Is there anyone here on HN who has non-news-article knowledge of what the situation was, around him, at NCSU?
Marshall Brain died hours after alleging retaliation at NC State
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Re: Marshall Brain died hours after alleging retaliation at NC State
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who’s standard of living? We will render arbitrary people homeless to constrain the supply and push up real asset prices for homeowners. We’ll tolerate flagrant cartel monopoly and flagrant securities fraud and all manner of evil to drive equities up? Qui bono? Not the working person at the median.
> Who’s standard of living? Each person's. It's an individual determination. > We will render arbitrary people homeless to constrain the supply and push up real asset prices for homeowners Yes. Because from the homeowner's perspective, they're maintaining their real standard of living. Crafting good policy requires being very careful about whose relative standard of living you're sacrificing for the greater good. Bec…
I’m not sure what the theme of your contention is: it sounds like you’re basically saying everyone will fight as hard as possible with whatever means at their disposal to be maximally selfish.
But that tired toy example from game theory shows that everyone loses if both grass the other up. Countless studies of both human beings and computer programs in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma show that the wining strategy is not in fact to drive housing prices so high that the homeless problem eventually wrecks your property value.
This smash and grab, “how much can you carry” mafia capitalism has been tried before and the result was a guillotine.
Re: Marshall Brain died hours after alleging retaliation at NC State
#73His story is a cautionary tale about real life vs idealism. The two come into conflict frequently, and sometimes violently. Nothing is more difficult or dangerous than holding power to account; the mechanisms we imagine are in place to hold power accountable exist purely in that imagination. The personal feelings of shame, guilt, or ethical responsibility we imagine there to be, or the social pressure brought to bear…
Yep. I often reflect on some of my career mistakes, especially when evaluating current decisions within the context of a job or interacting with other institutions, and what I wish I'd learnt earlier would be to "read a room". Sure, there is technically a process for reporting wrongdoing, but there's no process for reporting wrongdoing and keeping your job, and keeping your job is more important. What isn't your job…
> Don't stick your neck out unless you control the outcome (for positive or negative), and figure out what you're really being told to do or asked to do, and keep your effort to that. Don't go above and beyond, it's out of scope and you're better off sleeping. Not joking. If you can't do that, you might struggle to stay employed, and it's not worth your personal risk.
Generally good advice but I would caveat it. Sometimes the org doesn’t know it wants something, or doesn’t know that you are the right person to ask. For example, I’ve had good success when finding ways to save millions of dollars. And other, more domain-specific things that make management happy.
Granted, you don’t need to do this if your position is stable and that’s enough for you. But if you are early in your career, trying to move up, or just want to be on the keeper list when there are layoffs, simply doing what is asked may not be enough.
Re: Marshall Brain died hours after alleging retaliation at NC State
#74This story really hits home for me. My dad was a physics teacher, and these complaints sound all too familiar—especially this part: "I did what the University told me to do, and then these administrators ruined my life for it." It’s frustrating how often dedicated educators are forced to navigate politics instead of focusing on teaching. The best educators are usually the least political, while those who thrive in po…
> The best educators are usually the least political, while those who thrive in politics often end up as administrators. The lady he accused of ethics violations was named Dept Head around the same time he made the complaint. An "old head" raising an issue against a new rising star...
My Dad was a university professor in mathematics. He loved his field! But the math department he worked in was taken over by someone who loved playing politics and maintaining power by playing favorites. My Dad refused to kiss the ring, and paid the price for that in his career advancement. He had tenure so it was never as bad as what happened to Marshal Brain.
Now we have n == 2, this could be a pattern. Of course it's a similar situation outside of academia too.
Re: Marshall Brain died hours after alleging retaliation at NC State
#75I received my engineering masters from NC State, but not this department (I was in the Industrial & Systems Eng. dept, in the IMSE program: https://imsei.ncsu.edu/). That said, my program was intentionally broad & flexible because students seeking higher ed in manufacturing engineering might be EEs, MEs, CS undergrads, or something entirely different and could be pursuing any sort of leadership role in a manufacturing environment. Because of that, the program often referred students to Brain's program, and it was always common knowledge that one of the bigger differentiators at NCSU's engineering school was the focus on entrepreneurialism (especially compared to most other regional unis in the southeast, except perhaps GATech and maybe UFlorida).
