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I am currently pursuing a second master's degree (in management), some of my personal experience in academia: 1) Publish or perish is a real thing. Citation ra

I am currently pursuing a second master's degree (in management), some of my personal experience in academia: 1) Publish or perish is a real thing. Citation ratings and measuring affects many of the academics I have encountered. This contributes to boring papers. 2) Mentioning the replication crisis in social science gets a lot of the social science academics observably upset and defensive. They have to take care of 1)! Compare this to the exemplary stance in CS, as demonstrated by researchers criticizing Google for not backing magic AI claims. [ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2766-y https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2766-y ] This vigorous scientific stance is almost impossible to imagine in social science outside of Critical Management Studies. 3) I have enjoyed my time spent with CS academics a lot more, luckily have some interaction even now - the ones I have spoken to seem to lack the self-criticism blind spots the social scientists exhibited. The CS group seems to have a lot more fun with their research. It was also interesting to observe that for term papers, many CS professors wanted to see a report with working software and a well-thought-out story of what challenges one encountered and how they were overcome. Not one paper was returned because of improper styling nor citing. They appeared to enjoy the battle stories of trouble-shooting and finding solutions to assignment challenges. They even read the sources I linked to, commenting on what they thought was a good find. From that experience (and others), CS sure feels like more of a meritocracy. In opposition, some social science professors were obsessed with proper APA or Harvard styling and citing "the right thinkers". Circular citation is a real thing. Perhaps since they can't prove anything, establishing credibility via cliques, mutual citation and signaling may be their academic survival strategy. It does feel like management and CS are orthogonal, and this has motivated me to direct my research towards a hard realism approach to facilitating communication between developers and value driven management. I.e. I have observed that even when a manager or leader wants to hire developers, social science damaged managers and HR will actively sabotage these efforts because they are still, fundamentally, driven by Taylorist, control fetish concepts (which they refuse to accept). The SS victims seem to wish to push their personal struggle on developers. "I suffered through school, you must show a diploma as well". Some even demand transcripts! When I consulted a company that was complaining about how hard it was to recruit developers, I looked at their application process. They demanded college transcripts even before the review of applicants began. I hope you are laughing with me at the entitled absurdity of this. Oh you want a personal letter as well? Bitter HR person, do you fail to understand that you are competing in your recruitment against multiple actors actively scraping through code repositories and blogs to find and contact devs? Or does accepting that a developer is incomparably more competitive on the job market than you and has multiple offers of employment at any time just hurt too much? One of my favorite quotes from a researcher (well cited) about managing developers includes a rant on how creative, industry competitive (can get another job) and financially stable developers are "hard to manage". This may be how many incompetent managers feel, deeply. If I can facilitate getting these emotionally insecure individuals out of recruitment and management, assisting developers and managers that want to produce value to find each other, it would be in opposition to many well peer-reviewed publications. Boring publications.

garden_hermit 6y ago
My doctoral degree has required training in both Computer Science and Social Science, and regularly interact with both communities. Drawing on this, I feel that this comment is unnecessarily partisan and divisive. > 2) Mentioning the replication crisis in social science gets a lot of the social science academics observably upset and defensive. The replication crisis is widely discussed in social sciences. Nearly every major social science journal will have at least one, likely many, editorials and articles on the crisis tailored to their field. Maybe this is explicitely a Management Studies thing? The field is relatively small and insular, and so cannot be generalized to wider social science. And are your experiences drawon from the community as a whole, or the faculty in your department? > 3) I have enjoyed my time spent with CS academics a lot more, luckily have some interaction even now - the ones I have spoken to seem to lack the ego-driven blind spots the social scientists exhibit. The CS group seems to have a lot more fun with their research. Maybe this is just the local community of wherever you studied? I've met equal parts ego-driven and chill people in both CS and Social Science. A major concept in most social science fields is sampling—I'd urge you to consider how representative the people you are talking to actually are, and how your sample might be biased from the global population. My prior is that there would be little difference in personality, in aggregate, between the fields. > I.e. I have observed that even when a manager or leader wants to hire developers, social science damaged managers and HR will actively sabotage these efforts because they are still, fundamentally, driven by Taylorist, control fetish concepts (which they refuse to accept) I mean, that's one possibility. The other is that hiring people is difficult and expensive, and that credentials are a quick and useful, if flawed, method of sorting through the pile. And are most HR people really trained in Management? I honestly don't know, but I doubt that the typical Psychology or Sociology major, for instance, is going to know of, remember, or consider using Taylorist management theory. It definitely seems that you enjoyed your time in CS more than your time in Management. That's great! CS is an important field with lots of cool people. But generalizing this preference into a wider philosophy that privileges CS at the expense of (all?) social sciences is silly.
- hndudette2 6y ago
  Regarding the replication crisis, can I ask why we don't yet have a central body to which scientists report their intended experimental design, sample size and research hypothesis before the experiment begins? Then we can eliminate publication bias due to null results not being published which is a big part of the replication crisis. The meta-analyses only survey those studies that reported this ahead of time and the scope of possible publication bias can be quantified.

garden_hermit 6y ago

My doctoral degree has required training in both Computer Science and Social Science, and regularly interact with both communities. Drawing on this, I feel that this comment is unnecessarily partisan and divisive. > 2) Mentioning the replication crisis in social science gets a lot of the social science academics observably upset and defensive. The replication crisis is widely discussed in social sciences. Nearly every major social science journal will have at least one, likely many, editorials and articles on the crisis tailored to their field. Maybe this is explicitely a Management Studies thing? The field is relatively small and insular, and so cannot be generalized to wider social science. And are your experiences drawon from the community as a whole, or the faculty in your department? > 3) I have enjoyed my time spent with CS academics a lot more, luckily have some interaction even now - the ones I have spoken to seem to lack the ego-driven blind spots the social scientists exhibit. The CS group seems to have a lot more fun with their research. Maybe this is just the local community of wherever you studied? I've met equal parts ego-driven and chill people in both CS and Social Science. A major concept in most social science fields is sampling—I'd urge you to consider how representative the people you are talking to actually are, and how your sample might be biased from the global population. My prior is that there would be little difference in personality, in aggregate, between the fields. > I.e. I have observed that even when a manager or leader wants to hire developers, social science damaged managers and HR will actively sabotage these efforts because they are still, fundamentally, driven by Taylorist, control fetish concepts (which they refuse to accept) I mean, that's one possibility. The other is that hiring people is difficult and expensive, and that credentials are a quick and useful, if flawed, method of sorting through the pile. And are most HR people really trained in Management? I honestly don't know, but I doubt that the typical Psychology or Sociology major, for instance, is going to know of, remember, or consider using Taylorist management theory. It definitely seems that you enjoyed your time in CS more than your time in Management. That's great! CS is an important field with lots of cool people. But generalizing this preference into a wider philosophy that privileges CS at the expense of (all?) social sciences is silly.

hndudette2 6y ago
Regarding the replication crisis, can I ask why we don't yet have a central body to which scientists report their intended experimental design, sample size and research hypothesis before the experiment begins? Then we can eliminate publication bias due to null results not being published which is a big part of the replication crisis. The meta-analyses only survey those studies that reported this ahead of time and the scope of possible publication bias can be quantified.