Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 155 posts

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#71

Post by willcipriano »

sircastor wrote: post #23
hourago wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lifetime employment doing what you love should only go to those who are supremely dedicated Should people give their lives for a profession? That seems prone to create unhealthy societies prone to conflict and cheating. In my experience self described meritocratic societies usually are just cynic nepotist societies. The children of the poor have to work their asses off to get much less that what the children of the…

>Should people give their lives for a profession? I have recently begun to appreciate how much (in the US) we structure our entire existence around our jobs, and how we earn money. The puritan work ethic, extrapolated out across BS jobs encourages so many of us to identify as our jobs, and make that our sense of self. It's ridiculous.

The puritans wouldn't have advocated holding off getting married or having children to work for a megacorp 80 hours a week. They wouldn't be impressed you are the "assistant to the senior vice president" or whatever. I don't think we can blame modern "hussle culture" on the puritans, it's more of a neoliberal thing to get let yourself get consumed by a job and hire out all your basic needs (take out, daycare, housekeepers) like we do today.

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#72

Post by icelancer »

xyzelement wrote: post #3

The story resonates but the conclusion doesn't. As an immigrant, I relate to what she says: feel pressure to work hard -> work hard -> achieve results -> benefit from those results. As far as I can tell, the system works. She got an opportunity, worked her ass off, produced a lot, and attained a great position/life as consequence. Those who chose an easier path, perhaps were less stressed but also didn't do or get as…

>> Due to her earlier work, she's at a place to reflect and say "I am at level X, I can dial it back" which is great. But this is a luxury of being at X level to begin with and you mainly don't get there without hard work.

This is pretty typical, especially on Hacker News. A bunch of people saying working too hard is bad who are rich primarily because they worked too hard while they were younger.

Mostly I think they don't get what they're saying. Though I suspect some of them actually say it to prevent competition.

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#73

Post by thinking4real »

“For young immigrant women like me, the pressures of early career research are even greater than for most.”

Ah, the “poor downtrodden women” angle.

Yes academia is very easy for white nationally born men. That’s why there aren’t any white male plumbers or garbage people.

Let’s take ukrainian men vs women. For women you are granted asylum, and probably fast tracked in a social program to help you. If you’re a man under 60 years old, you’re not allowed to leave Ukraine and instead are likely being drafted to a war you want nothing to do with. You’re physically prevented from leaving the country.

Great take.

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#74

Post by bentt »

Rayhem wrote: post #41
bentt wrote: post #35

This just in - competitive people in competitive fields compete. The only way to fix this is to make rules about how hard anyone is allowed to work. By definition this is a denial of freedom and stifles progress. The real solution for an individual is to be satsfied with less. Just don’t expect that of anyone else lest you tread on the thin ice of communim, which is ironic considering the birthplace of the author.

> By definition this ... stifles progress. This conclusion does not at all follow from the premise. The myth that more competition means you get a better result absolutely does not hold and needs to die. There's a fundamental equilibrium shift when you spend more resources competing than you do on progressing.

> The myth that more competition means you get a better result absolutely does not hold and needs to die. There's a fundamental equilibrium shift when you spend more resources competing than you do on progressing.

Source?

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#75

Post by cableshaft »

photochemsyn wrote: post #19

Back when I was in grad school there was a whole set of research people who just lived at the university - but I noticed, they'd didn't really do a whole lot of work. They were just always there, always on hand when the tenured PI showed up to be noticed, and so on. They'd mastered the art of appearing to be dogged 24-7 nose-to-the-grindstone researchers, but it was really just a relaxed little club. Most of their en…

This sounds pretty similar to non-academic corporate life. People who show up to hang out, get mad at people who don't do the same, you're encouraged to work extra hours to get ahead, only able to work on things you get funding for (i.e. what clients will pay you for or projects that those above you will greenlight), being controlled by corporate executives, etc.

But you probably get paid more in the corporate world, at least.

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#76

Post by ModernMech »

thwayunion wrote: post #56
DonaldPShimoda wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting the cost of funding students, but also there are costs in securing prestige for your institution. The university benefits when your grants are large and plentiful, so they encourage research faculty to pursue those projects which earn more money, even if it's not exactly what they care most about.

> You're forgetting the cost of funding students, but also there are costs in securing prestige for your institution. But why does he need students to do his own research? I made a similar calculation and went into industry. I am now at the point where I could self-fund an indefinite post-doc (with benefits) at the risk-free rate of return. By the time I would be going up for Full Professor, I'll be able to self-fund…

> You'll be working for The Man instead of doing what you really want either way, I promise

As an academic who does work on my own projects all the time, I'll have to disagree. I mean, yeah I have to do things I'm not thrilled about, like advising students and filling out course evaluations. But at the same time, I only work 4 days a week, 28 weeks of the year, and those days I'm done at noon. The rest of my time I spend working on my projects, which are 100% what I'd be doing if I were to come across a billion dollars tomorrow.

> If you want to do Science, just spend 1-2 decades in industry and save your money.

I see this advice a lot, and it's logical. But I don't think practical. If it were, I think we'd see more people going this route, but I'm not aware of too many (well, any really). Can you point to anyone who has amassed a small fortune in industry and now is a successful independent researcher?

