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>Setting up a suitable build system. Writing some unit tests for the code. Creating a skeleton of the models that are to be developed. Designing nice mock-ups o

>Setting up a suitable build system. Writing some unit tests for the code. Creating a skeleton of the models that are to be developed. Designing nice mock-ups or logos. Creating animations or graphics for presentations. I actively advise students against joining labs like this and consider the whole enterprise unethical. I raise concerns whenever I'm reviewing grant proposals by folks who run their labs like this. I've successful nuked funding proposals because the work plan included language like this. Want a devops engineer? Hire a devops engineer ("systems scientist" or so on). Want a graphic designer? Hire a graphic designer. But DO NOT lie to impressionable youth by telling them that you are admitting them into a PhD program to be your apprentice on a research project and then proceed to pay them $30K/yr (with marginal benefits) for uninteresting and unexceptional engineering and design work. They are taking a huge financial opportunity cost to work on uniquely high leverage problems. Maintaining your research group's build system is not what they signed up for. > ‘I’m a researcher, not a(n) X,’ with X∈ {software developer, designer, marketing person, artist, …} Sure, but here's the rub. What does everything in that set have in common? They make at least 2x+ the average PhD student and have much better benefits. If you want a "force multiplier" person in your lab, do your job: get a grant and pay a fair price for that sort of labor. PhD students are NOT ∈ {software developer, designer, marketing person, artist, …}. If they were, you'd be paying quite a bit more and/or getting far less exceptional candidates.

