13 ms·

‘A toxic culture of overwork’: The graduate student mental health crisis

301 points by danso 8y ago

kodz4 8y ago
Meanwhile in China we have 9-9-6. The US needs to wake up to whether it wants to stay in the game.
- mac01021 8y ago
  What does "9-9-6" refer to?
  - jorgec 8y ago
    schedule from 9am to 9pm, 6 days per week. However, this schedule doesn't work.
  - unithrowaway 8y ago
    My guess is from 9 AM to 9 PM six days a week.
  - friendstock 8y ago
    Work from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.
  - uxcolumbo 8y ago
    09:00 - 21:00 6 days a week.
- ivalm 8y ago
  That sounds like a recipe for terrible productivity and inability to do creative work...
- doctorpangloss 8y ago
  There are people everywhere who work very hard. A corporate culture doesn’t tell you much about socially positive outcomes in research. A faith in corporate culture may, though. Conformity, in any country, is incompatible with effective R&D.
  - kodz4 8y ago
    We are talking about Stanford here. I don't know, but to me it feels like someone getting into the NBA or trying out for the Olympics having a problem with hard work. If you can't do the work why take up a spot in one of the best schools in the land? Isn't that a valid question? Especially in the hypercompetitive world we live in?
    - jacobolus 8y ago
      From what I understand, successful professional athletes tend to train very hard during dedicated practice hours (something like 30 hours per week), but then have rich lives outside their training, get enough sleep every night, etc. Trying to do more than 30 hours of intense creative work per week yields diminishing returns, while leading to worse and worse negative health effects as you increase hours. People working 60+ hours per week are wrecking themselves for bad results.
      - icelancer 8y ago
        > From what I understand, successful professional athletes tend to train very hard during dedicated practice hours (something like 30 hours per week), but then have rich lives outside their training, get enough sleep every night, etc. I train hundreds of professional athletes. The majority of them do not have rich lives outside of their training. Most of them have very unbalanced lives that center around their sport, training, and everything to do with it. Most relationships fail inside pro sports for several obvious reasons. Most have some form of mental health issues. We watch them on TV and we expect greatness, but as long as it is not us paying the cost to get there, we don't mind.
        jacobolus 8y ago
        Thanks for the reply. How much do the athletes you train practice? Do you think the exclusive focus helps their performance at their sport? Do you think competition selects for people with mental health problems, or causes mental health problems? Is there a noticeable difference between athletes who burn out in a few years vs. the ones who have long careers?
- tonyaiken 8y ago
  I don’t think overwork matters
- fiblye 8y ago
  Hours worked is inversely correlated with GDP per capita. China needs to step down if they want to try to be competitive.
  - icelancer 8y ago
    This implies that "GDP per capita" is something to optimize for. My guess is that China doesn't see it that way.
    - ivalm 8y ago
      I mean, pick your favorite financial metric, they are behind.
      - icelancer 8y ago
        This is trivially false. Here's a relevant one: Rate of positive change of GDP (absolute or per capita) over the last 20 years, by country.
        fiblye 8y ago
        They're behind Ireland in that aspect. And frankly, countries like Switzerland and Norway can't even really grow their GDP. They're essentially maxed out since most people have a standard of life beyond even upper class people in most countries. China is at a point where $2000 of growth is more significant than $12000 would be for Switzerland or Norway.
- rbg246 8y ago
  Sleep science says this is a terrible idea
- seattle_spring 8y ago
  Meanwhile in China you also have one of the highest suicide rates per capita in the world.
  - icelancer 8y ago
    That's... not true by official statistics. http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/suicide-rate-by-country/ http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/suicide-rate-by-c... Japan and the United States are both quite a bit higher. Is it likely that China is fudging the numbers and it's higher than what they report? Yes. But neither Japan nor the US come off as looking good here.
- luckydata 8y ago
  Not a single thing about China is attractive to me. Not how you work, not your politics, not your view of what's important in life. We have nothing to learn from you and I hope we don't become more similar than we are now.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - skrebbel 8y ago
    I agree with the things you list but wow there's a lot to learn from the Chinese. There's a NYT bestseller called "the subtle art of not giving a fuck". The Chinese, by and large, don't need this book because they already carefully allocate their fucks, and it's a natural thing for them to do (especially in the south, by my impression) More anecdotally, I find Chinese engineers among the most joyful and laid back people to work together with. 10-10 Would Work With Again. Also Chinese humor is splendid. Any joke that can get better by loudly appending "HAHAHAHAHA! ^_^" must be an excellent joke.
    - thewarrior 8y ago
      How can you be laid back while also doing 996 ?
      - skrebbel 8y ago
        Long lunches and 2-hour afternoon naps help.
  - digitalixus 8y ago
    If there's one thing living and working in Europe (Germany) has taught me is that all countries are more or less the same. It's just how well the culture manages to mask the "unattractive" traits we love to criticize in places like China (or America, as of late), and the PR/propaganda campaign they run to convince everyone they're the best place on the planet. China is a prime example of subpar image/PR management. They really gotta take a hint and learn from the Germans, who are well respected and have lots of positive stereotypes parroted around the internet "work-life balance, efficiency, timeliness, high standards of living, LE FREE HEALTHCARE!!!" IMO Germany is worse than America (the country they love to poo-poo on) and even China in so many respects. Yet America and China are the places people call "third world" nowadays. - Trains are constantly late. - Majority of offices don't have airconditioning or any air ventilation system (in fact, my previous workplace of 300 employees was in a building with NO insulation or fire alarm/suppression system!) - Card payments are not accepted in at least 50% of places, particularly restaurants. Cash only in 2019 (can anyone say TAX EVASION?). - People boast about contactless payments which just became mainstream last year like it's the second coming of sliced bread. - Boasting about the public transportation system which is only the best if you're a student with a massive surplus of time/shortage of cash, otherwise it takes you anywhere from 10 mins to 1 hour (depending on time of day and route) more to get between two places compared to a car. Heaven forbid you have a family, then public transportation even costs more than having a car. - Employers are extremely exploitative, especially in tech and especially startups - I'd say some places in America/Asia have better work-life and are less toxic than German companies. The only difference between America/China and Germany is the latter has employment laws that are actually enforced, but only if you go to court (but contrary to popular belief, don't make you "unfireable", just allow the employee to get a few thousand EUR as compensation for when the employer does try their hand at something exploitative - and they will, hoping you're not aware of your rights) - Virtue signalling on all sorts of things. Not gonna get into politics/immigration, there's plenty on that elsewhere. But German companies love to boast about EQUALITY FOR ALL, DISCRIMINATION IS DISGUSTING. All while lowballing immigrants in terms of salary and imposing an industrial-grade glass ceiling for any non-German who tries to work here. E.g. they will boast how their company of 300 has over 80 nationalities and work exclusively in English (because 90% of clients are American/British) but oddly enough, everyone in mid-upper/upper management is white and German. Maybe throw in the occasional white non-German European or token Indian guy for DIVERSITY!!!111!!!!1 - Diesel, until recently, was the bragging point for efficiency. I remember not 5 years ago, there would be so many Europeans in comments sections of (any discussion remotely car/transportation related) poo-pooing on the "dumb Americans" for still using gasoline and polluting the environment by not getting "the bigger MPGs" using diesel. LOL. - Free healthcare isn't actually free if you're not like the classic local European who still is a student with 0 work experience at age 30 shitposting on the internet. Look at the "KV" (health insurance) field of your payslip: I pay hundreds of EUR every MONTH as a healthy young person for "free healthcare". Out of sight, out of mind right? TLDR China is about as attractive as any other country on the planet, they just have subpar image management and PR at the moment
- sgwae 8y ago
  They dont expect you to be working the whole time though. If you spend time learning, or working on personal projects whos the wiser?
  - imtringued 8y ago
    Then your employer owns your personal projects.
    - sgwae 8y ago
      uh, how would that even get enforced? Some of my coworkers do schoolwork, and online lectures during work, you think the boss will take thier degree? Knowleged gained from spending time learning new stuff, and experienced gained from related projects to prepare for your next job is gonna be hard/pointless to confiscate as well. Oh no, the boss is going to take my hello world app in node js.
- skrebbel 8y ago
  I recognize that this is anecdata but I worked together remotely with a engineers from the Shenzhen area a number of times, and they would have a 2 hour lunch plus a 2 hour afternoon nap (under their desks, on a couch, anywhere really) every day. Working from 9 to 9 sounds less heavy (and more fun!) that way. Maybe I met some lucky few, but if my impression of Chinese tech working culture is accurate, it's less insane than popularly reported.
  - digitalixus 8y ago
