6 ms·

The story resonates but the conclusion doesn't. As an immigrant, I relate to what she says: feel pressure to work hard -> work hard -> achieve results -> benef

• bbor 4y ago
  If academia had a better effort/reward ratio pre-“X-level”, wouldn’t society reap the benefits of increased interest in those careers?
  • xyzelement 4y ago
    Maybe. But also it seems like there's some exponential benefits too. Who can produce the next earth shattering discovery: a 1000 researches who've only done one study, or one researcher who has done a 1000 studies? All that experience and context matters. The woman who wrote the article is sought after today not because what she's produced over the past years, but because of what those efforts enable her to do next.
  • kneebonian 4y ago
    Well I mean Einstein, Netwon, Maxwell, and Galileo were probably more valuable to advancing our understanding of physics than every one of their contemporaries combined. The funny part is that Einstein wasn't even in academia until after he was famous. If anything this speaks to me that we want only those people in the field who would do it even if there was no reward for they will be the ones who produce earth shattering breakthroughs.
    • bumby 4y ago
      I agree, but it seems like a lot of modern research requires resources that make it difficult for independent people to contribute.
    • kelipso 4y ago
      > The funny part is that Einstein wasn't even in academia until after he was famous No...he was doing his PhD when he published the special relativity and other papers that made him famous.
      • oldprogrammer2 4y ago
        But wasn't he working at a patent office? I was under the impression that working on a PhD at that time and place would not have been considered "in academia", in that he was not teaching or assisting.
        • kelipso 4y ago
          He was but I guess definitions vary and I'd consider working on your PhD makes you definitely be in academia.
      • aborsy 4y ago
        I am not sure if this is true. I think he was in a patent office when work was done and published in 1905.
    • nonrandomstring 4y ago
      Well not "earth shattering" by any means, but I did all of my research and published with MIT while entirely outside the university system. Everything I achieved was despite, not because of the university system, which having previously encountered I knew would only obstruct my work. What really helped was the internet, patiently emailing other researchers and kindly being sent papers. Without that generosity and the fact that in 2005 people in my field (DSP) kept personal websites, it would not have been possible. Fortunately in many areas of computing research, you don't need much equipment, or it is cheap or even free to get your hands on. I fee sorry for people who work in physics or fields that need expensive specialist facilities for their work. This is why I vehemently support SciHub and hope other budding researchers get the same breaks that I did, without having to kill themselves in dead institutions. Having had one foot back in academia for 10 more years now I am absolutely convinced it is doomed. The death spiral of efficient self-cannibalism is reaching a frenzy. Outside a handful of top tier institutions they are not even fit places for teaching and learning, never mind original research. It is so sad what "ideology" can do to great institutions and nations.
• frakt0x90 4y ago
  To some extent. My wife is about to finish her PhD. She's not even a top-level publishing academic and the amount of work she's had to put in for next to no pay (sometimes literally no pay) is insane. Hard work is great and but there is such a thing as too hard and I would argue academia takes advantage of some of the hardest working and most qualified people in the country (I'm in the US).
  • dingusdew 4y ago
    The US does this in every instance where passion is involved. Passionate people, especially those who are passionate about their work, are more easily convinced to take less pay because they are "passionate" and want to see their work come to fruition. Exploitation of youthful passion for profit is basically the centerpiece of how America beats its workers into submission and slowly breaks down their expectations for anything good in the workplace. The worse condition the workers are willing to accept, the more profit to be made off of their labor.
    • xyzelement 4y ago
      // The US does this in every instance where passion is involved I don't think there's a conspiracy. High performers in "passion" fields are sought after and make bank (Tom Cruise vs starving actor, eg) The problem is the oversupply of middling talent. If I needed a random average actor for something, there are thousands of them fighting for the job, so it doesn't pay much. If I need Tom Cruise I am going to pay a lot. The passion lense is useless. Doctors are passionate. Engineers are passionate. The difference is the bar to entry. Getting into and graduating med school is very hard. Very few people, relatively, have an MD so they are in demand. And failure is clean - if you didn't make it to medschool, you go do something else. You don't spend the rest of your life as an "aspiring physician" There's no such filter for acting etc so lots of people flood the field, don't get a natural weed-out and thus spend the rest of their life competing with each other for mediocre opportunities. And we just don't have a shortage of actors. The US system is provides a practical signal. If you aren't making it on your "passion field", at some point the money signals that you can contribute better to society elsewhere.