mehrdada 5y ago
> They are taking a huge financial opportunity cost to work on uniquely high leverage problems. Maintaining your research group's build system is not what they signed up for. Not necessarily an opportunity cost. Often they are paid in a more valuable commodity, i.e. visas.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  Probably true. But I'm writing from the perspective a grant reviewer. Systematically abusing immigrant labor.... well, it isn't exactly a more charitable interpretation. So, from my perspective, a bit of a moot point :)
- throwawayjd 5y ago
  That's definitely not the case, given the long queues (and low chances) for H1B and high barrier for O1 visas. I might as well get an L1 working in industry after all.
  - mehrdada 5y ago
    I would be less than "definitely sure" about that. I know lots of folks firsthand whose primary motivation were that. This is obviously very country-dependent. If you are in a country with presence of say FAANG offices, sure you'd go for L1 or EB1C. Not everyone is that privileged. Not to mention during the Trump era, F1 visa was one of the only exempted ways to get your foot in the door for various countries. (There's also OPT, btw, which is critical in the process, and H1B lottery chance, assuming a US Masters degree, was more than 50% last time I looked at it a couple years ago. O1 (and even EB1A/B) are not that rare for well-published PhDs, and EB2-NIW is quite easy for any PhD worth their salt, I'd say.)
    - throwawayjd 5y ago
      Thanks for mentioning EB2-NIW, I didn't know that before, and I'll definitely look into it. Regarding O1, one of the PhDs I admire most failed to get an O1 despite his success. I guess publishing papers in our fields is kind of hard and maybe some fields are more easy to get an O1 than others :)
- xmprt 5y ago
  If someone just wants a visa, then it's much easier to get a quick and easy masters instead of doing a PhD with 5 years of research.
  - mehrdada 5y ago
    Maybe--very much depends on the source and destination country. Fact on the ground is lots of people have ended up choosing that as their path, optimal or not. You can master-out in the middle of a PhD program, which is frowned upon, but it is difficult to get funding if you directly apply for a masters degree. Perhaps the solution is to decrease the negative cultural backlash against predisposed intention of leaving with a masters despite applying for a PhD, which is currently seen as some sort of betrayal of the adviser if you are going to have your grad students do boring work. It'll be a win-win deal in that case.
    - auxym 5y ago
      In Canada, research masters are a prereq for entering a PhD program.
      - simplestats 5y ago
        In the US I think it's entirely up to the school. Or at least the accreditation bodies in different fields and regions. When I was in school, one applied to "MS/PhD" programs most typically. And all imaginable variants existed in terms of funding and likelihood of leaving with only a MS. Some schools would fund no one till they finish the MS stage, and others would fund everyone from the beginning (just give every accepted student a full fellowship for the first couple years). And also some schools were pretty notorious for kicking people out at the end of the MS stage, with a difficult exam at this step or not enough advisors to take them on for the PhD. One positive side, though, is if you wash out of a PhD program at any later stage, you at least walked away with a Master's.
      - throwawayjd 5y ago
        I don't think so. It is funded and recommended, but direct doctorate is also possible, unlike many European schools.
lmeyerov 5y ago
I've been on the other end of such reviewers. Building community and engaging in it takes a whole ton of seemingly non-core work, but community-of-practice research is totally a thing, and for folks who empirically study innovation, one of the best approaches in practice. Likewise, it's common wisdom by systems researchers to invest in platform early to get compounding results later. Two of my best projects, include two awarded top of the year / decade in my field, came from the former, and colleagues made a few $B companies from the latter. And yet, reviewers assume they know best. Just because it's not your approach... (And yes, I spent time on logos, websites, and whatnot that never make it into papers: it all adds up and you never really know what is ok to drop until after the fact. More so, the paper is the worst form of result and better as just a stepping stone, IMO: a paper is the failure to do anything more meaningful & expansive, like a community of practice or company.)
- Topolomancer 5y ago
  Author here---I love the term 'non-core work.' It encompasses a lot of the things that irk me in academia (and it's a little bit hypocritical because in the end, academic projects also benefit quite a lot from this non-core work...at least, if your goal is to build something that people actually want to use, as opposed to just pushing out papers.) PS: And upon writing this comment, I had the epiphany that 'pushing out papers' might indeed be the primary objective for some. :-|
  - throwawaygh 5y ago
    > academic projects also benefit quite a lot from this non-core work Yes, of course they do. The whole point is that this type of labor is valuable. > if your goal is to build something that people actually want to use, as opposed to just pushing out papers. Neither of those things is the purpose of a phd... If a student's goal is to build something that people actually want to use, they are much better served by taking an industry position in a product group. > pushing out papers From my perspective, the obsession with publishing is just another version of the same problem.
    - 5y ago
BeetleB 5y ago
The counter is that only a small minority of people who graduate with a PhD get to do research in their fields after graduating. It's a disservice to them if they don't gain skills beyond research. It's why many PhDs can't get jobs in teams like mine - they don't have the skills of people with lesser degrees, and while we're not against training new candidates, we don't want to pay them large sums of money when the guy who just had a BS degree came in with all these skills.
- rscho 5y ago
  This is a systemic problem of universities having become money-making machines, hence opening as many PhD positions as they can with as few tenure-track positions as possible. Changing PhDs to become vocational schools is like putting a band-aid on a skull fracture.
- hectormalot 5y ago
  True. I’m hiring lots of data scientists and have become somewhat disappointed with the phd profiles. It happens too often that they lack the broader skills to be successful, vs people who did do “non-core” activities and are now more well rounded.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  What skills are you talking about? Git commit and unit testing? Not saying they’re insignificant skills but a competent PhD should be able to learn them quite fast (in a month) in a competent environment. I and many others did. The issue is that there are a large number of phds who are actually much dimmer than your average programmer, and you’re not differentiating them in the interviews.
  - snovv_crash 5y ago
    Any programmer can learn to write a unit test. Not all can learn to design code to be easily testable. If you can't differentiate before hiring, because they don't even know how to write tests, then you're taking a big risk hiring them.