    Ain't that the inconvenient truth? Countries with long working hours aren't filled with people with superhuman stamina and concentration. They just fill up the additional hours with a bunch of other stuff; in the western hemisphere, it's acting busy and spending hours on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. I'd rather work in a place with "work-life balance" (whatever the hell that is these days, 8-6?) but such places are disappearing all over the planet. Even in Europe, work-life balance can be goddamn horrible in tech, especially if you work in a startup. Unpaid overtime is common, in a recent interview at a startup of 70 employees, I was told "our official working hours are 9am-6pm but... well, we're a startup, so you know... hint hint nudge nudge". If what places like Blind are saying is true (that pay in the east is rising to SV-like levels), China and Asian countries with "long working hours" may be viable places to work in the future, since long hours are already a norm in America and becoming the new European standard too.
    - Gene_Parmesan 8y ago
      These places are findable, but you have to take a pay hit usually. I'm working as a software dev for a nonprofit right now in the US -- we have 35-40 hour weeks, 25 days of vacation, 1 telecommute day per week, and the nicest coworkers I've ever met. Everyone is sunny and relaxed because the culture breeds happiness. It's downright intoxicating to work there. But I'm making a solid $20k less than I could make elsewhere at my current role. To me though, it's worth it for a working environment where I wake up with a smile at the thought of driving in, rather than waking up with a sick pit of dread in my gut every day.
    - lavotu 8y ago
- Volt 8y ago
  That China needs to put in that much effort to be competitive with the US isn't a particularly good sign. Work smarter, not harder.
blastbeat 8y ago
I can somehow relate to that. I'm suffering from an anxiety disorder since I was 15, was diagnosed with 18 and started some (unhelpful) therapies in that year. Later, during my masters, at some point I finally had a mental breakdown and ended up 3 months in psychiatry. I was simply overwhelmed by a) coping with panic attacks before, during and after lectures, and b) coping with the increasing pressure to perform. But the major issue behind that breakdown was actually the decision between coming of age, or letting my anxiety take responsibility for my life. I decided for the first. After psychiatry I was basically able to leave my room and go to lectures again. I took another 2 years ambulatory therapy to take full responsibility for myself, and 5 years to finish my masters. After that, I started a Ph.D., and during that time my mental condition went from like "cannot imagine how the fuck I ended in psychiatry" to "one final straw, and I'm back in psychiatry". Although it went well, I certainly would not do it again. That said, I obtained my masters/Ph.D. at some no-name university in Germany. I was able to pay back my student loan during the Ph.D. studies and left university with savings. Also, I'm not in ruin because of a 3 month hospitalization. Thus, reading about insane performance/financial pressure at (elite) universities combined with the questionable health care system in the US for me is terrifying.
edhu2017 8y ago
Disclaimer: Our field is extremely competitive (deep learning) and other labs may have better working styles depending on their lab size and member composition. My lab's workload on average is 8 - 12 hours a day for 6-7 days a week, ramping up even more closer to deadlines. That being said, a lot of this time (50% or more) is for thinking and discussing. This schedule, while hard, seems to be effective for publishing in good conferences.
- asutekku 8y ago
  If half of the time is thinking, why do you need to be on the spot? Seems really counterproductive to me.
  - Bombthecat 8y ago
    He probably means planning meetings. Never understood what the purpose is to fill half the day with meetings. Beside the illusion of productivity.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - edhu2017 8y ago
      We don't plan too many meetings. Once a week for a lab wide meeting. Most of these meetings are casual and just discussions between cliques of phd students on specific topics.
  - edhu2017 8y ago
    Being in the lab helps me focus on my thinking. I also discuss my current thinking and problems with my peers for critique, and I can do the same for them. I'm more conditioned to do research, and my mind wanders less in the lab. However, I do agree that having free time and being away from the lab is important to get a fresh view of things.
- Aeolun 8y ago
  But how do you know that 6-8 hours 4-5 days a week wouldn’t be just as effective? I assume you don’t really have anything to compare it to.
omk 8y ago
After 5 years of work, I finally decided to take the jump and live the dream of earning a Masters degree from a prestitious university in The Netherlands. Being a non-EU citizen I had shell euro 15000/year but it still seemed cheaper than US counterparts. Couple months into the semester I realized the pressure kicking in my program. The planned 40 hour load required atleast 80 hours of work. I could sense stress and depression all around. None of my classmates seemed to have any weekends to travel around or play a sport. Friends needed smoke breaks every couple hours during group assignments. The fact that the program didn't offer the quality that one would expect made matters worse. I spent 6 months doing things that I did not enjoy. At the same time, my 5 years of work experience taught me enough to understand that what I was spending most of time on did not prepare me intellecually with regards to what to expect once I am back in the industry. The only preparation I was getting was the ability to absorb stress; and I was sucking at it. Dark thoughts started haunting me; I pushed through one semester and came back home to evaluate the ROI of this whole ordeal. I quit after going back in order change my program to something better; but time to switch and forth coming costs weren't motivating enough. UPDATE: I would honestly attribute most of the ordeal part to the program I selected. I looked forward to a couple professors to work with; both of them ended up either leaving the university or reducing their focus on my program. I saw students in other programs go along really well. At this point in academia I would consider it critical to visit the university personally (even if you are an international) to evaluate the environment you would be studying in and understand from fellow students how the program is being driven.
- skrebbel 8y ago
  My I ask what you studied and where? I'm curious because I did a Master's (CS) at a Dutch university (Eindhoven) and my experience was the total opposite. Lots of students were involved in extracurricular activities, there was time for study and time for fun, people generally seemed mostly relaxed. I'll concur that the program was a bit of an industry mismatch in that they don't teach software engineering but academic theoretical computer science, which has at most 10% overlap with what programmers in industry do. But I suspect that holds for most Master's programs out there (doesn't make it less ridiculous of course).
raverbashing 8y ago
I wonder how much of this is attributable to advisor and university "entrance/belonging rituals" (meaning "only the tough survive" mentality) There seems to be a lot of psychological abuse in graduate circles, even if it is not explicit. I am glad I dropped out early
vasco 8y ago
The fact that there was a lot of work and pressure to do well makes me look back fondly at my university years. Going through something hard and coming out the other end is rewarding and much more fulfilling than if it had been a breeze.
- perfmode 8y ago
  It’s not either-or, though.
_hardwaregeek 8y ago
Y'know, occasionally I see off hand remarks from tech or start-up people dissing academia, not understanding that academia is probably one of the hardest career paths in the world (and thus surprisingly similar to start-ups). You can't take a break (publish or perish), you need a lot of qualifications to even dream about getting tenure (top 5 grad schools or bust), and you're competing against ridiculously smart and pathologically obsessive people.
- mjburgess 8y ago
  I suspect its the content of the game rather than its difficulty. That is, academia is at-best dimly related to practical results that have a direct effect on people's lives.
  - tensor 8y ago
    Considering almost all the world changing knowledge our society has has come from academia, I really can't agree with you. Even in CS, almost all of what I learned in grad school was directly applicable to real problems. The issue is that the bar in industry is so low that we're more worried about getting people to do even basic things than getting them to use state of the art technology.
    - mjburgess 8y ago
      Yes, but the results of "academia" are an exercise in the net effects of collective intelligence. Many a bee sacrifices its life without making a difference. Rarer in business is one individuals efforts 100% wasted with such regularity. Academia is a path finding strategy through a forest where most paths are dead-ends. On a case-by-case, individual basis, it doesn't look so good.
      - johncolanduoni 8y ago
        In startups, a set of individuals efforts is 100% wasted with extreme regularity. They are also a path finding strategy through a forest where most paths are dead-ends, but you get paid very well until you hit that dead-end and move to the next path.
jorgec 8y ago
I was studying at the university, and my dad was fired, so I "decided" to work (during the day) and study at night and I found a different new world. I wasn't the only guy that did that; it was hard but not impossible. I also worked on summer in one of the worst schedules: 12 hours per day x 7 days per week. Am I mad?. Not really, I really enjoyed working and studying, I earned experience (and money), and when I graduated, I already had a job, expertise, and money (and contacts). Now, if you say that it's hard to study when the study is your only concern.. ¯\_ツ_/¯ We can't raise as a good adult if we don't give our best shot.
denhamparry 8y ago
I’m in my 30’s now and found out that I suffer from depression. It was a lightbulb moment realising that the feeling I’d become accustomed to for the previous 15 years was actually something. For me, I never fitted in with anyone at University and felt alone. Going into work I started with small companies, providing tech for sales roles. The sales way of ‘high pressure’ was transferred to how projects should be managed. Today I try and help out by building a community via running a meet-up. The people I have around me today and the confidence I have to be able to be depressed and get out of it with the help of others around me keeps me going.
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
