Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

shitpost.plover.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 70 posts

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#21

Post by Arnt »

beojan wrote: post #15
Arnt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a secretary for the group, not for any one professor. If you'd visited in, say, 1925 the professors in the group might've had one secretary each.

That has more to do with those secretaries being replaced by computers than anything else. When everyone can type, and mistakes are easily corrected, you don't need people whose only job is to type anymore.

I'm Norwegian, not Swedish, but AIUI the societal trends were similar.

There's been a trend towards typing ability, yes, but hardly decisive. The old secretaries would do the bulk of e.g. organising conferences or the professor's travel, that's needs typing but not only typing.

The trend (in .no/.se etc) towards equality, against certain symbols of prestige, mattered a great deal. A long time ago having a secretary was a symbol of power, appropriate for Professor Dr. Lundman. At some point forgoing one became a symbol of modernity, and private secretaries became much less common, and the universities reorganised to provide specialised services such as ticket purchasers and maybe grant application writers instead of private secretaries.

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#22

Post by erikb »

raverbashing wrote: post #9

While academia is a place of good ideas and discussions, the power-distance and the use of students as very cheap labour with the promise of a higher place of importance someday is a dark side of it Low skilled workers are treated better and more fairly than Graduate Students in a lot of occasions

True in most cases I'd say. In this case, even for $200/month and working hours of 60-80h/week I'd still argue most people would be proud to have this position. The learning, the networking effects, the constant intellectual challenge. I think this is also value, and in some regards a lot more rare than money.

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#23

Post by quietbritishjim »

danieltillett wrote: post #3

The original this is taken from is better [0]. 0. https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/2...

Wow, the ending is brutal:

> At the end of May I left Szeged. I was grateful for all he had done, but it was only much later that I appreciated reasonably well his contribution to my education. On the overnight train from Budapest to Venice, a young Hungarian man accompanied by a young woman kindly asked me in poor German to leave them the compartment for the night. They had just been married that day and were beginning their honeymoon. On arrival at Venice the next morning, he opened the corridor window and got off the train, while his bride, who spoke only Hungarian, lowered their suitcase through the window. Then a terrible thing happened. The train pulled out, with her still on it. The poor girl was cut off from everything that she knew, everything she had been living with. I knew what she felt. Hadn't I too just been cut off from my previous life?

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#24

Post by Arnt »

eesmith wrote: post #14
Arnt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a secretary for the group, not for any one professor. If you'd visited in, say, 1925 the professors in the group might've had one secretary each.

Certainly there's a trend away from private secretaries. But the original statement was specifically about "ultra-low power distance societies, places like Sweden", and the process you mention is also taking place in the US, which (I believe) is not in that category. Moreover, the statement added "the idea that anyone, no matter how important, is ever entitled to an assistant or secretary is almost anathema [in Swede…

I suppose it's taking place everywhere where assistant labour is expensive. Faster in the places where having a private secretary is old-fashioned, like Sweden.

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#26

Post by M_Bakhtiari »

eesmith wrote: post #7
M_Bakhtiari wrote: post #2

In some ultra-low power distance societies, places like Sweden, the idea that anyone, no matter how important, is ever entitled to an assistant or secretary is almost anathema. Imagine if von Neumann had been required to do all of that in addition to making his own airline and hotel reservations, as is the case for many university professors these days.

Could you confirm that first statement? That is, when I visited Sweden for a consulting job about 15 years ago, there was definitely a secretary for the group I visited. She helped organize the paperwork for the visit, booked my hotel and taxi, etc. The word for secretary in Swedish is "sekreterare", and a search of the Uppsala University domain find things like https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=y…

> Could you confirm that first statement?

Yes, and as you can see from one of the comments below, the same is largely true of neighbouring Norway.

> That is, when I visited Sweden for a consulting job about 15 years ago, there was definitely a secretary for the group I visited. She helped organize the paperwork for the visit, booked my hotel and taxi, etc.

Notice that I talked about cultural views on secretaries, not the existence of secretaries within the country's borders. It's a downwards trend, I expect they're even more thinly spread now than 15 years ago.

It's not unexpected that the secretary-general of any organisation, even in Sweden, has a secretary. And of course theirs will be the last to go, with modern universities favouring administration over faculty, as it's the former that brings the cash, the latter only cost money (with that attitude, why not fire the faculty altogether?).

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#27

Post by MattConfluence »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #25

As a young post doc at the Institute for Advance Study, my Dad knew von Neuman, who according to my Dad, tended to work late at night and work with loud music playing - very much like young hackers today!

I've read a funny anecdote (no idea whether it is accurate) that von Neumann's loud gramophone music was a big source of frustration for his office neighbor, Albert Einstein.

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#28

Post by M_Bakhtiari »

beojan wrote: post #15
Arnt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a secretary for the group, not for any one professor. If you'd visited in, say, 1925 the professors in the group might've had one secretary each.

That has more to do with those secretaries being replaced by computers than anything else. When everyone can type, and mistakes are easily corrected, you don't need people whose only job is to type anymore.

>When everyone can type

I've spent some time as a troubleshooter of sorts in academia, and I can say that no, not everyone can type. Some are barely literate, especially when they have to use English rather than their native tongue.

Besides, secretaries do more than type. Online booking services have to a large extent replaced travel agents, but they are really just dumb shells on top of the travel agent's consoles, and consumes the user's time and attention.

As long as we don't have general AI computerising all but the most trivial tasks are going to be terrible to work with and waste a lot of time, especially when you have some kind of edge case and have to fight some business rules set up by some out of touch bean counter somewhere.

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#29

Post by M_Bakhtiari »

mseebach wrote: post #8
M_Bakhtiari wrote: post #2

In some ultra-low power distance societies, places like Sweden, the idea that anyone, no matter how important, is ever entitled to an assistant or secretary is almost anathema. Imagine if von Neumann had been required to do all of that in addition to making his own airline and hotel reservations, as is the case for many university professors these days.

The idea that anyone is entitled to a secretary, that a secretary is a kind of status symbol, is rightfully falling out of fashion, and not just in Sweden. But it's not being replaced by nothing, it being replaced by (non-personal) function staff that offloads specific tasks. The department has student relations officers that deal with scheduling, enrollment, tracking grades etc, the university has a travel office, e…

> The idea that anyone is entitled to a secretary, that a secretary is a kind of status symbol, is rightfully falling out of fashion, and not just in Sweden.

Indeed, the opposite error, seen in many ultra-high power distance societies, is arguably worse: when a secretary and a desk not facing a wall becomes an end in itself and nothing of value is produced.

> But it's not being replaced by nothing, it being replaced by (non-personal) function staff that offloads specific tasks.

Those things have been around for a long time, but treating it as a replacement rather than a complement to general-purpose secretaries means there will be no-one to do the more open-ended tasks, or tasks specific to the work of a particular person or group.

Re: The duties of John von Neumann's assistant (1993)

#30

Post by corpMaverick »

Ma8ee wrote: post #4
M_Bakhtiari wrote: post #2

In some ultra-low power distance societies, places like Sweden, the idea that anyone, no matter how important, is ever entitled to an assistant or secretary is almost anathema. Imagine if von Neumann had been required to do all of that in addition to making his own airline and hotel reservations, as is the case for many university professors these days.

In Sweden and in other places, everything, including the universities, is nowadays run by economists. Since university professors don't produce anything that has any immediate monetary value it of course make perfect sense to save money by replacing administrative personel that costs money with the professors time, which is free since the professors pay their own sallaries with external funding.

> run by economists

I am confused. Perhaps you meant to say managers, administrators or bureaucrats ?

Post reply on HN