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If you get stressed by fearing you'll miss an 'important' message to which you want to 'react' immediately outside of your working hours (I'd argue even within

If you get stressed by fearing you'll miss an 'important' message to which you want to 'react' immediately outside of your working hours (I'd argue even within work hours unless it is that once a year true emergency) to make a 'good impression' let me tell you now that that is not a winning strategy. The hard truth is you are conditioning others to see and treat you like a good servant. One they want to keep as a servant. If you want to serve yourself and advance your carreer, bring other values to the table when it matters. You want to be the person that shows promising skills for the next few carreer steps, not be the 'good ata boy, fetch'. If you are truly needed for something urgent, because you are the only person that can do it rather than anyone that will do it. they will find a way to contact you even with your phone notifications turned off. Making the "good impression" is a negative if you are impressing the wrong image. You can ignore this advice from someone who has been through many stages of a carreer, and it can be scary advice givin your current perception, but trust me, this is an important worklife lesson.

dotnet00 3y ago
I expected to get this kind of response, but applying it so broadly is kind of overly cynical and doesn't really account for the realities of early career research. These urgent emails can be about things like quick questions about my code. If they had to wait for me to reply (which would cause them to just switch to another in their large backlog of tasks in the meantime), it'd take even longer than the year it has already taken to make meaningful progress on integrating my work. Alternatively they may be requests to have a quick call to discuss a paper draft I sent for their review (because that's the only reasonable time they might have to discussit that week). With these, of course I should care about expediency as there are only a handful of papers with me as primary author. They directly count towards the progress of my career. Plus, with these there are strict submission deadlines to deal with, which are more important to me as primary author. I'm in a research group of 4 people, 2 of whom are more scientist than computer engineer, and the other is mainly a Python person and also mainly a Windows person. Thus, any of our new developments relating to GPU acceleration, parallelization, automations and relating to our Linux systems are, in most cases, my child. This isn't a large company where there may be many different people who can handle the same task and where it's reasonable to make it difficult for them to reach me to avoid giving the impression of being a slave. Plus, it isn't like I'm just doing everything I'm told either. I understand when someone's just asking me to do something that they likely won't even remember asking for and know to deprioritize those things appropriately.
- PeterStuer 3y ago
  I understand. I did the same when (I guess) I was your age. I do not think I was being cynical. By nature if people have great utility or satisfaction from something, they do not want it to change. Is that bad of them?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

dotnet00 3y ago

I expected to get this kind of response, but applying it so broadly is kind of overly cynical and doesn't really account for the realities of early career research. These urgent emails can be about things like quick questions about my code. If they had to wait for me to reply (which would cause them to just switch to another in their large backlog of tasks in the meantime), it'd take even longer than the year it has already taken to make meaningful progress on integrating my work. Alternatively they may be requests to have a quick call to discuss a paper draft I sent for their review (because that's the only reasonable time they might have to discussit that week). With these, of course I should care about expediency as there are only a handful of papers with me as primary author. They directly count towards the progress of my career. Plus, with these there are strict submission deadlines to deal with, which are more important to me as primary author. I'm in a research group of 4 people, 2 of whom are more scientist than computer engineer, and the other is mainly a Python person and also mainly a Windows person. Thus, any of our new developments relating to GPU acceleration, parallelization, automations and relating to our Linux systems are, in most cases, my child. This isn't a large company where there may be many different people who can handle the same task and where it's reasonable to make it difficult for them to reach me to avoid giving the impression of being a slave. Plus, it isn't like I'm just doing everything I'm told either. I understand when someone's just asking me to do something that they likely won't even remember asking for and know to deprioritize those things appropriately.

PeterStuer 3y ago
I understand. I did the same when (I guess) I was your age. I do not think I was being cynical. By nature if people have great utility or satisfaction from something, they do not want it to change. Is that bad of them?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]