>> “It felt as if I was telling him he didn’t respect me, and he essentially said, you’re right,” he recalled. I'm a PhD research student on my second year. It's unfortunate to frame this in terms of respect for the student's person, rather than his work, which is most likely what has lost the advisor's respect. I've come to my PhD after six years in the industry. Because of this I see my research as a work assignment: my advisor has handed me a project that I need to see through. The success of the project is not guaranteed and it's up to me to achieve it. As in the industry, where I earned the respect of my colleagues by getting things done, so in academia, I can only earn the respect of my advisor and other academics by delivering strong results and publishing in a reputable venue. If I can do that, then noone will have any reason to not respect "me" (actually, my work). The important thing to understand is that your advisor's enthusiasm and interst in your work cannot be taken for granted. And so is the enthusiasm and interest of other researchers in your field. Unless you are delivering genuinely interesting and exciting work, you cannot expect sustained enthusiasm and support to continue that work. Another thing to keep in mind about academics is that they are always on a tight budget: of funding, attention, time, energy. If you take a piece out of that budget you have to put something back in, or you will inevitably cause doubt and disapointment. It's a professional relation, studying for a PhD: you give something to be given something, do something so that others might do something for you.
- currymj 8y ago
  I’ve seen your posts before so I am pretty sure you’re a CS PhD student. It is important to remember that getting a PhD in CS is unusually good. There’s a lot of money, limited need for expensive equipment, good job prospects in academia, and little stigma about going into industry. Also, it seems to me that a culture of abusive behavior and hazing has not yet set in. None of this is true in the natural sciences, and advisors often do not treat students with even the basic dignity due to any human. This kind of thing is rare in computer science.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
    Machine learning actually- in particular, Inductive Logic Programming. But, yes, it's basically CS. I appreciate that there's a difference between different fields. I'm also aware that the article above is about research students in the US- I'm in a UK university.
lewis500 8y ago
I’m a professor. I have a few thoughts about this. First, the grad student/professor relationship is inherently asymmetrical, much more so than most employer/employee relationships. The degree has to last years or else you get nothing, and there are no hard and fast terms of the relationship like there is in many jobs. The professors recommendation might be the most important thing you get, and that is always running in the background. So many professors treat their students like robots. Second, professors are essentially super students. We became professors because we have extreme standards. Your engineering manager became a manager because he was an engineer and got promoted, but having a professor as a boss is like if a famous open source developer was your boss. Nothing about becoming a professor selects for kindness or empathy, unlike a manager at an ordinary company who might be trained and evaluated—-especially in a large company—-on the happiness of his workers. So a lot of professors have essentially obsessive attitudes and no empathy. Add to this the fact that many students are escaping countries where they have little future. For example, the past few years, the Iranian economic crisis has caused a surge in Iranian applicants. Third, the professors themselves are under extreme pressure. Everybody knows this. Fourth, the work a professor outsources to students tends to be the stupidest and worst tasks, because the students usually aren’t good enough to make big contributions. This is depressing for the students: they’re smart people who signed up to work with a famous professor on work they cared about, but their day to day is to do things anyone could do for almost no money. Finally, the professors are under pressure to create these huge labs. We don’t make profits, so things like funding and number of PhD students are taken to be metrics for evaluating. The US news ranking absurdly includes phd’s per tenure track professor as one of their metrics. So a lot of people are accepted who really shouldn’t be there, and the research is designed to have tons of busy work.
- cwbrandsma 8y ago
  So few places I’ve worked did an engineer actually get promoted to manager. Mostly product managers with little technical expertise...they used to be in sales. I’ve had a few engineers as managers, they were mostly really good. Just not many.
- king_magic 8y ago
  Sorry, but candidly, this just reads as a bunch of lame excuses to continue a blatant cycle of abuse. Nothing in my professional 15 year career has come anywhere remotely close to the brutal, absurd reality of what I’ve seen graduate/PhD students go through. I think academia is nearing a kind of crisis akin to what the the Catholic Church is going through with rampant sex abuse. Diminishing, unimpressive returns in output (aside from a few bright areas), and dark secrets continually being covered up/brushed aside. Academia needs to do some serious soul searching.
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
>> “I know lots of people who come out of undergrad and work 60 hours a week,” said James, referring to his friends in finance and other industries, “but they’re making so much more.” So that makes it better? I'd have thought that, if academic culture is seen as exhausting and exploitative, a 60-hour work week would not be seen as anything different, regardless of the salary. If a higher salary makes enough of a difference- well then, is that what this article is about? Giving graduate students more money for their work?
- comicjk 8y ago
  The salary comment does seem out of place compared to all the issues about the advisor/student relationship. But, as an independent axis, money can reduce stress. The easiest example is a shorter commute and more reliable transportation.
zwaps 8y ago
Another point that contributes to academia as "perfect storm", in addition to the points mentioned before, is that in many countries the chances of having a career are slim for the median student. Not everyone can gain a top position in any field. But in most industries, there are plenty of positions where you can make meaningful contributions. We know that most humans need to feel useful for mental health. In academia, there are increasingly few viable career paths where you are not required to beat out everyone. The further you progress, the harder it becomes to switch to industry. Implied in this is that the further you go, the more risk you must be willing to take, and the more stress you are under. In my country, the system for selecting professors is not very meritocratic. Older professors frequently would not have an ounce of success if they were required to prove themselves in the current situation. In addition, there are very few positions to do research below a professor level, and these positions are precarious and do not offer a lot of options for meaningful contribution. This places extreme stress on graduate students - in addition to everything being said here. As you progress in your PhD, you are either at the very top, or you have to fear that your career will go nowhere. Remember, this is a group of people that already selected on wanting to do research, seeing research as their goal in life. This is a systemic pressure of extreme magnitude. If you fail, which is statistically likely, then you will be in a (comparatively) bad position to go after other careers. In addition, you are most likely a person who does not care primarily about money and wealth. Thus, options for a meaningful life decline as risk increases. The success or failure is determined by many factors our of your control. Like your advisor's behavior, how the network is utilized, if you are lucky to work on a hot subject, if your contribution is recognized and so forth. The locus of control is far out of your reach, more so than in other industries. And if you fail, all the options you set for yourself in your life vanish. It doesn't take a lot of thought to realize this has an extreme effect on the psyche of graduate students. It's more than publish or perish. It's publish or face the void.
- woah 8y ago
  This seems strange. In industry, it seems that great cachet is attached to academic experience. In AI, there are a lot of positions paying a half million per year and up that are only available to PHD's. In blockchain, there have been many projects that have had little to show besides a powerpoint and the letters after the founder's name but still raised tens of millions of dollars in funding from big name VCs. For a time, this was so prevalent that projects like this were given the joking name "professorcoins". Are you talking about the experience of students whose subjects are not used in industry? In that case, it seems that they would have a difficult time regardless of whether or not they were in academia, since they would simply not be working on their subject at all in the private sector.
sambull 8y ago
Get ready for it.. I've had a employer make me work 36 hours straight.. I started hallucinating and fell into psychosis. I'm still recovering. But if they think your the only tool they have they'll blunt you until you won't repair.
hjk05 8y ago
Something often overlooked because it doesn’t fit the “evil professor overworks students” narrative, is that students themselves elect to put in more hours because they feel reaposible for their projects. During my graduate studies I worked under a professor who literally banned lab access to prevent people from working weekends. I hated that rule, but obeyed it, though I know some others snuck in anyways.
- khalilravanna 8y ago
  Yeah but those students aren’t putting in those extra hours because it’s “fun”, right? They’re doing it because the culture intrinsically rewards if not requires that sort of overwork. It sounds to me like that professor is treating the symptom (students want to overwork themselves) but the cause (toxic culture) still needs to be addressed.
solotronics 8y ago
This is probably a stupid question but with the internet as a distribution method is there anything stopping someone from doing their research independently and publishing on their own? I am sure if you are doing quality work you would still be able to get a hold of a professor somewhere who would be interested in working with you. Of course this would not apply to situations where there is lab equipment involved but I am thinking of the perspective of math, computer science, etc. where the work can be done on any commodity computer.
