T-Shaped People and Academia
bastian.rieck.me
T-Shaped People and Academia
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Re: T-Shaped People and Academia
#2What's the point in even dividing people between such silly categories? I understand the context within a metaphor but when the author starts saying things like, 'every successful team I have been on had a t-shaped person' , it just seems absurdly reductive.
Re: T-Shaped People and Academia
#3What's the point in even dividing people between such silly categories? I understand the context within a metaphor but when the author starts saying things like, 'every successful team I have been on had a t-shaped person' , it just seems absurdly reductive.
T-types are defined as those that increase a team's agility. Saying the definition each time would be cumbersome,so we package the connotation up into an idiom and move on.
Generalizations can make for identification of useful patterns. Sometimes, the identification is pareidolia. Sometimes, it works. Tools of science and philosophy help us move that along.
Re: T-Shaped People and Academia
#4What's the point in even dividing people between such silly categories? I understand the context within a metaphor but when the author starts saying things like, 'every successful team I have been on had a t-shaped person' , it just seems absurdly reductive.
T-types are defined as those that increase a team's agility. Saying the definition each time would be cumbersome,so we package the connotation up into an idiom and move on. Generalizations can make for identification of useful patterns. Sometimes, the identification is pareidolia. Sometimes, it works. Tools of science and philosophy help us move that along. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
> T-types are defined as those that increase a team's agility.
…according to some model of the work which may be entirely inaccurate, I think is the point the parent is making.
Re: T-Shaped People and Academia
#5Interesting. If academia prioritizes “I shaped” is it fair to say that industry prioritizes “T shapers”? That’s certainly been my experience. Although industry does want deep expertise in one area.
I’ve heard a lot of companies explicitly recruit T-shaped individuals. But I’ve never heard the opposite.
Re: T-Shaped People and Academia
#6Professors are rewarded for publications and almost nothing else (at least from what I've seen at the school I'm apart of), so because of it all effort goes towards publications, and this passes down to students and the folks they hope to hire. Its also unfortunate any work that is not done towards a publication is essentially invisible to everyone within that system. Even things like teaching are considered second class to publications (very unfortunate consequence).
That being said this is from my experience and am unsure how it is at other schools.
Re: T-Shaped People and Academia
#7>Setting up a suitable build system. Writing some unit tests for the code. Creating a skeleton of the models that are to be developed. Designing nice mock-ups or logos. Creating animations or graphics for presentations.
I actively advise students against joining labs like this and consider the whole enterprise unethical. I raise concerns whenever I'm reviewing grant proposals by folks who run their labs like this. I've successful nuked funding proposals because the work plan included language like this.
Want a devops engineer? Hire a devops engineer ("systems scientist" or so on). Want a graphic designer? Hire a graphic designer.
But DO NOT lie to impressionable youth by telling them that you are admitting them into a PhD program to be your apprentice on a research project and then proceed to pay them $30K/yr (with marginal benefits) for uninteresting and unexceptional engineering and design work. They are taking a huge financial opportunity cost to work on uniquely high leverage problems. Maintaining your research group's build system is not what they signed up for.
> ‘I’m a researcher, not a(n) X,’ with X∈ {software developer, designer, marketing person, artist, …}
Sure, but here's the rub. What does everything in that set have in common? They make at least 2x+ the average PhD student and have much better benefits.
If you want a "force multiplier" person in your lab, do your job: get a grant and pay a fair price for that sort of labor. PhD students are NOT ∈ {software developer, designer, marketing person, artist, …}. If they were, you'd be paying quite a bit more and/or getting far less exceptional candidates.
Re: T-Shaped People and Academia
#8What's the point in even dividing people between such silly categories? I understand the context within a metaphor but when the author starts saying things like, 'every successful team I have been on had a t-shaped person' , it just seems absurdly reductive.
T-types are defined as those that increase a team's agility. Saying the definition each time would be cumbersome,so we package the connotation up into an idiom and move on. Generalizations can make for identification of useful patterns. Sometimes, the identification is pareidolia. Sometimes, it works. Tools of science and philosophy help us move that along. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
> T-types are defined as those that increase a team's agility.
That's not how they are defined in the article or the detailed definition it links to. The definitions there define traits of someone who may be able to increase the agility of a team depending on the team and what it is doing but the same could be said for most types of people yet not all are T-shaped and vice versa.
Re: T-Shaped People and Academia
#9Core problem is you generally will fail a PhD if all you are is the middle author of lots of papers. Even worse if you are looking for an academic job afterwards.
Re: T-Shaped People and Academia
#10Professors are rewarded for publications and almost nothing else (at least from what I've seen at the school I'm apart of), so because of it all effort goes towards publications, and this passes down to students and the folks they hope to hire. Its also unfortunate any work that is not done towards a publication is essentially invisible to everyone within that system. Even things like teaching are considered second c…
Well, early in their carriers they are rewarded for grants and supporting many grad students. It's problematic to not award tenure to a professor who is supporting 30 students. If they leave with their grants and only take a few (of the best) students, leaving the rest of the students in the lurch and very (rightfully?!) angry at the department dean/provost. Usually, some other means of supporting them is found since it's a little embarrassing otherwise.
After tenure, it seems like profs drop down to a manageable 4-7 students in the disciplines I studied in. You can do that on 1-2 grants a year.
As others have previously mentioned it's a bit weird, because actually teaching is neither taught nor really supported by most research universities. It's often required, but not all that advantageous to do well.