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T-Shaped People and Academia

bastian.rieck.me

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Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#91

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Topolomancer wrote: post #40
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 typicall…

That person is usually called a "developer."

Historically, it's a technician's job.

Of course it's super useful to have someone on an experimental physics team who can personally machine metal, blow glass, and repair broken electronics, but generally you try to leave that to specialists.

The people who built CERN are not the same as the people who designed CERN are not the same as the people who did the research that made something like CERN plausible.

Your attitude seems to be "Well - ML, web design, graphics, original research, it's all computers so why not?"

There's a reason Peter Higgs didn't operate a concrete mixer, and that's because it wasn't his job.

It's the same in CS. This kind of work should be handed over to someone who can work on it full time, so researchers can get on with research full time.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#92

Post by throwawayarnty »

rambambram wrote: post #53

On one hand all these PhD thingies are very very important, and on the other hand words like "assets" and "commodities" are used for these same PhD people.

My favorite term they use in academia is "trainee" to justify low salaries. Trainees encompass High School Students, Undergraduates, to Postdocs, an age range from maybe 18 to 38.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#93

Post by Topolomancer »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #91
Topolomancer wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 typicall…

That person is usually called a "developer." Historically, it's a technician's job. Of course it's super useful to have someone on an experimental physics team who can personally machine metal, blow glass, and repair broken electronics, but generally you try to leave that to specialists. The people who built CERN are not the same as the people who designed CERN are not the same as the people who did the research that…

> Your attitude seems to be "Well - ML, web design, graphics, original research, it's all computers so why not?" > > There's a reason Peter Higgs didn't operate a concrete mixer, and that's because it wasn't his job.

That's not what I meant at all, though. I realise that my perspective might be specific to machine learning research: here, most papers involve implementations, prototypes, etc. My point could be boiled down to the following: if you have a candidate with fewer papers but _also_ some knowledge on how to, for instance, write clean code (or at least clean_er_ code), that candidate can be an asset _just as much_ as the candidate going into a Ph.D. with 10 first-author papers already. Both candidates cover different aspects of the research area.

I am saying that it's a good idea to look beyond `$num_papers` as a metric when hiring budding Ph.D. students, being well aware of their respective responsibilities. Current hiring practice in academia, as far as I can tell, completely ignores the skills _enabling_ excellent research. Earlier in the thread, someone mentioned this nice saying, which sums it up pretty neatly:

> The astronomers thought I wasn't that great an astronomer but a great programmer, and the programmers thought I wasn't a great programmer but a great astronomer.

One last thing I want to point out:

> It's the same in CS. This kind of work should be handed over to someone who can work on it full time, so researchers can get on with research full time.

Yes, I will definitely hire full time positions for this. The biggest groups are doing this already, probably because they realise that having a software engineer on board can help. I will apply the same considerations when hiring for such a role, trading 'depth' in favour of 'breadth' when it comes to their skill set, though. That strikes me as the right way of approaching this.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#94

Post by ModernMech »

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 know it’s in vogue to claim that grad students have shit benefits because they are paid terribly, but I do have to push back on that.

For one, the main benefit of a funded Ph.D. is that you don’t pay tuition. That’s a huge benefit that can total $40k or more per year before candidacy.

Secondly, you (should) get to travel and present your research around the world for free. During my Ph.D. I got to present our work in Portugal, Chicago, and Japan, all expenses paid. That’s not nothing for a young aspiring researcher, and not something my friends in industry got to do at 24.