  - BeetleB 5y ago
Topolomancer 5y ago
Author here—thanks for these comments! I realise that this is a valid take, but it's not what I had in mind. Being based in European academia salaries for Ph.D. students and other personnel are more or less fixed (of course, going to industry, this is not the case). I certainly do not want to exploit students. My observation is that modern machine learning research entails so many additional moving parts (most, but not all of them, involving around SWE) that any student with skills in this area is already an asset. However, these skills are typically ignored while hiring. I have seen the scenario you describe, but I it is definitely not what I intended to put a finger on in this post. Thanks for pointing this out!
- BeetleB 5y ago
  > Being based in European academia salaries for Ph.D. students and other personnel are more or less fixed And this may depend where in Europe, but they get paid more than in the US, and also tend to get full benefits. At least those that I knew in Denmark/Belgium were. They were not even classified as students, but as full time employees. Doing PhD research was their job.
  - Topolomancer 5y ago
    Yes, precisely! And I should stress that the students I hire as PhD students are hired as exactly that. No strings attached, no additional duties, etc. They are free to focus on their research. My point in the article was more to put a finger on the fact that there is 'core work' (papers, papers, papers!!!) in academia and 'non-core work.' The latter is rewarded less, in my experience, even though it's a prerequisite to get the former done.
    - zwaps 5y ago
      Your answers feel like you are engaging in cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, you recognize in your article that "non-core" work is not rewarded in academia. In particular, however, the situation is dire for current PhD students. Getting into a PhD program is easy compared to getting an academic job (even - or especially - in the EU) with at least some job security. Further, you probably know that most PhDs lack the knowledge, experience and ability to accurately judge their chances on the future job market with any accuracy. On the other hand, your replies indicate that you are following the "traditional" European research hierarchy, where the PhD student does years of "non-core" work for the Professor, ultimately ends up with less publications. This leads to issues competing internationally, a chain of short term contracts, post-docs or adjunct positions and finally, many leaving academia (or at least the EU). Which, by the way, is a real problem. In European academia, we are all aware of these traditional hierarchical sentiments. At each university, there are stories about the Professor who said something like: "Your first research ideas belong to me", or Professors who actively resist the establishment of a stipend-based PhD program with the argument that "Someone (the PhDs) has to do the work at the institute!". Now, there are probably countries that do better than others. Your state might mandate that PhD students get a salary and benefits, but all that is worth little if they end up in a bad condition after 3-6 years of doing their PhD. And here, your reply here worries me. No, you do not hire PhDs to *work* for you. You hire them to train them to be researchers and to collaborate on that. Next to publishing and teaching, as a Professor, you are responsible for enabling these PhD students to have a successful career. More than in any other career, it is YOU, the advisor, who ends up making or breaking the future of a human being. The thought that PhDs are merely hired workers who have to work through "menial, non core" work before they are allowed to get to their research, is one of the main reasons why academic research in the EU is doing so badly compared to other regions in the world. In the interest of your future PhD students, I implore you to consider how much impact you really have on their lives!
throwawayjd 5y ago
I'm such a `force multiplier` as you mentioned. I'm in the gap between genetic programming, machine learning. It's very hard to have skills across biology, math and programming, and unfortunately, I'm someone who has to have all three to join my prestigious lab, whilst my peers are significantly less skilled than me. I feel grad school is kind of a scam for us immigrants because locals who have good recommendation letters can go to the same lab with much fewer skills. I do resonate with what you say and wonder if I should quit my PhD to go to industry.
- Topolomancer 5y ago
  Author here---maybe you find my response to the parent post interesting. What you are describing is something I also experienced: a good name can open a lot of doors for you, and academia is certainly not as meritocratic as people might think it is. I read some anger and disenchantment in your comment. Feel free to reach out in order to get another perspective on your situation. In any case, without knowing the specifics of your situation, and being a more or less anonymous internet stranger providing unsolicited advice, I would suggest you don't do anything hasty. Getting a PhD can be useful in certain domains; at the same time, if you are not engaged and---dare I say it---happy with your overall situation, it might be time to move on. Whatever you do: the world is big and, with a little bit of luck and foresight, there are additional opportunities to be found! Best of luck to you :-)
  - throwawayjd 5y ago
    Indeed, thank you for your kind reply. I resonate hard with your first paragraph :) I do feel anger sometimes, but after all they're pleasant folks to work with, and I feel I shouldn't blame them just because they're born in richer places than me. I'd probably still finish my PhD :) But I do admire your resolution to become a professor, as I have been nothing but impatient with teaching other people things I understand. Your blog does have many insights that are rare in academia, with so many people rushing to get more papers published. I hope you'd have a successful career as a professor.
    - 5y ago
rini17 5y ago
Of course anything could be done in exploitative an unethical way but, I don't see such intent here. There are good points already mentioned. I can add if you hire one person to write unit tests, another for graphics, another for models... then you suffer the overhead of coordinating them. Also, pure research work is often repetitive and drudgery, so being able to come up with cool logo or working on "uninteresting and unexceptional" tools that can be shared with other researchers can maintain the motivation.
- Topolomancer 5y ago
  > Also, pure research work is often repetitive and drudgery, so being able to come up with cool logo or working on "uninteresting and unexceptional" tools that can be shared with other researchers can maintain the motivation. Author here--thanks, that's a cool way of putting it! (plus, working on such tools, for instance, should be recognised by PIs in an ideal world)
galgalesh 5y ago
I'm a PhD student in Europe and I get paid more than a junior graphic designer or marketing person and I get paid about the same as senior DevOps engineers. It would definitely be cheaper for my research group to outsource this work onto non-research staff.
- Topolomancer 5y ago
