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Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?

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Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?

#161

Post by angrais »

chriskanan wrote: post #82
loceng wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's certainly true, but it isn't every week a student has something for me to read. What professors at research universities do: 1. Mentor PhD students (and often also MS and BS students) 2. Write papers and edit student papers 3. Write grant proposals 4. Deal with a lot of administrative issues 5. University service committees - some are on multiple some are on none (admissions, COVID response, undergraduate prog…

Then of course most of your list (besides 5) is also what PhD students do, at least in the UK.

Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?

#162

Post by cycomanic »

chriskanan wrote: post #23

I'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…

As a professor (well associate professor actually), I can second pretty much everything you have said.

One additional thing I want to mention is, that the job of the supervisor is not only to guide the student to the PhD (i.e. the mentor role), but also to ensure that the student actually has done sufficient work to earn the PhD (the role of a gatekeeper). Which can lead to the situation, that the student thinks they should be graduating now, but the supervisor is still asking for more work. Now there are some supervisors that are abusing the gatekeeper role. Furthermore even for supervisors that are not consciously abusing the role there is also a conflict of interest, because it is in the supervisors interest to keep successful students as long as possible. So this is difficult to manage.

Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?

#164

Post by bananaquant »

weregiraffe wrote: post #158
mathattack wrote: post #156

I think you should look at the incentives... In the academic world, tenured professors are rarely fired for bad behavior. Their primary incentive is to create grad students who cite their work. (“Expand on the path they’ve laid”). This means they can tune out or abuse anyone not part of their citation factory with relatively little cost. As long as there is a ready supply of new students each year they are fine. In t…

>Their primary incentive is to create grad students who cite their work. That's not true, the primary incentive is to generate new articles, which allow you to get more grants, which allow you to hire more grad students who generate even more articles. And the primary incentive of the grad student is to write as many articles as well, because good articles are what will allow them to advance in the academy. So really…

From my experience, this alignment of interests is more tricky than it seems.

Sure, the overall goal is to publish as many papers as possible, but their topic more often than not is solely determined by the advisor. Those papers may not end up helping the student to get a job upon graduation, unless their topic is one of the more exciting ones and the universities are actively hiring new faculty to pursue such things further. Tenured advisors are often not concerned about this issue since they already have their job.

It is also likely that the papers are backed by the current funding received by the advisor. It is exceedingly difficult for a former student who has become a new faculty member to get funding for similar projects because they would literally have to compete with their advisor for it. Some of the more cordial professors that I've seen would actually co-write future grants with their former students, so that everyone could benefit. But oftentimes I've seen professor impose a ceiling on a student's career aspirations, so they would be eliminated from competing for the funding in the long run. Regrettably, this often happens to bright ambitious students, who have made a mistake of revealing their ability to function independently early on.

Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?

#165

Post by throwaway89fra »

Im American and work in an office (remote during Covid) where Im only one of a few Americans. The rest of my co-workers all came from Indian .. they worked hard, appreciate their job, their job is attached to staying in the US and thus they have to do very good work. Indeed, all of us do so and the best part all without working with entitled cry baby drama (some narcissistic) Americans. There's either a few or more of such who make work more stressful then it ever needs to be cause of their insecurities, entitlement and narcissism. I am so thankful to be working where I do and away from entitled Americans who some take for granted what they have and cause a done of unneeded drama and stress to those around them.

Also, as you get older all people chill out ... dont live in their head/live out their insecurities.

Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?

#166

Post by irateswami »

There's a whole lot of bootlicking boomers on this post...

Abuse in industry is SHOCKINGLY common, and tolerated, as long as those bad actors can make contributions to a project. Thankfully, many companies are starting to become less and less tolerant of these types of people, and I make it clear when I interview that I have no time or tolerance for workplace bullies or brilliant jerks. I've left jobs because of bullying, and will continue to, because I refuse to be disrespected.

Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?

#167

Post by cycomanic »

lvice wrote: post #35

I believe that abuse is more common in academia. A relationship between a supervisor and his direct reports, both in academia and industry, is impacted by the power that the supervisor can exert. The relationship between a supervisor and his PhD students is not the same as a manager and his direct reports in industry because: - The students are invested and committed into their PhDs for several years. It is much hard…

I think you have a couple of common misconceptions. I'm not saying they necessarily change your conclusions, but they should be pointed out nonetheless.

>- The reward of a job is, for the most part, the monthly paycheck. A PhD is a long-term investment that must be completed in order to have value. An employee that quits a job after one year is not an issue, and it is considered "experience", but quitting a PhD half way through can be perceived as a failure.

Several people already mentioned "you can just quit your job". I think this is with a limited view of software developers. Yes, if you are a software developer the job market is such that you can easily quit. The situation might be completely different in some other fields, and loosing the job can be a much more existential threat.

>- Professors in academia have almost unlimited decision power in how they manage their budget and their reports. It can almost feels like an absolute monarchy.

I don't know the situation in the US, but I can tell you that in the countries I know about this is simply not the case. The amount of bureaucracy that you have to jump through to spend money as a professor (often money that you brought into the university through grants) is mindboggling. I know junior staff in industry who have more power to make buying decisions than professors. I know at one university every purchase over $50000 had to be signed off by the dean of the faculty (this was maybe 500-1000 staff and 30 000 students) over $150000 it had to go to the president. For anything bought by a professor, even low dollar amounts, it had to be signed off by the head of department. Hiring (PhD students, or even interns) needs to be approved by HR ...

>All of these points, combined with a bad supervisor, are fantastic fuel for anxiety and unhappiness. There is no worse thing that, after so much work, feeling that you have no control over your situation and you have no margin to improve it, without significant additional sacrifices.

While bad supervisors are definitely a thing, generally the PhD is a situation which can be fantastic fuel for anxiety and unhappiness. You work on something that you are responsible for, which is not guaranteed to work and coming to the end of your time, you might realise you don't have enough to show. In many way it can be very similar to starting a business, there can be incredible highs, but also incredible lows.

Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?

#168

Post by sideshowb »

benrbray wrote: post #102
sokoloff wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree very strongly with your second sentence (and your last sentence). Do you see those as being meaningfully different from an advisor guiding an already-driven grad student?

> The advisor doesn’t pull them through the program; the student pushes and the advisor guides. I think we are in agreement about the role of an advisor, but I sense that maybe we disagree about how active a role the advisor can be expected to take. (forgive me below for exaggerating a bit to make a point -- I recognize we are literally arguing semantics :) ) When I hear "the student pushes and the advisor guides", i…

> Just by virtue of having received a PhD, one automatically becomes qualified to advise,

Minor comment but in the university I work for you can't be a primary supervisor until you've seen a student through to completion as secondary advisor. I'm not sure how widespread this requirement is though.

Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?

#169

Post by Aachen »

I find it curious to see a university student asking in a manner that invites almost exclusively anecdotal evidence. I'm not sure those answers will be to accurate unless someone finds an actual survey about this. Looking through the top 20 or so comments, I don't see any statistics or surveys mentioned.

I wonder if an HN poll, or tallying the current comments, might be better than nothing or if the result would be misleading and biased (HN is obviously not a general population sample) to the point where it's more harmful than useful.

Re: Ask HN: Is abuse from supervisors as common in industry as in academia?

#170

Post by namelosw »

I believe the biggest one is sunk cost which you have already mentioned.

> Among my late-stage PhD friends, it feels like 80% are unhappy

The industry is much better, not because it's inherently less abusive and there are still a lot of abusive employers, but because people can easily leave without too much sunk cost and go find non-abusive workplaces.

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