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Comment by yardie | Hacker News Reader

I was an undergraduate work-study student working in my university lab. I got to talking with a Ph.D student helping set up his equipment,

"how long you been working on this?"

"Almost 10 years."

"Seems really long."

"Yes, normally it's 5 years but I can't enough time to finish it. I'm always working on Prof. Engineer's research projects."

"I mean can't you just leave?"

"No, not at all. You are completely beholden to your advisor. Can't get money, lab time, assistants without them. I'd have to walk away from all my research."

I was gobsmacked. Professor Engineer was teaching a course I was taking, though he wouldn't recognize me in my shop bunny suit. His attitude towards students was nothing like his attitude towards his graduate researchers. This was not the first story I heard and I assumed that's how grad school worked.

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Academia is probably unavoidably abusive because it’s all personal relationships[1] but PhDs are definitely abusogenic compared to professional doctorates like JDs or MDs. You absolutely need your supervisor[2].

[1] Academic science is one of the most feudal environments I have ever personally experienced, and human genetics perhaps even more so. A few large groups of collaborators with connected pedigrees share post-docs and promote each other’s work, and fund young researchers coming up through their network. Any researcher who crosses one of the lords of human genetics could be excluded from a whole patronage set, and sources of funding, as these networks populate the grant-review boards.

https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2019/01/17/d-5/

[2] It also illustrated a truth in academia from what little I’ve seen and experienced within it: it is a highly feudal culture defined by patronage networks and an ordered understanding of the relationship of superiors to subordinates. As they say: “You come at the king, you best not miss.”

https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/03/

This is one of the downsides of a centrally planned economy where all the funds are allocated by an authority who doesn't profit from investment returns.

Ouch. Think I'd just research real world salaries for the Masters degree and likely flee.

I'm told this is a common path, at least in CS. apply to a phd program to get funding, do some research, take some courses, then drop out because you "just can't handle it" once you have enough credits for your free masters degree.

Maybe you're just putting it this simplistically for the rhetoric, but if you're doing research it's not really free. You're actually getting paid (albeit not much) and having your tuition waived to do work as a researcher.

I don't have any firsthand experience, this is just what a few of my friends at CMU have told me. they also complain about their paltry stipend, which I find kind of amusing considering that the waived tuition + stipend is close to what I gross for my fulltime SWE gig.

Grad student visas are a whole animal. Transitioning from an F1 to a H1b, or green card, is fraught with it's own complications. That's why most graduate schools are stacked international students. Americans and permanent residents wouldn't put up with it. And that is by design.

This is really odd to me. In most contexts I’ve experienced, the professor’s research and the student’s are more or less one and the same. Yes, you might have an extra project, but how could someone get stuck for an extra five years?

> In most contexts I’ve experienced, the professor’s research and the student’s are more or less one and the same.

A PhD is an individual research degree - ideally you’re supposed to be working on your own ideas not someone else’s.

That's not how it works in a lab that relies on expensive equipmentvand multi-year research programs. Those PhD thesis projects are minor variants on your PIs research program.

Parent was comparing undergrad classroom behavior to the (reported) research lab behavior.

Professor's will normally have 1-10 projects simultaneously from what I gather. They rely on the grad students to do the actual gruntwork. If you are doing research in X and the professor pivots you to his project Y what are your options.?

What's a "shop bunny suit"?

Clean room tyvek coveralls that cover head to toe. You'll see them in automotive paint shops and electronic rooms. This was a hypersonic lab so even a strand of hair, blown at +2000mph, could do serious damage to equipment.

And since I was working between classes it made it easier to change.

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