  > It would definitely be cheaper for my research group to outsource this work onto non-research staff. Author here! I realise that my point is a little bit misunderstood. I am not saying 'Ah, let the PhD students do it.' I am saying that these sort of aspects should be recognised and rewarded, potentially influencing hiring decisions (for instance, hiring an SWE role instead of a Ph.D. student to fully support the lab).
RhysU 5y ago
Speaking as an applied research manager in industry, I don't want to hire great academic students that cannot also be reasonably successful in delivering on these non-academic tasks. Sure, for example, it's a waste to have a newly minted PhD set up CI systems. However, it's more of a waste to have them blocked waiting on someone else and then beholden to someone else every time there's an issue. Researchers that can drop into the technology stack are great productivity multipliers for themselves and for their peers. Academic types do their students a disservice when neglecting the development of such skills. Not everyone lands a professorship. Also, didn't a bunch of these ML folks get undergrad CS degrees? Why should they be unable to do undergrad CS tasks?
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  I think you've lost the plot. The author is talking about hiring people who already know how to do these things! This isn't about skills development. It's about using people who already have these skills as engineering support labor for the research group while paying then 1/2 to 1/5th of what they'd make in industry doing equivalent work (that, again, they already know how to do!)
  - RhysU 5y ago
    I am talking about the complement of the plot. I am saying that every student should be doing these tasks. The students without these skills should be learning them too. Then no one is being taken advantage of. Then all of the students are more marketable. These skills are useful to academics too: successful junior faculty will one day need to stand up their own labs with their technical skills.
bjornsing 5y ago
I agree. But I think there’s also a basic misunderstanding about what a T-shaped individual is and why they are sought after outside academia. It’s not because they can do a bit of everything, setting up the build system with one hand and designing the logo with the other. (That’s more what you’d call a jack of all trades.) The reason T-shaped individuals are sought after in industry is that they are effective leaders. They understand enough about the problem domain(s) to identify meaningful problems and enough about the solution domain to help map out the solution space. The reason you’d want more T-shaped people in machine learning research is that they will ask better research questions, not because they’ll design prettier logos.
- Topolomancer 5y ago
  > The reason T-shaped individuals are sought after in industry is that they are effective leaders. They understand enough about the problem domain(s) to identify meaningful problems and enough about the solution domain to help map out the solution space. > The reason you’d want more T-shaped people in machine learning research is that they will ask better research questions, not because they’ll design prettier logos. Author here---fully agree with you. Man, that example with the logos is going to haunt me now...I just did not want to bog down the article with too many technical details. Of course there's immense value in moving between disciplines...that's a whole other discussion to be had (because IMO, academia does not necessarily have the right incentives for this either; research between disciplines X and Y often tends to be dismissed as being 'not enough X for Y' or 'not enough Y for X')
ModernMech 5y ago
I know it’s in vogue to claim that grad students have shit benefits because they are paid terribly, but I do have to push back on that. For one, the main benefit of a funded Ph.D. is that you don’t pay tuition. That’s a huge benefit that can total $40k or more per year before candidacy. Secondly, you (should) get to travel and present your research around the world for free. During my Ph.D. I got to present our work in Portugal, Chicago, and Japan, all expenses paid. That’s not nothing for a young aspiring researcher, and not something my friends in industry got to do at 24. Also, one thing that a lot of people don't know is that grad students in the USA don't have to pay FICA taxes on their stipends or their tuition remission. That also has to be figured in when comparing compensation.
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > That’s a huge benefit that can total $40k or more per year before candidacy. No one does a phd for the coursework :) > travel This is worth perhaps $2K-$4K. Your industry friends could easily travel the world, and they wouldn't be stuck in a conference hotel for half their trip. > FICA taxes No! This isn't a good thing!!! The employer pays half of these, and paying them entitles you to the US social safety net! Universities don't even give phd students the minimal benefits that every other employer in the entire country is required to subsidize 50%. Stated another way: Denying any other employee a 50% match on state-provided retirement/disability insurance/unemployment insurance/medicare/etc. would literally be criminal.
  - ModernMech 5y ago
    > No one does a phd for the coursework :) Tuition also entitles you to access library resources, university software, campus gyms, sports facilities, child care, and university provided health services. I think your emoticon is implying your statement is tongue in cheek, but I mean.... they absolutely do though. If you don't consider taking courses a benefit to doing a Ph.D. then yeah, the value proposition of a Ph.D. program is quite lopsided. Tax-free tuition is an amazing benefit from my perspective. > Your industry friends could easily travel the world, and they wouldn't be stuck in a conference hotel for half their trip. You say stuck at a conference hotel, but I love conferences. They are so much fun and I always learn so much and meet amazing people. Moreover, what I said was "travel and present research". Not many employees who have been working for 1-2 years out of college get to present their work in front of an audience of peers and experts. It's great exposure and an amazing way to make connections and start building a career. My friends in industry were never given opportunities like that. > paying them entitles you to the US social safety net! I mean, you start paying into them soon enough -- I'm not really worried about my social security payout when I retire because I didn't pay into FICA when I was 24. The benefit of not paying FICA is that $30k goes further now when you need it. With Obamacare, healthcare isn't much of an issue anymore for grad students, and we got cheap/free healthcare at the university health services. Look, all I'm saying is that when you say "$30k with marginal benefits" it makes it sound like a grad student is being compensated as a fast food employee. It's more like: $30k, and there are all kinds of benefits which may or may not appeal to you as an individual. If you want to make a ton of money go into industry. If you want a different experience do a Ph.D. You will (should!) come out of it with an education and a lot of open doors, some of which are permanently locked or vastly harder to open without the Ph.D. degree.