• Swizec 4y ago
  As a fellow immigrant, can confirm, hard work works. That’s the main reason I came to USA – hard work didn’t feel like it would work back home. Nothing nefarious, just tall poppy syndrome and general environmental influence or multiplicative factor. In America, with a bit of luck, it feels like 1x hard work produces 2x result. 3x if you’re privileged. At home, it felt like 1x hard work would get 1.3x result. BUT! It is important to realize you’re solving a cold start problem. The hustle and hard work only gets you so far. You have to switch to using leverage once you have it. Do not grind yourself to dust. Yes, dialing back is a luxury. That’s what the hard work was for. Now you can focus on using that position to do more with less. I liken it to running an ultramarathon to get to the start line of the marathon. You now have similar footing to someone who grew up in the social class to which you now belong, just a little later. Good luck. edit: I’m not saying hard work guarantees anything. In life there are no guarantees. But I do think it’s a necessary input. Also there’s studies showing immigrants have the highest class mobility in USA. I’m sure “the immigrant work ethic” has something to do with it. -> https://economics.princeton.edu/working-papers/intergenerational-mobility-of-immigrants-over-two-centuries/ https://economics.princeton.edu/working-papers/intergenerati... At the end of the day, if you want exceptional results, you have to do exceptional things. Such is life. Only 2% of Americans have a PhD. Getting into the top 2% of the population sounds pretty exceptional to me. Doing it in a population you weren’t even born into? Heroic.
  • neilv 4y ago
    > As a fellow immigrant, can confirm, hard work works. You can confirm that hard work can work. Or seem to work.
    • xyzelement 4y ago
      Yup. We can also surmise that lack of hard work is guaranteed to not work. So if you need to grow hard work seems like the better option.
      • monsieurbanana 4y ago
        Lack of hard work definitely isn't an hindrance for grow. Having the right family name, pleasant facial structure or just being very likeable and sociable are all possible replacements for hard work.
• hourago 4y ago
  > Those who chose an easier path, perhaps were less stressed but also didn't do or get as much. This is could be true assuming that the goal of society is maximum production and not maximum well-being. > But this is a luxury of being at X level to begin with and you mainly don't get there without hard work. Most of the results of hard-work go to the owners of business, not to the people doing that extra effort. And that is also true for academia. To overwork human beings to increase profit in exchange of a fraction of the produced seems inefficient at least, evil at worst.
  • snapplebobapple 4y ago
    When it comes to research maximum output is maximum well being for society (assuming the research isn't garbage, looking at you large parts of the humanities department) because that research drives productivity increases through multiple avenues. This is true because the effect of research is usually broadly applicable (i.e. a more efficient engine can save trillions in fuel and environmental damage) while the costs of overwork are concentrated on a very few that are self selecting for that lifestyle. That most of the results of hard work go to the business owner is a result of capital being scarce while labor is more likely to not be right now (this is changing but it is a slow process). This is definitely true of academia with massive phd overproduction. If you want more benefit to accrue to phds you need to end the pyramid scheme that has been massively overproducing phds for decades or create broader non teaching/research demand for phds (ideally real demand, not manufactured credential requirement inflation because that causes massive dead weight loss)
• noorkersz 4y ago
  I think about this as another of those "industries" in which a lot people want to get into. Similar to art, animation, acting, screen writing, recording artist music; I suppose any creative industries will be like this. All these 'industries' become exploitative (possibly capitalism has something to do with how this happens. but let's stay on topic) So then, I consider this pattern of exploitation -- of "put up with it or get out", to be a sort of collective (or cultural, organizational) trauma in the sense that it self-perpetuates. People join, get overworked, become traumatized, and then some make it through. Now, once on the other side, they proceed to overwork newcomers. It's very common to think "I made it through, and I've become what I am because of those experiences" a rationalization of the trauma. But I wonder about them who make it... was it because of overworked abuse, or was it in spite of it?
  • photochemsyn 4y ago
    Academic institutions are loaded up with people who are skilled at political manipulation and bureaucratic infighting, and who often have little real interest in their supposed field of research. For these types it's basically a game of getting in with the reviewers of grant proposals, rubbing elbows at scientific conferences, hiring technicians and postdocs and maybe some pHD students to generate a steady stream of papers, cozying up to university administration, attending dinners and so on. It's gotten even worse since the corporations started getting exclusive licenses to university patents, now there's all the secrecy in those fields as well as the PIs start salivating about the possibility of getting a small percentage of the royalties on those patents. Trofim Lysenko would have recognized the system, it's similar to the one he ran in the Soviet Union for decades.
