‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#141

Post by lewis500 » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 1:54 PM UTC

king_magic wrote: post #125

lewis500 wrote: post #120

I’m a professor. I have a few thoughts about this. First, the grad student/professor relationship is inherently asymmetrical, much more so than most employer/employee relationships. The degree has to last years or else you get nothing, and there are no hard and fast terms of the relationship like there is in many jobs. The professors recommendation might be the most important thing you get, and that is always running…

Sorry, but candidly, this just reads as a bunch of lame excuses to continue a blatant cycle of abuse. Nothing in my professional 15 year career has come anywhere remotely close to the brutal, absurd reality of what I’ve seen graduate/PhD students go through. I think academia is nearing a kind of crisis akin to what the the Catholic Church is going through with rampant sex abuse. Diminishing, unimpressive returns in o…

I don’t think they’re excuses. They’re explanations of how things happen. The asymmetrical relationship especially explains how professors can get away with treating students badly, but it isn’t a justification. If you read Bad blood, for instance, E Holmes and sunny treat everyone horribly, but ultimately lots of people quit because they have other options.

The pressure on the professor and the selection for obsessiveness explain motives.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#142

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

king_magic wrote: post #134

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my experience in the industry was that I changed five jobs in six years because in order for my work to be valued as highly as it was really worth, I had to sell it to someone new every year. What is really brutal in academia is the competition to get your research published and appreciated (by being cited and reused by others). This doesn't happen automatically. The pressure to find something useful to contrib…

This still sounds like a bunch of excuses to continue abusing people. Intense pressure exists everywhere: don't put academic work on a magical pedestal, there's a lot more to working in the industry than just keeping your boss happy (and uh, a lot more happens in the industry than just building the next Uber for X). Still no excuse to overwork people to near death (yes, there are extreme outliers like Goldman Sachs &…

I don't follow- where is the excuse?

I left one of my junior dev positions in the industry with a stomach ulcer as a souvenir. I don't know what Goldman Sachs is like, but as a junior developer you're expected to do all the work for half the money it's worth and in half the time it would take your senior colleagues.

Edit: and while youre senior colleagues treat your work like rubbish to justify their senior salaries.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#143

Post by khalilravanna » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

hjk05 wrote: post #135

Something often overlooked because it doesn’t fit the “evil professor overworks students” narrative, is that students themselves elect to put in more hours because they feel reaposible for their projects. During my graduate studies I worked under a professor who literally banned lab access to prevent people from working weekends. I hated that rule, but obeyed it, though I know some others snuck in anyways.

Yeah but those students aren’t putting in those extra hours because it’s “fun”, right? They’re doing it because the culture intrinsically rewards if not requires that sort of overwork. It sounds to me like that professor is treating the symptom (students want to overwork themselves) but the cause (toxic culture) still needs to be addressed.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#144

Post by king_magic » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:02 PM UTC

lewis500 wrote: post #141

king_magic wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but candidly, this just reads as a bunch of lame excuses to continue a blatant cycle of abuse. Nothing in my professional 15 year career has come anywhere remotely close to the brutal, absurd reality of what I’ve seen graduate/PhD students go through. I think academia is nearing a kind of crisis akin to what the the Catholic Church is going through with rampant sex abuse. Diminishing, unimpressive returns in o…

I don’t think they’re excuses. They’re explanations of how things happen. The asymmetrical relationship especially explains how professors can get away with treating students badly, but it isn’t a justification. If you read Bad blood, for instance, E Holmes and sunny treat everyone horribly, but ultimately lots of people quit because they have other options. The pressure on the professor and the selection for obsessi…

That’s fair, and I think my wording might have been too harsh in the context of your post.

But outside of this context, these same explanations are exactly the excuses that professors and administrators will ultimately make.

Don’t get me wrong, industry isn’t perfect either. But I know which one I’d rather pick, and it sure as hell isnt academia.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#145

Post by afarrell » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:02 PM UTC

king_magic wrote: post #125

lewis500 wrote: post #120

I’m a professor. I have a few thoughts about this. First, the grad student/professor relationship is inherently asymmetrical, much more so than most employer/employee relationships. The degree has to last years or else you get nothing, and there are no hard and fast terms of the relationship like there is in many jobs. The professors recommendation might be the most important thing you get, and that is always running…

Sorry, but candidly, this just reads as a bunch of lame excuses to continue a blatant cycle of abuse. Nothing in my professional 15 year career has come anywhere remotely close to the brutal, absurd reality of what I’ve seen graduate/PhD students go through. I think academia is nearing a kind of crisis akin to what the the Catholic Church is going through with rampant sex abuse. Diminishing, unimpressive returns in o…

How do you dismantle a cycle of abuse without first understanding the incentives and power relations which are the pieces of that abusive system?

