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T-Shaped People and Academia

bastian.rieck.me

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Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#31

Post by Topolomancer »

throwawayarnty wrote: post #28

His example of a T-shaped person doing T-shaped work is: >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. This makes me think the author is a fairly I-shaped person, because those examples look like one area (i.e., build systems, unit tests, sketchi…

Author here---I was thinking about actual design work or working on the 'presentation' aspects of a publication. For me, the development of new experimental techniques and new ML models is more or less the same. Could you elaborate?

(but you are spot on: the breadth of my skills depends on your Zoom level...I am only a lowercase t at best :D)

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#32

Post by Topolomancer »

mehrdada wrote: post #9

Core 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.

Author here---that's exactly one of the issues I encountered. I am making a conscious effort to move beyond this state of affairs, but it takes more than one person to enact change.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#33

Post by drawkbox »

mrVentures wrote: post #2

What'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.

From the footnotes:

> There is a veritable zoo of characters of the alphabet, trying to capture the elusive properties of people out there in the real world. It should be understood that I do not even for a second think that one pithy letter is sufficient to describe a real person; all of these characterisations are merely hinting towards certain properties. As always in real life, there are many different shades on a spectrum to consider here

T-shaped is somewhat generalized because over time people like this become more. Overall they are great for the start of projects and long term because they do what is necessary to ship products and projects.

> Over time, one might think that a T-shaped person thus turns into a comb-like pattern. As far as I understand, this has not been studied yet by ethnographers. Maybe the term ‘serial experts’ would also been appropriate, except for its unfortunate similarity to the criminal world.

The author states T-shaped people become the glue or "scaffolding" for a successful project.

> Ts as multipliers. Throughout my career, the most impactful projects always had a T-shaped person onboard. This person would usually not be an expert in the subject matter, but would be able to provide the direly-needed scaffolding and foundation of a project that is all too often ignored in the initial phase, until it comes back later on with full swing to wreak havoc

In my experience, T-shaped people can and do become experts of product, these are people more willing to make things work and ship projects over just focusing on their own goals or field of study solely. T-shaped people become product experts as they have seen more areas or earlier parts of the whole.

T-shaped people can take a project from start to finish due to them being product/market experts from their involvement in more than just one area. Startups seem to operate and start best with T-shaped. In game development, good game projects and interactive projects especially Ts are prevalent.

In game development for instance, Valve prefers T-shaped employees, generalists in many areas but deeper knowledge in one more more areas, people willing to help ship.[1] Even if later you have to get more depth in certain areas like rendering, networking, animation, audio or even branding/marketing, Ts are the trails that form that can later be upgraded or refined if needed. Ts are the root of self-organizing teams and companies like Valve.

Valve has a good take on the balance for T-shaped people that help ship games [1]. These types area willing to wear different hats even if it isn't in the area they want to be their main focus. The mere understanding of those areas from experience in them, can make their main focus more finely tuned to work and mesh with the product.

> We value “T-shaped” people.

> That is, people who are both generalists (highly skilled at a broad set of valuable things—the top of the T) and also experts (among the best in their field within a narrow discipline—the vertical leg of the T). This recipe is important for success at Valve. We often have to pass on people who are very strong generalists without expertise, or vice versa. An expert who is too narrow has difficulty collaborating. A generalist who doesn’t go deep enough in a single area ends up on the margins, not really contributing as an individual

Too much specialization can be bad for projects and people, especially early on. Though by definition Ts would have a one or more deeper knowledge skillsets and can bounce between I-shaped and T-shaped without issue.

For startups, games, apps, content, even entrepreneurship or sole-proprietors to small companies, T-shaped is the way it has to be in most cases. Everyone is somewhat T-shaped, it is a sliding scale.

For academics at the Masters/Phd level, being T-shaped may actually be harmful or even hidden on applications because the nature of academics is the deeper I-shaped focus, you are trying to further the deeper detail of some subject. I bet lots of more broad generalists leave this off their descriptions/applications because of the bias against it. Everyone is T-shaped, just some are more willing to do different roles and wear different hats. It is a balance of being a leader in their chosen subject, but also wanting to get their foot in the door. A T-shaped person can be an expert still, and in many areas, but stating too much generalization may lead to bias in academia as this article summarizes.

[1] Valve Employee Handbook (page 46) https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/apps/valve/Valve_NewEmployee...

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#34

Post by Topolomancer »

zomglings wrote: post #23

This article points out yet ANOTHER way in which modern academia is rendering itself obsolete. Let academia die the miserable death it deserves. Let us instead focus our efforts on building its replacements rather than participate in this research funding gangbang of society. Because, make no mistake, we are all paying for this garbage. For replacements: 1. We need systems meant to EDUCATE goddamnit. (e.g. Khan Acade…

Author here; thanks for this interesting take! What makes you arrive at the conclusion that the research funding is garbage? I am seeing this more as a problem in terms of providing hires with the wrong incentives.

The replacements you mention fall exactly into that category: depending on where you are working, your teaching/outreach/educational aspects might actually count against you when it comes to advancing your career in academia. That is certainly a problem.

