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T-Shaped People and Academia

bastian.rieck.me

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Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#61

Post by hectormalot »

BeetleB wrote: post #27
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'…

The counter is that only a small minority of people who graduate with a PhD get to do research in their fields after graduating. It's a disservice to them if they don't gain skills beyond research. It's why many PhDs can't get jobs in teams like mine - they don't have the skills of people with lesser degrees, and while we're not against training new candidates, we don't want to pay them large sums of money when the g…

True. I’m hiring lots of data scientists and have become somewhat disappointed with the phd profiles. It happens too often that they lack the broader skills to be successful, vs people who did do “non-core” activities and are now more well rounded.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#62

Post by jarenmf »

I'm familiar with the type of people you're describing, they are curios and creative and constantly looking for ways to improve things, these people are very rare (particularly in academia?) and really not easy to find. I don't think these criteria you mentioned will help since most of them are not necessary personal qualities, they are rather a group culture. If there are established good practices in the group (at minimum using version control, doing regular backups) new people will follow. I agree with you about the absurdity of the number of publications factor giving that the asymmetry between the values of publications.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#63

Post by tgv »

periheli0n wrote: post #57

It will be near impossible to get tenure if one develops T-shaped qualities. You simply cannot amass the number of grants and papers necessary when dancing on several academic parties, or even doing devops. I've seen too many PhD students doing that and then hitting an academic dead end in their first postdoc or directly after graduating. It's great for the PI if they have T-shaped students on their team, but they mu…

> It will be near impossible to get tenure if one develops T-shaped qualities.

That's completely true in my experience, and not only because of the "lack of depth". Interdisciplinary work is simply not rewarded, because your papers are only partially recognized in the department you apply to. I worked in a cog.sci/comp.sci mixture with the focus on language (which adds linguistics), but the psychology departments didn't accept CS conference publications. That my principal paper got a pretty decent citation score for that field, and that some of the follow-up papers including experiments didn't do bad either, didn't mean anything to the CS department: they simply don't care about the topic, and nor "Cognition," nor "Cerebral Cortex" featured on their impact lists.

That said, I think the article's examples (setting up a build system, designing nice mock-ups or logos, creating animations or graphics for presentations) are not T-shaped academic skills, at all. Creating presentations is something everyone has to learn, the rest is offloading support work on PhDs. I've got an idea: perhaps they can do the teaching as well. That's a good T-skill. And do lab support. And get coffee, because you know, so much breadth. No, that's pure exploitation of, exactly as you call it:

> valuable, lowly-paid and highly motivated people that they made a bad career choice by starting a PhD.

PhD programs should only be allowed when there's a guarantee of a worthy curriculum, and sufficient supervision, and support. There'll be less PhDs, but that might even be beneficial.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#64

Post by zwaps »

Topolomancer wrote: post #46
BeetleB wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being based in European academia salaries for Ph.D. students and other personnel are more or less fixed And this may depend where in Europe, but they get paid more than in the US, and also tend to get full benefits. At least those that I knew in Denmark/Belgium were. They were not even classified as students, but as full time employees. Doing PhD research was their job.

Yes, precisely! And I should stress that the students I hire as PhD students are hired as exactly that. No strings attached, no additional duties, etc. They are free to focus on their research. My point in the article was more to put a finger on the fact that there is 'core work' (papers, papers, papers!!!) in academia and 'non-core work.' The latter is rewarded less, in my experience, even though it's a prerequisite…

Your answers feel like you are engaging in cognitive dissonance.

On the one hand, you recognize in your article that "non-core" work is not rewarded in academia. In particular, however, the situation is dire for current PhD students. Getting into a PhD program is easy compared to getting an academic job (even - or especially - in the EU) with at least some job security. Further, you probably know that most PhDs lack the knowledge, experience and ability to accurately judge their chances on the future job market with any accuracy.

On the other hand, your replies indicate that you are following the "traditional" European research hierarchy, where the PhD student does years of "non-core" work for the Professor, ultimately ends up with less publications. This leads to issues competing internationally, a chain of short term contracts, post-docs or adjunct positions and finally, many leaving academia (or at least the EU). Which, by the way, is a real problem.

In European academia, we are all aware of these traditional hierarchical sentiments. At each university, there are stories about the Professor who said something like: "Your first research ideas belong to me", or Professors who actively resist the establishment of a stipend-based PhD program with the argument that "Someone (the PhDs) has to do the work at the institute!".

Now, there are probably countries that do better than others. Your state might mandate that PhD students get a salary and benefits, but all that is worth little if they end up in a bad condition after 3-6 years of doing their PhD.

