12 ms·

The Secret Lives of Professors (What Being a Professor is Really Like)

168 points by sinc 16y ago

phreeza 16y ago
I wish some of my professors would have read this as grad students. Become a professor because you love teaching, not because you want to do research. Which also raises the question whether there should be a similarly venerable(and compensated) position reserved for researchers who don't teach?
- hugh3 16y ago
  Which also raises the question whether there should be a similarly venerable(and compensated) position reserved for researchers who don't teach? Being a staff scientist at a national lab is about as close as you can get to this in the US. Compared to being a professor you'll get similar money (sometimes more), less prestige, more time for research and slightly more annoying bureaucracy. There's upsides and downsides of each.
- pgbovine 16y ago
  Which also raises the question whether there should be a similarly venerable(and compensated) position reserved for researchers who don't teach? an academic research lab sponsored by a big company (note that this is not the same as a corporate R&D division) ... in the 1970's, this was epitomized by Xerox PARC and AT&T Bell Labs. today, Microsoft Research is currently the leader in this category.
  - pwhelan 16y ago
    MSFT Research also sends the nicest rejection letters you can imagine.
    - ciupicri 16y ago
      Do you have some examples?
- _delirium 16y ago
  A handful of universities have Research Professor positions. At Carnegie Mellon, it's basically the same as a normal Professor (tenured, similar prestige, etc.), except that you don't normally teach, and in return, you're expected to fund a portion of your own salary out of the grants you bring in. (If you don't bring in grants some year, you can fall back on teaching to earn your keep, so research profs do occasionally teach.)
  - pwhelan 16y ago
    Some of these profs will offer special classes that might otherwise not really get offered or have enough students to warrant forcing someone to teach. I loved these classes because the profs were usually really passionate about the subject and that showed in their efforts. There was less droning on and emphasis on arcane, irrelevant minutiae and more "basic principles... now we build stuff and talk about the fun problems there". Those classes were so enjoyable that they almost made me pursue a PhD even though I am not right for that -- at least for now.
amichail 16y ago
It's more fun to create something novel that many people use and appreciate (e.g., an iPhone game). Much better than research prototypes that go no where beyond a publication or two.
- pgbovine 16y ago
  ok, i'll bite ;) if everyone thought the way that you did, then we'd still be programming by submitting our punch cards to some gigantic centralized machine. think about how much basic academic research occurred before the invention of something like the iPhone became possible
  - natrius 16y ago
    There are plenty of necessary things in life that aren't exciting to do. There's nothing wrong with pointing it out unless you're trying to get more people to unwittingly do those things without fully understanding their choice. EDIT: I'm not trying to say that pure science is universally unexciting. Few things are. But generally, more people seem to be interested in consumer products than pure science research.
    - _delirium 16y ago
      I think a lot of researchers (myself included) really do prefer doing what we're doing, though. It's not like I'm doing research instead of making iPhone games because I have no choice; if I wanted to jump and make iPhone games instead, plenty of companies have open positions. I just find what I'm currently doing a lot more interesting. (That said, I wouldn't want this prof's job, because managing a large group of people, whether in industry or a research lab, is not my idea of fun.)
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
- endtime 16y ago
  Seriously? You'd rather implement Tetris in Obj-C than make a fundamental, provable improvement to an important algorithm? We have very different ideas of fun.
abstractbill 16y ago
This nicely sums up a bunch of reasons why I decided not to do a postdoc, and instead joined my first startup after finishing my PhD. I'm sure it works for some people, but I just couldn't see myself being happy with it.
- timr 16y ago
  Same for me. I had a few opportunities for good post-docs, but I just couldn't see the point. I didn't really want to be a professor, and if you don't want to be a prof, a post-doc is just a really low-rent job.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - anongradstudent 16y ago
    Do you think there's a point to getting a PhD at all? I've been debating dropping out of my PhD program (after one year), mostly for personal reasons, but partially because most grads from my (top N) program end up not being able to land a research or academic position after graduation. If I end up like 95% of the graduates from my program, will it have been a waste of time? Is there any value in a PhD if you do your own startup, become a dev at a huge company like Google, or become a dev at a small company like Yelp? And if so, what does it get you over having five years of experience? I don't mean in monetary terms -- a PhD is obviously a net negative monetarily; what I'm looking for is the chance to make a living working on 'interesting' problems.
    - smokinn 16y ago
      Well I've heard that Apple won't even bother considering you if you don't have at least a minimum of a master's degree in something related if you're applying for the Spotlight team. If you're studying something hard and you get good at it someone will want to hire you. You will have essentially paid for a good chunk of their R&D for them.
    - stoney 16y ago
_delirium 16y ago
This does vary based on the field and kind of school. It's definitely accurate for being a professor at a top-tier research university in the sciences or engineering. A prof job at those kinds of places could accurately be titled "research manager": the main job requirements are managing and bringing in funding for a fairly large research lab of 5-10 grad students and possibly some research scientists and postdocs. But you can shift the balance of the various components if you go to different kinds of schools. To take the opposite end of the spectrum, if you're the CS prof at a small liberal-arts college, your job will involve a lot more teaching and mentoring undergrads, and a lot less grant-writing and research-lab management. It's unfortunately not true that there's a happy medium to fit every kind of temperament, but there are some options at least.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
holdenc 16y ago
When you join an elite school as an academic you become a bureaucrat in a bureaucracy. Want to spend the institution's money? Make an important decision? Get people to help you? Get ready to grovel, and sacrifice much of what you believe is worth fighting for.
winzie 16y ago
I can certainly see the entrepreneurial aspect of being a professor -- managing a lab, hiring and firing people, and sourcing funding, and I don't disagree that professors are there to inspire the next generation. However, there is still a part of me that feels professors have that "safety net". Tenured professors are paid a monthly salary by the university, and often times at / above industry (that's true at least in Canada anyways). With a steady income, they have no risk, and the risk factor is a big part of being an entrepreneur.
- _delirium 16y ago
  > With a steady income, they have no risk, and the risk factor is a big part of being an entrepreneur. For first-time entrepreneurs I agree, but there are a lot of "serial entrepreneurs" who sold a company for multi-millions, and are now founding new companies. Millions in the bank definitely seems like a big safety net that insulates you from most real-world risk...
- fadmmatt 16y ago
  I was an entrepreneur (failed twice), and I'm now a professor. Being a pre-tenure professor is way more terrifying than being an entrepreneur was. And, depending on the field, between 25% and 75% of your salary as a professor will come from being able to procure external funding. If you can't convince the funding agencies to pay you, then tenure buys you an office, a teaching load and health care. It's been terrifying for me because my hit rate is about the same as Matt's. I've had very little luck getting funding for my research. And, at the last funding panel I served on, the funding rate was down to 5%. My own fund-seeking overhead is now at 60% of my time, and I'm still not getting any. Either we have too many scientists, or not enough science funding. I don't think the current system is sustainable.
  - frossie 16y ago
    Either we have too many scientists, or not enough science funding. A little bit of both, to which I would add a third: the way we fund science is... I'm going to charitably say "sub-optimal"
DannoHung 16y ago
Where the fuck is all the money going?
- DannoHung 16y ago
  I'm sorry, but I wasn't just referring to the grant money. I mean the money that colleges get from tuition, donations, etc. Where is all that money going to? What is costing so much now? For all the talk about costs of colleges going up, I have never seen a single explanation of where the money is going. And if it ain't going into research, then it's gotta be going somewhere.
tjmaxal 16y ago
I really liked how he compared being a young professor to being in a startup. I don't know how accurate that analogy really is but it's certainly fun to think about. At my undergrad they had a whole program designed to commercialize faculty research by funding school centric startups. I still find the whole thing fascinating.