mehrdada 5y ago

> They are taking a huge financial opportunity cost to work on uniquely high leverage problems. Maintaining your research group's build system is not what they signed up for. Not necessarily an opportunity cost. Often they are paid in a more valuable commodity, i.e. visas.

throwawaygh 5y ago
Probably true. But I'm writing from the perspective a grant reviewer. Systematically abusing immigrant labor.... well, it isn't exactly a more charitable interpretation. So, from my perspective, a bit of a moot point :)
throwawayjd 5y ago
That's definitely not the case, given the long queues (and low chances) for H1B and high barrier for O1 visas. I might as well get an L1 working in industry after all.
- mehrdada 5y ago
  I would be less than "definitely sure" about that. I know lots of folks firsthand whose primary motivation were that. This is obviously very country-dependent. If you are in a country with presence of say FAANG offices, sure you'd go for L1 or EB1C. Not everyone is that privileged. Not to mention during the Trump era, F1 visa was one of the only exempted ways to get your foot in the door for various countries. (There's also OPT, btw, which is critical in the process, and H1B lottery chance, assuming a US Masters degree, was more than 50% last time I looked at it a couple years ago. O1 (and even EB1A/B) are not that rare for well-published PhDs, and EB2-NIW is quite easy for any PhD worth their salt, I'd say.)
  - throwawayjd 5y ago
    Thanks for mentioning EB2-NIW, I didn't know that before, and I'll definitely look into it. Regarding O1, one of the PhDs I admire most failed to get an O1 despite his success. I guess publishing papers in our fields is kind of hard and maybe some fields are more easy to get an O1 than others :)
xmprt 5y ago
If someone just wants a visa, then it's much easier to get a quick and easy masters instead of doing a PhD with 5 years of research.
- mehrdada 5y ago
  Maybe--very much depends on the source and destination country. Fact on the ground is lots of people have ended up choosing that as their path, optimal or not. You can master-out in the middle of a PhD program, which is frowned upon, but it is difficult to get funding if you directly apply for a masters degree. Perhaps the solution is to decrease the negative cultural backlash against predisposed intention of leaving with a masters despite applying for a PhD, which is currently seen as some sort of betrayal of the adviser if you are going to have your grad students do boring work. It'll be a win-win deal in that case.
  - auxym 5y ago
    In Canada, research masters are a prereq for entering a PhD program.
    - simplestats 5y ago
      In the US I think it's entirely up to the school. Or at least the accreditation bodies in different fields and regions. When I was in school, one applied to "MS/PhD" programs most typically. And all imaginable variants existed in terms of funding and likelihood of leaving with only a MS. Some schools would fund no one till they finish the MS stage, and others would fund everyone from the beginning (just give every accepted student a full fellowship for the first couple years). And also some schools were pretty notorious for kicking people out at the end of the MS stage, with a difficult exam at this step or not enough advisors to take them on for the PhD. One positive side, though, is if you wash out of a PhD program at any later stage, you at least walked away with a Master's.
    - throwawayjd 5y ago
      I don't think so. It is funded and recommended, but direct doctorate is also possible, unlike many European schools.

lmeyerov 5y ago

I've been on the other end of such reviewers. Building community and engaging in it takes a whole ton of seemingly non-core work, but community-of-practice research is totally a thing, and for folks who empirically study innovation, one of the best approaches in practice. Likewise, it's common wisdom by systems researchers to invest in platform early to get compounding results later. Two of my best projects, include two awarded top of the year / decade in my field, came from the former, and colleagues made a few $B companies from the latter. And yet, reviewers assume they know best. Just because it's not your approach... (And yes, I spent time on logos, websites, and whatnot that never make it into papers: it all adds up and you never really know what is ok to drop until after the fact. More so, the paper is the worst form of result and better as just a stepping stone, IMO: a paper is the failure to do anything more meaningful & expansive, like a community of practice or company.)