And here, your reply here worries me. No, you do not hire PhDs to *work* for you. You hire them to train them to be researchers and to collaborate on that. Next to publishing and teaching, as a Professor, you are responsible for enabling these PhD students to have a successful career. More than in any other career, it is YOU, the advisor, who ends up making or breaking the future of a human being.

The thought that PhDs are merely hired workers who have to work through "menial, non core" work before they are allowed to get to their research, is one of the main reasons why academic research in the EU is doing so badly compared to other regions in the world.

In the interest of your future PhD students, I implore you to consider how much impact you really have on their lives!

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#65

Post by ramraj07 »

BeetleB wrote: post #27
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'…

The counter is that only a small minority of people who graduate with a PhD get to do research in their fields after graduating. It's a disservice to them if they don't gain skills beyond research. It's why many PhDs can't get jobs in teams like mine - they don't have the skills of people with lesser degrees, and while we're not against training new candidates, we don't want to pay them large sums of money when the g…

What skills are you talking about? Git commit and unit testing? Not saying they’re insignificant skills but a competent PhD should be able to learn them quite fast (in a month) in a competent environment. I and many others did. The issue is that there are a large number of phds who are actually much dimmer than your average programmer, and you’re not differentiating them in the interviews.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#66

Post by rini17 »

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'…

Of course anything could be done in exploitative an unethical way but, I don't see such intent here.

There are good points already mentioned. I can add if you hire one person to write unit tests, another for graphics, another for models... then you suffer the overhead of coordinating them. Also, pure research work is often repetitive and drudgery, so being able to come up with cool logo or working on "uninteresting and unexceptional" tools that can be shared with other researchers can maintain the motivation.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#67

Post by throwawayjd »

Topolomancer wrote: post #44
throwawayjd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 le…

Author here---maybe you find my response to the parent post interesting. What you are describing is something I also experienced: a good name can open a lot of doors for you, and academia is certainly not as meritocratic as people might think it is. I read some anger and disenchantment in your comment. Feel free to reach out in order to get another perspective on your situation. In any case, without knowing the speci…

Indeed, thank you for your kind reply. I resonate hard with your first paragraph :)

I do feel anger sometimes, but after all they're pleasant folks to work with, and I feel I shouldn't blame them just because they're born in richer places than me. I'd probably still finish my PhD :) But I do admire your resolution to become a professor, as I have been nothing but impatient with teaching other people things I understand. Your blog does have many insights that are rare in academia, with so many people rushing to get more papers published. I hope you'd have a successful career as a professor.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#68

Post by throwawayjd »

mehrdada wrote: post #50
throwawayjd wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would be less than "definitely sure" about that. I know lots of folks firsthand whose primary motivation were that. This is obviously very country-dependent. If you are in a country with presence of say FAANG offices, sure you'd go for L1 or EB1C. Not everyone is that privileged. Not to mention during the Trump era, F1 visa was one of the only exempted ways to get your foot in the door for various countries. (There…

Thanks for mentioning EB2-NIW, I didn't know that before, and I'll definitely look into it. Regarding O1, one of the PhDs I admire most failed to get an O1 despite his success. I guess publishing papers in our fields is kind of hard and maybe some fields are more easy to get an O1 than others :)

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#69

Post by periheli0n »

Topolomancer wrote: post #29
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'…

Author here—thanks for these comments! I realise that this is a valid take, but it's not what I had in mind. Being based in European academia salaries for Ph.D. students and other personnel are more or less fixed (of course, going to industry, this is not the case). I certainly do not want to exploit students. My observation is that modern machine learning research entails so many additional moving parts (most, but n…

> I certainly do not want to exploit students.

Then you must tell them that when they do “non-core-work“ they are essentially wasting their time; at least if they intend to stay in academia.

Sure there is some technical housekeeping necessary to get research done and papers written. But it must be kept to an absolute minimum.

It is nice to have students who polish the web site or set up CI on GitHub. But these students will almost certainly have fewer research results to show at the end of their PhD, compared to their officemates who just focus 100% on their research.

I don’t like it either but it’s the painful truth. I’ve seen way too many PhD students wasting their time doing incredibly valuable work for the lab but failing to publish their own work. It‘s the responsibility of the PI to make it absolutely clear to those students what is happening and that they should focus on a career outside academia if they enjoy doing such things.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#70

Post by oriolid »

systemvoltage wrote: post #21
ironmagma wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah. T-shaped is part of the corporate BS lingo. It is meaningless and it has a shallow appeal of something more profound than it ostensibly is. If you really think about it, everyone is T shaped or more like a root of a tree with depth in various aspects of their career. It is also time dependent. In 2011, I knew a lot about computation fluid dynamics. Today, not so much. The whole thing is a fad. Unrelated but the…

The part about Elon Musk could just mean that he is not as T-shaped as he thinks he is.
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