- coltonv 8y ago
  A friend of mine just told me she's going back to school for a doctorate despite being a successful researcher at an Ivy league school. Basically if she wants to run a lab or lead projects with good funding, she needs the title, even if she doesn't learn much along the way.
- mathgenius 8y ago
  Not a stupid question at all. History is littered with examples of major scientific discoveries that went completely ignored because the discoverer was not associated with a prestigious institution, or some other reputable platform. > quality work So what? There is no shortage of quality work. If someone really wants to make it as an outsider (or even an insider) I would suggest spending some time on youtube watching videos about how to make it in hollywood. It is much the same: fashion-driven, full of bean-counters, whats the next hot thing, who do you know, are you fun to work with, etc. etc. People have this idea that science is the objective search for truth. But this is just a small part of what is going on.
  - zbentley 8y ago
    > History is littered with examples of major scientific discoveries that went completely ignored Citations please
- mattkrause 8y ago
  It would be rough to go it alone. Research is probably a bit more social than most people imagine. Nothing pokes a hole in a 'brilliant' idea like bouncing it off a colleague, and at the same time, you often need an outside perspective to decide if something is a breakthrough or dead-end. Research groups often have a bunch of informal knowledge: a technique that sounds simple may have some subtle pitfalls; one that looks complicated might be really easy to apply in specific situations. Some published results, while maybe not wrong per se, are less generalizable or harder to replicate than the papers claim. A lot of this knowledge hasn't made it into the formal literature, but is very easy to pick up over coffee. If you want people to read your papers (or fund your proposals), they need to be written in a way that the conventions of your field: how much detail is needed for various steps, what can you claim based on your results (and what shouldn't you claim), etc. Grad students usually learn these conventions by writing with senior people. If your end goal is to learn this stuff from a professor, there's already a pathway for that: go to grad school! If your ideas were amazing, you could collaborate with one, but you're going to be competing with the prof's actual trainees for his time/attention, which will make it hard for you to get on the prof's radar to begin with.
BearsAreCool 8y ago
I'm working on a masters degree at the moment for context. The fact that a professor has the ability to deny me the piece of paper I've been told all my life is my ticket to a better life based on arbitrary grading rules is horrifying. In my program there is a different professor for every class and how they grade and what they want has always been different, some demand title pages for every paper, some demand some specific source count, and others grade you down for submitting too close to the official due date. The professors who I have liked the most are the ones that act like the students, just scraping by barely managing to do their work, and not having the time or energy to be too critical of the students work. I'm sure professors are nice people and I'm even good friends with some at other universities, but there is a massive power imbalance and it is horrifying to students.
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  Exactly. Professors have no, I repeat, NO accountability. Inside their classroom, they are the petty dictators they are empowered by the university to be. Some do a good and just job at education... But that's not their real goal. Their goal is to get the university more money and more students - teaching is the secondary objective. If it happens, it's good. I've seen a large handful of people whom should have never been offered a teaching position. When English is obviously a 2nd or 3rd language, and you're teaching a complicated topic, and we can't understand you - you shouldn't be teaching it. I'm not making insults on intelligence, because they were intelligent... But when every student struggles to understand every word (example word: theta , pronounced:fee-ter ) they shouldn't be teaching. I've also had "professors" who taught light and sound physics, discussing electricity, who didn't know what a capacitor was. And it was in the middle of the partial differential plate field equations for... capacitors. He was also known at putting questions on the test that did not pertain to the class proper. He would also create his own (wrong) answer key, and then refuse to accept corrections. Good scores for the class were around 18-22 out of 100. I have no clue how one would accomplish this, but the university ALSO needs to be accountable to the students who throw it money.
  - anon946 8y ago
    I assume that you are mainly discussing undergrad education. In that case, the way to pressure universities to be accountable is by not going to such universities, as you imply in your first paragraph: "Their goal is to get the university more money and more students". So don't go to such universities. They will lose students. Losing undergrad students won't directly impact research funding, but it will have an impact at any public university.
devilmoon 8y ago
Something I have noticed throughout my studies is that some countries seem better equipped to let university students shine and not suffer from high stress, or at least help them decompress. This might be anecdotal experience, and I am not currently in a PhD programme so I am not sure it would aplly there as well, however this is what I have noticed: In my country universities are usually an environment quite similar to High School wrt how students usually fit into the greater social circle of the institution, meaning that you usually go in for your lectures and leave as soon as you're done, have only a few ties with other students and there are almost no extra curricular activites to partake in through which you could bond with other people. During my undergraduate studies I spent a year in a university in the UK and this experience opened my eyes to how detrimental this environment is to students' performance; The university I attended explicitely encouraged students to set up "Student Associations" centered around whatever topic the person setting up particularly cared about, and in my experience I attendend events from many different ones, ranging from my department's one to anime/manga, to gaming, to my native country's culture. This has helped me so much in connecting with other people I would've otherwise never met who shared some of my interests, and in turn I was always able to have someone to speak to about common problems that students face, or to attend social events in order to decompress from a particularly hard day; at the end of the year I gave some of the best exams of my career, I made friends I am still in contact with years after, I was able to land an internship through one of these societies' events, and generally enjoyed life and university MUCH more than I ever did in my country. After coming back home and moving on with my life I am currently pursuing a Masters in my own country, and after a bit more than a semester I already feel the same feeling of dread I felt during my undergrad experience kick in since there are no avenues or ways to actually enjoy life as a university student. I firmly believe that if more countries / universities adopted the same stance I experience in that UK university students would generally be way better off, both with respect to their mental health and their track record. Unfortunately I have never met someone who has shared the same experience as me and hence has the same outlook on the problem, and even when speaking up about these issues with my department or colleagues many seem to not particularly care or understand what that particular system would entail for everyone involved. It is really a shame. I am wondering if there are any scientific studies that have been done on this particular issue that I could bring up to shift perception around this? Anyway, just my two cents. tl;dr: make students more involved in their university's community and provide the means to self-organise around common interests so as to create comraderie and avenues to decompress, everyone will benefit from it.
spenrose 8y ago
Excerpt: "In 2015, Sophie — a recent graduate of the School of Earth’s Ph.D. program who wished to remain anonymous in order to preserve her relationship with her advisor — and five others in her Ph.D. cohort took a prospective Ph.D. candidate out to dinner. Sitting at a restaurant on University Avenue, the prospective candidate mentioned that she was in therapy. One by one, the current students at the table said that they were, too, but none of them had ever discussed it with each other. “Unless it’s your really good friends, you don’t talk about it,” Sophie said. “It’s still stigmatized, and it’s still seen as a sign of weakness. It took someone to be honest … [and then] everyone else opened up.” According to statistics provided by CAPS director Bina Patel, CAPS counselors saw 22 percent of the graduate student community over the 2017-2018 academic year, for an average of 4.5 visits per student. Graduate students make up 59 percent of the students CAPS serves, which Patel said is consistent with peer institutions. "
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codekilla 8y ago
I've worked in academia for several years, and it's been somewhat discouraging. I've certainly noticed the pressure put on grad students--not fun. I'm someone who is deeply passionate about science/research and have tried to think of things that could be done outside academia to contribute basic scientific research--the hope is more team science and not labs organized around PI feudalships. Anyway, I've been working on https://www.eonias.org/ https://www.eonias.org/ on the side (still fleshing it out), if anyone is interested in collaborating on writing a grant, please reach out.
ehvatum 8y ago
My feelings on this couldn't be more mixed. I enjoyed many years working as a coder in the academic research setting, but I lost my best friend to suicide in the second semester of his PhD program. It's just sort of a test to see if you're stronger than the system. If you want the strength to survive grad school, spend a few years scraping by in a third-world nation, or climb mountains, or get serious about wilderness survival. Do something aside from following the rules and getting inevitably raped by a system you have done nothing to learn to dominate.
deleted 8y ago
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301 points by danso 8y ago

