrounds. So while it may seem unfair to just quickly judge a candidate based on how long it took to acquire a PhD, I will use every tool at my disposal to try to get that stack of 100 seemingly equal candidates on paper down to about 15 candidates that we can start calling for prescreening interviews.