Even if the loss of Brain and/or the scandal around the circumstances seem fairly inconsequential to most of you, it's a big deal for NC State's engineering program and the students there. It's also likely going to be a big deal for large donors like John Sall (co-founder of the SAS Institute, which is HQ'd in Raleigh).
Re: Marshall Brain died hours after alleging retaliation at NC State
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. I often reflect on some of my career mistakes, especially when evaluating current decisions within the context of a job or interacting with other institutions, and what I wish I'd learnt earlier would be to "read a room". Sure, there is technically a process for reporting wrongdoing, but there's no process for reporting wrongdoing and keeping your job, and keeping your job is more important. What isn't your job…
It’s more nuanced then that. People don’t want others pretending to be superior to them, if they are not actually that much better. e.g. A literal supergenius can behave very erratically nearly every week of the year, 40 years straight, and still achieve notable successes in life, such as Kurt Godel But a regular genius pretending to be a literal supergenius and trying to do the same, is well at best going to be perc…
Lets be honest, most faculty members eventually become simple Ectoparasites on student work, or ruminate on problems they stopped making progress on for decades.
As someone prone to idealism, you need to careful of the external consequences of work that runs into conflict with institution politics, government goals, and foreign/domestic intelligence services (professional thieves.)
I am probably just a clown, but often had to consider the escalation of coercion stages in the context of personal resolve. You will be evil one day too... Best of luck =3
Re: Marshall Brain died hours after alleging retaliation at NC State
#77My son wants to be a mathematician. I told him never go into academia because it's a pit of poisonous vipers, administrators and professors both. I'm going to send him this article to hopefully re-indoctrinate him in case he forgot my previous message.
Re: Marshall Brain died hours after alleging retaliation at NC State
#78> Kashani said Brain submitted numerous complaints through the EthicsPoint system and said tensions arose because Brain didn’t “play the political game” through his questioning of higher-ranking administrators. This right here is why I scoff at “anonymous reporting systems” or stuff like EthicsPoint, for the simple reason that the only ethics that ultimately matter in an organization are those of everyone above you,…
Organizations create these reporting systems to make themselves look good to outsiders, but they will punish you severely if you actually try to use them. It's kind of like your grandmother's good china: Look at it all you want but don't you dare use it. Stuff like this is incredibly confusing to people on the autism spectrum.
> Stuff like this is incredibly confusing to people on the autism spectrum.
Upvoted for this alone. We thrive in clearly defined systems, but the powers that be are careful to hide the actual systems of power from us. It’s infuriating to find out we’ve been playing the wrong “game”.
Re: Marshall Brain died hours after alleging retaliation at NC State
#79> Kashani said Brain submitted numerous complaints through the EthicsPoint system and said tensions arose because Brain didn’t “play the political game” through his questioning of higher-ranking administrators. This right here is why I scoff at “anonymous reporting systems” or stuff like EthicsPoint, for the simple reason that the only ethics that ultimately matter in an organization are those of everyone above you,…
Organizations create these reporting systems to make themselves look good to outsiders, but they will punish you severely if you actually try to use them. It's kind of like your grandmother's good china: Look at it all you want but don't you dare use it. Stuff like this is incredibly confusing to people on the autism spectrum.
These systems must be used in conjunction with public media.
Re: Marshall Brain died hours after alleging retaliation at NC State
#80His story is a cautionary tale about real life vs idealism. The two come into conflict frequently, and sometimes violently. Nothing is more difficult or dangerous than holding power to account; the mechanisms we imagine are in place to hold power accountable exist purely in that imagination. The personal feelings of shame, guilt, or ethical responsibility we imagine there to be, or the social pressure brought to bear…
"cautionary", "real life vs", "Nothing is more difficult or dangerous", "exist purely in that imagination".
You're claiming that real life is always as in this episode; and so, I guess, that you should never oppose someone at an higher position? Or with more power?
It's healthy to be aware of the possibility that things could go this way, but it's definitely not a guarantee that they will; in some environments it's more likely to happen, in others more likely to not happen.
But if we always acted as selfish cynics, then yeah, real life would be guaranteed to be what you describe