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Harder questions need to be asked regarding how metrics tie to actual objectives. Just because I have a chart trending in the right direction is meaningless. “N

Harder questions need to be asked regarding how metrics tie to actual objectives. Just because I have a chart trending in the right direction is meaningless. “Number of papers published” is not a good metric. We need more trust and fewer metrics / games. The thing I really don’t want to pay for (as a tax payer) is the bureaucracy in the middle of all of this.

kiba 3y ago
Might be a good idea to bring back the concept of the gentleman scientist, who are generally independently wealthy. Charles Darwin is one such scientist.
- pvaldes 3y ago
  It seems that we are getting short of people interested into paying with their own money for the privilege of solving other's people problems for free. Is very strange.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Great, I think it'd be so much better if a qualification for scientist was "already rich".
  - _dain_ 3y ago
    maybe, but it's a hell of a lot easier to get rich when you don't spend your 20s on a phd working for peanuts
- linguae 3y ago
  As a researcher who is seeking alternatives to the pressures of both academic and industrial research, one of the things I’m thinking about for my long-term career plan is to relocate to an area with a lower cost of living (bye Silicon Valley) and make an arrangement where I work part time for money (possibilities include being a contractor, doing freelance or consulting work, or starting a business that doesn’t require more than 20 hours per week to operate) and spend the other 20 hours a week on research. I’d love to be able to do research based on my own interests without having to worry about business or career concerns. I’ve come to realize that when one is paid to do research, the researcher is suddenly under pressure by the person or institution paying the researcher. “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” after all. But if I make a living through non-research tasks, then I’ll have research freedom. The tough part is coming up with a business idea that would allow this type of lifestyle; that’s where I’m currently at. If I could make $130,000 per year, heck, even $65,000, and live in an inexpensive part of America then I’d be fine, but the trick is figuring out how to make that much money in only 20 hours instead of 40.
  - osigurdson 3y ago
    Why not live somewhere even cheaper? Do your research from a nice hut on the beach in Thailand for example.
  - mnky9800n 3y ago
    What do you do research in?
    - linguae 3y ago
      I work in machine learning, and I also have interests in programming languages, operating systems, and databases.
  - PeterisP 3y ago
    Working in research, I have observed that one can't do everything alone, so many things effectively need a team because specializations matter and some tasks simply need a decent quantity of mundane effort. So me living cheaply wouldn't be sufficient because I still need funding to pay all the other people involved.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
It's a hard problem because there are no good answers. > We need more trust and fewer metrics / games. Except, at scale when dealing with a lot of people, there are plenty of people who are willing to abuse that trust. I made this mistake early on in my career as a manager. I gave an important piece of work to one of the very senior engineers who I managed. Over the course of a month, he repeatedly said "trust me" regarding the status of his project. When 6 weeks went by and he finally showed it, it was in such a state that it was essentially unusable. We ended up throwing the whole thing out. Furthermore, he left for another job about two months after that, leaving his work in a shitty state. I made plenty of mistakes there, but I also learned a valuable lesson, "trust but verify". Until someone shows me concrete evidence of what they've done, I really have nothing to go by. To be clear, I'd love to be able to "have more trust and fewer metrics". But at the end of the day, it's really hard to give people the freedom to, say, hole up for months at a time while they say "trust me".
- osigurdson 3y ago
  Managers need to have the capacity to understand the work being done. Get into (I assume) code, and see what is happening. If you can’t do this, it is impossible to be an effective leader. You can be an effective people manager without this capability but you cannot be trusted to ensure the work will get done.
  - hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
    Totally agree. To be clear, I am technical, and I definitely was able to evaluate the work being done once it was delivered. My mistake (among many) was letting the work go too long without any visible progress. That's why I get annoyed when people just lament about the problems with things like OKRs and KPIs, while totally disregarding the problems these things were designed to solve and pretending that if managers just had a more "trusting" mindset that a million Higgs and Wiles would be free to blossom.
    - Gibbon1 3y ago
      I don't know what to think about a 'senior' engineer that doesn't reflexively keep his manager in the loop.

kiba 3y ago

Might be a good idea to bring back the concept of the gentleman scientist, who are generally independently wealthy. Charles Darwin is one such scientist.

pvaldes 3y ago
It seems that we are getting short of people interested into paying with their own money for the privilege of solving other's people problems for free. Is very strange.
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Great, I think it'd be so much better if a qualification for scientist was "already rich".
- _dain_ 3y ago
  maybe, but it's a hell of a lot easier to get rich when you don't spend your 20s on a phd working for peanuts
linguae 3y ago
As a researcher who is seeking alternatives to the pressures of both academic and industrial research, one of the things I’m thinking about for my long-term career plan is to relocate to an area with a lower cost of living (bye Silicon Valley) and make an arrangement where I work part time for money (possibilities include being a contractor, doing freelance or consulting work, or starting a business that doesn’t require more than 20 hours per week to operate) and spend the other 20 hours a week on research. I’d love to be able to do research based on my own interests without having to worry about business or career concerns. I’ve come to realize that when one is paid to do research, the researcher is suddenly under pressure by the person or institution paying the researcher. “He who pays the piper calls the tune,” after all. But if I make a living through non-research tasks, then I’ll have research freedom. The tough part is coming up with a business idea that would allow this type of lifestyle; that’s where I’m currently at. If I could make $130,000 per year, heck, even $65,000, and live in an inexpensive part of America then I’d be fine, but the trick is figuring out how to make that much money in only 20 hours instead of 40.
- osigurdson 3y ago
  Why not live somewhere even cheaper? Do your research from a nice hut on the beach in Thailand for example.
- mnky9800n 3y ago
  What do you do research in?
  - linguae 3y ago
    I work in machine learning, and I also have interests in programming languages, operating systems, and databases.
- PeterisP 3y ago
  Working in research, I have observed that one can't do everything alone, so many things effectively need a team because specializations matter and some tasks simply need a decent quantity of mundane effort. So me living cheaply wouldn't be sufficient because I still need funding to pay all the other people involved.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

It's a hard problem because there are no good answers. > We need more trust and fewer metrics / games. Except, at scale when dealing with a lot of people, there are plenty of people who are willing to abuse that trust. I made this mistake early on in my career as a manager. I gave an important piece of work to one of the very senior engineers who I managed. Over the course of a month, he repeatedly said "trust me" regarding the status of his project. When 6 weeks went by and he finally showed it, it was in such a state that it was essentially unusable. We ended up throwing the whole thing out. Furthermore, he left for another job about two months after that, leaving his work in a shitty state. I made plenty of mistakes there, but I also learned a valuable lesson, "trust but verify". Until someone shows me concrete evidence of what they've done, I really have nothing to go by. To be clear, I'd love to be able to "have more trust and fewer metrics". But at the end of the day, it's really hard to give people the freedom to, say, hole up for months at a time while they say "trust me".

osigurdson 3y ago
Managers need to have the capacity to understand the work being done. Get into (I assume) code, and see what is happening. If you can’t do this, it is impossible to be an effective leader. You can be an effective people manager without this capability but you cannot be trusted to ensure the work will get done.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Totally agree. To be clear, I am technical, and I definitely was able to evaluate the work being done once it was delivered. My mistake (among many) was letting the work go too long without any visible progress. That's why I get annoyed when people just lament about the problems with things like OKRs and KPIs, while totally disregarding the problems these things were designed to solve and pretending that if managers just had a more "trusting" mindset that a million Higgs and Wiles would be free to blossom.
  - Gibbon1 3y ago
    I don't know what to think about a 'senior' engineer that doesn't reflexively keep his manager in the loop.