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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

#201

Post by chimprich »

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…

You're assuming that the point of academia is that it is valuable to society.

The point of academia (from a purist's perspective, at least) is that learning is the target in itself; pushing back the boundaries of ignorance is an end-goal of our species.

In many cases the advancement of our state of knowledge brings many rewards but that doesn't have to be the point of it.

> Maybe I am wrong but after postmodernism I really don't see what new revelations are going to be of fundamental value to society.

I'm not sure postmodernism has any fundamental value to society! But of course we can't reason about how much value new advances have to society - if we knew enough about them to know that, they would already have been discovered.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#202

Post by ThomPete »

kem wrote: post #178
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…

As a professor, I probably agree that a lot of academia probably isn't that valuable, and probably could be reorganized. However: 1. I think the same arguments could be made about just about anything anywhere. People forget that. 2. I think there's a collision of reality with assumptions about how progress works. We tend to think that supergeniuses come in and revolutionize everything, and I think things are instead…

You cant say that about every other field though. You cant say it about physics you cant say it about chemistry you cant say it about math. Each of the have very applicable outputs.

None of your examples require philosophy or psychology etc. to provide progress. Neuroscience is perfectly capable to ponder on its own problems.

Emergence belongs to other fields too though systems theory, art, ai. And it isn't going to change philosophy itself like ex modernism or postmodernism did.

Keep in mind I didn't say the fields weren't important, the point is that they are not uncovering fundamental properties of their own field. They cant because the tools they uses aren't allowing them to really dig deeper.

Anyway I am not 100% certain about this but there is something that isn't sitting right IMO.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#203

Post by BaronSamedi »

Clanan wrote: post #82
BaronSamedi wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting targets won't solve anything since this is a structural problem. You cannot leave those structures in place and expect a different outcome. That is just treating the symptoms. In my view the solution is simple: instead of letting bureaucrats and administrators decide, let parents and students choose the classes and teachers they want. Those teachers that offer classes and a teaching style that students actual…

This might be the start of a good approach, but I think it would largely reward popular teachers and easy classes. Back in university I would not have trusted myself to decide which were the necessary classes. With family, stress, work, etc. it would be too tempting to take the easy road. Maybe some combination of students and teachers...

I think rewarding popular teachers would be a feature rather than a bug. As for the too-easy problem, well, if you had to take a certification exam (like, for example, the bar exam) then you would have to choose the courses you thought would most likely help you pass.

My larger point was that the current educational system has stagnated and seems to be frozen in the late 19th century. It is highly--even actively--resistant to change. It is very expensive for the results it delivers. Whatever the right answer is (if there is one) requires thinking about the root causes of the problems and possibly fundamental change. Unfortunately, with topics like these people seem to want a different result without changing the underlying system that produces that result.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#204

Post by baldfat »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #195
baldfat wrote: post #21

I have a different take its the lack of pay for professors and the lack of respect for public education (On average a college professor makes less then a public school teacher, in my discipline I would have averaged about $20k less IF I got tenure) As a former academic professional (Librarian at a college) The high cost of college is based on the demands of students. 30 years ago there was no internet, no smoothy bar…

>30 years ago there was no internet, no smoothy bar equipped fitness rooms, no pretty dorms and everything upscale. Weirdly enough, I went to school 10 years ago, and there was crappy internet, ugly dormitories with housing shortages, and decades-old gyms with "smoothy bar" being a totally unknown term. They finished building a new gym with a smoothy bar in my senior year. They didn't add new dorms until after I grad…

All with debit so the budget will be spent on interest payments.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#205

Post by ThomPete »

chimprich wrote: post #201
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…

You're assuming that the point of academia is that it is valuable to society. The point of academia (from a purist's perspective, at least) is that learning is the target in itself; pushing back the boundaries of ignorance is an end-goal of our species. In many cases the advancement of our state of knowledge brings many rewards but that doesn't have to be the point of it. > Maybe I am wrong but after postmodernism I…

Well not really. There is a reason why learning into itself have value and thats exactly because it benefit society which is why governments have paid for it historically.