The second point I don't entirely get---the grants I applied for all demand public research, for instance open-access publications, open source software etc. (European perspective, YMMV)

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#35

Post by throwawayjd »

throwawaygh wrote: post #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'…

I'm such a `force multiplier` as you mentioned. I'm in the gap between genetic programming, machine learning. It's very hard to have skills across biology, math and programming, and unfortunately, I'm someone who has to have all three to join my prestigious lab, whilst my peers are significantly less skilled than me. I feel grad school is kind of a scam for us immigrants because locals who have good recommendation letters can go to the same lab with much fewer skills. I do resonate with what you say and wonder if I should quit my PhD to go to industry.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#36

Post by nexuist »

zomglings wrote: post #25
nexuist wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where resources are assigned on merit No Child Left Behind was supposed to implement this; the problem that quickly became obvious is that schools that were already doing well got more money because their students had higher scores and schools that were struggling actually lost funding because their scores were garbage. This contributed to the gap widening instead of closing. It's difficult to figure out how to dev…

I did not know that about No Child Left Behind. If you have some links, would really appreciate them. I will look myself, as well. Sounds like a great bit of history to learn from. I do believe that academics have come up with the right approach to determine the value of research - anonymized peer review. The problem is, there are always signals that leak through that veil of anonymity that help you determine who the…

https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/library/blog/873

> Perhaps the most adverse unintended consequence of NCLB is that it creates incentives for schools to rid themselves of students who are not doing well, producing higher scores at the expense of vulnerable students' education. Studies have found that sanctioning schools based on average student scores leads schools to retain students in grade so that grade-level scores will look better (although these students ultimately do less well and drop out at higher rates), exclude low-scoring students from admissions and encourage such students to transfer or drop out.

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/10/27/443110755/no-chil...

> Ahn found a very different story among schools where lots of students were struggling. For these, often poorer schools, the law was like quicksand. Donna Brown is director of federal program monitoring and support for North Carolina's public schools, and she saw the quicksand firsthand.

> "When I came to the department in 2004," Brown remembers, "there were nine schools in the state that were identified for some level of improvement sanction. And, by 2008-9, there were 521."

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#37

Post by throwawayjd »

mehrdada wrote: post #12
throwawaygh wrote: post #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'…

> 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. Not necessarily an opportunity cost. Often they are paid in a more valuable commodity, i.e. visas.

That's definitely not the case, given the long queues (and low chances) for H1B and high barrier for O1 visas. I might as well get an L1 working in industry after all.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#38

Post by throwawayarnty »

Topolomancer wrote: post #31
throwawayarnty wrote: post #28

His example of a T-shaped person doing T-shaped work is: >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. This makes me think the author is a fairly I-shaped person, because those examples look like one area (i.e., build systems, unit tests, sketchi…

Author here---I was thinking about actual design work or working on the 'presentation' aspects of a publication. For me, the development of new experimental techniques and new ML models is more or less the same. Could you elaborate? (but you are spot on: the breadth of my skills depends on your Zoom level...I am only a lowercase t at best :D)

Nice to hear from you!

I guess for me it is assumed that one who does the work can also communicate the work in various forms (text, formal presentations, informal discussions). Perhaps it requires separate skills? But to me they sound like a continuation along the same "I".

When one hears a nice talk from (what I would call) an "I" researcher, it is usually communicated well, but the techniques and scientific question can be narrow.

When I hear a nice talk from a "T" researcher, it's usually someone who combines seemingly disparate fields (e.g. physics + sociology) together to solve a scientific question.

I guess either way I assume "I" and "T" researchers are both able to communicate their work. Perhaps that's where I misunderstood your post.

Doing wet-lab experiments and developing in-silico ML models are completely different and often times labs are often focused on only one or the other. I imagine a T-shaped person excels in wet-lab experiments to generate quality data as well as in analysis/modeling skills to put the data into a quantitative framework.

I also want to make it clear that I don't consider "I" or "T" any better than the others. We need both in science to progress. Perhaps our definitions of "I" and "T" differ slightly.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#39

Post by Topolomancer »

ironmagma wrote: post #19
mrVentures wrote: post #2

What'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.

Everyone is T-shaped, so this verbiage is baffling. There’s not a single person alive who only knows about, say, dogs and nothing else.

Author here---fully agree with you and alluded to that in the footnotes. Of course, a single letter is insufficient to capture human variation. The 'T' is taken to mean researchers that are not only willing to become an expert in a single topic of their choice, but that are capable of collaborating across disciplines, or investing additional resources in the things that are not commonly 'rewarded' in academia but still necessary (foundational work behind the scenes, or the community-building that another comment mentioned).

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#40

Post by Topolomancer »

mrVentures wrote: post #2

What'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.

Author here---I agree with the silliness of these categories, but I found no better way of phrasing this in an abstract manner. In the teams I mentioned in the article, it was super helpful to have that one colleague who knew a bit about software development, about running code in an HPC environment, about automated testing etc. Yes, these skills might be commonplace somewhere else, but in academia, they are typically not. Moreover, there are no incentives around for people to improve their knowledge in these tangential or broader areas. They might even be 'punished' for it later on since their research output ostensibly suffers.
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