——

I ask this as someone who has been accused of making excuses when I was explaining a problem ans asking for help in solving the problem:

What is it about the above comment that seems like excuses?

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#146

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:04 PM UTC

dd36 wrote: post #137

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, my experience in the industry was that I changed five jobs in six years because in order for my work to be valued as highly as it was really worth, I had to sell it to someone new every year. What is really brutal in academia is the competition to get your research published and appreciated (by being cited and reused by others). This doesn't happen automatically. The pressure to find something useful to contrib…

Lots of academics do “Uber for ice cream but with AI.” Academia is iterative. Arguably, it’s even less competitive than the real world. It’s theory vs. practice. Guess what’s hard? Getting enough paying customers to be sustainable.

>> Lots of academics do “Uber for ice cream but with AI.” Academia is iterative.

Iterative, yes, but it must be innovative, not a recombination of existing contributions.

Also, if you only ever contribute tiny baby steps, you will simply not stand out. If you want to build a strong reputation you need strong results that advance the state of the art significantly.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#147

Post by maze-le » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:06 PM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #95

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #61

Y'know, occasionally I see off hand remarks from tech or start-up people dissing academia, not understanding that academia is probably one of the hardest career paths in the world (and thus surprisingly similar to start-ups). You can't take a break (publish or perish), you need a lot of qualifications to even dream about getting tenure (top 5 grad schools or bust), and you're competing against ridiculously smart and…

No, well, I guess that’s exactly why we are dissing academia. It’s ridiculously hard, the environment seems shitty, and the payoff is pretty much nonexistent. Why would anyone choose to do that instead of making boatloads of money in industry?

To be sure the exact same argument can be made for some startups too. Toxic work-culture for the sheer possibility of (often limited) rewards is not unique to academia -- its just more prevalent.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#148

Post by woah » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:07 PM UTC

zwaps wrote: post #127

Another point that contributes to academia as "perfect storm", in addition to the points mentioned before, is that in many countries the chances of having a career are slim for the median student. Not everyone can gain a top position in any field. But in most industries, there are plenty of positions where you can make meaningful contributions. We know that most humans need to feel useful for mental health. In academ…

This seems strange. In industry, it seems that great cachet is attached to academic experience. In AI, there are a lot of positions paying a half million per year and up that are only available to PHD's. In blockchain, there have been many projects that have had little to show besides a powerpoint and the letters after the founder's name but still raised tens of millions of dollars in funding from big name VCs. For a time, this was so prevalent that projects like this were given the joking name "professorcoins".

Are you talking about the experience of students whose subjects are not used in industry? In that case, it seems that they would have a difficult time regardless of whether or not they were in academia, since they would simply not be working on their subject at all in the private sector.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#149

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:09 PM UTC

currymj wrote: post #140

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #117

>> “It felt as if I was telling him he didn’t respect me, and he essentially said, you’re right,” he recalled. I'm a PhD research student on my second year. It's unfortunate to frame this in terms of respect for the student's person, rather than his work, which is most likely what has lost the advisor's respect. I've come to my PhD after six years in the industry. Because of this I see my research as a work assignmen…

I’ve seen your posts before so I am pretty sure you’re a CS PhD student. It is important to remember that getting a PhD in CS is unusually good. There’s a lot of money, limited need for expensive equipment, good job prospects in academia, and little stigma about going into industry. Also, it seems to me that a culture of abusive behavior and hazing has not yet set in. None of this is true in the natural sciences, and…

Machine learning actually- in particular, Inductive Logic Programming. But, yes, it's basically CS.

I appreciate that there's a difference between different fields. I'm also aware that the article above is about research students in the US- I'm in a UK university.

Re: ‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

#150

Post by jdietrich » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

king_magic wrote: post #125

lewis500 wrote: post #120

I’m a professor. I have a few thoughts about this. First, the grad student/professor relationship is inherently asymmetrical, much more so than most employer/employee relationships. The degree has to last years or else you get nothing, and there are no hard and fast terms of the relationship like there is in many jobs. The professors recommendation might be the most important thing you get, and that is always running…

Sorry, but candidly, this just reads as a bunch of lame excuses to continue a blatant cycle of abuse. Nothing in my professional 15 year career has come anywhere remotely close to the brutal, absurd reality of what I’ve seen graduate/PhD students go through. I think academia is nearing a kind of crisis akin to what the the Catholic Church is going through with rampant sex abuse. Diminishing, unimpressive returns in o…

There is an absurd oversupply of graduate students. Where there is an oversupply of labour, there are always abusive conditions. Academia can do all the soul-searching it wants, but the only meaningful solution is to rebalance supply and demand in academia; a very useful first step would be the provision of impartial and informed careers advice to high school and college graduates.