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> At your place of work, circulate a document criticizing leadership and how they're all wrong. Make sure to publicize this loudly to people outside the organiz

> At your place of work, circulate a document criticizing leadership and how they're all wrong. Make sure to publicize this loudly to people outside the organization. See what happens. Ha! We do that all time at the university and nobody cares. At all. Nothing happens. Ever. It is somewhat infuriating, to be honest! Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ?

rayiner 4y ago
> Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ? Universities are a unique creature where ideas and debate are the whole point, “more so than getting things done.” That’s also part of the “real world” in some sense, but it isn’t the world nearly all of us reside in. I would recommend any organization that wants to be successful outside of that unique context to not emulate the model of universities. That includes non profits and NGOs. Hierarchy exists almost universally in human organizations. That’s not an accident—it’s necessary for groups of humans working together to be effective.
bko 4y ago
People have been fired for a lot less at universities. Often time its not even attacking the organization or people, just for saying the wrong thing about a political issue.
noasaservice 4y ago
Academia follows some really strange rules, including things like tenure regarding academic freedom and speech. They also hire copious amounts of teacher assistants at poverty wages called "stipends", which also seem to bypass minimum wage laws. Even though they too act like businesses, because of 500-year precedents, wouldn't be a fair comparison.
SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
> Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ? Saying it's "not the real world" is unfairly denigrating, but people have made the argument that academia is it's own bubble with different rules to the world of private enterprise. Challenging existing ideas is a core tenet of higher education, but that can cause blowback in the private sphere. The existence of tenure, and sidelining of the profit motive (not quite elimination) also changes things.
stingraycharles 4y ago
I’d argue that a university is a very different type of organization than a company like SpaceX, with vastly different expectations on employee behavior.
namecheapTA 4y ago
Implying that academia is anything like the real world that 99% of people exist in is something only an academic would be foolish enough to imply.
- enriquto 4y ago
  There's surely two orders of magnitude more people working in academia than in rocket science. Does your argument prove, then, that SpaceX is not the real world, either? We are all in the same world; this whole "you are not real enough" argument is ridiculous, and doesn't really mean anything.
  - namecheapTA 4y ago
    People working at a rocket company work under the same basic value structure that a person working at a concrete company does. People in academia do not. The fact that you missed this and thought comparing the number of people in a particular industry subset of a capitalistic enterprise to academia would somehow prove a point basically shows me how poor the thought/logic skills are in academia... The one thing they're supposed to be better at.
  - IncRnd 4y ago
    The "real world" refers to everything outside of academia, where things are done differently compared to inside academia.
jimbob21 4y ago
I'm not the person you're responding to, but yes I would argue academia is not the real world i.e. private sector companies. Its academia. There are a whole different set of rules because it is not a privately run for-profit company. And nothing ever happens specifically because that's absolutely par for the course in academia. There's a whole different culture there.
arandomhuman 4y ago
> Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ? If you are attempting to compare liberties those in academia have to corporate employees e.g. most people who are employed, no its not like the "real world".
IncRnd 4y ago
The environment in academia is absolutely not the same as a corporate environment.
j-bos 4y ago
Perhaps. Would you say working in academia is mo different from working in industry?

rayiner 4y ago

> Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ? Universities are a unique creature where ideas and debate are the whole point, “more so than getting things done.” That’s also part of the “real world” in some sense, but it isn’t the world nearly all of us reside in. I would recommend any organization that wants to be successful outside of that unique context to not emulate the model of universities. That includes non profits and NGOs. Hierarchy exists almost universally in human organizations. That’s not an accident—it’s necessary for groups of humans working together to be effective.

bko 4y ago

People have been fired for a lot less at universities. Often time its not even attacking the organization or people, just for saying the wrong thing about a political issue.

noasaservice 4y ago

Academia follows some really strange rules, including things like tenure regarding academic freedom and speech. They also hire copious amounts of teacher assistants at poverty wages called "stipends", which also seem to bypass minimum wage laws. Even though they too act like businesses, because of 500-year precedents, wouldn't be a fair comparison.

SturgeonsLaw 4y ago

> Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ? Saying it's "not the real world" is unfairly denigrating, but people have made the argument that academia is it's own bubble with different rules to the world of private enterprise. Challenging existing ideas is a core tenet of higher education, but that can cause blowback in the private sphere. The existence of tenure, and sidelining of the profit motive (not quite elimination) also changes things.

stingraycharles 4y ago

I’d argue that a university is a very different type of organization than a company like SpaceX, with vastly different expectations on employee behavior.

namecheapTA 4y ago

Implying that academia is anything like the real world that 99% of people exist in is something only an academic would be foolish enough to imply.

enriquto 4y ago
There's surely two orders of magnitude more people working in academia than in rocket science. Does your argument prove, then, that SpaceX is not the real world, either? We are all in the same world; this whole "you are not real enough" argument is ridiculous, and doesn't really mean anything.
- namecheapTA 4y ago
  People working at a rocket company work under the same basic value structure that a person working at a concrete company does. People in academia do not. The fact that you missed this and thought comparing the number of people in a particular industry subset of a capitalistic enterprise to academia would somehow prove a point basically shows me how poor the thought/logic skills are in academia... The one thing they're supposed to be better at.
- IncRnd 4y ago
  The "real world" refers to everything outside of academia, where things are done differently compared to inside academia.

jimbob21 4y ago

I'm not the person you're responding to, but yes I would argue academia is not the real world i.e. private sector companies. Its academia. There are a whole different set of rules because it is not a privately run for-profit company. And nothing ever happens specifically because that's absolutely par for the course in academia. There's a whole different culture there.

arandomhuman 4y ago

> Are you saying that academia is "not the real world" ? If you are attempting to compare liberties those in academia have to corporate employees e.g. most people who are employed, no its not like the "real world".

IncRnd 4y ago

The environment in academia is absolutely not the same as a corporate environment.

j-bos 4y ago

Perhaps. Would you say working in academia is mo different from working in industry?