‘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

#191

Post by afarrell » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #188

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…

> but having a professor as a boss is like if a famous open source developer was your boss. This would be a dream for me :D. Instead we get 'jira assigners' as managers in tech.

What is your conception of what skills make someone:

* A good product manager

* A good team lead

* A good career manager

And why do you think open source development fame would correlate well with those skills?

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

#192

Post by i_am_proteus » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

james-mcelwain wrote: post #184

mattkrause wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along with the personal cost, this instability can't be great for producing good science either. My lab has learned and lost some techniques over and over again, as people churn through. If it were up to me, I'd convert some MS/PhD slots into staff scientist roles with longer contracts. I think you could probably do this in a way that increases productivity, and makes more people more happy to boot.

One of my friends who is a graduate student complains about the difficulty of collaborating with other scientists who lack strong coding skills. They are so focused on the science that there's no time to learn or practice good code hygiene. If often wondered why labs don't hire regular developers to increase research veliocity. I have no interest in research, but would happily work in the context of academia doing th…

Some labs do this! I've seen places where the ratio of engineers to grad students and postdocs was about 1:1. The engineers were salaried and could take courses at the university if they chose to (for free, but on their own time).

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

#193

Post by crankylinuxuser » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

anon946 wrote: post #186

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Professors have no, I repeat, NO accountability. Inside their classroom, they are the petty dictators they are empowered by the university to be. Some do a good and just job at education... But that's not their real goal. Their goal is to get the university more money and more students - teaching is the secondary objective. If it happens, it's good. I've seen a large handful of people whom should have never…

I assume that you are mainly discussing undergrad education. In that case, the way to pressure universities to be accountable is by not going to such universities, as you imply in your first paragraph: "Their goal is to get the university more money and more students". So don't go to such universities. They will lose students. Losing undergrad students won't directly impact research funding, but it will have an impac…

I take it you haven't read "Meditations on Moloch". https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

All universities do this to a varying extent, for undergraduate -and- graduate. And it doesn't make sense for a university to take such a significant risk on non-payment for failing a student. And there would be questionable ethics for a university to pass a student to get paid.

From a "God's Eye View", we can do better to properly fund schools while preserving that students learn without getting cheated. But from individual students' point of view, and the universities' point of view, there are no good answers.

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

#194

Post by mistrial9 » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #138

zwaps wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is in fact two things here. Most continental EU countries used to have a different system before the Bologna Bachelor/Master system. In the prior case, many countries simply did not have a Bachelor equivalent. In France, Spain, Netherlands and Germany, you'd by default do a Masters-level degree. As such, a Masters is more continued education - it does not imply a big cut from a "practical degree" toward researc…

> It is still the case that many jobs (like nursing) are not taught at a university, simply because there is no path to academic research. You can do research as a nurse. There are nurses with PhDs even.

in the US there are practicing nurses without a college degree, right now.. also nursing is not always unionized, especially in the South..

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

#195

Post by lazyjeff » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 4:57 PM UTC

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…

I'm an assistant professor in computer science and have tried a few things to tune down the pressure in my lab. It's always hard to tell what works and what doesn't due to the very small N (N = number of phd students). I also run a small lab (N = 3 right now) so don't have the scaling and funding issues as larger labs.

The thing that seems to be most successful is having every PhD student work with a couple of undergraduate students. Every project has undergraduate student collaborators, so it's never a solo endeavor. There's momentum from others in the project making progress so you're not pushing the boulder yourself. That way they can commiserate together when the results are bad or I'm being sucky.

The other thing I'm starting to try is before I give any negative feedback in person, I ask them how they think they're doing. If they think they're doing great, then it's clearly a mismatch of expectations. I need to figure out how to make the expectations converge before giving negative feedback. I can't think of anything more demoralizing than thinking you're performing well, and then your advisor unexplicably saying you're not productive enough.

Anyways, I think the environment varies substantially between groups. There's certainly some systematic problems (some department culture, some due to the advisor, and some because of being academia in general). But there's probably as many (or more) research labs as startups. So making blanket statements about advisors/advisees is like saying something like "all startups are under extreme VC pressure to monetize" or that "there's a toxic 24/7 work culture at disruptive startups" is similarly overgeneralizing (but probably true for some large number of them).

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

#196

Post by imtringued » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 4:58 PM UTC

sgwae wrote: post #12

kodz4 wrote: post #2

Meanwhile in China we have 9-9-6. The US needs to wake up to whether it wants to stay in the game.

They dont expect you to be working the whole time though. If you spend time learning, or working on personal projects whos the wiser?

Then your employer owns your personal projects.