kodz4 8y ago

Meanwhile in China we have 9-9-6. The US needs to wake up to whether it wants to stay in the game.

mac01021 8y ago
What does "9-9-6" refer to?
- jorgec 8y ago
  schedule from 9am to 9pm, 6 days per week. However, this schedule doesn't work.
- unithrowaway 8y ago
  My guess is from 9 AM to 9 PM six days a week.
- friendstock 8y ago
  Work from 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.
- uxcolumbo 8y ago
  09:00 - 21:00 6 days a week.
ivalm 8y ago
That sounds like a recipe for terrible productivity and inability to do creative work...
doctorpangloss 8y ago
There are people everywhere who work very hard. A corporate culture doesn’t tell you much about socially positive outcomes in research. A faith in corporate culture may, though. Conformity, in any country, is incompatible with effective R&D.
- kodz4 8y ago
  We are talking about Stanford here. I don't know, but to me it feels like someone getting into the NBA or trying out for the Olympics having a problem with hard work. If you can't do the work why take up a spot in one of the best schools in the land? Isn't that a valid question? Especially in the hypercompetitive world we live in?
  - jacobolus 8y ago
    From what I understand, successful professional athletes tend to train very hard during dedicated practice hours (something like 30 hours per week), but then have rich lives outside their training, get enough sleep every night, etc. Trying to do more than 30 hours of intense creative work per week yields diminishing returns, while leading to worse and worse negative health effects as you increase hours. People working 60+ hours per week are wrecking themselves for bad results.
    - icelancer 8y ago
      > From what I understand, successful professional athletes tend to train very hard during dedicated practice hours (something like 30 hours per week), but then have rich lives outside their training, get enough sleep every night, etc. I train hundreds of professional athletes. The majority of them do not have rich lives outside of their training. Most of them have very unbalanced lives that center around their sport, training, and everything to do with it. Most relationships fail inside pro sports for several obvious reasons. Most have some form of mental health issues. We watch them on TV and we expect greatness, but as long as it is not us paying the cost to get there, we don't mind.
      - jacobolus 8y ago
        Thanks for the reply. How much do the athletes you train practice? Do you think the exclusive focus helps their performance at their sport? Do you think competition selects for people with mental health problems, or causes mental health problems? Is there a noticeable difference between athletes who burn out in a few years vs. the ones who have long careers?
tonyaiken 8y ago
I don’t think overwork matters
fiblye 8y ago
Hours worked is inversely correlated with GDP per capita. China needs to step down if they want to try to be competitive.
- icelancer 8y ago
  This implies that "GDP per capita" is something to optimize for. My guess is that China doesn't see it that way.
  - ivalm 8y ago
    I mean, pick your favorite financial metric, they are behind.
    - icelancer 8y ago
      This is trivially false. Here's a relevant one: Rate of positive change of GDP (absolute or per capita) over the last 20 years, by country.
      - fiblye 8y ago
        They're behind Ireland in that aspect. And frankly, countries like Switzerland and Norway can't even really grow their GDP. They're essentially maxed out since most people have a standard of life beyond even upper class people in most countries. China is at a point where $2000 of growth is more significant than $12000 would be for Switzerland or Norway.
rbg246 8y ago
Sleep science says this is a terrible idea
seattle_spring 8y ago
Meanwhile in China you also have one of the highest suicide rates per capita in the world.
- icelancer 8y ago
  That's... not true by official statistics. http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/suicide-rate-by-country/ http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/suicide-rate-by-c... Japan and the United States are both quite a bit higher. Is it likely that China is fudging the numbers and it's higher than what they report? Yes. But neither Japan nor the US come off as looking good here.
luckydata 8y ago
Not a single thing about China is attractive to me. Not how you work, not your politics, not your view of what's important in life. We have nothing to learn from you and I hope we don't become more similar than we are now.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- skrebbel 8y ago
  I agree with the things you list but wow there's a lot to learn from the Chinese. There's a NYT bestseller called "the subtle art of not giving a fuck". The Chinese, by and large, don't need this book because they already carefully allocate their fucks, and it's a natural thing for them to do (especially in the south, by my impression) More anecdotally, I find Chinese engineers among the most joyful and laid back people to work together with. 10-10 Would Work With Again. Also Chinese humor is splendid. Any joke that can get better by loudly appending "HAHAHAHAHA! ^_^" must be an excellent joke.
  - thewarrior 8y ago
    How can you be laid back while also doing 996 ?
    - skrebbel 8y ago
      Long lunches and 2-hour afternoon naps help.
- digitalixus 8y ago
  If there's one thing living and working in Europe (Germany) has taught me is that all countries are more or less the same. It's just how well the culture manages to mask the "unattractive" traits we love to criticize in places like China (or America, as of late), and the PR/propaganda campaign they run to convince everyone they're the best place on the planet. China is a prime example of subpar image/PR management. They really gotta take a hint and learn from the Germans, who are well respected and have lots of positive stereotypes parroted around the internet "work-life balance, efficiency, timeliness, high standards of living, LE FREE HEALTHCARE!!!" IMO Germany is worse than America (the country they love to poo-poo on) and even China in so many respects. Yet America and China are the places people call "third world" nowadays. - Trains are constantly late. - Majority of offices don't have airconditioning or any air ventilation system (in fact, my previous workplace of 300 employees was in a building with NO insulation or fire alarm/suppression system!) - Card payments are not accepted in at least 50% of places, particularly restaurants. Cash only in 2019 (can anyone say TAX EVASION?). - People boast about contactless payments which just became mainstream last year like it's the second coming of sliced bread. - Boasting about the public transportation system which is only the best if you're a student with a massive surplus of time/shortage of cash, otherwise it takes you anywhere from 10 mins to 1 hour (depending on time of day and route) more to get between two places compared to a car. Heaven forbid you have a family, then public transportation even costs more than having a car. - Employers are extremely exploitative, especially in tech and especially startups - I'd say some places in America/Asia have better work-life and are less toxic than German companies. The only difference between America/China and Germany is the latter has employment laws that are actually enforced, but only if you go to court (but contrary to popular belief, don't make you "unfireable", just allow the employee to get a few thousand EUR as compensation for when the employer does try their hand at something exploitative - and they will, hoping you're not aware of your rights) - Virtue signalling on all sorts of things. Not gonna get into politics/immigration, there's plenty on that elsewhere. But German companies love to boast about EQUALITY FOR ALL, DISCRIMINATION IS DISGUSTING. All while lowballing immigrants in terms of salary and imposing an industrial-grade glass ceiling for any non-German who tries to work here. E.g. they will boast how their company of 300 has over 80 nationalities and work exclusively in English (because 90% of clients are American/British) but oddly enough, everyone in mid-upper/upper management is white and German. Maybe throw in the occasional white non-German European or token Indian guy for DIVERSITY!!!111!!!!1 - Diesel, until recently, was the bragging point for efficiency. I remember not 5 years ago, there would be so many Europeans in comments sections of (any discussion remotely car/transportation related) poo-pooing on the "dumb Americans" for still using gasoline and polluting the environment by not getting "the bigger MPGs" using diesel. LOL. - Free healthcare isn't actually free if you're not like the classic local European who still is a student with 0 work experience at age 30 shitposting on the internet. Look at the "KV" (health insurance) field of your payslip: I pay hundreds of EUR every MONTH as a healthy young person for "free healthcare". Out of sight, out of mind right? TLDR China is about as attractive as any other country on the planet, they just have subpar image management and PR at the moment
sgwae 8y ago
They dont expect you to be working the whole time though. If you spend time learning, or working on personal projects whos the wiser?
- imtringued 8y ago
  Then your employer owns your personal projects.
  - sgwae 8y ago
    uh, how would that even get enforced? Some of my coworkers do schoolwork, and online lectures during work, you think the boss will take thier degree? Knowleged gained from spending time learning new stuff, and experienced gained from related projects to prepare for your next job is gonna be hard/pointless to confiscate as well. Oh no, the boss is going to take my hello world app in node js.
skrebbel 8y ago
I recognize that this is anecdata but I worked together remotely with a engineers from the Shenzhen area a number of times, and they would have a 2 hour lunch plus a 2 hour afternoon nap (under their desks, on a couch, anywhere really) every day. Working from 9 to 9 sounds less heavy (and more fun!) that way. Maybe I met some lucky few, but if my impression of Chinese tech working culture is accurate, it's less insane than popularly reported.
- digitalixus 8y ago
  Ain't that the inconvenient truth? Countries with long working hours aren't filled with people with superhuman stamina and concentration. They just fill up the additional hours with a bunch of other stuff; in the western hemisphere, it's acting busy and spending hours on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. I'd rather work in a place with "work-life balance" (whatever the hell that is these days, 8-6?) but such places are disappearing all over the planet. Even in Europe, work-life balance can be goddamn horrible in tech, especially if you work in a startup. Unpaid overtime is common, in a recent interview at a startup of 70 employees, I was told "our official working hours are 9am-6pm but... well, we're a startup, so you know... hint hint nudge nudge". If what places like Blind are saying is true (that pay in the east is rising to SV-like levels), China and Asian countries with "long working hours" may be viable places to work in the future, since long hours are already a norm in America and becoming the new European standard too.
  - Gene_Parmesan 8y ago
    These places are findable, but you have to take a pay hit usually. I'm working as a software dev for a nonprofit right now in the US -- we have 35-40 hour weeks, 25 days of vacation, 1 telecommute day per week, and the nicest coworkers I've ever met. Everyone is sunny and relaxed because the culture breeds happiness. It's downright intoxicating to work there. But I'm making a solid $20k less than I could make elsewhere at my current role. To me though, it's worth it for a working environment where I wake up with a smile at the thought of driving in, rather than waking up with a sick pit of dread in my gut every day.
  - lavotu 8y ago
Volt 8y ago
That China needs to put in that much effort to be competitive with the US isn't a particularly good sign. Work smarter, not harder.

