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

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

#81

Post by bachmeier »

thwayunion wrote: post #4

The author is too optimistic. There are going to be continuous waves of mass firings of tenured faculty in the 2030s and 2040s. The overwork and stress culture are going to get much worse over the next quarter century. The problem is structural, not cultural, and there isn't much that academics are going to be able to do in order to combat the problem. Specific to the USA, but also true in much of the west: 1. Revenu…

> 2. There is an oversupply of academic labor and labor is the primary controllable expense.

Can't say I agree with that statement. It was true for decades, but academic employment had been losing its status for years, and the pandemic greatly increased that. There are lots of examples of research positions having few or no applicants. Grad students these days are much less intent on getting academic jobs than even five years ago.

Now, that's not to say that deans across the country aren't continuing to plan as if that's the case, but they may find themselves with a serious problem a decade from now.

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

#82

Post by bumby »

sideshowb wrote: post #79
bumby wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Right, and it was phrased with "unfortunately" and as a "dystopia" which I took to mean "it shouldn't be this way." I wasn't trying to refute their point that tradeoffs exist, but rather indicate that's exactly how one should expect the system to operate. (Possible I misread their intent, though.) The idea that someone would expect to 1) land a job they love while 2) making gobs of money and 3) have it generalizable across an oversaturated market like academia seems to indicate a lack of understanding of the incentive structure within the system.

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

#83

Post by clircle »

ModernMech wrote: post #77
maximus-decimus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indu…

I think I was paid like 18K a year when I got my STEM PhD in 2018. So, when you say that PhD students are not as expensive as SWEs, you could be making the understatement of the year. I bet the Mcdonalds workers made more than me.

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

#84

Post by polygamous_bat »

ModernMech wrote: post #77
maximus-decimus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indu…

Personal experience: my advisor brings in somewhere between 2-3x my nominal pay as a Ph.D. student just to employ me. In his words, the excess goes into the "university", which I believe is just the org structure/bureaucracy that we at HN love to hate. So, all I want to say is

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

They both can be true! You can be paying through the nose just for a middleman fat cat to take a fat cut, leaving the Ph.D. student with very little power to receive an unlivable amount.

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

#85

Post by thwayunion »

ModernMech wrote: post #76
thwayunion wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

> 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.

TBH I have no idea what number of "bullshit hours" I work, but I spend the vast majority of my time working on things I'd probably be doing anyways. I certainly think what I'm working on is more interesting than what I'd almost certainly be doing if I had accepting one of my TT offers.

> 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?

This largely depends on how you define success.

They certainly aren't doing things like putting together performance bonus packets or playing the peer review game, so if you look to things like bonuses/promotions or journal papers in prestige venues they're probably not "successful". But isn't the goal to get off the bullshit ladder? You don't really think the prestige publishing game is anything other than BS make-work, do you? ;-)

> It seems like the more popular route is to spend 1-2 decades amassing wealth and then just retire on that money.

Sure. If your version of "what i would do with a billion dollars" involves lots of slopes and beaches then why not? What's wrong with this?

> 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.

I know a lot of folks from my PhD cohort who went this route and took Professor of Practice positions for their kids' college years.

> If you want to blow your family's nest egg at 40

Who said anything about blowing? The principal should continue growing, just a bit slower since you're spending some of the interest...

> 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.

A STEM PhD, after 10-20 years in tech or finance, IS an independently wealthy person... that's the whole point.

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

#86

Post by thwayunion »

bachmeier wrote: post #81
thwayunion wrote: post #4

The author is too optimistic. There are going to be continuous waves of mass firings of tenured faculty in the 2030s and 2040s. The overwork and stress culture are going to get much worse over the next quarter century. The problem is structural, not cultural, and there isn't much that academics are going to be able to do in order to combat the problem. Specific to the USA, but also true in much of the west: 1. Revenu…

> 2. There is an oversupply of academic labor and labor is the primary controllable expense. Can't say I agree with that statement. It was true for decades, but academic employment had been losing its status for years, and the pandemic greatly increased that. There are lots of examples of research positions having few or no applicants. Grad students these days are much less intent on getting academic jobs than even f…

> There are lots of examples of research positions having few or no applicants.

I've mostly heard of this happening for two types of roles. The first are post-docs. The second are low-paying primarily teaching positions at exactly the types of places that will probably blink off the map in the 2030s.

In both cases, the hard truth is that the institution will simply leave the position unfilled before increasing pay or improving job security. Compensation is nearly perfectly inelastic and job security cannot be guaranteed.

> a decade from now

A decade from now their enrollments will have declined due to the post-2008 baby bust, in many cases by double digits. They'll be more worried about who they have to lay off than who to hire.

Particularly true for those instructor and other teaching-oriented positions.

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

#87

Post by aborsy »

kelipso wrote: post #59
kneebonian wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I mean Einstein, Netwon, Maxwell, and Galileo were probably more valuable to advancing our understanding of physics than every one of their contemporaries combined. The funny part is that Einstein wasn't even in academia until after he was famous. If anything this speaks to me that we want only those people in the field who would do it even if there was no reward for they will be the ones who produce earth shatt…

> The funny part is that Einstein wasn't even in academia until after he was famous No...he was doing his PhD when he published the special relativity and other papers that made him famous.

I am not sure if this is true. I think he was in a patent office when work was done and published in 1905.

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

#88

Post by aborsy »

photochemsyn wrote: post #28
noorkersz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think about this as another of those "industries" in which a lot people want to get into. Similar to art, animation, acting, screen writing, recording artist music; I suppose any creative industries will be like this. All these 'industries' become exploitative (possibly capitalism has something to do with how this happens. but let's stay on topic) So then, I consider this pattern of exploitation -- of "put up with…

Academic institutions are loaded up with people who are skilled at political manipulation and bureaucratic infighting, and who often have little real interest in their supposed field of research. For these types it's basically a game of getting in with the reviewers of grant proposals, rubbing elbows at scientific conferences, hiring technicians and postdocs and maybe some pHD students to generate a steady stream of…

>> Academic institutions are loaded up with people who are skilled at political manipulation and bureaucratic infighting, and who often have little real interest in their supposed field of research. For these types it's basically a game of getting in with the reviewers of grant proposals, rubbing elbows at scientific conferences, hiring technicians and postdocs and maybe some pHD students to generate a steady stream of papers, cozying up to university administration, attending dinners and so on.

This is an accurate description of the current situation!

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

#89

Post by gnicholas »

thwayunion wrote: post #80
gnicholas wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 actua…

> 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.

What are some institutions where this is true? Are we talking 10% of institutions, or a more substantial number? I've read about many dismissals that were challenged, and I've never heard the institution defend itself on the grounds that tenure isn't actually guaranteed, but is just a social expectation.

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

#90

Post by agumonkey »

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'm struggling with a pervasive culture of inverting this pattern. "I do nothing unless you give me a lot of privileges". And if you come with motivation and desire to achieve more (overachieving to an extent) you become the enemy.
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