Topolomancer 5y ago
Author here---I love the term 'non-core work.' It encompasses a lot of the things that irk me in academia (and it's a little bit hypocritical because in the end, academic projects also benefit quite a lot from this non-core work...at least, if your goal is to build something that people actually want to use, as opposed to just pushing out papers.) PS: And upon writing this comment, I had the epiphany that 'pushing out papers' might indeed be the primary objective for some. :-|
- throwawaygh 5y ago
  > academic projects also benefit quite a lot from this non-core work Yes, of course they do. The whole point is that this type of labor is valuable. > if your goal is to build something that people actually want to use, as opposed to just pushing out papers. Neither of those things is the purpose of a phd... If a student's goal is to build something that people actually want to use, they are much better served by taking an industry position in a product group. > pushing out papers From my perspective, the obsession with publishing is just another version of the same problem.
  - 5y ago

BeetleB 5y ago

The counter is that only a small minority of people who graduate with a PhD get to do research in their fields after graduating. It's a disservice to them if they don't gain skills beyond research. It's why many PhDs can't get jobs in teams like mine - they don't have the skills of people with lesser degrees, and while we're not against training new candidates, we don't want to pay them large sums of money when the guy who just had a BS degree came in with all these skills.

rscho 5y ago
This is a systemic problem of universities having become money-making machines, hence opening as many PhD positions as they can with as few tenure-track positions as possible. Changing PhDs to become vocational schools is like putting a band-aid on a skull fracture.
hectormalot 5y ago
True. I’m hiring lots of data scientists and have become somewhat disappointed with the phd profiles. It happens too often that they lack the broader skills to be successful, vs people who did do “non-core” activities and are now more well rounded.
ramraj07 5y ago
What skills are you talking about? Git commit and unit testing? Not saying they’re insignificant skills but a competent PhD should be able to learn them quite fast (in a month) in a competent environment. I and many others did. The issue is that there are a large number of phds who are actually much dimmer than your average programmer, and you’re not differentiating them in the interviews.
- snovv_crash 5y ago
  Any programmer can learn to write a unit test. Not all can learn to design code to be easily testable. If you can't differentiate before hiring, because they don't even know how to write tests, then you're taking a big risk hiring them.
- BeetleB 5y ago

Topolomancer 5y ago

Author here—thanks for these comments! I realise that this is a valid take, but it's not what I had in mind. Being based in European academia salaries for Ph.D. students and other personnel are more or less fixed (of course, going to industry, this is not the case). I certainly do not want to exploit students. My observation is that modern machine learning research entails so many additional moving parts (most, but not all of them, involving around SWE) that any student with skills in this area is already an asset. However, these skills are typically ignored while hiring. I have seen the scenario you describe, but I it is definitely not what I intended to put a finger on in this post. Thanks for pointing this out!

BeetleB 5y ago
> Being based in European academia salaries for Ph.D. students and other personnel are more or less fixed And this may depend where in Europe, but they get paid more than in the US, and also tend to get full benefits. At least those that I knew in Denmark/Belgium were. They were not even classified as students, but as full time employees. Doing PhD research was their job.
- Topolomancer 5y ago
  Yes, precisely! And I should stress that the students I hire as PhD students are hired as exactly that. No strings attached, no additional duties, etc. They are free to focus on their research. My point in the article was more to put a finger on the fact that there is 'core work' (papers, papers, papers!!!) in academia and 'non-core work.' The latter is rewarded less, in my experience, even though it's a prerequisite to get the former done.
  - zwaps 5y ago
    Your answers feel like you are engaging in cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, you recognize in your article that "non-core" work is not rewarded in academia. In particular, however, the situation is dire for current PhD students. Getting into a PhD program is easy compared to getting an academic job (even - or especially - in the EU) with at least some job security. Further, you probably know that most PhDs lack the knowledge, experience and ability to accurately judge their chances on the future job market with any accuracy. On the other hand, your replies indicate that you are following the "traditional" European research hierarchy, where the PhD student does years of "non-core" work for the Professor, ultimately ends up with less publications. This leads to issues competing internationally, a chain of short term contracts, post-docs or adjunct positions and finally, many leaving academia (or at least the EU). Which, by the way, is a real problem. In European academia, we are all aware of these traditional hierarchical sentiments. At each university, there are stories about the Professor who said something like: "Your first research ideas belong to me", or Professors who actively resist the establishment of a stipend-based PhD program with the argument that "Someone (the PhDs) has to do the work at the institute!". Now, there are probably countries that do better than others. Your state might mandate that PhD students get a salary and benefits, but all that is worth little if they end up in a bad condition after 3-6 years of doing their PhD. And here, your reply here worries me. No, you do not hire PhDs to *work* for you. You hire them to train them to be researchers and to collaborate on that. Next to publishing and teaching, as a Professor, you are responsible for enabling these PhD students to have a successful career. More than in any other career, it is YOU, the advisor, who ends up making or breaking the future of a human being. The thought that PhDs are merely hired workers who have to work through "menial, non core" work before they are allowed to get to their research, is one of the main reasons why academic research in the EU is doing so badly compared to other regions in the world. In the interest of your future PhD students, I implore you to consider how much impact you really have on their lives!

