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Comment by _emacsomancer_ | Hacker News Reader

I found the beginning of this perplexing:

> The strange thing about academics, which always fascinates me, is that they believe they're completely immune to status considerations and consider themselves to be more or less monks. In reality, of course, academics are the most status-conscious people in the world. Take away a parking space from an academic and see how long he stays.

One, even monks worried about status (though perhaps in different terms). Two, I think academics are generally perfectly self-aware about their relationship with status, and I don't think they are significantly different from other professions. I don't think it usually hinges on parking spaces though.

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I think academics are aware that the problem just circles around in a different form. You can't escape the cycle of requiring any form of 'validation' or 'approval' from peers, and you have to rely on some 'in-system' validation mechanic that ultimately comes down to trust.

For an academic, you have to trust that both the individual producing the work and the individuals reviewing the work aren't getting sucked in by the hype or their own personal biases/needs/ego. As an academic, one has to trust and assume one's own work reflects one's own understanding to the highest possible caliber, and that once that work is released, that it will be examined rigorously to the same caliber professionally, academically.

But it's still a question of "having to trust in things you can't test for without changing the functioning of the approval/validation mechanic". Whether that's getting lost in the details of your own work (having so much knowledge it feels like you have none), or getting lost in the actual system itself - is the system designed so that bad actors are caught and weeded out - and honestly, it's my opinion that one singular mind can not manage all of this. But I think for many academics, the system is designed where, if one singular mind appears to mismanage any of this, they are labeled a bad actor.

So self awareness is more, something that just goes unrecognized and unnoticed, because it's considered a weakness to show it. The same thing happens in business, same behavior functionally. The way it presents itself is different because, there's a different yardstick. Money, quantifiable, measurable. But to the people actually moving large quantities of money around, it has as much potential for greatness or disaster as an enlightened intellect.

True enough regarding monks. Peruse the Rule of Saint Benedict and there's plenty in there about tamping down status-seeking.

Example: http://www.osb.org/rb/text/rbefjo3.html#21

And both monasteries and universities have clearly distinct ranks (and other titles) and hierarchies. These are quite clearly tied to status.

Have you dealt with academics a lot, in their home University contexts?

(I never had to directly, but I've spoken enough with people who have. Nothing about that writing strikes me as strange, or even particularly controversial.)

Well, yes, but only as a fellow academic...

One should not underestimate the importance of parking spaces to an academic at a suburban school.

When an academic loses free or convenient parking, they are suddenly hit with either financial costs or a losses of time. The howling can be tremendous, and the memory of an academic can be very long.

Academics tend to operate in a resource-constrained environment, and on timescales of a few years, can be effectively zero-sum. If a resource is taken away, it may never return, and no compensation may be offered.

TL;DR: Hold wages constant if necessary, but don't go after the parking.

Most suburban campuses could have plenty of parking, but they avoid building enough so that supply is constrained, so that they can reward professors by handing out designated parking spaces.

The number of different levels of parking preference at Stanford boggles the mind.

As my father rose from lowly lecturer to top professor, at the University of Queensland his parking privileges slowly got worse (though it never got very bad). This in spite of the fact that a lot more parking was built.

So it seems that parking was redistributed away from academic staff during that period.

This may be true, but it's not clearly tied to status.

Of course, there are parking things which are tied to status, but these generally are only at higher administrative level (Dean &c.) - but then it's a special parking space which is a visible marker of status perhaps but clearly not the most important thing about the position (even status-wise).

My university doesn't have any free parking; if we want parking we have to pay a fee, which is based on how 'good' the spaces are. And (unless you're a Dean or whatever) you don't get a specific space but rather the right to park within certain designated areas. A significant number of faculty (myself included as well as my chair) choose to ride the bus or the train (which we do get free passes for, as do the students).

> Academics tend to operate in a resource-constrained environment, and on timescales of a few years, can be effectively zero-sum. If a resource is taken away, it may never return, and no compensation may be offered.

This is certainly (and sadly) true.

> TL;DR: Hold wages constant if necessary, but don't go after the parking.

No, I'd rather you properly increase my salary. Thank you.

I was a little lost at the first paragraph (we do have a name for the strategy behind the "no one ever got fired for buying an IBM" pitch[1]).

The next point is just weird for someone who knows anything about academic funding: maybe he's right if you limit "academics" to tenured professors who don't care about funding or the future of their post-docs and grad students, but for the rest of us status is an important part of the grant process. It's not as simple as "we like her, let's fund her grant" but grants are reviewed by your peers, so "status" is how we get payed.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt#Bo...

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