I think there’s a default assumption in academia that students bring the motivation and perspiration to their work. The advisor doesn’t pull them through the program; the student pushes and the advisor guides. My spouse and several friends have PhDs and I do not, so my exposure is secondhand, but when I hear that circle of friends/friends-of-friends complaining about poor advisors, I often hear details about the grad…
I’ve always wondered how people dismiss academic abuse. Now I know! It’s “cause the students are just lazy / expect to be told what to do”. Bullshit. My previous academic advisor would take out his aggressions and frustrations on his students. One specific instance, he began yelling at the lab because there were footprints on the couch - (I had taken a nap last night after finishing work, whoops). “Whose responsibili…
Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?
91–100 of 226 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?
#92Man, neglect is far too common. In one company, I only got promotion after I told I was resigning. My manager didn’t care about professional development, he even made false promises multiple times.
Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?
#93When I was in grad school, I had more than one tenured professor tell me they would have never been able to survive if they had to do what we had to do to get a tenure track job. One of the tenured professors was a terrible human being and actively mocked the conditions her students were in and how nice she had it when they were a student and on the tenure track.
I left academia and have no regrets. I was on an H1-B and was trapped in that situation for a while, but even then I was getting paid decently and not the other way around, where I got $1100/month to do the work a tenured professor wouldn't do even though they were paid a lot more.
Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?
#94If you’re going into industry from academia, I’d suggest doing some deep homework on how to work with different corporate cultures. Be aware of the toxic behaviors people display and have documented. Learn email etiquette. Be prepared to make every conversation an email either to just yourself or (for it to really stick) to everyone in the conversation.
Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?
#95I think there’s a default assumption in academia that students bring the motivation and perspiration to their work. The advisor doesn’t pull them through the program; the student pushes and the advisor guides. My spouse and several friends have PhDs and I do not, so my exposure is secondhand, but when I hear that circle of friends/friends-of-friends complaining about poor advisors, I often hear details about the grad…
Some people fail to grasp the idea that the world does not always work surround them. And they have a very different definition of "abuse" than others, which basically goes to: you are abusing me if you don't actively take care of my emotions. For those people, it is much easier to find "abuses". Academic supervisors are not your personal friends. They have no interest in observing your emotions, because they have a…
This is probably the only falsifiable part I could find from your comment as the rest seems to pertain to unfalsifiable speculation about "kids these days" -- so with that said, I'll say that academic supervisors and especially business managers /do/ have a very specific interest in observing your emotions if they're remotely competent.
Human personnel burnout and underperformance risk is extraordinarily expensive. One approach to risk management is to simply delegate it to the subordinate, and if anything goes wrong, fire that subordinate. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't work very well in practice. For one, the agency to actually address the root culprit of burnout and/or underperformance usually lies disproportionately with leadership. It has to, otherwise, hierarchical human organizations could never logistically scale.
But what that means is that you're flat out wrong. Not only do business managers have a vested interest in managing the emotions of their subordinates, but it's ostensibly one of their strongest interests because it's one of their most dangerous risks. You realize this when you begin to accrue experience either being bitten by this first hand, or watching your peers become bitten by this. And you know the old saying. Once bitten, twice shy.
Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?
#96I think the flexibility of academe allows opportunities for abuse. I've been in academe more than industry, but from what I can tell industry has clearer expectations, goals and structures in place. An academic supervisor is free to create his/her own arbitrary lab rules. Quitting a lab is also not as simple since you'll likely still need to stay in the same university and have a degree at stake. What pisses me most…
Recognition of my work, at least earlier in my graduate program, was actually one of the few things I've been happy with -- good supervisors will be very clear in crediting their students for implementing projects (early in the students' grad careers) and figuring out how to extend projects and drive them forward (later in the students' grad careers). For instance, when giving conference talks, my PI and others will…
The vast majority of my work will go completely uncredited (both inside and outside of academia) unless someone inside academia that I might want to work with happened to see my mentors talk. If I leave academia, I have no 'proof of work' for anything outside my paper and thesis (no one will read it). I can't claim authorship on very important 500K+ grants that I practically wrote and won myself, but others take credit for it. Those don't go on my CV/resume, and if they did then people looking could look up the grant and see I am not in fact listed as an author or contact. I've come to realize that this is a huge problem.
Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?
#97Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?
#98I've had probably a dozen line managers and a couple of dozen superiors I've had to deal with on a very regular basis over the course of my career (a smidge over 20 years).
Of them only one, who happened to be a line manager, was habitually abusive. Two others were periodically abusive, but in general not (say once or twice per month), and perhaps three more had very occasional snarly moments/blow-ups.
I've worked at, or contracted for, around a dozen companies. Perhaps four of them had a management culture I'd describe as toxic: two explicitly so, two in more underhanded and mendacious ways. Overall if I had to choose between those two evils I'd probably pick the former, although both basically suck. Of the four companies in question in only three of the cases was there any discernible impact on my own happiness and wellbeing. No company has been perfect and all have at times manifested some amount of dysfunction in management and process - I think that's just normal no matter where you work.
Almost everywhere I've worked where there are more than about 30 people some element of politics comes into play. Some people play politics more than others, but it's always there. It's also a natural consequence of getting a group of people working together who all have different ambitions, beliefs and values, interests, and motivations. Not everybody pulls in exactly the same direction all of the time.
Also, if you are ambitious you will always reach a point where you are "held back" for whatever reason. Often that's because there are only so many more senior jobs to go round, and the company only has so much money to pay wages, although you might hear all kinds of other reasons given. If that's a problem (and sometimes it will be, if you're ambitious) my advice to you would be to find a new job. I've made the mistake of staying at the odd place too long before, but don't do this because - depending on your temperament - you may find it hard to avoid becoming bitter and disillusioned. If that happens it will hamper your search for new employment.
Industry pay is probably better than academia but you have to understand that to some extent dysfunctionality and asshole behaviour are part of life. You can (and should) get out of bad situations and move yourself into better situations, but you can never guarantee you won't have to deal with a bad situation again.
Industry is absolutely not homogeneous and a lot of it comes down to who your manager is, and your own preferences and biases. E.g., if you're a "just get stuff done" kind of person you may find working for a giant megacorp kind of aggravating. OTOH if you like things to be orderly you may find the more cowboy/everybody muck in and turn their hand to anything ambience of a smaller growing company (not even necessarily a start-up) to be not entirely to your liking. And of course there's a whole spectrum in between.
Some people say that you'll have more control over creating a great place to work if you start your own company. That's true to some extent. However, when there's a downturn, pandemic, or your business simply doesn't get enough traction to keep going in its current form, you'll find you have to start making hard decisions. That doesn't necessarily make you a bad person, but it will mean you'll make decisions that affect other peoples' lives in ways they understandably won't like.
There are no guarantees about the future: the past 12 months should have taught all of us that.
With all of that being said, and whatever you decide, I wish you the best, and urge you to always be seeking work that delivers some amount of joy/satisfaction (it'll never be perfect though!).
Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?
#99I'm a professor and have worked in industry. Let me break down the issues a bit on the education side, first. Almost always by year 4+ most PhD students are fatigued and starting to get very weary. I was definitely one of them, and at times I did feel like my supervisor wasn't helping my career development or giving me enough mentoring. He is a wonderful, kind, and creative person and he spent 1-2 hours per week with…
Is 1-2 hours per week really that much? I suppose they also spend additional time reading what you've written, along with revisions, etc?
Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
many academic supervisors are also just lazy to do what is part of their job tho, and they prefer focusing on the interesting part.
First, even if you define taking care of graduate students as part of their job and they fail to do so, it does not mean they are abusing their graduate students. Second, the expectation of coddling is a very very recent phenomenon. Graduate students are usually expected to be functioning adults, not teenagers. Absorbing negativity and handling them by yourself is usually expected to functioning adults. Third, academ…
I think the expectation of (and complaints about!) coddling are actually historically very well trodden. There's a great reddit thread about this [1] which details historic complaints from the Greco-Roman era all the way to the present.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/7btv14/the_more_th...