blastbeat 8y ago

I can somehow relate to that. I'm suffering from an anxiety disorder since I was 15, was diagnosed with 18 and started some (unhelpful) therapies in that year. Later, during my masters, at some point I finally had a mental breakdown and ended up 3 months in psychiatry. I was simply overwhelmed by a) coping with panic attacks before, during and after lectures, and b) coping with the increasing pressure to perform. But the major issue behind that breakdown was actually the decision between coming of age, or letting my anxiety take responsibility for my life. I decided for the first. After psychiatry I was basically able to leave my room and go to lectures again. I took another 2 years ambulatory therapy to take full responsibility for myself, and 5 years to finish my masters. After that, I started a Ph.D., and during that time my mental condition went from like "cannot imagine how the fuck I ended in psychiatry" to "one final straw, and I'm back in psychiatry". Although it went well, I certainly would not do it again. That said, I obtained my masters/Ph.D. at some no-name university in Germany. I was able to pay back my student loan during the Ph.D. studies and left university with savings. Also, I'm not in ruin because of a 3 month hospitalization. Thus, reading about insane performance/financial pressure at (elite) universities combined with the questionable health care system in the US for me is terrifying.

edhu2017 8y ago

Disclaimer: Our field is extremely competitive (deep learning) and other labs may have better working styles depending on their lab size and member composition. My lab's workload on average is 8 - 12 hours a day for 6-7 days a week, ramping up even more closer to deadlines. That being said, a lot of this time (50% or more) is for thinking and discussing. This schedule, while hard, seems to be effective for publishing in good conferences.

asutekku 8y ago
If half of the time is thinking, why do you need to be on the spot? Seems really counterproductive to me.
- Bombthecat 8y ago
  He probably means planning meetings. Never understood what the purpose is to fill half the day with meetings. Beside the illusion of productivity.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - edhu2017 8y ago
    We don't plan too many meetings. Once a week for a lab wide meeting. Most of these meetings are casual and just discussions between cliques of phd students on specific topics.
- edhu2017 8y ago
  Being in the lab helps me focus on my thinking. I also discuss my current thinking and problems with my peers for critique, and I can do the same for them. I'm more conditioned to do research, and my mind wanders less in the lab. However, I do agree that having free time and being away from the lab is important to get a fresh view of things.
Aeolun 8y ago
But how do you know that 6-8 hours 4-5 days a week wouldn’t be just as effective? I assume you don’t really have anything to compare it to.

omk 8y ago

After 5 years of work, I finally decided to take the jump and live the dream of earning a Masters degree from a prestitious university in The Netherlands. Being a non-EU citizen I had shell euro 15000/year but it still seemed cheaper than US counterparts. Couple months into the semester I realized the pressure kicking in my program. The planned 40 hour load required atleast 80 hours of work. I could sense stress and depression all around. None of my classmates seemed to have any weekends to travel around or play a sport. Friends needed smoke breaks every couple hours during group assignments. The fact that the program didn't offer the quality that one would expect made matters worse. I spent 6 months doing things that I did not enjoy. At the same time, my 5 years of work experience taught me enough to understand that what I was spending most of time on did not prepare me intellecually with regards to what to expect once I am back in the industry. The only preparation I was getting was the ability to absorb stress; and I was sucking at it. Dark thoughts started haunting me; I pushed through one semester and came back home to evaluate the ROI of this whole ordeal. I quit after going back in order change my program to something better; but time to switch and forth coming costs weren't motivating enough. UPDATE: I would honestly attribute most of the ordeal part to the program I selected. I looked forward to a couple professors to work with; both of them ended up either leaving the university or reducing their focus on my program. I saw students in other programs go along really well. At this point in academia I would consider it critical to visit the university personally (even if you are an international) to evaluate the environment you would be studying in and understand from fellow students how the program is being driven.

skrebbel 8y ago
My I ask what you studied and where? I'm curious because I did a Master's (CS) at a Dutch university (Eindhoven) and my experience was the total opposite. Lots of students were involved in extracurricular activities, there was time for study and time for fun, people generally seemed mostly relaxed. I'll concur that the program was a bit of an industry mismatch in that they don't teach software engineering but academic theoretical computer science, which has at most 10% overlap with what programmers in industry do. But I suspect that holds for most Master's programs out there (doesn't make it less ridiculous of course).

raverbashing 8y ago

I wonder how much of this is attributable to advisor and university "entrance/belonging rituals" (meaning "only the tough survive" mentality) There seems to be a lot of psychological abuse in graduate circles, even if it is not explicit. I am glad I dropped out early

vasco 8y ago

The fact that there was a lot of work and pressure to do well makes me look back fondly at my university years. Going through something hard and coming out the other end is rewarding and much more fulfilling than if it had been a breeze.

perfmode 8y ago
It’s not either-or, though.

_hardwaregeek 8y ago

Y'know, occasionally I see off hand remarks from tech or start-up people dissing academia, not understanding that academia is probably one of the hardest career paths in the world (and thus surprisingly similar to start-ups). You can't take a break (publish or perish), you need a lot of qualifications to even dream about getting tenure (top 5 grad schools or bust), and you're competing against ridiculously smart and pathologically obsessive people.

mjburgess 8y ago
I suspect its the content of the game rather than its difficulty. That is, academia is at-best dimly related to practical results that have a direct effect on people's lives.
- tensor 8y ago
  Considering almost all the world changing knowledge our society has has come from academia, I really can't agree with you. Even in CS, almost all of what I learned in grad school was directly applicable to real problems. The issue is that the bar in industry is so low that we're more worried about getting people to do even basic things than getting them to use state of the art technology.
  - mjburgess 8y ago
    Yes, but the results of "academia" are an exercise in the net effects of collective intelligence. Many a bee sacrifices its life without making a difference. Rarer in business is one individuals efforts 100% wasted with such regularity. Academia is a path finding strategy through a forest where most paths are dead-ends. On a case-by-case, individual basis, it doesn't look so good.
    - johncolanduoni 8y ago
      In startups, a set of individuals efforts is 100% wasted with extreme regularity. They are also a path finding strategy through a forest where most paths are dead-ends, but you get paid very well until you hit that dead-end and move to the next path.

jorgec 8y ago

I was studying at the university, and my dad was fired, so I "decided" to work (during the day) and study at night and I found a different new world. I wasn't the only guy that did that; it was hard but not impossible. I also worked on summer in one of the worst schedules: 12 hours per day x 7 days per week. Am I mad?. Not really, I really enjoyed working and studying, I earned experience (and money), and when I graduated, I already had a job, expertise, and money (and contacts). Now, if you say that it's hard to study when the study is your only concern.. ¯\_ツ_/¯ We can't raise as a good adult if we don't give our best shot.

