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Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

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Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#141

Post by anoonmoose »

jessriedel wrote: post #94
Fede_V wrote: post #66

That list is correct, but it's only half of the problem. The other other half of the problem is supply. In fields like mathematics, physics, computer science, grad students have excellent non-academic options. There is an oversupply of PhD students with respect to the number of available positions, but the excess PhD students have fantastic career avenues. In fields like the humanities, and, to a lesser extent, the m…

> Not every PhD should have a guaranteed spot as a professor (that would be insane) but when less than 8% of postdocs become professors, the system is in crisis. There are lots of industries like this, e.g., corporate law, sports, acting, music. Are they all "in crisis"? http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/28/non-dual-awareness/ [EDIT] Others: military officers, investment banking, organized crime, tech start-up, trade…

Law is in crisis, the other three are all so (relatively speaking) small, unimportant, and gated by the genetic lottery that they're not worth discussing.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#142

Post by digi_owl »

wpietri wrote: post #96
merpnderp wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like in IT the spread of different process systems is exactly this. To reduce each job to a set of functions that people with similar levels of training can do the job at the same level of output, interchangeably. So we're left with jobs that are 90% following inane process and 10% producing something useful. All to make sure if we quit, we can be replaced in a few days.

The folks at Toyota talk about two different kinds of process: controlling and supportive. Controlling is that sort of BS. And I had seen it so much early in my career that I thought that's all there was. Supportive process is bottom up, done to improve consistency and reliability. E.g., by my door I have checklists for going running and swimming, because I was tired of going out to exercise and realizing I had forgo…

Another thing is that "workers in the decision loop" reeks of socialism.

Toyota do not have that kind of response though, as being Japanese in origin the leadership have a bit of Giri left in their thinking.

In some European nations after WW2 it was not uncommon to have enough worker representatives in the board room that they could affect a vote.

These days its been stripped down to a token union man that has little to no chance of affecting the decisions.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#143

Post by metaphorm »

dagw wrote: post #55
madez wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the personnel issues are sometimes indeed minor and a waste of time. What are the symptoms your wife is observing?

Minor stuff like spending 3 weeks "unemployed" and without a salary because her boss couldn't be arsed/was too busy to sort out the paperwork, grant money almost getting lost in the shuffle, stuff like that. And even if you perceive a personnel issue as genuinely minor and you genuinely do consider it a waste of time, telling someone that problems they perceive as genuine are so insignificant to you that you don't ev…

you're making the case for an administrative assistant, which is a very different role and set of responsibilities than a team of executives or managers.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#144

Post by dasmoth »

_jal wrote: post #87
dasmoth wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one were being truly radical about this, a possible solution is to replace researchers' salaries with pensions -- remove the incentive to retire in place by allowing you to retire at home if that's what you want.

And then you have a pool of professors made up of people who can afford to teach for free, or perhaps create a system where some finance leech buys your future pension for NPV payouts now.

a system where some finance leech buys your future pension for NPV payouts now.

Isn't that called a loan?

I imagine that smart finance-leeches will tend to avoid loaning against 100% of the value of the pension, for much the same reason it's hard to get a mortgage that takes 100% of your income to repay. Beyond that -- where is the problem?

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#145

Post by _delirium »

Fede_V wrote: post #66

That list is correct, but it's only half of the problem. The other other half of the problem is supply. In fields like mathematics, physics, computer science, grad students have excellent non-academic options. There is an oversupply of PhD students with respect to the number of available positions, but the excess PhD students have fantastic career avenues. In fields like the humanities, and, to a lesser extent, the m…

That's definitely a problem, but a fairly disjoint one. The fields with the worst oversupply problem oddly enough largely don't have the problem of this kind of metrics-based research micromanagement. It's hard to get a philosophy professorship, but when you do, nobody cares about your h-index. That's partly because there's less (almost no) grant money, so universities don't care that much about research metrics in those areas.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#146

Post by metaphorm »

csneeky wrote: post #17

All employers want their employees to "do the job to the best of their ability". But the freedom given to you to decide how your success is measured is proportional to your experience and past performance. There are those in both academia and private industry that get a lot of freedom to do their work/research. But there is a hierarchy to this just like everything in nature. The exceptionally strong and bright animal…

> But there is a hierarchy to this just like everything in nature

do you truly believe that everything in nature is hierarchical?

