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T-Shaped People and Academia

bastian.rieck.me

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Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#101

Post by throwawaygh »

RhysU wrote: post #82
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'…

Speaking as an applied research manager in industry, I don't want to hire great academic students that cannot also be reasonably successful in delivering on these non-academic tasks. Sure, for example, it's a waste to have a newly minted PhD set up CI systems. However, it's more of a waste to have them blocked waiting on someone else and then beholden to someone else every time there's an issue. Researchers that can…

I think you've lost the plot. The author is talking about hiring people who already know how to do these things!

This isn't about skills development. It's about using people who already have these skills as engineering support labor for the research group while paying then 1/2 to 1/5th of what they'd make in industry doing equivalent work (that, again, they already know how to do!)

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#102

Post by throwawaygh »

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…

I think you've lost the plot. The author is talking about hiring people who already know how to do these things!

This isn't about skills development. It's about using people who already have these skills as engineering support labor for the research group while paying then 1/2 to 1/5th of what they'd make in industry doing equivalent work (that, again, they already know how to do!)

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#103

Post by ModernMech »

throwawayarnty wrote: post #92
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.

To be clear, students are paid stipends, not salaries. Stipends are low because they are stipends.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#104

Post by Topolomancer »

throwawaygh wrote: post #102
BeetleB wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think you've lost the plot. The author is talking about hiring people who already know how to do these things! This isn't about skills development. It's about using people who already have these skills as engineering support labor for the research group while paying then 1/2 to 1/5th of what they'd make in industry doing equivalent work (that, again, they already know how to do!)

Author here---my point is not to exploit cheap labour, but rather to consider more than `$num_papers` when evaluating a CV. Getting a student that can, for instance, foster a culture of 'clean code' can benefit a lab as well. My point is that these people are typically not recognised or rewarded---and that needs to change.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#105

Post by Topolomancer »

throwawaygh wrote: post #15
robwwilliams wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this demand for focus is more pervasive at top tier institutions. I intentionally chose a second tier research institution with great colleagues in my area, then neuroscience, so that I could indulge my whims and T-type style of science. I “wasted” two years playing with databases for genetics and then published the first paper in biomedical science with a URL in 1994 (Portable Dictionary of the Mouse Genome)…

But that's a good example of a high-risk/high-reward investment in research infrastructure . The article mentions, for example, maintaining the group's build system and making project logos. Different in kind, no? PhD students should not be recruited with the expectation that they will do devops, software engineering, and graphic design work. Or, if that's the labor they're doing, universities should maybe start payi…

> PhD students should not be recruited with the expectation that they will do devops, software engineering, and graphic design work. Or, if that's the labor they're doing, universities should maybe start paying them a fair wage for their labor.

Fully agree with you there---and for me, that was never the point of the article.

> Building something like genenetwork.org in 1994 was exciting R&D for the time. Setting up a CI/CD pipeline or making a project logo in 2022 isn't.

Yes, at the same time, maybe setting up CI/CD is needed nonetheless in order to better manage a shared codebase. My point is that PIs should be aware of these things and also recognise this sort of 'foundational' work whenever it happens. Of course, if a lab needs complex DevOps, then of course they should hire someone _dedicated_ for the role.

My observations pertain to the kind of work that happens behind the scenes and is often unrewarded and unrecognised. As I said: academia is doing a disservice to the people that are willing to (to re-use the example you supplied) set up a CI pipeline for their project or teach others how to write code cleanly, etc. Of course, the best approach would be to have dedicated roles for dedicated tasks in research (and beyond).

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#106

Post by throwawaygh »

ModernMech wrote: post #94
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…

> That’s a huge benefit that can total $40k or more per year before candidacy.

No one does a phd for the coursework :)

> travel

This is worth perhaps $2K-$4K. Your industry friends could easily travel the world, and they wouldn't be stuck in a conference hotel for half their trip.

> FICA taxes

No! This isn't a good thing!!!

The employer pays half of these, and paying them entitles you to the US social safety net! Universities don't even give phd students the minimal benefits that every other employer in the entire country is required to subsidize 50%.

Stated another way: Denying any other employee a 50% match on state-provided retirement/disability insurance/unemployment insurance/medicare/etc. would literally be criminal.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#107

Post by RhysU »

throwawaygh wrote: post #101
RhysU wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as an applied research manager in industry, I don't want to hire great academic students that cannot also be reasonably successful in delivering on these non-academic tasks. Sure, for example, it's a waste to have a newly minted PhD set up CI systems. However, it's more of a waste to have them blocked waiting on someone else and then beholden to someone else every time there's an issue. Researchers that can…

I think you've lost the plot. The author is talking about hiring people who already know how to do these things! This isn't about skills development. It's about using people who already have these skills as engineering support labor for the research group while paying then 1/2 to 1/5th of what they'd make in industry doing equivalent work (that, again, they already know how to do!)

I am talking about the complement of the plot.

I am saying that every student should be doing these tasks. The students without these skills should be learning them too.

Then no one is being taken advantage of. Then all of the students are more marketable. These skills are useful to academics too: successful junior faculty will one day need to stand up their own labs with their technical skills.

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#108

Post by Topolomancer »

bjornsing wrote: post #87
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 agree. But I think there’s also a basic misunderstanding about what a T-shaped individual is and why they are sought after outside academia. It’s not because they can do a bit of everything, setting up the build system with one hand and designing the logo with the other. (That’s more what you’d call a jack of all trades.) The reason T-shaped individuals are sought after in industry is that they are effective leader…

> The reason T-shaped individuals are sought after in industry is that they are effective leaders. They understand enough about the problem domain(s) to identify meaningful problems and enough about the solution domain to help map out the solution space.

> The reason you’d want more T-shaped people in machine learning research is that they will ask better research questions, not because they’ll design prettier logos.

Author here---fully agree with you. Man, that example with the logos is going to haunt me now...I just did not want to bog down the article with too many technical details. Of course there's immense value in moving between disciplines...that's a whole other discussion to be had (because IMO, academia does not necessarily have the right incentives for this either; research between disciplines X and Y often tends to be dismissed as being 'not enough X for Y' or 'not enough Y for X')

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#109

Post by Topolomancer »

rini17 wrote: post #66
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 a…

> 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.

Author here--thanks, that's a cool way of putting it! (plus, working on such tools, for instance, should be recognised by PIs in an ideal world)

Re: T-Shaped People and Academia

#110

Post by Topolomancer »

galgalesh wrote: post #73
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 a PhD student in Europe and I get paid more than a junior graphic designer or marketing person and I get paid about the same as senior DevOps engineers. It would definitely be cheaper for my research group to outsource this work onto non-research staff.

> It would definitely be cheaper for my research group to outsource this work onto non-research staff.

Author here! I realise that my point is a little bit misunderstood. I am not saying 'Ah, let the PhD students do it.' I am saying that these sort of aspects should be recognised and rewarded, potentially influencing hiring decisions (for instance, hiring an SWE role instead of a Ph.D. student to fully support the lab).

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