168 points by sinc 16y ago

I wish some of my professors would have read this as grad students. Become a professor because you love teaching, not because you want to do research. Which also raises the question whether there should be a similarly venerable(and compensated) position reserved for researchers who don't teach?

hugh3 16y ago
Which also raises the question whether there should be a similarly venerable(and compensated) position reserved for researchers who don't teach? Being a staff scientist at a national lab is about as close as you can get to this in the US. Compared to being a professor you'll get similar money (sometimes more), less prestige, more time for research and slightly more annoying bureaucracy. There's upsides and downsides of each.
pgbovine 16y ago
Which also raises the question whether there should be a similarly venerable(and compensated) position reserved for researchers who don't teach? an academic research lab sponsored by a big company (note that this is not the same as a corporate R&D division) ... in the 1970's, this was epitomized by Xerox PARC and AT&T Bell Labs. today, Microsoft Research is currently the leader in this category.
- pwhelan 16y ago
  MSFT Research also sends the nicest rejection letters you can imagine.
  - ciupicri 16y ago
    Do you have some examples?
_delirium 16y ago
A handful of universities have Research Professor positions. At Carnegie Mellon, it's basically the same as a normal Professor (tenured, similar prestige, etc.), except that you don't normally teach, and in return, you're expected to fund a portion of your own salary out of the grants you bring in. (If you don't bring in grants some year, you can fall back on teaching to earn your keep, so research profs do occasionally teach.)
- pwhelan 16y ago
  Some of these profs will offer special classes that might otherwise not really get offered or have enough students to warrant forcing someone to teach. I loved these classes because the profs were usually really passionate about the subject and that showed in their efforts. There was less droning on and emphasis on arcane, irrelevant minutiae and more "basic principles... now we build stuff and talk about the fun problems there". Those classes were so enjoyable that they almost made me pursue a PhD even though I am not right for that -- at least for now.

amichail 16y ago

It's more fun to create something novel that many people use and appreciate (e.g., an iPhone game). Much better than research prototypes that go no where beyond a publication or two.