denhamparry 8y ago

I’m in my 30’s now and found out that I suffer from depression. It was a lightbulb moment realising that the feeling I’d become accustomed to for the previous 15 years was actually something. For me, I never fitted in with anyone at University and felt alone. Going into work I started with small companies, providing tech for sales roles. The sales way of ‘high pressure’ was transferred to how projects should be managed. Today I try and help out by building a community via running a meet-up. The people I have around me today and the confidence I have to be able to be depressed and get out of it with the help of others around me keeps me going.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

>> “It felt as if I was telling him he didn’t respect me, and he essentially said, you’re right,” he recalled. I'm a PhD research student on my second year. It's unfortunate to frame this in terms of respect for the student's person, rather than his work, which is most likely what has lost the advisor's respect. I've come to my PhD after six years in the industry. Because of this I see my research as a work assignment: my advisor has handed me a project that I need to see through. The success of the project is not guaranteed and it's up to me to achieve it. As in the industry, where I earned the respect of my colleagues by getting things done, so in academia, I can only earn the respect of my advisor and other academics by delivering strong results and publishing in a reputable venue. If I can do that, then noone will have any reason to not respect "me" (actually, my work). The important thing to understand is that your advisor's enthusiasm and interst in your work cannot be taken for granted. And so is the enthusiasm and interest of other researchers in your field. Unless you are delivering genuinely interesting and exciting work, you cannot expect sustained enthusiasm and support to continue that work. Another thing to keep in mind about academics is that they are always on a tight budget: of funding, attention, time, energy. If you take a piece out of that budget you have to put something back in, or you will inevitably cause doubt and disapointment. It's a professional relation, studying for a PhD: you give something to be given something, do something so that others might do something for you.

currymj 8y ago
I’ve seen your posts before so I am pretty sure you’re a CS PhD student. It is important to remember that getting a PhD in CS is unusually good. There’s a lot of money, limited need for expensive equipment, good job prospects in academia, and little stigma about going into industry. Also, it seems to me that a culture of abusive behavior and hazing has not yet set in. None of this is true in the natural sciences, and advisors often do not treat students with even the basic dignity due to any human. This kind of thing is rare in computer science.
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
  Machine learning actually- in particular, Inductive Logic Programming. But, yes, it's basically CS. I appreciate that there's a difference between different fields. I'm also aware that the article above is about research students in the US- I'm in a UK university.

lewis500 8y ago

I’m a professor. I have a few thoughts about this. First, the grad student/professor relationship is inherently asymmetrical, much more so than most employer/employee relationships. The degree has to last years or else you get nothing, and there are no hard and fast terms of the relationship like there is in many jobs. The professors recommendation might be the most important thing you get, and that is always running in the background. So many professors treat their students like robots. Second, professors are essentially super students. We became professors because we have extreme standards. Your engineering manager became a manager because he was an engineer and got promoted, but having a professor as a boss is like if a famous open source developer was your boss. Nothing about becoming a professor selects for kindness or empathy, unlike a manager at an ordinary company who might be trained and evaluated—-especially in a large company—-on the happiness of his workers. So a lot of professors have essentially obsessive attitudes and no empathy. Add to this the fact that many students are escaping countries where they have little future. For example, the past few years, the Iranian economic crisis has caused a surge in Iranian applicants. Third, the professors themselves are under extreme pressure. Everybody knows this. Fourth, the work a professor outsources to students tends to be the stupidest and worst tasks, because the students usually aren’t good enough to make big contributions. This is depressing for the students: they’re smart people who signed up to work with a famous professor on work they cared about, but their day to day is to do things anyone could do for almost no money. Finally, the professors are under pressure to create these huge labs. We don’t make profits, so things like funding and number of PhD students are taken to be metrics for evaluating. The US news ranking absurdly includes phd’s per tenure track professor as one of their metrics. So a lot of people are accepted who really shouldn’t be there, and the research is designed to have tons of busy work.

cwbrandsma 8y ago
So few places I’ve worked did an engineer actually get promoted to manager. Mostly product managers with little technical expertise...they used to be in sales. I’ve had a few engineers as managers, they were mostly really good. Just not many.
king_magic 8y ago
Sorry, but candidly, this just reads as a bunch of lame excuses to continue a blatant cycle of abuse. Nothing in my professional 15 year career has come anywhere remotely close to the brutal, absurd reality of what I’ve seen graduate/PhD students go through. I think academia is nearing a kind of crisis akin to what the the Catholic Church is going through with rampant sex abuse. Diminishing, unimpressive returns in output (aside from a few bright areas), and dark secrets continually being covered up/brushed aside. Academia needs to do some serious soul searching.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

>> “I know lots of people who come out of undergrad and work 60 hours a week,” said James, referring to his friends in finance and other industries, “but they’re making so much more.” So that makes it better? I'd have thought that, if academic culture is seen as exhausting and exploitative, a 60-hour work week would not be seen as anything different, regardless of the salary. If a higher salary makes enough of a difference- well then, is that what this article is about? Giving graduate students more money for their work?

comicjk 8y ago
The salary comment does seem out of place compared to all the issues about the advisor/student relationship. But, as an independent axis, money can reduce stress. The easiest example is a shorter commute and more reliable transportation.

zwaps 8y ago

Another point that contributes to academia as "perfect storm", in addition to the points mentioned before, is that in many countries the chances of having a career are slim for the median student. Not everyone can gain a top position in any field. But in most industries, there are plenty of positions where you can make meaningful contributions. We know that most humans need to feel useful for mental health. In academia, there are increasingly few viable career paths where you are not required to beat out everyone. The further you progress, the harder it becomes to switch to industry. Implied in this is that the further you go, the more risk you must be willing to take, and the more stress you are under. In my country, the system for selecting professors is not very meritocratic. Older professors frequently would not have an ounce of success if they were required to prove themselves in the current situation. In addition, there are very few positions to do research below a professor level, and these positions are precarious and do not offer a lot of options for meaningful contribution. This places extreme stress on graduate students - in addition to everything being said here. As you progress in your PhD, you are either at the very top, or you have to fear that your career will go nowhere. Remember, this is a group of people that already selected on wanting to do research, seeing research as their goal in life. This is a systemic pressure of extreme magnitude. If you fail, which is statistically likely, then you will be in a (comparatively) bad position to go after other careers. In addition, you are most likely a person who does not care primarily about money and wealth. Thus, options for a meaningful life decline as risk increases. The success or failure is determined by many factors our of your control. Like your advisor's behavior, how the network is utilized, if you are lucky to work on a hot subject, if your contribution is recognized and so forth. The locus of control is far out of your reach, more so than in other industries. And if you fail, all the options you set for yourself in your life vanish. It doesn't take a lot of thought to realize this has an extreme effect on the psyche of graduate students. It's more than publish or perish. It's publish or face the void.

woah 8y ago
This seems strange. In industry, it seems that great cachet is attached to academic experience. In AI, there are a lot of positions paying a half million per year and up that are only available to PHD's. In blockchain, there have been many projects that have had little to show besides a powerpoint and the letters after the founder's name but still raised tens of millions of dollars in funding from big name VCs. For a time, this was so prevalent that projects like this were given the joking name "professorcoins". Are you talking about the experience of students whose subjects are not used in industry? In that case, it seems that they would have a difficult time regardless of whether or not they were in academia, since they would simply not be working on their subject at all in the private sector.

sambull 8y ago

Get ready for it.. I've had a employer make me work 36 hours straight.. I started hallucinating and fell into psychosis. I'm still recovering. But if they think your the only tool they have they'll blunt you until you won't repair.

hjk05 8y ago

Something often overlooked because it doesn’t fit the “evil professor overworks students” narrative, is that students themselves elect to put in more hours because they feel reaposible for their projects. During my graduate studies I worked under a professor who literally banned lab access to prevent people from working weekends. I hated that rule, but obeyed it, though I know some others snuck in anyways.

khalilravanna 8y ago
Yeah but those students aren’t putting in those extra hours because it’s “fun”, right? They’re doing it because the culture intrinsically rewards if not requires that sort of overwork. It sounds to me like that professor is treating the symptom (students want to overwork themselves) but the cause (toxic culture) still needs to be addressed.