    • noorkersz 4y ago
      I formed this opinion, that in academic institutions there exist two types of persons: bureaucratic types, who play politics and so on, like the ones you describe. and the ones that actually know the content and love their fields of study. my opinion is that institutions need both types. But what do I know... I am going to finish my masters (or maybe not) and get out of academia.
    • 4y ago
• Ultimatt 4y ago
  The point you missed is she got where she is with a very very large amount of luck too. Most grants have about 100+ equally high quality applicants at this point in history. If you dont make it 8 years out of PhD (which is a huge investment of your productive life) you get shit canned forever on funding and "early career" opportunities. The system is exploitative in the extreme.
  • midoridensha 4y ago
    Sounds like the best way to win at this game is not to play in the first place.
• kneebonian 4y ago
  It's interesting you say this, I've realized it true in mine own life, I worked very hard, and admittedly was blessed with some wonderful opportunities early on in my career that led to me being far ahead of many of my peers age wise. I spent several years early in my career and life working very hard, working, full time school, full time parent, etc. Because of that I am now at a place where as my children have the ability to speak I have been able to dial it back a bit and still maintain my standing because of the foundation that was put in place long ago. As my mother said "Life has to get hard at some point it can get hard now or it can get hard later."
  • xyzelement 4y ago
    // As my mother said "Life has to get hard at some point it can get hard now or it can get hard later." She's wise. The way I express the same idea - I'd rather make my own life hard on my own terms, than deal with it just being hard and struggling. Easy example - it's much easier to chose to save money when you have it (forgo something) than to somehow deal with not having money later. Or - it's totally fine and cute to have to live with roommates in your 20s so you can save and invest. Living with roommates in your 40s because you haven't saved and invested - less cute.
• thwayunion 4y ago
  > "I am at level X, I can dial it back" I am 100% certain that this rug is going to be pulled out from under any academic who is currently under the age of 45 or so. Tenure and seniority aren't going to mean much when budgets are tight and the admin is run by professional managers instead of senior-academics-on-admin-rotation. Painful for anyone who's currently an Asst or Assoc Prof and was planning on retiring-in-place in academia, but I think it's a net good for academic culture in the long term.
  • gnicholas 4y ago
    Isn't a lot of the increase in costs coming from the admin side, where folks are easier to lay off? My understanding (married to an academic) is that it's pretty difficult to get rid of tenured folks, and much easier to eliminate admin positions. And in some cases, the admins make a lot of money, even in comparison to the professors.
    • thwayunion 4y ago
      > My understanding (married to an academic) is that it's pretty difficult to get rid of tenured folks This depends on the type of institution, but it's mostly a shared fiction on the order of "corporate culture". Ie, The sort of fiction that no leader dares to undermine when times are good but which goes out the window as soon as revenues start declining and cuts must happen. At many institutions, there are no actual legal or contractual barriers to dismissing tenured faculty. Tenure is nothing more or less than a gentleperson's agreement. A social expectation. Even where actual legal/contractual protection does exist, it typically protects the person's job but not the job itself. Ie, a university might not be able to fire a tenured professor and hire a new professor. But they can simply downsize the academic department and release the faculty member by virtue of the faculty position no longer existing. Maybe hire back ad junct labor a few semesters later if necessary. > much easier to eliminate admin positions. This largely depends on what you mean by "admin". Typically the split is between "staff" and "faculty". The explosion of "staff" is not (just) a story of bloated middle management. It's also a story of the ongoing move from tenured to untenured labor. In particular: "staff" often includes people like instructors, ad junct teaching labor, research scientists, and post-docs. Why would you fire an ad junct instructor or research scientist (staff) if they are cheaper than a professor (faculty) for roughly the same work? In fact, a savvy financial engineer might even prefer the more contingent form of labor even though they are more expensive because a friction of releasing traditional faculty is expensive in terms of opportunity cost and agility.
• icelancer 4y ago
  >> Due to her earlier work, she's at a place to reflect and say "I am at level X, I can dial it back" which is great. But this is a luxury of being at X level to begin with and you mainly don't get there without hard work. This is pretty typical, especially on Hacker News. A bunch of people saying working too hard is bad who are rich primarily because they worked too hard while they were younger. Mostly I think they don't get what they're saying. Though I suspect some of them actually say it to prevent competition.
• agumonkey 4y ago
  I'm struggling with a pervasive culture of inverting this pattern. "I do nothing unless you give me a lot of privileges". And if you come with motivation and desire to achieve more (overachieving to an extent) you become the enemy.