throwawayjd 5y ago

I'm such a `force multiplier` as you mentioned. I'm in the gap between genetic programming, machine learning. It's very hard to have skills across biology, math and programming, and unfortunately, I'm someone who has to have all three to join my prestigious lab, whilst my peers are significantly less skilled than me. I feel grad school is kind of a scam for us immigrants because locals who have good recommendation letters can go to the same lab with much fewer skills. I do resonate with what you say and wonder if I should quit my PhD to go to industry.

Topolomancer 5y ago
Author here---maybe you find my response to the parent post interesting. What you are describing is something I also experienced: a good name can open a lot of doors for you, and academia is certainly not as meritocratic as people might think it is. I read some anger and disenchantment in your comment. Feel free to reach out in order to get another perspective on your situation. In any case, without knowing the specifics of your situation, and being a more or less anonymous internet stranger providing unsolicited advice, I would suggest you don't do anything hasty. Getting a PhD can be useful in certain domains; at the same time, if you are not engaged and---dare I say it---happy with your overall situation, it might be time to move on. Whatever you do: the world is big and, with a little bit of luck and foresight, there are additional opportunities to be found! Best of luck to you :-)
- throwawayjd 5y ago
  Indeed, thank you for your kind reply. I resonate hard with your first paragraph :) I do feel anger sometimes, but after all they're pleasant folks to work with, and I feel I shouldn't blame them just because they're born in richer places than me. I'd probably still finish my PhD :) But I do admire your resolution to become a professor, as I have been nothing but impatient with teaching other people things I understand. Your blog does have many insights that are rare in academia, with so many people rushing to get more papers published. I hope you'd have a successful career as a professor.
  - 5y ago

rini17 5y ago

Of course anything could be done in exploitative an unethical way but, I don't see such intent here. There are good points already mentioned. I can add if you hire one person to write unit tests, another for graphics, another for models... then you suffer the overhead of coordinating them. Also, pure research work is often repetitive and drudgery, so being able to come up with cool logo or working on "uninteresting and unexceptional" tools that can be shared with other researchers can maintain the motivation.

Topolomancer 5y ago
> Also, pure research work is often repetitive and drudgery, so being able to come up with cool logo or working on "uninteresting and unexceptional" tools that can be shared with other researchers can maintain the motivation. Author here--thanks, that's a cool way of putting it! (plus, working on such tools, for instance, should be recognised by PIs in an ideal world)

galgalesh 5y ago

I'm a PhD student in Europe and I get paid more than a junior graphic designer or marketing person and I get paid about the same as senior DevOps engineers. It would definitely be cheaper for my research group to outsource this work onto non-research staff.

Topolomancer 5y ago
> It would definitely be cheaper for my research group to outsource this work onto non-research staff. Author here! I realise that my point is a little bit misunderstood. I am not saying 'Ah, let the PhD students do it.' I am saying that these sort of aspects should be recognised and rewarded, potentially influencing hiring decisions (for instance, hiring an SWE role instead of a Ph.D. student to fully support the lab).

RhysU 5y ago

Speaking as an applied research manager in industry, I don't want to hire great academic students that cannot also be reasonably successful in delivering on these non-academic tasks. Sure, for example, it's a waste to have a newly minted PhD set up CI systems. However, it's more of a waste to have them blocked waiting on someone else and then beholden to someone else every time there's an issue. Researchers that can drop into the technology stack are great productivity multipliers for themselves and for their peers. Academic types do their students a disservice when neglecting the development of such skills. Not everyone lands a professorship. Also, didn't a bunch of these ML folks get undergrad CS degrees? Why should they be unable to do undergrad CS tasks?

