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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

#221

Post by flamedoge »

deong wrote: post #218
flamedoge wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can do research with a thinkpad and being a part-time barista...

Indeed you can. It's much harder though. If you have a full-time job unrelated to your research, you need to self-fund a lot of expenses. You need to convince your boss to let you take time off to go to that conference to present your work. You need to foster connections to other researchers through activities like reviewing for journals, etc. Of course, you can bypass all that and just publish straight to the intern…

I get that we're all humans and feel better if we converse face to face sometimes. I certainly appreciate people doing research on their own expense and time for the general good.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#222

Post by naravara »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #191
naravara wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American society isn't racist?

I don't think using objective metrics is racist, which is what we were talking about. If you have any data that proves me otherwise, I would appreciate it very much. It would be unexpected to me.

I think you might have misunderstood my point. I said our management culture leans on metrics so heavily as a way to mitigate the effects of racism (and sexism) in managerial decision making. Not that the metrics are racist.

It's harder for us to rely on systems that leave more room for personal judgement without oversight because we worry that decisions not attached to hard metrics are more likely to be subject to invidious biases. The charitable take is that the drive for metrics is motivated by a sincere attempt to mitigate these biases. The more cynical take I offered was saying that people use it as a way to cover their tracks against charges of discrimination.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#223

Post by dkarapetyan »

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…

In theory this is always the right thing to do no matter what industry you are in. Do you want to build a good software organization then hire smart people and get out of their way but in practice it is basically impossible.

First to know what smart looks like you have to be smart yourself before you can hire more smart people. Second you have to be really cognizant to not hire more people like yourself because not all smart looks the same way. Third whatever position you're hiring for you need to understand well enough to recognize the same kind of skill in others but this kinda conflicts with the second point because expertise always introduces bias. Fourth you have to be ruthless when it comes to firing people because every so often you will make a mistake and hire a bozo that looked smart and people really don't like firing people.

Basically all the cards are stacked against you and what I've observed in most software organizations is that you'll be lucky if you manage to make 10% of your workforce satisfy the "smart" metric.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#224

Post by deong »

BaronSamedi wrote: post #212
deong wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose you could make the authoritarian argument that the experts know better than you and should be allowed to force you take the classes they think best. I'm not sure that's especially authoritarian rather than just practical. I have a CS PhD focused on optimization and machine learning. I trust a student to mostly decide whether they feel like computer science is a good field for them to go into, but once the…

I don't disagree with your point. I was mostly thinking of general education and the high school curricula. On the other hand, I'm not a big fan of the PhD style program. It seems old-fashioned and possibly obsolete to me. I would prefer to see it replaced by something like, in the case you mention, an advanced certification in machine learning. I don't know the field well enough to say what such a certification migh…

I think what you're describing is a need that's filled pretty well today by a master's degree.

I don't think the PhD is so much archaic as just overused. It is intended to signify that a person has demonstrated that they can contribute significant new knowledge to a field of study, and incidentally, that they can teach (graduate) university courses. Society probably needs far less of both those traits than it can supply people who want to do them.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#225

Post by tux1968 »

BaronSamedi wrote: post #220
tux1968 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes please. I want my kids to compete in the job market against the millions of people who would be taught science and evolution in the religious schools that would clearly emerge under such a system.

As if that isn't already happening under the current system. But, hey, why even think about change? The US educational system is already so good at improving, not letting institutional inertia block new ideas, offering better value for parents and students,...

Say what you want about the inadequacies of our education systems, but they have helped to deliver the amazing world in which we live today.

Let us not go throwing the good out with the bad in pursuit of some ideal that isn't within reach anyway. There is no perfect answer, but i'm personally wary of unintended consequences of radical change. Our social, political, and cultural survival may very well hang in the balance.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#226

Post by technotony »

Chathamization wrote: post #210
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…

There doesn't need to be a metric for that, it's the manager's job to use their judgement to assess that by building a relationship with the person, seeing how well they communicate their ideas (a sign someone understands things), that they finish what they said they would do etc etc.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#227

Post by codys »

rattray wrote: post #196
sevensor wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From ground level, though, it's really easy to see the dysfunctional cultures growing up around metrics. At the factory where I used to work, we'd zig-zag from metric to metric. Yield one quarter, Cpk the next, scrap rate the quarter after that. Special cross-departmental teams to manage the metric. Regardless of which metric was chosen, people would do really dumb things to try to meet it. If scrap rate was the metr…

> The better managers translated the quantitative metrics into qualitative guidance for their teams. The worse managers provided no such buffer and instead made their teams achieve metrics by any means necessary. This seems like a key insight. Metrics are key to good management – but metrics are for the managers, not for the teams. Managers that pass metrics directly down to their teams as goals aren't doing their jo…

> Metrics are key to good management

This doesn't follow from the GP's comment. All we know from that comment is that Metrics + some managers = bad.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#228

Post by bshanks »

metaphorm wrote: post #143
dagw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, this is not the solution; I've seen this sort of thing happen in academia even with professors with assistants (thankfully my own professors have never been like this). For example, the administrative assistant presents the professor with an employee timesheet that needs to be signed in order for some employee to be paid, and the professor says, "thanks, I'm busy now, just leave that here and don't bother me again" and then doesn't sign it, causing the employee not to be paid on time. The administrative assistant does not have the authority to sign it himself and does not have the authority to tell the professor what to do (and may be fired by the professor if they make themselves a bother by trying to nudge the professor into doing the paperwork).

The problem here is not that the professor is too disorganized, the problem is that some professors either don't perceive managerial tasks as important, or they view their managerial duties as impositions.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#229

Post by nitwit005 »

technotony wrote: post #226
Chathamization wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There doesn't need to be a metric for that, it's the manager's job to use their judgement to assess that by building a relationship with the person, seeing how well they communicate their ideas (a sign someone understands things), that they finish what they said they would do etc etc.

That just makes the problem circular. How do you find these managers that are good at judging people?

Also, you're clearly laying out metrics: communication ability and timeliness. They're just somewhat generic metrics.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#230

Post by mathperson »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #206
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 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 work…

What is an IC? I think it should mean something like senior engineer but I've only seen this acronym in the context of intelligent community
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