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#147

Post by hasbroslasher »

nickpinkston wrote: post #100
wpietri wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a worrying trend of treating staff as equally capable but untrusted cogs in a wheel, and metricising performance. That's a great way of summing up what I've heard called "managerialism". There's a theory behind, e.g., the MBA that a competent manager can manage anything. That what one manages makes no difference as long as you're a real manager. One of the corollaries of that theory is that all one has to…

I tend to find people with your view have never been an executive managing the managers, or even a manager. When you are (like myself) then you see that good managers / leadership (including tech team leads, etc.) really do make a massive difference in performance with the same people. Things like metrics, values, and re-orgs might seem like Dilbert-esque corporate speak (a view I used to share), but they're incredib…

This makes two big assumptions that can't be overlooked:

1. People can't self-manage (to some degree) 2. Performance is the end goal of management

I think both of these are wrong, or at least unfounded. I work in a more-or-less self-managed environment, and performance is actually pretty good. I get to pursue about 50% of my work independently and the other half is either collaborative and in line with a coworker's needs, or is one of those "must-dos". I don't see a possible world where I'd get more work done over the average day if there were artificial metrics like "time spent at desk", "lines of code written" or "number of tasks completed" dangled over my head - I'd probably just fuck off more and come up with clever schemes to break the game. This problem can be seen in academia as well - give a bunch of smart people a matrix of rules and yell "GO!". Watch them optimize.

I'd also argue that if it's only performance you're looking for, you're both ethically and intellectually off base. Good managers do increase performance/productivity - bad managers do not. But to assume that, as with teachers, academics, or software engineers, you can measure and reward behaviors without causing adverse affects on your workplace then you're dreaming. My manager is good because he backs off when needed, leaving me and a coworker to argue about an implementation design. My manager is good because he sets up an area of focus and says "ideas, go!". My manager is good because he will let people take a week or month to pursue a new solution that he personally doesn't understand, but trusts them to solve it aptly. My manager is not good because his team excels in certain metrics - his team excels in certain metrics because he is good. And last, my manager is good because productivity is not the end goal - employee happiness is. Happy employees do good work, and more importantly, they're happy for their own sake, which is much better than being surrounded by burnt out metric junkies.

So maybe my takeaway is that if we're going to do any kind of metric gathering it should probably be sub-perceptible and not be treated as a golden calf. If my CEO wants to devise a clever way of using me as a science experiment in pursuit of better management practices then I encourage that. But to tell people "here's what we're tracking now go off and do good work instead of that" is really fraught with problems.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#149

Post by dasmoth »

Cyph0n wrote: post #105
deong wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that always infuriated me about computer science (my field), is that I don't actually need the big research grant. There are people who do, of course, but I could do most of what I found interesting and useful with a high-end desktop PC and some free time. But universities don't operate that way anymore. It doesn't matter that all I need is $5K and some time -- the university needs their 40% cut of a multi-…

But you can only have so much free time, which means you eventually will have to "buy" time. Grants help you do this by allowing you to fund grad students and postdocs.

Not everyone who is a good independent researcher is a good man-manager. For some people, researching independently -- or perhaps collaborating with a few other independents -- might be a better route than being forced to spin up a research group (and more-or-less-inevitably finding themselves with limited time to do the hands-on stuff themselves).

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#150

Post by trishume »

ThomPete wrote: post #120

I think we need to rethink what we consider academically important which should be taught at universities and then what should be taught as self studies. I can't help but thinking that one of the real problems is that a lot of academia isn't that valuable anymore as a field of study. Don't get me wrong I consider ex. philosophy as one of the most important fields but I also feel like it doesn't belong as an indiepend…

It's really easy to make punchy-sounding arguments about why a certain field isn't as important to teach, so we should be rather reluctant to go along with them.

For example your argument about psychology could equally applied to almost any field and physics. "I feel the same way about (Computer Science|Biology|Chemistry) which to me is even more problematic as it is based on the premise that we can learn about (computers|life|chemicals) by studying (code|proteins|chemicals). Again it should be tied to something like quantum physics instead." In fact this argument makes no sense to me, why wouldn't studying human behaviour be the best way to learn about human behaviour?

Same for the argument about philosophy, it's too easy to assume something valuable a field produces is too amazing to ever be topped. "After [the light bulb] I really don't see what new revelations [about electricity] are going to be of fundamental value to society."

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