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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

#271

Post by jnicholasp »

zeteo wrote: post #268
jnicholasp wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Note that having a job seems necessary though. I'm not sure that's true. It would be interesting to see some numbers. My naive impression is that there are at least two things needed to make intellectual history: genius, and opportunity to practice your genius. Both are rare, and given that there are far, far more people who need to earn a living than people who don't, I would expect the absolute numbers of (Genius…

I don't have a good theory - it's just based on reading biographies. Almost no famous thinkers lived on passive income (although, as I've said, annuities and bonds have been widely available for over 500 years). And probably not any kind of job will do. The most plausible explanation I've read belongs to Richard Feynman: > I have to have something so that when I don't have any ideas and I'm not getting anywhere I can…

The sentiment in general is reasonable to me: that humans are generally more effective and more productive when they have something to do and work on, even when they're not getting anywhere with their main project(s).

It's not at all clear to me that a menial job is a strong solution to that problem. I would expect that in, say, a world with UBI, that also recognized this problem, people would find better ways to keep themselves feeling like they are at least doing something and making some contribution, than working on things they don't care about or believe in. There are plenty of meaningful volunteer opportunities in the world that would be much more effective "make you feel useful" solutions than filing papers in a bureaucratic office.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#272

Post by WalterBright »

tensor wrote: post #132
nickpinkston wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I would be more inclined to believe this if the pro-manager view didn't come from the managers the vast majority of the time. It seems too convenient and self-service. Of course managers want to think they make a massive difference. Certainly some aspects can: keeping politics away from your group so that they can work, focusing work tasks by eliminating extraneous ones, advocating for people in the company. However,…

Sometimes companies are forced into doing metrics. If you need to fire someone for poor performance, in order to avoid a lawsuit, you'll need to document it, and that requires metrics. The same goes for lawsuits over who gets paid how much.

As long as there are regulations and lawsuits over this sort of stuff, there will be metrics.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#273

Post by xapata »

tensor wrote: post #132
nickpinkston wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I would be more inclined to believe this if the pro-manager view didn't come from the managers the vast majority of the time. It seems too convenient and self-service. Of course managers want to think they make a massive difference. Certainly some aspects can: keeping politics away from your group so that they can work, focusing work tasks by eliminating extraneous ones, advocating for people in the company. However,…

I believe "The Zen of Python" is one of the reasons for Python's success. I also believe that most "goals and values" that CEOs obsess over are bogus, but there's a kernel of truth that setting the philosophy for the company has a subtle, but strong effect.

Your skepticism based on who's speaking is warranted. After all, you shouldn't ask your barber if you need a haircut. Yet, maybe your hair stylist has the most expertise. Should you trust your dentist on how often you should get your teeth cleaned?

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#274

Post by gozur88 »

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.

Heh. My company calls that "agile".

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#275

Post by trentnix »

js2 wrote: post #247
geodel wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sports one very important difference is that real time performance is monitored by a large number of people. People who do not pay salaries of sports person and do not meddle with working of sports team directly. For any other kind of job performance is measured by insiders. Outsiders may gauge performance on quarterly / annual basis.

Sports teams are also relatively small organizations. The number of players on a team is in the dozens. No one could shirk by w/o it being noticed. (Well, mostly: http://www.fourfourtwo.com/us/features/confessions-carlos-ka... )

Almost like the size of...a classroom?

Team sports and the innovation, pursuit of excellence, and solidarity that comes with it are prevalent at all levels - recreational, amateur, and professional.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#276

Post by tnecniv »

pdimitar wrote: post #257
Fomite wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given I know someone who works rather hard, full time, on negotiating grants and other contracts and they're far from the Dean level, I'd suggest you're off from the amount of work required to run and administer a university by a pretty hefty margin.

Well, I don't mind being wrong on that one, it's mostly side observations plus some intuition, and we know these aren't exactly objective criteria. That being said, in your example maybe the dean simply couldn't be bothered? :P

It's more likely that the dean is just not the person who should be writing the grant proposal. Professors whose groups are actively working in the area the grant is for will write a much better proposal. It's also expected that as a professor you are -- to a significant degree -- capable of funding your group.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#277

Post by toss1 »

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…

YES, and here you have the MBA phenomenon striking again. Reducing things to over-simplified metrics, thereby ruining it all, or betting the entire economy on a theory that "manufacturing is low value and should be offshored to the lowest possible cost provider". In this case, driving down the effectiveness of teaching by adding metrics.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#278

Post by fwefwwfe »

undersuit wrote: post #237
mathperson wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Internal Consultant?

Intestinal Combustion?

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#279

Post by gipp »

jgamman wrote: post #260
zeteo wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that having a job seems necessary though. Maybe it's a case of the golden mean? On one side you have people whose job absorbs all leisure. On the other you have some who draw sufficient income without having a job at all. These are Marx's infamous "coupon clippers", and historically they're not as prominent in intellectual history as people with undemanding jobs (personally I'm not aware of many philosophers / s…

i think you have to go back to the 18th century for that. i'm thinking britain where science was something acceptable that gentlemen could do in their spare time (with smart+poor doing a lot of heavy lifting) and in particular Antoine Lavoisier in France who literally bought the rights to be a tax farmer so he could do his research. he lost his head in the revolution so there's that. YMMV.

Kelvin, De Broglie, and Brahe come to mind as well.

Re: Every attempt to manage academia makes it worse

#280

Post by _jal »

dasmoth wrote: post #144
_jal wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I said NPV.

Beyond that, the problem would be getting the same results as paying someone directly, while reducing efficiency by inserting a middleman to take a piece for... why, exactly?

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