Also, one thing that a lot of people don't know is that grad students in the USA don't have to pay FICA taxes on their stipends or their tuition remission. That also has to be figured in when comparing compensation.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#95

Post by ModernMech »

periheli0n wrote: post #88
Topolomancer wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is spot on. > But I totally agree that academia fails at rewarding people who facilitate the work of others. There is some perversion to this, since the key part of academia is precisely to spread and exchange knowledge. Yes. I saw quite a few talented people turn the backs on a career in academia for exactly this reason. > In this light it is funny to see that in many universities (especially in Germany…

> that part is at least changing a little bit (even though the predominant thinking is still 'Yeah, who cares?') in the younger generation of PIs. Things are changing extremely slowly in academia. It’s always the old faculty that decides who becomes new faculty, and their decisions tend to be very conservative. What’s worse, I have seen very progressive young PIs become complacent and conservative once they had tenur…

One thing that’s happening is that different roles are being created. For example at UPenn it’s now possible to get tenure as a teaching professor.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#96

Post by williamstein »

The original post says the following, with italics and explanation points: "Coming from mathematics, where one paper every few years (!) is considered the mark of a productive mathematician,". I spent decades in academic pure mathematics, and I've been on many hiring committees, and that assertion doesn't match my experience. Also, look at the original poster's own publication list at https://bastian.rieck.me/research/#publications, which has several publications every year.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#98

Post by throwawaygh »

lmeyerov wrote: post #20
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've been on the other end of such reviewers. Building community and engaging in it takes a whole ton of seemingly non-core work, but community-of-practice research is totally a thing, and for folks who empirically study innovation, one of the best approaches in practice. Likewise, it's common wisdom by systems researchers to invest in platform early to get compounding results later. Two of my best projects, include…

I don't dispute any of this post. Actually, to be blunt, the fact that you think any of this is a retort to "pay people for the type of work you expect them to do" is deeply concerning.

> reviewers assume they know best.

You are probably more adept at running a grant-funded research group than me. I have no doubt. My concern here is ethical. I do think the average PI is in waaaay too deep to admit how horrible even the "good" PIs end up treating their phd students. So, in that sense, I do generally assume I know best. Not about how to do successful research. But about the true reality of how the people in those salt mines are being treated.

On that note: of course all that non-core work is valuable! Incredibly valuable! And PIs should probably hire someone to do that work! At fair market wages! With accurate job titles and job descriptions!

I agree with everything you're saying... except about who should do the labor and what they should be paid for that labor.

I'm going to reiterate two sentences from my original post.

>> Want a devops engineer? Hire a devops engineer ("systems scientist" or so on). Want a graphic designer? Hire a graphic designer.

>>> ‘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.

Labs that have successful spin-offs are usually the worst about this sort of thing. They're running their research lab like a seedling incubator, but paying each of the one man shops printing their lottery tickets low five figures without retirement benefits.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#99

Post by Topolomancer »

williamstein wrote: post #96

The original post says the following, with italics and explanation points: "Coming from mathematics, where one paper every few years (!) is considered the mark of a productive mathematician,". I spent decades in academic pure mathematics, and I've been on many hiring committees, and that assertion doesn't match my experience. Also, look at the original poster's own publication list at https://bastian.rieck.me/researc…

Author here---I am not exactly doing mathematics research any more, but have shifted to CS/ML. It was my impression that the pace in that field is a little faster than in pure mathematics (whether that's a good thing or not is debatable). Please let me know whether I misunderstood this.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#100

Post by ModernMech »

throwaway1183 wrote: post #49

There are people for whom PhD is worth. If you are those people don't read this. It's easily knowable if you are or not. Now for people like me: Give me at least a million USD to invest in next PhD in CS. The most BS form of PhD is PhD in CS. It chirps your life away, with no clear benefits. It doesn't scale well enough in a field where innovation is rapidly progressing. Also when you are being underpaid while workin…

> And once you come out of your PhD, who is going to hire you? Industry or academia? Well even in academia, there are tons of PhD already, so goodluck competing that.

Since you seem to be talking about a CS Ph.D. in particular, there are actually many open faculty positions because industry is able to absorb so many graduates. It's quite common for a CS Ph.D. to get an academic tenure-track position right after graduation, without having to do a post-doc. We are interviewing many such candidates right now at my department, and we have been running searches since before my time. I was hired this way actually. It's competitive, sure, but you won't be sitting around for 5 years like my friend in Biology.

Actually the most searches fail because it's really a buyer's market for applicants. They can negotiate huge startup packages by leveraging competing offers that our department can't even hope to match, and so the search continues...

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