But if you want to study alchemy you have to do it on your own. My point is that perhaps philosophy and psychology and economics now belongs to that group.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#206

Post by Karrot_Kream »

wpietri wrote: post #91
Lxr wrote: post #49

If a job is complex, multifaceted and involves subtle trade-offs, the best approach is to hire good people, pay them the going rate and tell them to do the job to the best of their ability. Absolutely, could not agree more. This is the only way to beat gamification of metrics in my opinion. There is a worrying trend of treating staff as equally capable but untrusted cogs in a wheel, and metricising performance. I fun…

> 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 don't think this theory makes much sense when you examine it. But it's excellent at justifying a caste system, one where all workers are controlled by wise managers, and where there's a stable hierarchy of executives above that. I note that the hierarchy established is basically equivalent to those of feudalism. It also has the handy property of justifying high compensation for managers and executives; since workers are cogs and higher-ups do the important thinking, all gains should flow upward.

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I agree that metricising performance is only as good as your metrics, and in my personal opinion, metricising knowledge work is a fool's errand (too many variables to accurately capture performance). That is _separate_ from having managers though. Managers can often triage work effectively, help engineers unblock their work, help identify people in the org that contain the domain knowledge necessary to help one of their direct reports, etc etc.

I think the whole urge to track velocity and points and stupid things like that to be absolutely dumb, though. Also I'm an IC and am coming up to the point in my career where I have to figure out a way to not be pushed into management.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#207

Post by CuriouslyC »

Ziomislaw wrote: post #136
CuriouslyC wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retiring in place is actually quite boring, and the feeling of uselessness that results is depressing. People won't actually do that unless the alternative is worse. If you hire people who are passionate about whatever it they were hired to work on, they might not do work that is profitable, but they'll do work that is interesting and has some benefit.

I believe you undevalue the passion some people have for not working.

Those people will still have a passion for something, or they're going to be profoundly unhappy. Consumption (whether it be TV, video games, drugs, etc) can only provide some distraction from the pain, it doesn't make it go away. In fact, the longer you try to deal with the pain by distraction, the worse it gets.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#208

Post by s73ver »

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…

If this is the case, then why are so many bad managers still managing?

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#209

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

mseebach wrote: post #50
kev009 wrote: post #34

I think this is somewhat well understood in things like Sports Psychology. You don't tell a receiver to catch X number of throws per game, you just encourage them perform. Likewise, training that more accurately simulates performance is more effective than working toward some metric. I learned it from Pat McNamara who has a special way with words and delivery: "When we are consumed by the outcome it will sabotage our…

This works because both sides have a well-understood model of what 'performing' looks like. And if you don't, you'll be shown the door very quickly.

I think this is key. In the sports arena, the metrics are VERY clear: if you don't win games, and your stats are poor, you're fired.

I understand where academics are coming from, but at the same time it seems like many people want to be isolated from any objective assessment of their performance at all. FWIW, I see this a LOT among software developers as well.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#210

Post by Chathamization »

Lxr wrote: post #49

If a job is complex, multifaceted and involves subtle trade-offs, the best approach is to hire good people, pay them the going rate and tell them to do the job to the best of their ability. Absolutely, could not agree more. This is the only way to beat gamification of metrics in my opinion. There is a worrying trend of treating staff as equally capable but untrusted cogs in a wheel, and metricising performance. I fun…

But that whole strategy is based on hiring "good people," and by what metric do you determine that? It seems that it's just pushing the measurements to another location, one that's less visible and transparent (the hiring process). Or maybe you don't think that there should be a firm set of metrics at all, but having metrics that are too loose ends up meaning the decisions tend to be arbitrary and based on the whims of whoever is currently making the decisions.

I think most managers would enjoy hiring the best people and then having greatness occur. But the reason these things are in place is because you're not always going to be hiring the best people (or someone might be great in some categories, but terrible in others you didn't know). Saying "hire good people" isn't much of a solution.

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