solotronics 8y ago

This is probably a stupid question but with the internet as a distribution method is there anything stopping someone from doing their research independently and publishing on their own? I am sure if you are doing quality work you would still be able to get a hold of a professor somewhere who would be interested in working with you. Of course this would not apply to situations where there is lab equipment involved but I am thinking of the perspective of math, computer science, etc. where the work can be done on any commodity computer.

coltonv 8y ago
A friend of mine just told me she's going back to school for a doctorate despite being a successful researcher at an Ivy league school. Basically if she wants to run a lab or lead projects with good funding, she needs the title, even if she doesn't learn much along the way.
mathgenius 8y ago
Not a stupid question at all. History is littered with examples of major scientific discoveries that went completely ignored because the discoverer was not associated with a prestigious institution, or some other reputable platform. > quality work So what? There is no shortage of quality work. If someone really wants to make it as an outsider (or even an insider) I would suggest spending some time on youtube watching videos about how to make it in hollywood. It is much the same: fashion-driven, full of bean-counters, whats the next hot thing, who do you know, are you fun to work with, etc. etc. People have this idea that science is the objective search for truth. But this is just a small part of what is going on.
- zbentley 8y ago
  > History is littered with examples of major scientific discoveries that went completely ignored Citations please
mattkrause 8y ago
It would be rough to go it alone. Research is probably a bit more social than most people imagine. Nothing pokes a hole in a 'brilliant' idea like bouncing it off a colleague, and at the same time, you often need an outside perspective to decide if something is a breakthrough or dead-end. Research groups often have a bunch of informal knowledge: a technique that sounds simple may have some subtle pitfalls; one that looks complicated might be really easy to apply in specific situations. Some published results, while maybe not wrong per se, are less generalizable or harder to replicate than the papers claim. A lot of this knowledge hasn't made it into the formal literature, but is very easy to pick up over coffee. If you want people to read your papers (or fund your proposals), they need to be written in a way that the conventions of your field: how much detail is needed for various steps, what can you claim based on your results (and what shouldn't you claim), etc. Grad students usually learn these conventions by writing with senior people. If your end goal is to learn this stuff from a professor, there's already a pathway for that: go to grad school! If your ideas were amazing, you could collaborate with one, but you're going to be competing with the prof's actual trainees for his time/attention, which will make it hard for you to get on the prof's radar to begin with.

BearsAreCool 8y ago

I'm working on a masters degree at the moment for context. The fact that a professor has the ability to deny me the piece of paper I've been told all my life is my ticket to a better life based on arbitrary grading rules is horrifying. In my program there is a different professor for every class and how they grade and what they want has always been different, some demand title pages for every paper, some demand some specific source count, and others grade you down for submitting too close to the official due date. The professors who I have liked the most are the ones that act like the students, just scraping by barely managing to do their work, and not having the time or energy to be too critical of the students work. I'm sure professors are nice people and I'm even good friends with some at other universities, but there is a massive power imbalance and it is horrifying to students.

crankylinuxuser 8y ago
Exactly. Professors have no, I repeat, NO accountability. Inside their classroom, they are the petty dictators they are empowered by the university to be. Some do a good and just job at education... But that's not their real goal. Their goal is to get the university more money and more students - teaching is the secondary objective. If it happens, it's good. I've seen a large handful of people whom should have never been offered a teaching position. When English is obviously a 2nd or 3rd language, and you're teaching a complicated topic, and we can't understand you - you shouldn't be teaching it. I'm not making insults on intelligence, because they were intelligent... But when every student struggles to understand every word (example word: theta , pronounced:fee-ter ) they shouldn't be teaching. I've also had "professors" who taught light and sound physics, discussing electricity, who didn't know what a capacitor was. And it was in the middle of the partial differential plate field equations for... capacitors. He was also known at putting questions on the test that did not pertain to the class proper. He would also create his own (wrong) answer key, and then refuse to accept corrections. Good scores for the class were around 18-22 out of 100. I have no clue how one would accomplish this, but the university ALSO needs to be accountable to the students who throw it money.
- anon946 8y ago
  I assume that you are mainly discussing undergrad education. In that case, the way to pressure universities to be accountable is by not going to such universities, as you imply in your first paragraph: "Their goal is to get the university more money and more students". So don't go to such universities. They will lose students. Losing undergrad students won't directly impact research funding, but it will have an impact at any public university.

devilmoon 8y ago

Something I have noticed throughout my studies is that some countries seem better equipped to let university students shine and not suffer from high stress, or at least help them decompress. This might be anecdotal experience, and I am not currently in a PhD programme so I am not sure it would aplly there as well, however this is what I have noticed: In my country universities are usually an environment quite similar to High School wrt how students usually fit into the greater social circle of the institution, meaning that you usually go in for your lectures and leave as soon as you're done, have only a few ties with other students and there are almost no extra curricular activites to partake in through which you could bond with other people. During my undergraduate studies I spent a year in a university in the UK and this experience opened my eyes to how detrimental this environment is to students' performance; The university I attended explicitely encouraged students to set up "Student Associations" centered around whatever topic the person setting up particularly cared about, and in my experience I attendend events from many different ones, ranging from my department's one to anime/manga, to gaming, to my native country's culture. This has helped me so much in connecting with other people I would've otherwise never met who shared some of my interests, and in turn I was always able to have someone to speak to about common problems that students face, or to attend social events in order to decompress from a particularly hard day; at the end of the year I gave some of the best exams of my career, I made friends I am still in contact with years after, I was able to land an internship through one of these societies' events, and generally enjoyed life and university MUCH more than I ever did in my country. After coming back home and moving on with my life I am currently pursuing a Masters in my own country, and after a bit more than a semester I already feel the same feeling of dread I felt during my undergrad experience kick in since there are no avenues or ways to actually enjoy life as a university student. I firmly believe that if more countries / universities adopted the same stance I experience in that UK university students would generally be way better off, both with respect to their mental health and their track record. Unfortunately I have never met someone who has shared the same experience as me and hence has the same outlook on the problem, and even when speaking up about these issues with my department or colleagues many seem to not particularly care or understand what that particular system would entail for everyone involved. It is really a shame. I am wondering if there are any scientific studies that have been done on this particular issue that I could bring up to shift perception around this? Anyway, just my two cents. tl;dr: make students more involved in their university's community and provide the means to self-organise around common interests so as to create comraderie and avenues to decompress, everyone will benefit from it.

spenrose 8y ago

Excerpt: "In 2015, Sophie — a recent graduate of the School of Earth’s Ph.D. program who wished to remain anonymous in order to preserve her relationship with her advisor — and five others in her Ph.D. cohort took a prospective Ph.D. candidate out to dinner. Sitting at a restaurant on University Avenue, the prospective candidate mentioned that she was in therapy. One by one, the current students at the table said that they were, too, but none of them had ever discussed it with each other. “Unless it’s your really good friends, you don’t talk about it,” Sophie said. “It’s still stigmatized, and it’s still seen as a sign of weakness. It took someone to be honest … [and then] everyone else opened up.” According to statistics provided by CAPS director Bina Patel, CAPS counselors saw 22 percent of the graduate student community over the 2017-2018 academic year, for an average of 4.5 visits per student. Graduate students make up 59 percent of the students CAPS serves, which Patel said is consistent with peer institutions. "

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codekilla 8y ago

I've worked in academia for several years, and it's been somewhat discouraging. I've certainly noticed the pressure put on grad students--not fun. I'm someone who is deeply passionate about science/research and have tried to think of things that could be done outside academia to contribute basic scientific research--the hope is more team science and not labs organized around PI feudalships. Anyway, I've been working on https://www.eonias.org/ https://www.eonias.org/ on the side (still fleshing it out), if anyone is interested in collaborating on writing a grant, please reach out.

ehvatum 8y ago

My feelings on this couldn't be more mixed. I enjoyed many years working as a coder in the academic research setting, but I lost my best friend to suicide in the second semester of his PhD program. It's just sort of a test to see if you're stronger than the system. If you want the strength to survive grad school, spend a few years scraping by in a third-world nation, or climb mountains, or get serious about wilderness survival. Do something aside from following the rules and getting inevitably raped by a system you have done nothing to learn to dominate.

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