It seems like the more popular route is to spend 1-2 decades amassing wealth and then just retire on that money. Or to invest it. You'd be what, 40+ at that time? That's a prime age for family rearing. The kids' college funds need to be swelling at that point. At such a critical time in a family, who in their right mind would leave a lucrative career to be an independent researcher, a job path that is largely reserved for independently wealthy people.

If you want to blow your family's nest egg at 40 by pursuing an independent research agenda, go right ahead, but I think that's a risk most people won't take. Even if successful, it's not going to have a positive ROI (that's not what research is about). That's why researchers spend other peoples money and not their own.

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#77

Post by ModernMech »

maximus-decimus wrote: post #37
subroutine wrote: post #27

The only way to undo the culture of overwork for academic professors, is to increase bottleneck somewhere upstream (e.g. cut the number of PhD students in half). Any time you have a situation where 300 people are applying for the same job (as is common for ladder rank professorships at research universities), the people who end up getting those jobs will inevitably have been overworked. Imagine if less than 10% of pe…

That would require them to say no to free labor.

To be clear, Ph.D. students are very expensive. I don't know where you would get the idea that they are "free labor". Sure they're not as expensive as software engineers, but they also can't (or shouldn't) be "fired" per se. There's a certain latitude you are afforded as a student, and that's something that I think a lot of Ph.D. candidates don't appreciate when they complain they are underpaid compared to their industry counterparts.

Source: was a Ph.D. student who complained about being underpaid, now a professor who sees how expensive they actually are.

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#78

Post by gnicholas »

thwayunion wrote: post #64
xyzelement wrote: post #3

The story resonates but the conclusion doesn't. As an immigrant, I relate to what she says: feel pressure to work hard -> work hard -> achieve results -> benefit from those results. As far as I can tell, the system works. She got an opportunity, worked her ass off, produced a lot, and attained a great position/life as consequence. Those who chose an easier path, perhaps were less stressed but also didn't do or get as…

> "I am at level X, I can dial it back" I am 100% certain that this rug is going to be pulled out from under any academic who is currently under the age of 45 or so. Tenure and seniority aren't going to mean much when budgets are tight and the admin is run by professional managers instead of senior-academics-on-admin-rotation. Painful for anyone who's currently an Asst or Assoc Prof and was planning on retiring-in-pl…

Isn't a lot of the increase in costs coming from the admin side, where folks are easier to lay off? My understanding (married to an academic) is that it's pretty difficult to get rid of tenured folks, and much easier to eliminate admin positions. And in some cases, the admins make a lot of money, even in comparison to the professors.

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#79

Post by sideshowb »

bumby wrote: post #68
plonk wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should expect that the idea that one can eat your cake and have it too is a rare case. But you’re not eating it, salaries suck in STEM academia compared to private jobs. If you don’t have freedom either, what’s the point?

It’s a colloquialism about trade-offs and not meant to be taken so literally. Again, autonomy is another aspect that you may need to consider as part of that tradeoff. If you want to maximize autonomy, great, but it’s unlikely you’ll also maximize pay (as a general rule). Most jobs are like this, I don’t see why academia should be any different. I also don’t think it’s coincidence that pay in academia has stagnated a…

> If you want to maximize autonomy, great, but it’s unlikely you’ll also maximize pay

And that's the literal trade off gp was referring to

Re: Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it

#80

Post by thwayunion »

gnicholas wrote: post #78
thwayunion wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I am at level X, I can dial it back" I am 100% certain that this rug is going to be pulled out from under any academic who is currently under the age of 45 or so. Tenure and seniority aren't going to mean much when budgets are tight and the admin is run by professional managers instead of senior-academics-on-admin-rotation. Painful for anyone who's currently an Asst or Assoc Prof and was planning on retiring-in-pl…

Isn't a lot of the increase in costs coming from the admin side, where folks are easier to lay off? My understanding (married to an academic) is that it's pretty difficult to get rid of tenured folks, and much easier to eliminate admin positions. And in some cases, the admins make a lot of money, even in comparison to the professors.

> My understanding (married to an academic) is that it's pretty difficult to get rid of tenured folks

This depends on the type of institution, but it's mostly a shared fiction on the order of "corporate culture". Ie, The sort of fiction that no leader dares to undermine when times are good but which goes out the window as soon as revenues start declining and cuts must happen.

At many institutions, there are no actual legal or contractual barriers to dismissing tenured faculty. Tenure is nothing more or less than a gentleperson's agreement. A social expectation.

Even where actual legal/contractual protection does exist, it typically protects the person's job but not the job itself. Ie, a university might not be able to fire a tenured professor and hire a new professor. But they can simply downsize the academic department and release the faculty member by virtue of the faculty position no longer existing. Maybe hire back ad junct labor a few semesters later if necessary.

> much easier to eliminate admin positions.

This largely depends on what you mean by "admin". Typically the split is between "staff" and "faculty".

The explosion of "staff" is not (just) a story of bloated middle management. It's also a story of the ongoing move from tenured to untenured labor. In particular: "staff" often includes people like instructors, ad junct teaching labor, research scientists, and post-docs.

Why would you fire an ad junct instructor or research scientist (staff) if they are cheaper than a professor (faculty) for roughly the same work?

In fact, a savvy financial engineer might even prefer the more contingent form of labor even though they are more expensive because a friction of releasing traditional faculty is expensive in terms of opportunity cost and agility.

Post reply on HN