throwawaygh 5y ago
I think you've lost the plot. The author is talking about hiring people who already know how to do these things! This isn't about skills development. It's about using people who already have these skills as engineering support labor for the research group while paying then 1/2 to 1/5th of what they'd make in industry doing equivalent work (that, again, they already know how to do!)
- RhysU 5y ago
  I am talking about the complement of the plot. I am saying that every student should be doing these tasks. The students without these skills should be learning them too. Then no one is being taken advantage of. Then all of the students are more marketable. These skills are useful to academics too: successful junior faculty will one day need to stand up their own labs with their technical skills.

bjornsing 5y ago

I agree. But I think there’s also a basic misunderstanding about what a T-shaped individual is and why they are sought after outside academia. It’s not because they can do a bit of everything, setting up the build system with one hand and designing the logo with the other. (That’s more what you’d call a jack of all trades.) The reason T-shaped individuals are sought after in industry is that they are effective leaders. They understand enough about the problem domain(s) to identify meaningful problems and enough about the solution domain to help map out the solution space. The reason you’d want more T-shaped people in machine learning research is that they will ask better research questions, not because they’ll design prettier logos.

Topolomancer 5y ago
> The reason T-shaped individuals are sought after in industry is that they are effective leaders. They understand enough about the problem domain(s) to identify meaningful problems and enough about the solution domain to help map out the solution space. > The reason you’d want more T-shaped people in machine learning research is that they will ask better research questions, not because they’ll design prettier logos. Author here---fully agree with you. Man, that example with the logos is going to haunt me now...I just did not want to bog down the article with too many technical details. Of course there's immense value in moving between disciplines...that's a whole other discussion to be had (because IMO, academia does not necessarily have the right incentives for this either; research between disciplines X and Y often tends to be dismissed as being 'not enough X for Y' or 'not enough Y for X')

ModernMech 5y ago

I know it’s in vogue to claim that grad students have shit benefits because they are paid terribly, but I do have to push back on that. For one, the main benefit of a funded Ph.D. is that you don’t pay tuition. That’s a huge benefit that can total $40k or more per year before candidacy. Secondly, you (should) get to travel and present your research around the world for free. During my Ph.D. I got to present our work in Portugal, Chicago, and Japan, all expenses paid. That’s not nothing for a young aspiring researcher, and not something my friends in industry got to do at 24. Also, one thing that a lot of people don't know is that grad students in the USA don't have to pay FICA taxes on their stipends or their tuition remission. That also has to be figured in when comparing compensation.

throwawaygh 5y ago
> That’s a huge benefit that can total $40k or more per year before candidacy. No one does a phd for the coursework :) > travel This is worth perhaps $2K-$4K. Your industry friends could easily travel the world, and they wouldn't be stuck in a conference hotel for half their trip. > FICA taxes No! This isn't a good thing!!! The employer pays half of these, and paying them entitles you to the US social safety net! Universities don't even give phd students the minimal benefits that every other employer in the entire country is required to subsidize 50%. Stated another way: Denying any other employee a 50% match on state-provided retirement/disability insurance/unemployment insurance/medicare/etc. would literally be criminal.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  > No one does a phd for the coursework :) Tuition also entitles you to access library resources, university software, campus gyms, sports facilities, child care, and university provided health services. I think your emoticon is implying your statement is tongue in cheek, but I mean.... they absolutely do though. If you don't consider taking courses a benefit to doing a Ph.D. then yeah, the value proposition of a Ph.D. program is quite lopsided. Tax-free tuition is an amazing benefit from my perspective. > Your industry friends could easily travel the world, and they wouldn't be stuck in a conference hotel for half their trip. You say stuck at a conference hotel, but I love conferences. They are so much fun and I always learn so much and meet amazing people. Moreover, what I said was "travel and present research". Not many employees who have been working for 1-2 years out of college get to present their work in front of an audience of peers and experts. It's great exposure and an amazing way to make connections and start building a career. My friends in industry were never given opportunities like that. > paying them entitles you to the US social safety net! I mean, you start paying into them soon enough -- I'm not really worried about my social security payout when I retire because I didn't pay into FICA when I was 24. The benefit of not paying FICA is that $30k goes further now when you need it. With Obamacare, healthcare isn't much of an issue anymore for grad students, and we got cheap/free healthcare at the university health services. Look, all I'm saying is that when you say "$30k with marginal benefits" it makes it sound like a grad student is being compensated as a fast food employee. It's more like: $30k, and there are all kinds of benefits which may or may not appeal to you as an individual. If you want to make a ton of money go into industry. If you want a different experience do a Ph.D. You will (should!) come out of it with an education and a lot of open doors, some of which are permanently locked or vastly harder to open without the Ph.D. degree.