‘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

#151

Post by lewis500 » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:18 PM UTC

king_magic wrote: post #144

lewis500 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree I would recommend industry to almost everyone. In fact, engineers ask me about grad school several times per year and I almost always discourage them. Too many people think of grad school as sort of a vague "next step" that will "open doors" or else a way of "leveling up" as though life is an RPG and a grad degree is a special badge or skin you can get. I encourage them rather to think concretely about what academia specifically entails: reading abstruse papers, writing papers with little chance of being appreciated, debugging software, writing grants, giving presentations, etc. Academia is only appropriate for a rare type of person, like being a classical musician.

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

#152

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:20 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?

For the privilege to do what they really want to do, i.e. study something they are really interested in.

For myself, I am interested in logic programming and machine learning. I started a PhD in Inductive Logic Programming, which is machine learning of logic programs from examples. There's no way I could follow this interest in any other structure but a PhD on ILP.

In the industry? I can forget right about it. Even ordinary logic programming is out of the question. Machine learning? That would have to be statistical machine learning that just bores me to death.

In academia I have -so far- the freedom to pursue my actual research interest and all I have to show for it is success in understanding my subject and discovering new knowledge, which is exactly what I want to do anyway.

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

#153

Post by BearsAreCool » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

I'm working on a masters degree at the moment for context. The fact that a professor has the ability to deny me the piece of paper I've been told all my life is my ticket to a better life based on arbitrary grading rules is horrifying. In my program there is a different professor for every class and how they grade and what they want has always been different, some demand title pages for every paper, some demand some specific source count, and others grade you down for submitting too close to the official due date. The professors who I have liked the most are the ones that act like the students, just scraping by barely managing to do their work, and not having the time or energy to be too critical of the students work. I'm sure professors are nice people and I'm even good friends with some at other universities, but there is a massive power imbalance and it is horrifying to students.

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

#154

Post by analog31 » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:29 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…

Also, there's enough demand in CS and engineering, that being a professor isn't necessarily seen as the top of the heap, and profs tend to be a bit more humble. A prof knows that they could walk out the door tomorrow and have a good career, and knows that the students could too.

There's also something to be said for working in a field where you can take the weekend off, and your project doesn't start to decompose.

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

#155

Post by grigjd3 » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:30 PM UTC

woah wrote: post #148

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…

Certain fields have an easy path to the private sector, like computer science, but a lot of academic research is done by academics because the private sector would never pay for it. Certainly when I left academics, I didn't see many employers looking to study initial data for the binary black hole problem. ;)

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

#156

Post by mathgenius » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:37 PM UTC

solotronics wrote: post #136

This is probably a stupid question but with the internet as a distribution method is there anything stopping someone from doing their research independently and publishing on their own? I am sure if you are doing quality work you would still be able to get a hold of a professor somewhere who would be interested in working with you. Of course this would not apply to situations where there is lab equipment involved but…

Not a stupid question at all.

History is littered with examples of major scientific discoveries that went completely ignored because the discoverer was not associated with a prestigious institution, or some other reputable platform.

> quality work

So what? There is no shortage of quality work.

If someone really wants to make it as an outsider (or even an insider) I would suggest spending some time on youtube watching videos about how to make it in hollywood. It is much the same: fashion-driven, full of bean-counters, whats the next hot thing, who do you know, are you fun to work with, etc. etc.

People have this idea that science is the objective search for truth. But this is just a small part of what is going on.

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

#157

Post by mattkrause » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:38 PM UTC

solotronics wrote: post #136

This is probably a stupid question but with the internet as a distribution method is there anything stopping someone from doing their research independently and publishing on their own? I am sure if you are doing quality work you would still be able to get a hold of a professor somewhere who would be interested in working with you. Of course this would not apply to situations where there is lab equipment involved but…

It would be rough to go it alone. Research is probably a bit more social than most people imagine.

Nothing pokes a hole in a 'brilliant' idea like bouncing it off a colleague, and at the same time, you often need an outside perspective to decide if something is a breakthrough or dead-end.

Research groups often have a bunch of informal knowledge: a technique that sounds simple may have some subtle pitfalls; one that looks complicated might be really easy to apply in specific situations. Some published results, while maybe not wrong per se, are less generalizable or harder to replicate than the papers claim. A lot of this knowledge hasn't made it into the formal literature, but is very easy to pick up over coffee.

If you want people to read your papers (or fund your proposals), they need to be written in a way that the conventions of your field: how much detail is needed for various steps, what can you claim based on your results (and what shouldn't you claim), etc. Grad students usually learn these conventions by writing with senior people.

If your end goal is to learn this stuff from a professor, there's already a pathway for that: go to grad school! If your ideas were amazing, you could collaborate with one, but you're going to be competing with the prof's actual trainees for his time/attention, which will make it hard for you to get on the prof's radar to begin with.

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

#158

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:41 PM UTC

johncolanduoni wrote: post #104

mjburgess wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect its the content of the game rather than its difficulty. That is, academia is at-best dimly related to practical results that have a direct effect on people's lives.

Academia called, they want their quantum theory back. Particularly the parts that enabled transistor-based electronics.

[deleted]

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

#159

Post by mathgenius » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:42 PM UTC

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #152

Aeolun wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For the privilege to do what they really want to do, i.e. study something they are really interested in. For myself, I am interested in logic programming and machine learning. I started a PhD in Inductive Logic Programming, which is machine learning of logic programs from examples. There's no way I could follow this interest in any other structure but a PhD on ILP. In the industry? I can forget right about it. Even o…

> machine learning of logic programs from examples.

This sounds like it would have use in industry. You are really saying that it does not?

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

#160

Post by mattkrause » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 2:45 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?

The 'purpose' of academia is pretty awesome: you get to figure out how the brain works--and how to fix it when it doesn't work well--why the sun shines, etc...

Some people find a lot more meaning in that than, say, using cutting-edge ML algorithms to optimally place Facebook ads for awful pizza.