pgbovine 16y ago
ok, i'll bite ;) if everyone thought the way that you did, then we'd still be programming by submitting our punch cards to some gigantic centralized machine. think about how much basic academic research occurred before the invention of something like the iPhone became possible
- natrius 16y ago
  There are plenty of necessary things in life that aren't exciting to do. There's nothing wrong with pointing it out unless you're trying to get more people to unwittingly do those things without fully understanding their choice. EDIT: I'm not trying to say that pure science is universally unexciting. Few things are. But generally, more people seem to be interested in consumer products than pure science research.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    I think a lot of researchers (myself included) really do prefer doing what we're doing, though. It's not like I'm doing research instead of making iPhone games because I have no choice; if I wanted to jump and make iPhone games instead, plenty of companies have open positions. I just find what I'm currently doing a lot more interesting. (That said, I wouldn't want this prof's job, because managing a large group of people, whether in industry or a research lab, is not my idea of fun.)
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
endtime 16y ago
Seriously? You'd rather implement Tetris in Obj-C than make a fundamental, provable improvement to an important algorithm? We have very different ideas of fun.

abstractbill 16y ago

This nicely sums up a bunch of reasons why I decided not to do a postdoc, and instead joined my first startup after finishing my PhD. I'm sure it works for some people, but I just couldn't see myself being happy with it.

timr 16y ago
Same for me. I had a few opportunities for good post-docs, but I just couldn't see the point. I didn't really want to be a professor, and if you don't want to be a prof, a post-doc is just a really low-rent job.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- anongradstudent 16y ago
  Do you think there's a point to getting a PhD at all? I've been debating dropping out of my PhD program (after one year), mostly for personal reasons, but partially because most grads from my (top N) program end up not being able to land a research or academic position after graduation. If I end up like 95% of the graduates from my program, will it have been a waste of time? Is there any value in a PhD if you do your own startup, become a dev at a huge company like Google, or become a dev at a small company like Yelp? And if so, what does it get you over having five years of experience? I don't mean in monetary terms -- a PhD is obviously a net negative monetarily; what I'm looking for is the chance to make a living working on 'interesting' problems.
  - smokinn 16y ago
    Well I've heard that Apple won't even bother considering you if you don't have at least a minimum of a master's degree in something related if you're applying for the Spotlight team. If you're studying something hard and you get good at it someone will want to hire you. You will have essentially paid for a good chunk of their R&D for them.
  - stoney 16y ago

_delirium 16y ago

This does vary based on the field and kind of school. It's definitely accurate for being a professor at a top-tier research university in the sciences or engineering. A prof job at those kinds of places could accurately be titled "research manager": the main job requirements are managing and bringing in funding for a fairly large research lab of 5-10 grad students and possibly some research scientists and postdocs. But you can shift the balance of the various components if you go to different kinds of schools. To take the opposite end of the spectrum, if you're the CS prof at a small liberal-arts college, your job will involve a lot more teaching and mentoring undergrads, and a lot less grant-writing and research-lab management. It's unfortunately not true that there's a happy medium to fit every kind of temperament, but there are some options at least.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

holdenc 16y ago

When you join an elite school as an academic you become a bureaucrat in a bureaucracy. Want to spend the institution's money? Make an important decision? Get people to help you? Get ready to grovel, and sacrifice much of what you believe is worth fighting for.

winzie 16y ago

I can certainly see the entrepreneurial aspect of being a professor -- managing a lab, hiring and firing people, and sourcing funding, and I don't disagree that professors are there to inspire the next generation. However, there is still a part of me that feels professors have that "safety net". Tenured professors are paid a monthly salary by the university, and often times at / above industry (that's true at least in Canada anyways). With a steady income, they have no risk, and the risk factor is a big part of being an entrepreneur.

_delirium 16y ago
> With a steady income, they have no risk, and the risk factor is a big part of being an entrepreneur. For first-time entrepreneurs I agree, but there are a lot of "serial entrepreneurs" who sold a company for multi-millions, and are now founding new companies. Millions in the bank definitely seems like a big safety net that insulates you from most real-world risk...
fadmmatt 16y ago
I was an entrepreneur (failed twice), and I'm now a professor. Being a pre-tenure professor is way more terrifying than being an entrepreneur was. And, depending on the field, between 25% and 75% of your salary as a professor will come from being able to procure external funding. If you can't convince the funding agencies to pay you, then tenure buys you an office, a teaching load and health care. It's been terrifying for me because my hit rate is about the same as Matt's. I've had very little luck getting funding for my research. And, at the last funding panel I served on, the funding rate was down to 5%. My own fund-seeking overhead is now at 60% of my time, and I'm still not getting any. Either we have too many scientists, or not enough science funding. I don't think the current system is sustainable.
- frossie 16y ago
  Either we have too many scientists, or not enough science funding. A little bit of both, to which I would add a third: the way we fund science is... I'm going to charitably say "sub-optimal"

DannoHung 16y ago

Where the fuck is all the money going?

DannoHung 16y ago
I'm sorry, but I wasn't just referring to the grant money. I mean the money that colleges get from tuition, donations, etc. Where is all that money going to? What is costing so much now? For all the talk about costs of colleges going up, I have never seen a single explanation of where the money is going. And if it ain't going into research, then it's gotta be going somewhere.

tjmaxal 16y ago

I really liked how he compared being a young professor to being in a startup. I don't know how accurate that analogy really is but it's certainly fun to think about. At my undergrad they had a whole program designed to commercialize faculty research by funding school centric startups. I still find the whole thing fascinating.