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

#197

Post by throwaway9870 » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 5:00 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…

Where were you a graduate student? I was a Stanford EE grad student for 8 years in the 90s (first year was for masters). You know why I was there so long? I loved it. Students returned from industry and said same thing: don't be in a hurry to get out. I worked for a hard-ass prof, they did not let anything slip. The hours I worked were insane, on one project it was literally every waking hour for almost a year. It was worth it to me, I would do it again. But I understand it isn't for everyone. After I graduated, I went to work for a chip startup and after a few months my boss made the comment that he was amazed how well trained I was. But that should not have been a surprise. I had a digital signal processing class with Teresa Meng (founder of Atheros), processor design with Hennessy (designed MIPS architecture), VLSI with Horowitz (founder of Rambus), OS programming with Mendel Rosenblum (founder VMWare), etc. I remember when Jerry and David got their funding to start a company with their little web directory. If that kind of environment doesn't excite you, maybe Stanford isn't for you.

As far as debt goes, I paid for my masters myself with loans (~29k) and the PhD was funded by my advisor with a stipend.

My strongest recommendation is two things: make sure you know why you are there and you are doing it for the right reasons, second, be part of a grad student environment. Don't go it alone. You are all in the same boat and can related to each other. We had a great research group, not everyone else did, spend time to build those relationships with other students or it will be more difficult than it needs to be.

But that isn't just advice for grad school, it really applies to most difficult challenges that we take on in life.

EDIT: one thing I see in other posts I want to address, you do have free time in grad school. Not always, but you do have it. I skied at Tahoe, hiked in Yosemite, toured Napa, visited Carmel & Monterey, went to Half Moon Bay many times, travelled to LA and San Diego. Also, get involved in some sport, physical excursion can really help reduce stress. I played a lot of b-ball in grad school.

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

#198

Post by codekilla » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

I've worked in academia for several years, and it's been somewhat discouraging. I've certainly noticed the pressure put on grad students--not fun. I'm someone who is deeply passionate about science/research and have tried to think of things that could be done outside academia to contribute basic scientific research--the hope is more team science and not labs organized around PI feudalships. Anyway, I've been working on https://www.eonias.org/ on the side (still fleshing it out), if anyone is interested in collaborating on writing a grant, please reach out.

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

#199

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

mjburgess wrote: post #64

_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…

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.

[deleted]

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

#200

Post by mattkrause » Sun, Mar 17, 2019, 5:09 PM UTC

james-mcelwain wrote: post #184

mattkrause wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Along with the personal cost, this instability can't be great for producing good science either. My lab has learned and lost some techniques over and over again, as people churn through. If it were up to me, I'd convert some MS/PhD slots into staff scientist roles with longer contracts. I think you could probably do this in a way that increases productivity, and makes more people more happy to boot.

One of my friends who is a graduate student complains about the difficulty of collaborating with other scientists who lack strong coding skills. They are so focused on the science that there's no time to learn or practice good code hygiene. If often wondered why labs don't hire regular developers to increase research veliocity. I have no interest in research, but would happily work in the context of academia doing th…

This has become a little more common lately, but probably still not as common as it should be.

Part of the problem is funding. You can get 3-4 grad students or ~2 postdocs for the price of a developer. Plus there are lots of existing mechanisms for funding them: training grants, internal and external fellowships, working as a TA, etc. A developer would have to get paid out of research funding, which is already pretty limited. The National Cancer Institute had a program for staff scientists, and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative just launched one targeting microscopy, but there aren’t tons of options, especially not for open-ended roles.

There’s been some adverse selection too. I briefly had a programmer but it rapidly became obvious he was working for an academic salary because no one else in their right m8ns would pay him more. I ended up rewriting all of that code, and despite this, my boss keeps sending me fresh-faced undergrads “to do the coding.” I guess the idea that you get what you pay for hasn’t sunk in yet. That said, we’ve also had a few that were excellent and were interested in the projects; I think they were both hired as part of some complicated arrangement where their spouses were recruited for more traditional academic roles.

Another part of it is that code quality hasn’t been a huge priority. That is finally starting to change, but most labs have a lot of code that was unceremoniously promoted from “one-off prototype” to “critical infrastructure” without too many changes. (This, incidentally, gives the lie to peoples’ obsession with YAGNI).

Finally, if anyone does need a neuro/ML themed developer, I call dibs :-) Seriously though, I completely agree that we have have more specialized roles (dev, technical writer/editor) and I think that whatever place manages to make this work could become a research powerhouse. Some of the bigger institutes (the Broad, Janlia Farms, etc) do have some jobs like this already.